WWE needs to play to its smart fans

What is pro wrestling companies were to embrace their smart fans with a smart-fan broadcast? WWE, most certainly, could do this, with ease.

The concept I have in mind here is along the lines of what ESPN does for big college football games, or what CBS has been doing the past couple of years at the Final Four.

Instead of having just the one announce team, they’ll give you several: the main team, as you’re used to, but then also you can watch the game with either set of homer announcers, another with a different camera and former coaches breaking down each play with a telestrator, whatever.

OK, so, to how wrestling could do something like this.

WWE Network, at its monthly Sunday night special, gives us the standard broadcast, with the kayfabe announce teams, doing things like telling us about how the wrestlers have scouted each others’ moves, calling it straight up.

In addition to the various foreign-language broadcast teams, you’d get a new option: the smart-fan team.

Whose job isn’t to sell you on the athletic competition.

The fourth wall is down. You’re a fan who knows that it’s all a work, you watch it that way, and these announcers work from that level of understanding.

They’re the coaches with the different camera angles telestrating each play as it happens.

You get a three-voice booth for this one, with one of them, a sort of sideline reporter, tied by earpiece to the kayfabe broadcast to be able to comment on what they’re trying to sell.

That’s a big part of watching wrestling from a smart-fan perspective, of course: knowing what Vince is trying to get you to buy into.

There’d be a play-by-play guy, a professional broadcaster type who is smart to the business, and a color guy, a former wrestler or manager, or booker.

Test this out on a Sunday night, get it working right, then expand it to Mondays and Tuesdays.

I might actually start watching on Mondays and Tuesdays again if this was an option.

Column by Chris Graham