I am falling out of love with professional wrestling
 

I feel absolutely disgusted to confess this. I am falling out of love with professional wrestling, specifically WWE. I haven't kept up with Impact, ROH etc. as much as I would've loved to, there's nothing in the industry (except for those Cody promos on Youtube) that has my interest. I wish things were different...

That isn't that unusual of a sentiment. You can only be worn down by a bad product for so long.

A challenge I've had is when I know people who have lapsed or straight up cut out WWE, I'll try to send them stuff from NJPW or another promotion to make them realize that there's more to wrestling than WWE, and it seems like they're just not willing to expand their horizons for whatever reason. There are even posters on this forum who are like that. They'll complain about WWE all the time but won't ever try something else.

There's like this unspoken mentality that if WWE is bad, it means wrestling is bad and there's no point in bothering at all.

Dave, fuck off with this thread lol

For a kid who grew up in the motherland, perception is reality, WWE is wrasslin'

All kidding aside, taking a break wouldn't be that bad, yeah?

Wrestling lost my heart the moment Tatanka turned on Lex Luger.

Only you can decide that.

Wrestling more than any other form of entertainment I can think of seems to be something where, once you've checked out, nobody else is ever going to convince you to check back in. Only you can decide for yourself to give it another try.

I say that as someone who tried in vain to get people I know IRL who used to watch wrestling to get back into it. "Hey I know you don't watch anymore, but this match/segment/angle happened last night and I thought you'd want to check it out". My hope was they'd be intrigued enough to watch for a bit and then I'd have someone to talk wrassling with again. But 95% of the time I'd get dead silence in response.

Feel like they were probably resisting the urge to just tell me "look, I don't fucking care about wrestling anymore, stop trying to get me to watch it again"

I've been taking a break for a few years now and have only been checking out Rumble, Mania, Summerslam, the next Raw (and maybe SD) following them, and with very rare exceptions (10-12 times a year max probably) having the ocassional Raw or SD episode or segment on in the background and actually watching it. I rarely even have Raw or SD on in the background anymore after being a fan for about 30 years now.

It hasn't actually helped improve the product nor my enjoyment of it when I do check things out, and usually does nothing but remind me or reinforce my justification for not watching, but the last few AEW promo videos have been great and Moxley's video was really fun to see.

I stopped watching current wrestling 3-4 years ago and started watching old stuff from the 70s, 80s and 90s. It's been great. I'll never go back.

Same, except it was like 10 years ago lol.

lol the thing I really love about watching old stuff is just that you can do so on your own time. Even if you're following along a timeline, you aren't burdened by a schedule to stay on top of everything. You can take a month long break right in the middle of it and it doesn't matter.

Definitely think that once people drop current WWE and realize how much time that frees up every week, it makes it even harder for them to get back into any sort of regular schedule even for current on-WWE stuff.

Why would anyone commit to regularly watching RAW? Even if it was 100% better than it was, 3 hours per show is torture. If RAW were an hour, I'd probably watch every week because even if it sucked, it'd be 45 minutes of actual material. In fact, they wouldn't have the time to suck as bad as they do. Watch 1995 RAW AKA the dark period, and you'll see how much better it is than now literally because you only have to commit an hour.

Yep. Kevin Nash pretty much said the same thing. Raw could be far and away the best show on TV but like fuck is he committing 3 hours to it.

That's why I'm mildly concerned that AEW is likely to jump in at 2 hours right out of the gate. 2 hours is far more palatable than 3 hours, but in an age of lessened attention spans I think asking someone to watch a brand new show that is longer than an hour is a challenge.

I don't think all wrestling always struggled with this, but because the McMahons took over - whose idea of subtlety is akin to bashing you in the face with a tire iron - the industry seems to struggle with the notion of leaving people wanting more.

It's very difficult to be a WWE fan these days. To me it boils down to 3 hours of Raw and 2 hours of Smackdown, it's just too much to keep up with weekly. I appreciate the abbreviated Hulu versions but I do enjoy watching live when I can.

I can't remember the last really good Raw show that I saw. Maybe the stuff with HHH/HBK/Taker/Kane from last year.

I find it hard to be a regular viewer of NJPW, but I get around to watching the big shows and they are great. The NWA/ROH Crockett Cup was a great event and gave me a lot of promise for more like it.

MLW is solid, it hovers around from bad to good depending on the segment though.

Save us Y2J, save us.

It's great. I'm currently doing a complete 1997 Raw watch. Just watched the first episode in May . I've done a complete 1984 WWF watch where I watched all the t.v and House Shows, and completed a 1998 Shotgun Saturday Night watch. I'll watch about a an hour here and there. Really enjoying the shows, and if I don't watch for a week it's no biggie.

