Wrestling becoming "uncool"

[louis1016]

For those of us who experienced the attitude era, we saw pro wrestling become accepted as being "cool" for a variety of reasons. High school and college kids would wear their NWO or Austin 3:16 t-shirts with pride. Millions of people were watching wrestling who never did before and wrestling would even beat Monday Night Football in ratings regularly.

 

Fast forward to 2020 and wrestling is most definitely not cool. The millions of fans have long since stopped watching or even caring about wrestling. Most normal people today would consider someone a loser for watching wrestling these days. Wrestling is now considered more nerdy then videogames and anime. The millions and millions of fans who stopped watching will never ever consider being a fan again at this point.

 

I am 100% a wrestling nerd (and other types of nerd) but I miss the days when wrestling was popular and wasnt something to be embarrassed about. I miss when wrestling fans werent associated with overweight nerdy virgins who wear replica title belts. Unfortunately these types of stereotypical nerdy wrestling fans are all thats left - just look at WWE and AEW crowds vs the crowds in an event from 1999. When AEW was announced, it got me excited to think that they could turn wrestling cool again but it was just wishful thinking because they ended up totally embracing the nerd culture instead. Wrestling will never be cool again at this point.

 

I'm curious what other people have to say on this topic whether you agree or disagree with me.

[BHK1978]

For those of us who experienced the attitude era, we saw pro wrestling become accepted as being "cool" for a variety of reasons. High school and college kids would wear their NWO or Austin 3:16 t-shirts with pride. Millions of people were watching wrestling who never did before and wrestling would even beat Monday Night Football in ratings regularly.

 

Fast forward to 2020 and wrestling is most definitely not cool. The millions of fans have long since stopped watching or even caring about wrestling. Most normal people today would consider someone a loser for watching wrestling these days. Wrestling is now considered more nerdy then videogames and anime. The millions and millions of fans who stopped watching will never ever consider being a fan again at this point.

 

I am 100% a wrestling nerd (and other types of nerd) but I miss the days when wrestling was popular and wasnt something to be embarrassed about. I miss when wrestling fans werent associated with overweight nerdy virgins who wear replica title belts. Unfortunately these types of stereotypical nerdy wrestling fans are all thats left - just look at WWE and AEW crowds vs the crowds in an event from 1999. When AEW was announced, it got me excited to think that they could turn wrestling cool again but it was just wishful thinking because they ended up totally embracing the nerd culture instead. Wrestling will never be cool again at this point.

 

I'm curious what other people have to say on this topic whether you agree or disagree with me.

 

I absolutely agree with you. Though I do have to question if wrestling was at its pique viewership wise during the Attitude Era. The Rock N' Wrestling Era was pretty huge, it drew massive ratings in the 1950's on network television (Though I do not know the exact totals of any era so I am no qualified to say for certain when pique viewership was for wrestling.).

 

I often wonder if wrestling is in another downturn and will come back or if it is done. When I was a little kid in the 80's it was huge and then it bottomed out and it was much like it is now.

 

I have said it in the past when I was in junior high school wrestling became uncool. My friends who used to be really into wrestling all turned against it because it was not cool and they would bust me for still watching wrestling (More WWF than anything else because it was geared towards kids. NWA/WCW was thought of as being more "real" so it was considered cooler but not by much. Especially after Robocop showed up.).

 

My senior year of high school was right when Nitro started and that was when wrestling started to become cool again. The same people who used to bust me for still being a wrestling fan were now talking about how cool it was to see Lex Luger show up on Nitro.

 

Then the Attitude Era began and well you covered that so no need to rehash what you said.

 

To me the day WCW died was when I noticed my interest starting to go. I was annoyed that Vince had finally won, he finally managed to stomp out all of the competition. Mainly because since I was a kid I always felt like the WWF/E sort of looked down at the fans. For instance, I remember seeing Dusty return to the WWF and them putting him in polka dots and making him look like a damn fool. Now granted I had not watched much of his stuff in the NWA because I live in New England and the WWF was king up here. But I would read magazines and so I knew Dusty was a big deal in other parts of the country and it was never even talked about. Stuff like that always annoyed me and so I was not a huge fan of the WWE due to that.

 

With them being the only thing around, I stopped caring. Then TNA came along and while some of it was damn near terrible there was some stuff I loved about it.

 

Nowadays, I like MLW but honestly, that is about it. There is some stuff I like about WWE (I like NXT for the most part and I really like Roman as a heel and his feud with his cousin I thought that was done really well.).

 

I am not sure I can articulate what I dislike about AEW. I am that way about most things, if I don't like something I just don't like it and I often struggle to pinpoint what exactly it is that I don't like about something. As I have said in the past I despise Omega and the Bucks.

 

No, it is not because I am a Jim Cornette acolyte. I disliked the three of them well before I had heard Jim's takes on them. To me, the three of them always came across as lame. I remember seeing Omega in ROH for the first time and I had heard about how great he was and how he was the face of this generation of wrestling. So I was shocked when I saw this goofy putz with the bad hair and the imaginary broom. I did not get the whole thing, I thought with a nickname like the Cleaner, he was supposed to be a mafia cleaner. Not an actual janitor.

