Catchy headline, right? This will ruffle some feathers, understandably. Nobody likes to hear their favourite pastime dismissed as a dying business, particularly on an internet forum that serves the purpose of helping to keep the business alive. But the reality I've come to yearn recently is that professional wrestling as an attraction has buried itself six feet under, destined to become nothing more than a niche hobby for niche hobbyists. I'm at the point where I truly believe it's never coming back to the mainstream spotlight, and this obituary will hopefully shed some light on why.


There will be many that will be just dandy with wrestling taking its place as a niche hobby. And there are many arguments for why wrestling should be happy to do just that. I don't deny that the absence of kayfabe has made the leap from rookie to superstar that much longer for today's wrestlers. If we all know it isn't real, why should we care? And we live in an era of behind-the-scenes access, 24/7 news coverage; the curtain has been pulled back on the world. WWE, many would argue, would be sensible to capitalise. And capitalise they have, producing world-class documentaries at speed. As has been established in wrestling for decades, the WWE's production value is unparalleled.


The crux of the problem is the vacuum of star-power. Stars in wrestling are built on a combination of charisma (highly significant), booking (highly significant), and athletic talent (considerably less significant, but preferred). Many blame WWE, and I agree. WWE, without question, appear to put a ceiling over the heads of their talent in order to protect the company from being 'Lesnar'd' again, i.e. a top guy just ups and leaves in his athletic prime having just gone over half the roster. But I think it's deeper than that. Wrestlers and their characters are separated more than ever, and in my opinion it's a huge mistake, and it's killing the mainstream appeal of the business.


Wrestlers are in a unique position as athlete/performer hybrids. They are not actors, so they do not jump from role-to-role building a resumé for themselves, outside of a quiet (and the odd inexplicable) gimmick change. They are not sportspeople because they are playing a character, albeit a single one that they are tied to for hopefully their entire career. So what is the benefit to exposing the 'performers' behind the wrestlers, humanising them, and making their real lives accessible to millions of fans? Nothing, if only to appease a few die-hard fans with their dicks in their hands. Imagine in the prime of Stone Cold Steve Austin, if you saw him driving to the arena in a Ride Along chatting to Gangrel and D'Lo Brown. He's no longer the enigma that we saw on TV for 15 minutes a week at most, he's a humble, normal guy. I can be Stone Cold Steve Austin. He's not a star anymore.


Reality TV is a multi-billion dollar industry. While it's complete horseshit, and anyone who watches it for any reason other than to appease their girlfriend ought to take a solid look in the mirror, there are aspects of it I admire. It, similarly to wrestling, features 'performers' playing sensationalised and/or fictionalised versions of themselves in a sensationalised and/or fictional setting, Yet, they keep kayfabe. I don't see them in the media talking about their acting, or performing. They're always playing their character, whether they're on a TV interview or social media, or whatever. Wrestlers, on the other hand, can't wait to tell everyone how fake the business is, and how lucky they are to be a part of it. And they wonder why they enter an arena to have a staged fight, and no one gives a shit.


Brock Lesnar is the best, biggest, richest wrestler in the world for a myriad of reasons and I'm not trying to oversimplify his value. But one of the main reasons is that he does very little of this shit. He's as real as real gets. And truthfully, he's probably not even being real. From what I've heard on the odd podcast and behind-the-scenes clip, he seems quite affable, but he's a smart bastard. And he knows, that belief in the wrestling business that Brock Lesnar is a killer playing a killer puts a 0 on the end of his downside every single time. Even more inexplicable it is, then, that no one, aside from maybe Becky Lynch, has heeded his advice and created a bad-ass character people want to see.


People want to get lost in wrestling. Keeping kayfabe is not about fans legitimately believing the show is real. It's about staying real within its reality - something that a good movie or TV show does. They do not wink at the camera and make fun of the fact, or acknowledge, that what they're doing is fake and bullshit and shouldn't be taken seriously. I do not subscribe to this idea that the wrestling audience has flipped from dumb marks in the 90's to smart fans in the modern era. While smart fans have moved from the minority to the majority, it's more due to the complete absence of mainstream interest in wrestling, than because of the creation and addition of more smart fans. This is entirely subjective, and many will disagree. I point to the empty arenas and the record-low ratings, and I rest my case, your honour.


