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Post by ArArArchStanton on Jul 23, 2020 18:40:52 GMT 1
Full disclosure, I haven't actually watched the WWF in 20 years, and yes, I'll never not call it the WWF. Get the E out.
I do still have fond memories of casually watching big moments in the late 80's, and watching regularly through the mid 90's to 2001ish. And I occasionally still enjoy channels like wrestlingbios or old matches for a trip down nostalgia lane. I've got some particular favorites like the first Hart VS Austin match at Survivor Series '96.
But I can tell you why I haven't watched in two decades, and if you're one who watches the WWF today, I believe it's the same reason why the popularity in general is way down from what it once was. And it's not that it's PG. But they are crippling issues that prevent it from ever coming back.
Wrestling is and always was goofy and over the top, duh. But the reason it could always work, is because the actual titles were taken seriously. It meant something to be the WWF Champion. It meant something just to say you were going to be the WWF Champion. I remember specific characters saying they were going after the title and being like "oh shit!" just at the announcement of such a goal. It even meant something to be the Intercontinental Champion. The titles themselves held value.
Now they don't, and they haven't for a long time.
The problem is that far too many performers have had these titles now, and that began with title changes coming too quickly. It's like ADHD culture took over and thought a title change was the only thing interesting. I won't get into a whole list of wrestlers who should never have had the title, because it's not that they aren't worthy. The problem is that so many wrestlers from the past were worthy, and they didn't get it because the title has to mean more than that. Jake The Snake, Ted Dibiase, Mr. Perfect, Razor Ramon, Roddy Piper, Rick Rude, all never had the title, and that is what made the title more valuable.
Now half the roster gets it, and the result is that there is no sense of achievement. There is no Austin winning his first title at Wrestlemania 14 moment. There is no Michael's winning his first title at Wrestlemania 12 moment. There is no Flair passing the torch to Sting or to Bret Hart moment. And if there is no big moment, there is no big champion, and if there is no big champion, then wrestling remains irrelevant.
And it's too late. It's 20 years of this now, with people having 14 title reigns. The IC title used to be the gateway title or a career defining achievement for a midcarder. For somebody like Macho, Hart, Michaels, The Rock, etc to hold it meant they were headed to the main event, and for people like Jarrett, Shamrock, Chyna, and Owen, it was a stamp of validation that they were big time performers. But that's what the WWF title has been reduced to now, and so the IC title has no actual purpose anymore. It's just been ruined.
And lastly, this could have all still been avoided, if they'd kept the WWF and WCW titles unified after Jericho won them both. Keeping two titles is an absolute disaster, because it means there is no "the man". There is no clear champion. They have literally neutered the point of a world title by never having a single world title. It's just people flying around ropes now. All sense of value is gone and that's why it won't ever return to popularity.
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Post by charzhino on Jul 23, 2020 19:30:27 GMT 1
I still watch it semi-reguarly but it's been awful for years and the decline is ever increasing.
Few reasons:
Raw went from 2 hours to 3 hours and this made it very difficult to watch especially as the quality of the product went downhill and a lot of the show became filler.
Too many titles. When they introduced 2 world titles, one for smackdown and one for raw it was the beginning of the end. No longer is there a top world championship that everyone recognises is the ultimate goal. With that you get too many title matches, title changes and dilutes the prestige of being declared a companies best. This also filtered down to the mid card titles where you now have 2 tag team champions, 2 womens champions, 2 tag team womens champions. Its stupid
Loss of big stars. The last big star that transcended the WWE was John Cena who left full time around 2015. Guys like Stone Cold, Rock, Ric Flair, Batista, Jericho, Kurt Angle, HBK, Kane, HHH are all long gone or retired. Undertaker has finally retired this year. Apart from Brock Lesnar who shows up about 5 times throughout a year, there are no big name draws anymore. The company has failed to create new stars which is why they keep reverting to bringing back old timers for 1 off shows that are well past their best like Goldberg.