THEN YOU DON'T DESERVE PROFESSIONAL WRESTLING YOU SWEATY WHORE

I'm finding myself just watching PPV's and occasionally turning in for bigger events on TV. Having a Hulu subscription helps because I can view SD and RAW at any point and can fast forward to those events.

I've gone back to watching the Attitude Era. I'm currently working my way into the middle of the 2000's. The thing I hate About it is that the Undertaker's music is blocked out because it was Kid Rock's American Bad ass song. Minor thing but still. If you made me choose between watching wrestling from then or watching today's product, I'd be on the Network all day

The one edit that drives me crazy is them editing out "Don't Go Messin With a Country Boy"

I've always been a WWE guy but I did watch WCW. Indie brands do nothing for me, Japan does nothing for me, so it's WWE or nothing. I think I will give AEW a chance but I think it will be a glorified TNA.

After WrestleMania I cancelled the network after 4 years. Even the network got brutal because all they seem to show is NXT which is ok but I don't want to watch various regions of NXT all day every day. I loved all the other shows and the retro stuff but they stopped showing that consistently (I think every cable/internet provider does the network differently).

Raw is completely unwatchable with the shitty camera work, cutting to commercials mid match, replaying 5 times what we just watched earlier in the show. Smackdown isn't much better but being 2 hours keeps everything tighter. They have pretty much made world titles completely irrelevant.

I can't get behind 5'6'', 175 pounders as champs (Never got behind Rey) or even going against normal sized guys. The wrestlers need to be bigger than life otherwise I cannot suspend disbelief.

The writing has been so bad for so long, I've finally for the first time since I was a teenager not watched this week. It's kind of nice.

I'll never understand how people act like WWE just got bad.

The belts haven't meant anything in over a decade if not longer.

I get that it's probably worse than ever, but it's been on a downward trend literally since the day after WrestleMania X7.

I haven't seen a WWE current event since the Katie Vick thing happened and I had already stopped regularly watching a year before then because every block of WWE shows had the exact same segment repeats and dragged on between matches.

By the end I was surviving on Heat because Dean Malenko or Jerry Lynn would rock up and pull a stellar technical match out of Crash Holly, Al Snow or some other poor bastard they wouldn't use on Raw or Smackdown because they didn't have tits or a big mouth.

Couldn't agree more. It's had bright spots here and there but for the most part overall it's been on a pretty steady decline since WMX7.

It ended when the company went public.
There are some bright spots but they are dulled by shit like what might be going on in SA.

No one cares you crybaby, Diaper Dave

But Tonya :(

Why haven't you watched MLW yet?

The WWE is pretty unbearable.

It's remarkable that they have the best talent pool and wrestlers I actually enjoy watching wrestle but nothing in WWE means anything so I do not care.

wwe has its ebbs and its flows, I think right now its ebbing but theres still a lot more promise in whats happening than in the past..plus if aew actually provides competition maybe it'll make them wake up as to how out of touch vince is with what wrestling fans want right now

Watch NXT on the network from the beginning. You will both really enjoy it while also getting pissed remembering how WWE has botched about 30 call ups.

Just saw Kushida's NXT debut.

I don't bother with TV now and haven't for a long time, with the exception of what I catch when my 6 year-old is watching it.

I still watch PPVs though. No idea why, really. Just a bad habit at this point.

I think I've only ever "loved" wrestling was when I actually watched it on TV, the firt nWo run. They would show it on TNT channel every Friday at 10 pm.

Any time I ever thought about getting back into WWE I was immediately put off by the thought of Randy Orton.

So awful.

Truly watching Raw every week is so hard for me.

Never minded Randy THAT much though he's indicative of the overall lameness the WWE exudes.

The modern-day embodiment of their out-of-touch nature is Baron Corbin. How they think anyone could turn on the TV and see that fucking goblin fumbling his way through promos and not change the channel is beyond me.

Ha, my son gets mad when I call Randy Orton boring. I even take the piss out of his boring, slow walk to the ring. :D

Most of the PPVs are still good to even great. It's the 20+ hours of TV in between that feels to me phoned in about 90% of the time.

Nothing illustrates this more than WWE running the same promos/vignettes on Raw and Smackdown week after week. It's just so lazy.

The thing that cracks me up w/ WWE r/n is how when you look at their most successful eras they are littered w/ larger than life characters (Hogan, Rock, Mankind, Macho Man, Roddy Piper, Undertaker, etc etc etc)


What larger than life characters exists in the new stars? Baron Corbin, the larger than life Applebees Server?

Don't get me wrong. Corbin could have his place... just not all over the fucking show. He should be Iron Mike Sharpe. Instead, they position him to be Paul Orndorff.

I've said it before, but Corbin comes across like he belongs working as a valet at a Maggiano's or some 3.5 star restaurant.