The second major issue, 50/50 booking, is the nail in the coffin. This is the most compelling evidence that they put the brakes on their own talent. Dominance, greatness, and winning have always been the single biggest draw in sports. Woods in golf, Federer in tennis, Armstrong in cycling, Ali in boxing, Bolt in track & field. Curiously, wrestling has the ability to manufacture such dominance, and has in the past with some of the biggest examples of drawing money in the history of the business - Andre's undefeated streak, Goldberg's undefeated streak, Undertaker's undefeated streak. And no, I'm not proposing every debutante go on an undefeated streak, but trading wins on Raw and SmackDown just makes every feud, every match, every moment of action, completely pointless.


So watch AEW, you say? They are less guilty of the 50/50 booking, in fact they are not very guilty of this at all, so I commend for that. But they are guilty of the third biggest faux pas of the modern era - the 'performance' in the ring. Aside from the odd designed squash, every single match has several near falls that every person in the arena, and every person watching on TV knows is a near fall. And the lack of suspense is abominable. I find myself watching a match with two talented guys wanting to like it, but I just get lost in the absurdity of it all. The complete lack of long-term selling, the trading of moves, it's just nonsense. It's a bunch of performers playing a bunch of characters trying to have the best match possible. I remember a WWE 2K video game a few years ago where they gave you a star rating for your match, and the algorithm was designed to give you more stars the more 'stuff' you did. Go for a superplex, half a star. Use a weapon, half a star. Kick out of a finisher, half a star. This game was ahead of its time.


And they too are guilty of the kind of meta, circle-jerking crap that turns the casual fan away because they don't know what the fuck is going on, and won't make the smart mark spend $1 more because he was already prepared to empty his wallet for this shit. I feel like they get a pass for a lot of nonsense at this promotion, most notably the hilarious assertion that they are presenting 'sports-based wrestling' when at best they are are presenting knock-off sports-entertainment that Vince fucking McMahon would turn away for its absurdity. 'Teleportation? Don't be so ridiculous', says the man who proposed Mae Young birth a hand. Where does it end?


I continue to fall further down the rabbit hole of old, 80's and 90's professional wrestling. I occasionally allow my head to pop out for a brief moment before it retracts in horror once again. What I would give for wrestling to be wrestling again. Perhaps I should give some serious thought to investing my time in Japanese wrestling, finally. Previous attempts have proven futile - it just doesn't speak to me - but it may be worth another shot. For now, old footage will have to do. Just give me two athletes, convincing in their desire to beat the crap out of each other, trying to win a wrestling match. Just give me wrestling.

You've hit the nail on the head as to why modern wrestling does not have mass appeal. As far as WWE goes, I'd take your point even further and to suggest that wrestlers are, or could be, bigger draws as reality/internet stars than as actual wrestlers.

Back in the Attitude Era, the wrestling persona is far more interesting than the real life persona. To take Todd's example: Steve Austin. Steve Austin, the self-identified redneck and podcast host, is a very entertaining guy, but he's nowhere near as interesting as the beer swiggin' hellraiser "Stone Cold" Steve Austin. Mark Callaway and Glen Jacobs sure as hell aren't as interesting or as cool as The Undertaker or Kane. Well, maybe Corporate Kane, but let's not go there.

In 2020, wrestlers are by and large far more interesting personalities outside of wrestling than they are inside. Take a look at pretty much everyone who participates in Xavier Wood's UpUpDownDown YouTube channel. Look at that Network show that films the wrestlers driving around. Look at Asuka's YouTube channel. OK, that's more debatable, but that's only because Asuka is legitimately interesting and larger than life in WWE. Hell, look at Total Divas. Or perhaps the best example: Being The Elite.

Wrestlers are so heavily scripted in WWE that they are not allowed to be themselves (or an exaggerated form of themselves) and perhaps that is why there is such a drive for these performers to present their "true forms" on the internet. Jon Moxley has been very outspoken about how depressed he became at his lack of creative freedom in WWE - I'm sure over half of the current roster feel the same, but are obviously not speaking publicly about it.

As Todd pointed out, Brock Lesnar is one of the only current wrestlers who keeps it real. He's one of the very few Western wrestlers I go out of my way to watch. Because he's real. His matches feel real. There is an air of unpredictability and danger to them that no other wrestler can replicate. NJPW wrestler Minoru Suzuki is another fine example. If you dig deep enough, you'll find he's a nice guy, but by and large he keeps that side of himself well hidden. He present himself like a sadist, who loves to hurt people, and he works his matches in that way. He's never been a big draw, certainly not on Lesnar's level, but he's had a very long and successful career. Jon Moxley is yet another example. I don't buy him as a killer like I do Lesnar, but I do buy him as a super tough badass who is willing go to to any length to win his matches or hurt his opponents. That makes him compelling. That makes me buy into his matches.