I might get heat for this but the hyper emphasis on womans wrestling has also contributed to wrestlings downfall. The womens revolution in wrestling might be seen as very progressive from the days that women were basically considered eye candy only and doing bra and panties matches. But making womens wrestling so prominent as part of the product, infusing it in major ppv main events and giving women their own royal rumble and hell in the cell matches has done more harm than good. Casuals want to watch larger than life male athletes wrestle in intense, heavy hitting matches, not women who all look the same.
Scripted promos. Back in the attitude era you had no script. Just bullet points and the right to express yourself freely. Now wrestlers are given scripts to memorize and when they give promos it comes off as corny and blatantly recited. This has meant that stars cannot emit their outlandish personality the way they want. They are shackled and sound like robots - see Roman Reigns.
And finally general overexposure. Overexposing matches like hell in the cell, Street fights, ladder matches. They were special occasions but now since theyve done them a million times no one cares. Wrestlers having twitter and being micromanaged. The company doing stupid goofy wrestling that exposes the business as fake. The matches themselves becoming less psychological and more focused on who can do the most flips or the fastest 450 splash or the most superkicks in 1 match. Its ridiculous.
20 years ago RAW had almost 10 million people watching. This past Monday nights Raw had 1.6 million, pretty much the lowest rating ever. And this is without major sports going on to compete. I will make a prediction that in 4 years, WWE will no longer be on cable tv because Fox and USA network will pull them off the air.
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Post by ArArArchStanton on Jul 23, 2020 21:03:12 GMT 1
You’re dead right.
The scripted promos are crap. Back in the day being able to give good promos was part of what got you up the card. Scripting them is nonsense.
Women’s wrestling, I mean come on it really shouldn’t be a sexist statement to point out the obvious fact that women are not athletically equal. They just aren’t. If you aren’t aware of that, or don’t like hearing it, just consider that the US women’s World Cup winning team trains against high school boys and Serena Williams, the best women’s tennis player ever, has lost handily to also ran men’s players. It’s not close and it doesn’t need to be. Let’s just be honest about that.
Money in the Bank is dumb. When you turn your world title into a joke where people can sneak in an steal it, you’ve lost. And it’s an entire PPV.
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Post by Jayman on Jul 25, 2020 18:37:11 GMT 1
There are no real stars anymore. I heard reviews of this last ppv with that eye for an eye match and that swamp match as well as all their silliness with puppets and goofy comedy and cinematic movie matches. It sounds like pure trash to me and exemplifies everything I despise about modern wrestling. I have not watched the product since 2004 and have no plans to ever watch this garbage ever again.
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Post by ArArArchStanton on Jul 25, 2020 19:28:16 GMT 1
There are no real stars anymore. I heard reviews of this last ppv with that eye for an eye match and that swamp match as well as all their silliness with puppets and goofy comedy and cinematic movie matches. It sounds like pure trash to me and exemplifies everything I despise about modern wrestling. I have not watched the product since 2004 and have no plans to ever watch this garbage ever again. i don’t intend to either I believe the lack of stars is a direct result of the titles being ruined. If the titles have no value then nobody feels significant. You can build them up to anything special
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Post by Jayman on Jul 25, 2020 20:01:09 GMT 1
There are no real stars anymore. I heard reviews of this last ppv with that eye for an eye match and that swamp match as well as all their silliness with puppets and goofy comedy and cinematic movie matches. It sounds like pure trash to me and exemplifies everything I despise about modern wrestling. I have not watched the product since 2004 and have no plans to ever watch this garbage ever again. i don’t intend to either I believe the lack of stars is a direct result of the titles being ruined. If the titles have no value then nobody feels significant. You can build them up to anything special What you say is totally true, but I believe there are bigger problems than that. wrestling schools on every corner who let anybody that can fit in a pair of trunks into the business. People being trained by people who never learned how to work themselves. There used to have to be something special about a person and you had to know somebody to get into the business. Since there is nothing unique about people that are in the business, what you get is wrestlers who look like they could be the guy bagging your groceries or making your sandwich at subway who do not stand out and do not have any kind of star quality and all do the same shit and even all look the same. Add that in with a culture of guys being handed scripts and being told what to do every step of the way along with television writers in charge of it who write shows like it is saturday night live, and this is what you get. Pure garbage that is beneath the average local independent shows I used to go to in the early 2,000's
