Wrestlemania: How I learned to Stop Worrying and Love being British

Sometimes a time of year is indicative of so much. Every year WrestleMania comes at a time of new beginnings: in April not only is the world celebrating Easter with its symbolic images of rebirth and renewal but Spring has well and truly sprung as clocks move to accommodate more daylight in our day. What could be more indicative of something purely promising?

It is with a renewed sense of vigour that I look at the entertainment form that I love but I can’t help but feel that for UK fans of WWE it is the best of times and it is the worst of times.

In the most illuminated corners of my memory, I remember that WrestleMania was always something watched after the event itself, recorded on VHS and then consumed repeatedly. And it was treasured. Now, the event comes at a cost and is cherished in a different sort of way. The expense is monetary, of course, but it also means losing more than just £17.95. As UK fans, the 1am start means that we lose slumber as well as the most of the next day if we are to enjoy this annual carnival of egos.

I realise that £17.95 – an increase of £3 on previous years – is little to bemoan, especially given the vastly more expensive US mainland cost. However, the lack of attention that UK fans get from the WWE is becoming something of a sticking point.

Biannual visits to the UK by the WWE are about as good as it gets these days. These vary now in terms of where they are scheduled. Some cities get a regular post WrestleMania April Raw tour date and a subsequent November event while, more recently, north eastern cities have been overlooked in favour of the less attractive SmackDown tour. At their best, UK house shows have can have hot crowds full of smart fans with a great sense of humour but, at their worst they’re full of kids clambering for merchandise with little to no attention span eager to see John Cena and only John Cena.

1992 saw the ultimate compliment with one of the big 4 ppvs being staged in London, flattery that has never been repeated despite SummerSlam’s success. With this now as something of antiquity, fans’ interest was piqued when rumours of WrestleMania 30 being held on these shores were fuelled when the Millennium Stadium, Cardiff was investigated as a potential venue in October last year. Sadly, this came and went.

The devolution of access for UK fans would seem to continue. Last year, the European WWE Shop closed down as the site claimed that fans could now order from the WWE’s home website where orders would now be shipped from. Ordering from the European site tended to be a little frustrating but came with reasonable shipping costs and lead times. Fast-forward 6 months and a casual fan looking to buy the latest CM Punk or John Cena t-shirt for $24.99 will find that their order more than doubles when the $27.00 shipping costs to the UK is added at checkout.

If the WWE network ever airs here (and that’s a huge ‘if’) it, too, will probably be a worse deal than is currently offered. Sky Sports covers the cost of most of the B ppvs that WWE offers and so fans are left to pay £14.99 for 4-5 others, with the exception of the aforementioned WrestleMania fee. Moreover, UK fans have never had access to WWE Classics on Demand except via an unreliable web service that petered out and stopped operating without announcement about 12 months ago. A payment of $3 per month gave you access to some classic content via their website but, in truth, it was temperamental and rarely updated.

British enthusiasts will also note that after 22 years of partnership, Silver Vision, the official licensee for World Wrestling Entertainment videos and DVDs in the EMEA region, parted company with WWE. Anyone who dealt with them will know that their service was second to none and they could rarely be beaten for value and price – they never charged customers for delivery and more often than not would deliver within 24 hours of ordering. The licence is now held by Freemantle Media who are already vastly more expensive for ppv events on DVD. (By way of example, Silver Vision are currently selling WrestleMania 28 on both formats for £8.99, Freemantle are offering the same product on DVD for £14.99)

Then there is the increase in programming that WWE are putting out. If there is any desire to watch more than Sky Sports’ current scheduling of Raw, SmackDown, Superstars, NXT and Vintage Collection, UK fans are not yet offered access to it. Saturday Morning Slam and Main Event are unavailable to British audiences at present. Hulu Plus is not available outside the US and the UK’s version of Netflix is a totally different ballgame, offering exponentially less content than the US version.

And yet. Perhaps I am looking at this the wrong way. $45+ ppv costs every month and the chance that the WWE will visit your city or somewhere in your state that’s near to you is probably not that dissimilar a deal to the UK’s current arrangement. Living in a central city in the UK, I am more often than not guaranteed to be able to attend a house show twice a year. A journey for me to London takes 2 hours; for many that wouldn’t get them anywhere close to their nearest city in the US. And given that I only have to pay to watch the Royal Rumble, WrestleMania, Summerslam, Money in the Bank and Survivor Series for a rate that is 50% less than that paid in the US, I feel that maybe I’m speaking out of turn here.

Its useless seeking parity and I know that. This is a company that thrives on American soil and should continue to do so because when it gets it right it produces some fantastic television. Come April 7^th I will be as eager as I ever was to watch the event. Wearing my over-priced merchandise, beer in one hand, junk food in the other; at 1am, it is the best of times. By 5 am, bleary-eyed, sleep-deprived and slightly disappointed, it is the worst of times. If there was ever a metaphor for the eagerness with which we meet spring in Britain, this was probably it.