My feeling is, however, that all of this might not be so bad. NXT, AEW and, to a lesser extent, WWE, are catering to the "smart fans" who love the circle-jerk social media stuff, who love seeing video game matches over and over again. AEW have some aspects of a more sport-based presentation, a serious alternative but they've lost that direction, and instead have started pandering and becoming more WWE-lite. The introduction of Broken Matt is the obvious example, but I'd also like to highlight the Inner Circle. When Jericho first introduced the stable with a great promo, they were a force, a threat. Now they are a joke. Goofballs. Now every weekly AEW show has a segment with them goofing around and dancing on camera, like they are a niche YouTube channel. Jericho should know better.

But, hey, maybe that's what the fans want. Maybe they will pay more to see the Inner Circle dancing and Matt Hardy teleporting than the likes of Cody Rhodes and MJF trying to bring back a more old school brand of wrestling. Maybe trying to resurrect a bygone era of wrestling is doomed to fail.

I dont really disagree with most of the points made here, I do believe this result is caused mainly by WWE's self-harming practices, and I do think AEW, for all of it's differences, falls victim to the same habits. But I also firmly believe that wrestling is fine, and even deserves, existing in the niche it stands in. Both because it works better like this and because most of the fucking carnies in the business deserve to never be "taken seriously" by the masses.

I dont believe the masses at large want to kayfabe themselves into believing the guys fake fighting in front of them are actually a very narrow definition of what "tough" is, certainly not as much as wrestling fans seem so desperate to. If anything I think it's the opposite, and it's the diehards that can't let go of the fact that the people doing the things in their TVs are, well, people.

The main example I will point to is actually one that Todd used: Reality TV, in the form of Total Divas, the one show from WWE's umbrella that can be argued has brought aboard new people into the business, all by exposing it's stars in all of their mundane (even if exaggerated) humanity.

To be honest, I do not believe that Austin or Rock would have achieved the same relative level of success these days even if all of the issues outlined weren't present, because it's just not the same era anymore.

I'm liking these posts as reminders to myself to come back and read this when I have the attention span.

Great post.

I've been accepting for a few years now that the wrestling I love is gone and I have become fine with that, although I'll still shit on modern stuff I don't like because I'm that kind of guy. I find it difficult to articulate the feeling, but modern wrestling just feels false, too knowing to me, NJPW included. I even get a similar feeling in some parts of the recent Tarantino films, feeling like they are a parody of a Tarantino film when that isn't the intent.

Modern wrestling gives me the feeling of cosplay. Now, you could argue that wrestlers have been cosplaying forever. Flair stole his nickname from Buddy Rogers and many of his and Ray Stevens' signature bumps. He even started out talking like Dusty before dropping it. Hogan took a lot from Billy Graham. It is hard to define why I feel the way I do about modern wrestling. Even the commentary is absurdly awful in WWE. Nobody sounds like they are genuine or believes what they are talking about.

There is more old wrestling than I will ever have time to watch, so on one hand it is fine. But watching something in real time along with others is a different thing and it is a shame that there isn't anything out there that I am keen on.

Cosplaying, swing-dancing, sterile, homogenized automatons.

Todd,

- First and foremost, great post. In the running with some of @ness, Big Pete, and Baker-man's best work so far this year for 2020 Post of the Year contender. Hopefully we remember this, archive it somewhere for posterity/consideration, etc. Perhaps the catchiest thread title this year, if not the entire history of Proboards Era PW.

- Totally agree with the points raised and defended in your first five paragraphs. You laid that all out so much more eloquently and with such better structure than I ever could've hoped to do myself. But you've managed to capture in word bottles all the thoughts and feelings I've been thinking and feeling about pro wrestling honestly probably since early 2004.

- ESPECIALLY agree with your fifth paragraph. Co-signed on Brock being the best wrestler for all the reasons you've outlined. I also wonder if his only true peer (i.e., Taker) is doing more harm than good with his recent urge to peel back the kayfabe curtain on one of the most protected characters ever.

- "I point to the empty arenas" // To be fair, pretty sure this is COVID-19's fault... But love all your other points in this paragraph. Beyond just wrestling, it's honestly one of my biggest gripes with the zombie genre (and probably other supernatural things like zombies). I have no problem suspending disbelief in some fantastical world so long as it's clear the laws of that world were clearly thought out and well defined... and then subsequently respected! If the auteurs aren't gonna respect the rules of the world they've built... why would/should I?

