By Wynter@WynterStorm24
“Oh boy, 3am!” The iconic words of Patrick Star echoes the sentiment of many American fans as they awaken to watch some of their favorite wrestlers perform in Japan. With a good 15 hour time difference, many of New Japan’s specials air before most of the population is awake. There are fans who commit to waking up early to watch the show as it happens live, fans who resign themselves to dodging spoilers and catching up at a more convenient time, and there are the fans who complain about the start time altogether.
Yeah, those fans are the worst.
In the United States, especially in the eastern time zone, we fans are a bit spoiled. Larger companies tend to make their tours here. WWE, the ever-present corporate giant, hosts the majority of its live events, television broadcasts, and big events in the United States. What I’m saying here is that everything is done on a time table fairly convenient to the American fanbase. And maybe that spoiling is what brings out all the complainers as soon as an overseas company announces a show time that falls out of the “acceptable” time window.
It mostly happened during New Japan shows, where for some reason a vocal section of fans felt that it was necessary to proclaim how “ridiculous” it was that they would have to get up early to watch a show live. WWE’s recent Super Showdown in Australia and the two controversial shows in Saudi Arabia brought these lovely people back to the surface. And with the announcement of a NXT UK Takeover happening in England, it seems there’s even more fuel for the fire.
The majority of the fans complaining on social media about early or inconvenient start times are American to the surprise of absolutely no one. Of course the demographic most used to being catered to is the one upset; good old American ethnocentrism.
Now to illustrate how silly the recent complaints about the upcoming NXT UK Takeover are, the event will be airing on the WWE Network at around 8pm in England. That’s about 3pm in the eastern part of the United States and 12 noon in the western part. While it’s probably not too convenient for a lot of us as it is in the middle of the work/school day, it’s by no means cause for alarm. Worst case scenario, we can just avoid the spoilers (we’re supposed to be working anyway, right?) and tune in to watch later in the evening.
To put this in perspective, this year’s Wrestlemania main card broadcast started at 7pm eastern and went until about 12:30am in the United States. That means our friends in the UK started their broadcast around midnight and ended around 5:30am. We complained about the long runtime here, imagine being awake basically all night. That’s mental! In fact, when I lived in Japan we had a joke condition called Wrestlemania-it is because people would skip school on Mondays to watch the pay-per-view since it would air around 11am.
I said all that to say this. Ethnocentrism, the belief that one’s culture is superior, is already deeply embedded into the American psyche and it’s starting to rear its ugly head in the wrestling community. By no means are you expected to stay up late or get up early to watch a wrestling show. I’m sure there are plenty of other things that you need to get done. But at the same time, don’t complain about the start times just because they’re inconvenient to you. You are not the sole audience of any wrestling promotion.