 

I have disliked the Bucks since I saw them in TNA. I find them not to be cool or funny and when wrestling fans, in general, started to talk about them like they were I knew the audience had turned and I had finally become embarrassed to be a wrestling fan.

 

Much like WWE, there is some stuff in AEW I like. But I have to be honest the AEW fans are a huge reason why I don't like the promotion. If you say you don't like something about the product the fans accuse you of being out of touch.

 

I have gone on for far too long and I probably have gone far too off-topic as I tend to do.

 

In summary, I don't know if wrestling will ever become cool again. That is tough to say, I think if it is to become cool again the onus is on the WWE and not so much on AEW. The reason being, the WWE is wrestling in the eyes of many, it is where the real stars go. The WWE is like the Yankees and Dodgers in baseball, when they are doing good the rest of the industry feeds off it.

 

I do believe that in order for wrestling to become cool they have to make it more mainstream again and more accessible to the public. It cannot be lol so random, it has to appeal to a broader audience. How they do that I do not know.

[Bestia Negra]

I agree with OP. The reason is simple to me: wrestling today isn't wrestling anymore. It's a choreographed gymnastics circus surrounded by a bad soap opera. It's become worse and worse over the past 20 years and it doesn't look like it'll get better anytime soon. I see why nobody wants to watch this anymore and I get why people think you're stupid if you enjoy this.

[Self]

I don't know if I've ever experienced wrestling as being mainstream cool. Even in the Attitude era, although that may just have been the my perception locally. It's hard for anything to be cool to everyone now. The internet creates subcultures, separate and not-so-welcoming to newcomers.

 

If WWE was to become 'good' again, wrestling would have a better perception, but I don't know how it does that. I'd wager it's the format more than the talent, but the lion's share of the talent are... There's nothing cool about a dorky kid dreaming about performing for WWE getting to live out his dream, and that's everyone these days. That's not an action drama. That's Glee.

[Blackman]

Well it's pretty frickin' far from being cool here. Definitely now. And it even wasn't during the 'good' days.

[dvdWarrior]

In my neck of the woods, wrestling seemed pretty cool back in the late 90s... those wonderful, long ago days when I was a happy, happy teenager.

 

In my high school, I remember black shirts being everywhere - among the guys anyway, I don't remember the girls caring all that much - all adorned with the iconic Austin 3:16 or the mighty, mighty nWo logo.

 

If you're wondering, my shirt had the nWo logo. I was, as Kevin Nash so often said, nWo 4 Life! :cool:

 

Still am. :(

 

However cool it may have been in those days, it's every bit as far away from being cool now. The way they book it these days, seems like they don't even want it to be cool.

 

We have seen what I like to call the complete and utter wussification of professional wrestling, and I'm not sure it can really ever recover.

[The Swanton825]

I think a lot of it comes down to the rise in popularity of MMA and the UFC in particular. If you think about it, MMA embodies the "take all comers" spirit pro wrestling had for a long time but it has the advantage of being a legit sport rather than an elaborate stage show. It's basically impossible these days to convince viewers that a wrestling match is between two badasses anymore when everyone worldwide knows that's not what a real fight looks like. And wrestling itself can't figure out how to adapt to the situation that doesn't split the fanbase right down the middle.

 

The way I see it is that variety is the thing that could give wrestling a leg up but just like the metal community, everyone is focused on the "right" way to do things that they'll drive away newcomers who like something different. Talking about the latest dumb thing a comedy or deathmatch wrestler did like it's the death of the industry is like claiming that Psychostick or Green Jellÿ's music has destroyed the credibility of bands like Opeth or Tool.

 

As for it never being cool again, friggin' D&D is cool now. All it takes is one good gateway for newcomers and fans not being ashamed of what they like, wrestling will be cool again at some point.

[Jaysin]

Why do people care so much if something is trendy or not? If you like something, don't feel ashamed.

[dvdWarrior]

Why do people care so much if something is trendy or not? If you like something, don't feel ashamed.

 

Very true, and very good point.

 

Sadly, I'm not liking it nearly as much as I used to, and I guess I'm just hoping it'd get a little cooler, for my own sake.

 

[Jaysin]

Very true, and very good point.

 

Sadly, I'm not liking it nearly as much as I used to, and I guess I'm just hoping it'd get a little cooler, for my own sake.

 

 

The only Wrestling I enjoy now is AEW. I watch Dynamite every week and watch all the ppvs. It's the most I've enjoyed wrestling since WCW's prime years.

 

I do read Impact results every week though as they're in an interesting spot right now.

 

Also, MLW came back this week and the main event is Davey Boy Smith Jr vs Jacob Fatu which is very promising. Gonna give that a shot at some point.

[CQI13]

Why do people care so much if something is trendy or not? If you like something, don't feel ashamed.

 

100% agree. It was mainstream back in the Attitude Era. I never thought it was cool though. I liked it. I still enjoy it. Don't care much beyond that.