- You forgot Tatanka's undefeated streak! Joking aside, in addition to the 50/50 booking, I think the issue is the overexposure of not just each wrestler but the same match-ups ad nauseam. Like, in theory, I have no problem with 50/50 booking between Stone Cold and The Rock... so long as I only see the match-up say 6 times in the life of that rivalry, with an average of a year's time between each match-up taking place, and the match-ups mostly happening only as the main event of big PPV events... All good. Totally different story than seeing Dolph Ziggler vs. Kofi Kingston for the 300x in the span of a single year on every TV show AND PPV.

- I think I owe a response to Big Pete (or maybe Dr. Emperor) in another thread on my stance re: AEW, but you pretty much hit the all-encompassing nail on the head for me here. I highly doubt I could ever get into AEW. Honestly, even #NWAPowerrr, I think I largely like out of spite for AEW and WWE. It's just as absurd and ridiculous... but at least there's a beautiful simplicity to it too, and it steers into the absurdity much more organically than AEW or WWE seem to. All in all, I'm with you and Strobe in wanting to just delve back into all the old historical content I either missed in real time or otherwise wasn't even alive to see. I'm also with you on Japanese wrestling not really speaking to me (even the golden age AJPW stuff) and not really knowing why.

= = = = =

Dr. Emperor,

- Totally agree on your point about modern era wrestlers not leveraging kayfabe enough on social media and/or whatever the internet is called these days. From what little I follow, it seems only Becky Lynch and MJF do it (or were doing it) right? Like, I feel like bonus points should be awarded to heel wrestlers who troll so hard or generate so much heat that they get their Twitter accounts shut down.

- I wonder if wrestlers these days are more interesting outside of wrestling than in because of how scripted shit is? I guess this mainly pertains to WWE product? I don't know how AEW works in this regard. But the promo quality difference between WWE and NWA seems to be night and day black and white. And I'm assuming that's less talent based and more because WWE has an umpteen-person writing staff homogenizing scripts to give all characters the same voice, and NWA is slapdashing bullet points together and letting pros go be pros. Honestly, it all kinda makes me hate the extracurricular stuff and avoid it because it pains me to see how charismatic some of these current era wrestlers can actually be... but aren't allowed to be.

- Whoops, never mind... you just touched on my above ramble and addressed those concerns way more succinctly than me in your following paragraph.

- You had me with your fifth paragraph until the end. Agree with you (your satirical reviews of his matches aside) and Todd on all the things that make Brock the best. And Minoru has always stood out to me as a guy I'd be keen on getting way more into, probably for all the same tangibles and intangibles that make Brock the greatest alive today. Then you lost me with that bad joke about Jon Moxley being a super tough bad ass and/or compelling. LOL, NOPE!

- Your penultimate paragraph (to steal a WMS-ism) pretty much just put me off AEW entirely. Don't think I'd have any interest in ever watching it, much less following it on even a semi-regular basis. And I feel bad about that because there are some guys there who I feel like I respect and could really be into: MJF, Orange Cassidy, and Luchasaurus being the names that come to mind. Anyway... I appreciate you taking the more optimistic spin here in contrast to Todd, and I think you're right in that the business is definitely focusing on (relying on?) and catering to a pre-established and finite smark fanbase. Which maybe makes sense in the streaming era where it's hard for any single medium or genre to totally dominate? With so many options for the "average casual consumer" out there, maybe doubling down on your niche audience is a tactic... whether or not it's smart, who knows? The problem is I don't think smarks reproduce on average nor live the healthiest lifestyles, so I think it'll be a dwindling fanbase population that won't replenish overtime. For instance, I know Baby PI will be introduced to wrestling via footage of stuff from 1985-2004 (with Brock matches being the only exception).

= = = = =

That all said, I think I'm inclined to agree with @nighty too... In this era, I don't even think Austin or Rock (or even Hogan or Andre) become the stars they were. At best, I think they top out as Becky Lynches and John Cenas. Brock is special because of what he went off and managed to do in UFC at just the right time.

What happens if your kid grows out of what you introduce it to, and ends up liking modern wrestling as is?

I'm not saying 🤯 would be right in disowning them at that point, but I'd understand.

May 13, 2020 20:09:23 GMT @nighty said:

What happens if your kid grows out of what you introduce it to, and ends up liking modern wrestling as is?

My brain is trying to compute whether I'd prefer this as a potential reality or the kid just not being into pro wrestling at all whatsoever. Leaning toward the latter...

May 13, 2020 20:01:07 GMT 🤯 said:

Then you lost me with that bad joke about Jon Moxley being a super tough bad ass and/or compelling. LOL, NOPE!

