WWE talents under siege from fans in Vegas during ‘Mania weekend

You may have been reading lately about the security issues at the hotels used by WWE talent in Las Vegas during Wrestlemania weekend.

The stories came to a head in an incident highlighted by TMZ involving CM Punk, who slapped a phone out of the hand of a fan who was shooting video of Punk’s wife, AJ Lee, and Bayley as they chatted in a hotel lobby.

On the one hand there, Punk was very much in the wrong – slapping a phone out of somebody’s hand can come with legal and civil repercussions.

On the other: pro wrestlers, like other public figures, are flesh and blood like the rest of us.

We really don’t need to be pestering them 24/7, is what I’m getting at.

“I understand that they think they know the superstars because they’ve watched them for so long, but at the same time, you’ve got to remember that they’re real people,” said recently retired WWE star AJ Styles, who was involved in a couple of uncomfortable interactions during WM42 weekend himself.

“It can get overwhelming when that many people swarm you like that. I get it. No means no with pictures and whatnot. If they ask you not to, chill out,” Styles said.

Former WWE champ Drew McIntyre said he and his family were also “rushed” in their hotel, and wrote on his socials that the offenders are “lucky I’m a calm-natured person outside the ring.”

“Please don’t do that ever again,” McIntyre said.

The hard part to this is: there is a decent-sized subset of fans who scout out the comings-and-goings of the performers – in wrestling, in pro and college sports, in music and other entertainment – solely for the purpose of getting a selfie or some other kind of touch or interaction.

More and more these days, you can pay for that kind of access at a meet-and-greet, convention or something similar, but those events can be costly.

Not that stalking people in airports, hotel lobbies and Waffle Houses is necessarily cost-effective.

“Here’s the thing that fans got to accept. Just because we’re walking through the hotel to get to our room, we’re not even hanging out. We’re just trying to get to our room. … I’m not taking pictures, because once I start, I’ll never stop. If I have my family with me, I can’t do that,” Styles said.