[Antonin]

I don't know about wrestling being cool or uncool. How do you define "cool"? I have watched wrestling on and off since the early 1970s. Here in Cleveland there was a TV show called Big Time Wrestling. I watched it. My uncles and all my friends watched it.

 

There always seemed to be some kind of wrestling on TV. Johnny Powers, The Sweet Man, all those guys. Haystacks Calhoun, Andre the Giant. It was a lot of fun.

 

I still watch wrestling now. Some wrestlers I like less than others, but that's the point, isn't it? Over the years I have found that I like wrestling less when there's a nationalistic or racial element. But overall, wrestling has been and still is a pleasant distraction from the problems of everyday life. For me, anyway.

[Makhai]

I think people have a very warped idea of what mainstream popular in TV terms is. Let me put it like this M*A*S*H* finale did a 60.2 Sunday Night Football does about 20.0. Wrestling has always been something shunned by the mainstream. And it has earned that reputation historically. So whenever this comes up I always say the same thing. It was really really cool, to sweaty 9-14 year-old boys, who didn't have the internet and never saw a boob before. It was seen as degenerate and awful by literally everyone else.

 

If wrestling did everything perfectly, it would never be that popular again. TV audiences are spread too thin, PPV is a dead industry, and streaming and the internet algorithms hyper concentrate your viewership base. I'm pretty sure almost nothing will be "mainstream" again. That's just not how the world works anymore. And it's not the audience you want to appeal to anymore either. If you want wrestling to get popular, then you will need a creative mind that excels at creating character-driven episodic content. Even South Park went from swear words and shock tactics into being always on the money social commentary in a South Park wrapper. Wrestling needs to let the past die. 62-year-old Sting, isn't going to resurrect wrestling. Pretty sure he can't res-erect his penis anymore without the little blue one and a 15-min headstart. It's pathetic he's the highest selling merch mover in the history of PWTees. It really is.

 

The future of mainstream wrestling isn't Val Venis, and The Godfather. It's not Saving Ryan's Privates or Hoe Trains. It's not zit cream and fat pills. It's using the best of combat sports and the best of television character-based storytelling, and pumping out 150hrs of content a year that doesn't make you embarrassed when somebody walks in the room. When wrestling gets there. It will be cooler for more people than it ever has been.

[Makhai]

Why do people care so much if something is trendy or not? If you like something, don't feel ashamed.

 

Because they enjoy it, and if other people enjoy it too then they don't have to watch it inbetween the porn in the garage when people think you're working on the car.

 

This desire is why there is always "The" show. GoT, NFL, Breaking Bad, The Bachelor. When media hits this point, it starts getting you laid and making you friends. That's what cultural touchstones do. They're ice breakers. Try talking about Sting's return with a tinder date. They'll be looking for a replacement bang by the middle of sentence two.

 

Not everyone can be Donald Trump levels of ignorant to the world around them, and substitute their own in its place. Not a realistic outcome for about half the world, it would seem.

[Jaysin]

That's flat out asinine. If you like watching something, watch it. The only opinion that matters is your own.

[Makhai]

<blockquote data-ipsquote="" class="ipsQuote" data-ipsquote-username="Jaysin" data-cite="Jaysin" data-ipsquote-contentapp="forums" data-ipsquote-contenttype="forums" data-ipsquote-contentid="52218" data-ipsquote-contentclass="forums_Topic"><div>That's flat out asinine. If you like watching something, watch it. The only opinion that matters is your own.</div></blockquote><p> </p><p> Ok, Cool Hand Luke.</p>

[Self]

<p>Yes, you should always watch things you like, regardless of how 'cool' mainstream society thinks it is. However, there's a difference between watching something, and being an outspoken, public fan of it. There are lots of things I enjoy that I don't talk about in polite society (miniatures, Glee),and wrestling is one of them. Not that I think it would get a negative reaction any more, but I can't imagine much of a positive one. So why bother? The few times I've heard it mentioned at work was in the context of someone's kids liking it, and talk of Lesnar during a conversation about UFC. </p><p> </p><p>

Remember, kids. It's okay to be ashamed of something, as long as you don't let that stop you enjoying it.</p><p> </p><p>

(Don't tell this to kids. I think I was raised incorrectly)</p>

[djthefunkchris]

The things that made Pro-Wrestling so popular can't possibly be put on TV now, without getting huge amounts of criticism. Huge amounts of (humorous) stereotypes (pimps, hoodlums, Samoan or Black or Biker Savages/Wild, Hillbillies/Wilderness people, Witch Doctors, Asians that can't "speaka the language", Arabian villains, cool (actually sleezy) Mexicans, Black Criminals, Military heroes/villains, "animalistic humans" with handlers, Ho's), sex, bullying, short people (midgets), name calling, homophobia, and a whole bunch of things that would get so much criticism today, if the network even would let it be viewed.

 

The thing is, it would probably work again. The fun parts of wrestling was how "dumb" and over the top they can go. It's almost like they want the wrestlers to be believable and grounded in realism, when it's still just people pretending to fight.