Why not?

May 13, 2020 20:53:44 GMT Emperor said:

May 13, 2020 20:01:07 GMT 🤯 said:

Then you lost me with that bad joke about Jon Moxley being a super tough bad ass and/or compelling. LOL, NOPE!

Why not?

Because he's a whiny doofus who wears dad jeans and has fluffier-looking offense than John Morrison without doing any of the parkour spots?

Have you seen him outside of WWE?

May 13, 2020 22:27:20 GMT Emperor said:

Have you seen him outside of WWE?

To be fair and honest... No.

What I saw of him in WWE was so off-putting, I had zero interest in investing any time or effort in finding his stuff elsewhere. In fact, I was glad he was finally gone from the only promotion I did occasionally keep tabs on.

But... In the spirit of open-mindedness, which got me to soften on Revivolt, I'm willing to watch and review a match if you want to recommend one. I still need to check out that heel Finn Balor vs. Johnny Gargano one to hopefully turn me around on both of them and NXT in general.

This thread has officially been endorsed (written?) by Jim Cornette.

And it's 100% spot-on.

May 13, 2020 22:30:24 GMT 🤯 said:

May 13, 2020 22:27:20 GMT Emperor said:

Have you seen him outside of WWE?

To be fair and honest... No.

What I saw of him in WWE was so off-putting, I had zero interest in investing any time or effort in finding his stuff elsewhere. In fact, I was glad he was finally gone from the only promotion I did occasionally keep tabs on.

Well, my opinion of Dean Ambrose before he left WWE was exactly the same as yours is now. Although one Jon Moxley match is probably not going to change your mind. It certainly took a lot longer than that for my mind to be changed.

May 13, 2020 23:10:49 GMT Emperor said:

May 13, 2020 22:30:24 GMT 🤯 said:

To be fair and honest... No.

What I saw of him in WWE was so off-putting, I had zero interest in investing any time or effort in finding his stuff elsewhere. In fact, I was glad he was finally gone from the only promotion I did occasionally keep tabs on.

Well, my opinion of Dean Ambrose before he left WWE was exactly the same as yours is now. Although one Jon Moxley match is probably not going to change your mind. It certainly took a lot longer than that for my mind to be changed.

I'm willing to give you three. That's all I can muster for Dean.

May 13, 2020 23:46:05 GMT 🤯 said:

May 13, 2020 23:10:49 GMT Emperor said:

Well, my opinion of Dean Ambrose before he left WWE was exactly the same as yours is now. Although one Jon Moxley match is probably not going to change your mind. It certainly took a lot longer than that for my mind to be changed.

I'm willing to give you three. That's all I can muster for Dean.

I’ve always liked Dean, and felt like he was short-changed so much in the WWE.

He’s been much better in AEW, but he’s definitely carried some of the goofiness from the WWE with him. And I hate that, because when he drops the shit, he’s really good. His in-ring work has been pretty god damn good though.

Todd's post is a more eloquent version of what I've been thinking and writing for years.

Todd Have you checked out NWA Powerrr yet? We have a similar outlook on wrestling and Powerrr is the first consistently enjoyable wrestling show I've stumbled upon in over decade. They do make some modern concessions, but it's mostly confined to wacky commercials and a comedy gimmick. It's still the closest thing you're going to get to classic 80s & 90s wrestling in the modern era. Nick Aldis in particular carries himself like the classic World Champions of yesteryear.

May 12, 2020 22:47:26 GMT Emperor said:

But, hey, maybe that's what the fans want. Maybe they will pay more to see the Inner Circle dancing and Matt Hardy teleporting than the likes of Cody Rhodes and MJF trying to bring back a more old school brand of wrestling. Maybe trying to resurrect a bygone era of wrestling is doomed to fail.

That is what the fans want. But as I mentioned, I don't believe it's because of some crazy reshaping of the minds of wrestling fans. It's just that everyone else has been whittled away, leaving just circle-jerk fans left. More power to them, people are fully entitled to like what they like. I do find it interesting though, that revolutions in wrestling have always pissed off fans of the previous era. In the 50's when wrestling debuted on television, fans of the early NWA stuff were no doubt pissed at the idea of an outlandish gimmick like Gorgeous George presented to them. In the 80's with Hogan, there was some ire thrown toward the WWF that they were betraying wrestling's origins as a shoot-style simul-fight. In the 90's, fans of classic wrestling wouldn't have liked weapons in every match, Dusty finishes in every match, etc. So I understand that this is my turn to be the bitter old mark that wants it to go back to way it was.