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Post by ArArArchStanton on Jul 25, 2020 20:51:18 GMT 1
i don’t intend to either I believe the lack of stars is a direct result of the titles being ruined. If the titles have no value then nobody feels significant. You can build them up to anything special What you say is totally true, but I believe there are bigger problems than that. wrestling schools on every corner who let anybody that can fit in a pair of trunks into the business. People being trained by people who never learned how to work themselves. There used to have to be something special about a person and you had to know somebody to get into the business. Since there is nothing unique about people that are in the business, what you get is wrestlers who look like they could be the guy bagging your groceries or making your sandwich at subway who do not stand out and do not have any kind of star quality and all do the same shit and even all look the same. Add that in with a culture of guys being handed scripts and being told what to do every step of the way along with television writers in charge of it who write shows like it is saturday night live, and this is what you get. Pure garbage that is beneath the average local independent shows I used to go to in the early 2,000's Oh I totally agree. I remember Bret Hart used to be small at 235. Now these guys are 215 on the regular, and even less. I could get to that big pretty quick. Out of curiosity I watched Finn Balor's Raw debut a few weeks ago. It's like the least intimidating thing I've ever seen. He walks up looking tiny as hell to Seth Rollins who is only about 220 himself. Seriously, I'm bigger than Finn Balor. And I get having some smaller high flying guys, but that really shouldn't be your main event roster. It's just so bad.
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Post by Jayman on Jul 25, 2020 21:32:24 GMT 1
What you say is totally true, but I believe there are bigger problems than that. wrestling schools on every corner who let anybody that can fit in a pair of trunks into the business. People being trained by people who never learned how to work themselves. There used to have to be something special about a person and you had to know somebody to get into the business. Since there is nothing unique about people that are in the business, what you get is wrestlers who look like they could be the guy bagging your groceries or making your sandwich at subway who do not stand out and do not have any kind of star quality and all do the same shit and even all look the same. Add that in with a culture of guys being handed scripts and being told what to do every step of the way along with television writers in charge of it who write shows like it is saturday night live, and this is what you get. Pure garbage that is beneath the average local independent shows I used to go to in the early 2,000's Oh I totally agree. I remember Bret Hart used to be small at 235. Now these guys are 215 on the regular, and even less. I could get to that big pretty quick. Out of curiosity I watched Finn Balor's Raw debut a few weeks ago. It's like the least intimidating thing I've ever seen. He walks up looking tiny as hell to Seth Rollins who is only about 220 himself. Seriously, I'm bigger than Finn Balor. And I get having some smaller high flying guys, but that really shouldn't be your main event roster. It's just so bad. That is a huge reason why millions of fans have abandoned the product. There are a few people that can draw a lot of money and know what they are doing and look and act like actual wrestlers. The simpler and more immediate problem is also that somewhere along the line everybody got the idea that wrestling is supposed to be funny. True there was always things that gave fans a chuckle. The manager forced to wear a dress, the heel gets tarred and feathered, etc... But that drew fans to arenas and made money. This new generation of wrestling seems to revolve around making people laugh. I don't remember ever watching wrestling because I wanted to laugh. There is a generation of fans that do. But it is a smaller fanbase and it has turned off more fans and will not gain new ones.
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Post by taylorfirst1 on Jul 25, 2020 21:54:03 GMT 1
I don't agree with all of the points in this thread but I agree with some and I agree that wrestling today has problems. Some that haven't been mentioned yet that bother me. 1. The matches are too long, they even have commercials in the middle of the match. All normal matches should have a 10 minute time limit. 2. There is such a thing as too much back and forth. I swear almost every match has a dozen near pin falls on both wrestlers. 3. The cheating is too easy and too blatant. It's like they don't even pretend to have rules anymore. When I was kid the heels had to be a little sneaky in order to get away with stuff.
These are small things and there are others I could mention but it all accumulates. However, the massive amount of competition in the entertainment industry is another big reason why the ratings are lower. But wrestling is still some of the highest rated shows on cable.
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