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| What has Jeff Katz done with your money? |
The thing is, there are only two companies who have the kind of money to pay their wrestlers a livable wage, and only one of them comes close to attaining an ideal situation. For all the flaws and shitty things that are laid at WWE's doorstep (and many, if not all of them, are deserved), they at least make sure their talent is both compensated and medically cared for. I honestly can't tell you what if any independent companies would be on that same level if they had the cash level. Whether it be Mike Quackenbush, John Thorne, Super Dragon, Dave Prazak, or any independent promoter, no one knows where on the spectrum they'd be if they had the money, because none of them have that kind of money.
You know who did end up getting that kind of money though? Jeff Katz. It's unclear how much private funds or sponsors he had going for him. I heard he could have funded the entire project through his Hollywood connections and his own personal bank account; in all fairness to Katz though, I don't have any sources to corroborate that. Either way he didn't fund it self-sufficiently, and he set up a Kickstarter campaign that asked 100,000 fans to donate $1 to help fund the project. Well, however the math worked on how many fans donated how much, $100,480 were raised. It's been now two years almost since the first call for cash was put out. There has not been any sign that this will see the light of day.
Now, $100,480 is a lot of money. It doesn't matter if it was culled from one person donating that much or 100,480 people who each gave one dollar. Fans gave money for a product, and two years later, even after there was a trailer and a promised release date, that product is nowhere to be seen. I have seen people accuse WWE of not giving people what they paid for when someone they like doesn't win. I have seen people demand refunds from Chikara because of the Condor Security angle. Any time something that doesn't give 100% personal satisfaction happens in any wrestling company, whether it's WWE or Podunk Pro Wrestling, Chikara or TNA, there are people who loudly proclaim they want their money back.
Then again, the last time I checked, when any of those companies promote a show, that show happens. If it doesn't, then they provide refunds for the lost ticket prices. Even TNA doesn't dump on its paying customers that bad (and you could argue the paying customers are the only people they remotely care about outside of professional social media gadfly Dixie Carter). So, why isn't there a louder outcry against Katz for not providing anything in the way of updates, let alone a finished product, on a show that has been finished filming for over a year now.
A popular argument bandied about is that $100K+ would look pretty good in the coffers of a company that actually delivers on a product. While that's true, I tend to look at it on a more microscopic level. No matter how much an individual person gave, it's something they could have spent on a tangible thing with immediate yield. For example, they could have used that dollar to go towards their purchase of WWE '13, or a ticket to AAW Epic, or a Smart Mark VOD of last year's Chikara Cibernetico, or a TNA action figure. The example Katz used in the Kickstarter pledge video was a "can of Diet Coke." Well, if someone who had donated just one dollar to this non-existent entity to date had bought a can of soda, that person would have at least gotten a quenched thirst out of it in that moment. That's a lot more than what they've gotten out of their investment so far with Wrestling Retribution Project.
It's a shame because there was so much promise here. However, I think I at least have gotten to the point where I'm less disappointed in something new not even getting out of the blocks and more angry that people got taken for their cash. In a business full of shady people, the swindling of $100K out of the wrestling fan populace at large is a new low. The lesson here is that if you want to monetarily support pro wrestling, do yourself a favor and actually support the wrestlers themselves, especially over wannabe promoters who don't have a tangible product to offer. The best place to start would be by going to sites like Pro Wrestling Tees to get your shirts.
ETA: Apparently, Katz did a podcast with PW Insider, as detailed here by PW Ponderings, in which he claims that he engaged in a deal gone bad that cost him all of his money. Since that seems to be the case, it absolves a lot of the anger that at least I have towards the project (if it is completely true). At the very least, Katz felt the heat, responded to the criticism on a site, which regardless of my or your opinions about it, has a large reach. It's difficult for me to come down hard on anyone who loses money in bad deals mainly because of how stacked the system is in favor of the banks and not the ones making the deals themselves.
With that in mind, I will leave the post up here for posterity, even if I have to take lumps for it. Lord knows, I'm not stranger to taking my lumps, whether deserved or not. That being said, here's hoping that Katz can recover from his financial woes, whether or not he gets WRP up and running. However, the main point still stands. I think as a general rule, we as fans should be more willing to support wrestlers first and promoters second. This isn't a hard and fast rule, and everything is up for interpretation, obviously. But yeah, wrestlers first.