But, there is a crucial difference. Any time wrestling has betrayed its own set of rules in the past, it has been done in order to draw in a broader audience and make the business bigger. This current revolution is having the opposite effect. Fewer people are watching wrestling than basically any time in history. This is why I'm surprised Vince went this route.

May 13, 2020 20:01:07 GMT 🤯 said:

- "I point to the empty arenas" // To be fair, pretty sure this is COVID-19's fault...

To be clear, I'm talking about pre-coronavirus. WWE's live event business is so poor that nowadays it doesn't really serve the business as a source of profit, it's more of a branding exercise to keep the WWE name in the lights. I don't think they make any money from it, certainly not when you factor in the long-term effects of wrestlers working 4 days a week. I don't think it will ever come back.

May 14, 2020 1:45:52 GMT Baker said:

Todd's post is a more eloquent version of what I've been thinking and writing for years.

Todd Have you checked out NWA Powerrr yet? We have a similar outlook on wrestling and Powerrr is the first consistently enjoyable wrestling show I've stumbled upon in over decade. They do make some modern concessions, but it's mostly confined to wacky commercials and a comedy gimmick. It's still the closest thing you're going to get to classic 80s & 90s wrestling in the modern era. Nick Aldis in particular carries himself like the classic World Champions of yesteryear.

I will give it a go. A large part of my wrestling enjoyment is the idea that it's larger than life. Most of my all-time favourite matches are my favourite matches because 20000 people and going bonkers for them in the stands. I would love Powerrr to be done on a grand scale, but I'll check it out in this form anyway. I know it's going to be better than AEW and WWE before I've even seen it.

Current Pro Wrestling is modern art, people arguing over nonsensical BS while everyone else looks at it from afar like “it’s just scribble”.

The WWE's landmark deal with the Fox Network should have seen a major shift in the company. I have extremely little doubt that the Fox executives were sold on the idea of signing the WWE with the belief that it would also net them Ronda Rousey and Brock Lesnar, neither of them appeared on the network that long. That's why Bill Goldberg was shuffled onto television because the WWE desperately needed stars and even at 50, Goldberg fits the profile of the talent Fox wanted on their network.

It was a move that should never have happened. Goldberg should never have found himself with a title at this stage of his career, but The Fiend was a terrible fit as champion. His hokey character is completely unrelatable and doesn't jive with the sports based presentation of the show. The WWE knows this, which is why they've recycled the two former NFL footballers - Baron Corbin and Roman Reigns going at it time and time and time again. I don't have the official figures, but I recall only 2-3 main events from the debut through to the Rumble that didn't include those two going at it in the main event.

Keep in mind, this is the same Baron Corbin who in the opening segment was torn apart by The Rock. Baron isn't a credible character, he's just somebody who continually finds himself in the main event for whatever reason. Sure, he holds the odd victory over Roman Reigns, but when has he successfuly won a feud? The only time I can recall Baron winning a feud was against Shorty G, arguably the biggest stuff up in WWE history.

I cannot believe how thick the WWE are with Chad Gable. In Gable, they have a charismatic olympic athlete who promotes the ethos of their television station and yet they've done everything to strip him of his credibility. As amazing as Kurt Angle was, there came a point in time where the WWE drew a line in the sand and still booked him as a legitimate threat. Here they have somebody in that mould and they book him like any other underdog. His character could be played by anybody, hell a Mustafa Ali would do a far better job with that role than Gable, but they insist on type casting Gable.

The point of all this ranting is that the WWE had this golden opportunity to start fresh and they've squandered it because they're so set in their ways. The WWE hasn't adapted, if anything after the Attitude Era, they decided to try and take a step back towards the New Generation era and forgot that nobody cares about this obviously fake characters. When the WWF were getting a foothold into the 80s zeitgeist, it was on the back of personalities like Hulk Hogan, Roddy Piper, Randy Savage. They acted like cartoon characters, but it wasn't beyond the realm of possibility that characters like this existed. This all changed later in the 80s and while it was fine because Ted Dibiase, Curt Hennig and Mark Calloway were wonderful performers in their own right, fans lost interest in the garbage men, the red roosters and the clowns.

It seemed like the WWF recognised this which is why 1997 worked because the rivalries felt genuine and appeared to be based on real life hostilities. We bought into rivalries like Austin-Bret, Bret-Shawn, HHH-Rock, Austin-McMahon, Edge & Christian-Hardy Boyz because there was an element of truth to the matter. Every now and then the WWF would go too far and get too caught up in the Kane-Undertaker nonsense but otherwise the angles rang true and the WWF knew how to present these angles.

