I have been pretty out of touch with wrestling for a while. While habitating 4216 Knox Road in beautiful College Park Maryland (for the better part of five tremendous years) I was an avid fan...Monday nights would be a major event in my house (as would Sunday night- X-Files!). I was more into WCW (NWO 4 Life still...see my Rodman post from a few years ago) but still kept up with WWE. Since then I have gone back to the well a few times but definitely fell off. After the events of the past ninety six hours I am undoubtably going to tune in this coming Monday to give it another shot.
Over the past five days we have had three WWE appearances/signings...each topping the previous one in terms of both turn out and positive feedback from the customers. It started Saturday with CM Punk, continued Sunday with Shawn Michaels and the trifecta was concluded last night with an historic event starring Jeff Hardy.
I call it historic because it was the first and definitely last (considering our move in a few weeks) public signing at our corporate office. Five-hundred plus people flocked to our mall and with all hands on deck it was a total success. I could not believe how many people came to these signings but truth be told it is the norm when one of these WWE stars appears. These stars are larger than life and the marketing team at WWE has created an incredible brand around them. Practically every customer had a Jeff Hardy t-shirt and/or armband(s) and many brought their own magazines/posters or DVDs to be autographed. Hardy, as well as Michaels and Punk, really do endear themselves to the fanbase by giving the customers real facetime and a little bit extra than the typical celebrity...to use a phrase thrown around here a lot - they get it...it being that the fans are what matters most. These WWE stars seem as genuinely appreciative of their fanbase as anyone I have ever worked with and personally I am hoping we have a lot more of these events in the upcoming months.
Anyway, enjoy the video and photos as they should be up shortly.