In 1999, Austin was often presented as an asshole in the dirt sheets because he refused to work with guys like Jeff Jarrett in major angles. If history shows anything, it's that Austin had a point and he needed to pick matches that would draw money. It's the one area I struggle with John Cena. Cena is the greatest PROFESSIONAL Wrestler of all-time, because he does everything he's told without losing his smile or packing his bags and going home. It makes him a brilliant pro, but in terms of business, I believe Cena more than anybody else made some horrible decisions. Putting The Miz over at Wrestlemania? Putting a rookie Sheamus over for a World Title? Putting over CM Punk and Daniel Bryan just to have The Kliq ruin each finish? A PPV main event with R-Truth? A PPV loss to John freakin' Lauranaitis?

It's decisions like that which cause fans to lose interest. The WWE has no issue giving these guys a shot, the problem is that these guys rarely do anything to elevate their game. When they do like a Punk or a Bryan, they do everything they can to take away from the moment. Cena put both men over, only for the WWE to decide it was Del Rio and Orton's moment.

In art we're constantly searching for form. We're looking for familiar tropes, patterns and themes to emotionally connect to and a story is successful when it's revered by a large audience. The WWE constantly undermines these elements and will tell the fans to cheer and boo this guy because they say so. Why should we care about John Cena vs. R-Truth? Because the WWE says so. Sure, it may not seem like that big a deal of the time and hey R-Truth is a great performer in his own right, but when you're trying to sell a John Cena vs. Randy Orton match, you can't expect fans to care because Cena is clearly just another spoke on the wheel.

The WWE is going to live on for the forseeable future and that's fine. They've squandered an opportunity to make it big and I'm struggling to see where the next genius booker is hiding.

I'm far more forgiving of AEW since they have to lay the groundwork, play their best cards and make do with the rest of the roster. If they can learn from their mistakes and try to think more logically beyond 'it's just wrestling' they might be able to attract a bigger audience.

NJPW is the best booked promotion in the world, but it's a completely different show with different goals. It's trying to seperate itself from the past. It doesn't pride itself in having legitimate bad-asses on the roster, it just wants the best young athletes from around the world working their asses off and having epics. The form of the promotion is strong for what it is, but it's a completely different style to America with tropes that fly in the face of a 'good' wrestling match.

Personally I'm a lifer and I hardly think the Pro Wrestling I grew up was better than this generation. The issue is, that it should be better than what it is and if anything it seems like for every step forward they've taken at least one back. I still find I can enjoy the product if I can accept it for what it is, instead of trying to compare it to what I believe it should be.

I knew the Smackdown launch on FOX was fucked the minute they debuted a 30-year-old AC/DC song as their theme. Remember when Smackdown used Marilyn Manson's "Beautiful People" when it debuted because the WWE actually had a pulse on pop culture?

Yeah ... those days have long passed.

The reality is, professional wrestling is a niche product that exists in a world outside of mainstream entertainment. For a few brief moments in time, notably the 1980's and late 1990's wrestling booms, professional wrestling tapped into popular culture and particularly captured the zeitgeist of the late 1990's during the Attitude Era - thus it's mainstream crossover. 

I see professional wrestling as a completely outdated production, and it has been for a long time. The business does very little to attract sustained mainstream attention, or to keep up with current trends. Yet, there's an expectation from the industry and fans it will eventually see that mainstream success again, despite an outlandishly outdated product and a stubbornness to reflect popular culture or the entertainment world that it so desperately wants the attention from. In short, it's doing absolutely nothing to be cool. It's 2020, and promotions are still heavily featuring nu-metal instrumentals/christian rock from the early 2000's for argument's sake. 

Unfortunately, it's not just the presentation - any attempt in the last 20 years to feed off the culture of the time or incorporate current events, the business ( and not only the WWE ) has treated it with little respect - the business is drenched in racist, sexist and exploitative undertones and has done very little to change anyone's, especially the mainstream's opinion of this. Any reference of the world outside of the ring, it has openly mocked, believing it was either done as satire or parody. It wasn't, it was just in poor taste. Today, it's debatable the business is even aware of popular culture in 2020 - AEW included.

To quote George Harrison on The Simpsons, it's been done. Oh, it's been done. We've been reliving the same product for almost 15 years, and as comically outdated the presentation is, for the most, the writing is gloriously off-key. It's as if the industry stopped evolving in 2005 and said they'd rather focus on LCD screens and lighting rigs than fresh story telling. It's incredible to think, the most creative thing to happen in the last 10 years was a black and white tee-shirt from Japan. There's some obvious exceptions to this notion, the early Shield run, Gargano v Ciampa, etc. But for the most, the most significant thing to happen was Devitt put on a shirt and pointed his fingers like a gun. And that's the main issue - nothing is new, or fresh or different than what has been booked before. Little attracts enough interest to get excited about, and very little holds the engagement longer than a few weeks. 

I think this point has been argued before, but isn't as openly acknowledged or discussed. Professional Wrestling has spent more time out of mainstream popularity, than it has in it due to these types of reasons. 

I say, stay in the shadows and do just wrestling well.. because no-one is doing that particularly well either these days. 

May 14, 2020 14:29:53 GMT KJ said:

I knew the Smackdown launch on FOX was fucked the minute they debuted a 30-year-old AC/DC song as their theme. Remember when Smackdown used Marilyn Manson's "Beautiful People" when it debuted because the WWE actually had a pulse on pop culture?

Yeah ... those days have long passed.

I agree with your point on ACDC, but wasn't Manson old news by 2002? System is the expert, but I feel the mainstream media had moved on after 1999.

Still, you could make the exact same point, just change it to Raw 1997 when they first used Beautiful People.

May 14, 2020 14:29:53 GMT KJ said:

I knew the Smackdown launch on FOX was fucked the minute they debuted a 30-year-old AC/DC song as their theme. Remember when Smackdown used Marilyn Manson's "Beautiful People" when it debuted because the WWE actually had a pulse on pop culture?

Yeah ... those days have long passed.

Oh my GOD thank you. Half the Internet was jerking themselves off over the Smackdown opening when it premiered, saying that Vince shelling out AC/DC money meant they were taking the show seriously.

Nobody clued in to the fact that it was cringey and stupid and just proving yet again that this company is out of touch.

...

I haven’t read the whole thread yet but everyone touching on reality TV makes me happy. I’ve been saying forever that the WWE Network is going to go down as one of the biggest failures in wrestling history because of exactly this. They don’t utilize that tool AT ALL and it’s easily the most powerful at their disposal.

The fact they didn’t transition the company to a 24/7 reality TV show and use the Network (and social media) to bring back the curtain of kayfabe is ridiculous. They have dropped the ball so hard with that. It was right there and now they’re that meme of LeBron pointing at JR Smith. Only we’re LeBron and WWE is Smith.

Like if you want to do Ride Along, fine. But you better make sense of it. It better be people that should be in a car together, extending their characters and storylines.

Why isn’t there a SportsCentre type show every morning, recapping all the WWE news from the previous day? You give us WWE Backstage once a week? You have enough people on your roster to fill an hour every day, you know you do. You just don’t care.

May 14, 2020 18:40:07 GMT RT said:

May 14, 2020 14:29:53 GMT KJ said:

I knew the Smackdown launch on FOX was fucked the minute they debuted a 30-year-old AC/DC song as their theme. Remember when Smackdown used Marilyn Manson's "Beautiful People" when it debuted because the WWE actually had a pulse on pop culture?

Yeah ... those days have long passed.

Oh my GOD thank you. Half the Internet was jerking themselves off over the Smackdown opening when it premiered, saying that Vince shelling out AC/DC money meant they were taking the show seriously.

Nobody clued in to the fact that it was cringey and stupid and just proving yet again that this company is out of touch.

...

I haven’t read the whole thread yet but everyone touching on reality TV makes me happy. I’ve been saying forever that the WWE Network is going to go down as one of the biggest failures in wrestling history because of exactly this. They don’t utilize that tool AT ALL and it’s easily the most powerful at their disposal.

The fact they didn’t transition the company to a 24/7 reality TV show and use the Network (and social media) to bring back the curtain of kayfabe is ridiculous. They have dropped the ball so hard with that. It was right there and now they’re that meme of LeBron pointing at JR Smith. Only we’re LeBron and WWE is Smith.

Like if you want to do Ride Along, fine. But you better make sense of it. It better be people that should be in a car together, extending their characters and storylines.

Why isn’t there a SportsCentre type show every morning, recapping all the WWE news from the previous day? You give us WWE Backstage once a week? You have enough people on your roster to fill an hour every day, you know you do. You just don’t care.

They could copy the entire ESPN formula. You're telling me "Pardon the Interruption: WWE Edition" couldn't be awesome?

KJ THAT is exactly the kind of show they should have brought CM Punk back for.