When did you STOP watching wrestling and how long did it last?

[The Blonde Bomber]

I used to love watching live wrestling but since around 2017 thereabouts I've not had the want to watch wrestling on a weekly basis. That's around when NXT started to lose some of it's luster for me which is also when I went into a depression but that's a whole other story. Since then I got hope when AEW came out but that was slashed after watching a few weeks of it. Than when Punk came back I would watch semi-weekly when I could to see his segments and sometimes would watch the rest of the show when I didn't feel like it was insult my intelligence or just blatantly choreographed. Nowadays I just stick to Youtube clips of some of the workers that interest me. WALTER, MJF, FTR, Starks, Reigns, Lesnar, Zayn, Heyman, to name a few but haven't had much interest in watching weekly in sometime.

[mistaken]

I watch 2 years out over every decade.

[SuperRamenmakerOkada]

I stop watching in 2011-2012 (which I find funny because that was CM Punk's big run) and I remember coming back to it in 2013. Just wasn't interested at that time.

Edited January 25, 2023 by SuperRamenmakerOkada

[same-old-davey]

About 2015 for me. But even though I'm not watching the big two currently, I am catching up on some classic territory stuff from before my time, and a few smaller promotions that are airing on Youtube and free Roku TV. It's never been a better time to discover indy after watching only Raw and Smackdown for the longest time.

[2Sweet]

After that one year when Smackdown Live was having its best run, I just fell out with WWE. I'd watch some NJPW or NXT videos on Youtube but my love for wrestling just slowly started to fade as I got older.

Sometimes I'll go on YT just to see what's going on in WWE and it'll be so much new faces. I'm just like "who the h*** are these guys?" 😂

Edited February 19, 2023 by 2Sweet

[MrCanada]

I really got into wrestling in 2000 or so. I think I saw it a handful of times before that here-or-there but my mother didn't like the idea of wrestling when I was just a small kid.

Weirdly I never have stopped watching. I have had periods where I watched less and attended Ontario indies more. And a small period where I really just grew sick of WWE and would keep up on news and just catch interesting segments/matches from  TNA/WWE/ROH at the time, but no real time off for me in probably 25-years.

[CactusHack]

Honestly, I need the alternative to WWE. As an attitude era kid, the second everything merged after the buy, WWE almost completely stopped being engaging to me. I lost any interest in following it from week-to-week by WMX8, and by WMXX I was maybe catching recaps once a month. Popped back into wrestling as an avid fan from the birth of TNA iMPACT on Spike TV until the day AJ Styles left at the end of 2013. It was a shame, too. Styles was never my favourite, by the end I was super big on Magnus, Roode and Storm but had felt like I had been done so dirty by Roode and Storm not main eventing BFG in 2012 (which was a wild thought for me, as Jeff Hardy is my all time favourite) that all my goodwill to the brand had been sapped dry.

From there thru to the launch of AEW, the only wrestling I was able to get into was Lucha Underground's first two seasons.

AEW gets me what I want out of a wrestling show - diverse in-ring entertainment. I get my hardcore brawls, my high flying acrobatics, technical displays, pomp, and it caters to the side of me that enjoys world-building lore. Definitely helps that the initial roster was populated by TNA guys (Kaz, Daniels, Taz, Archer, Young Bucks), Attitude Era WWF guys (Jericho, Billy Gunn, Dustin Rhodes, JR) and Lucha Underground guys (Brian Cage, Pentagon, Fenix, Luchasaurus) - all sprinklings of my favourite products over my life. Hope I can get a decade of entertainment out of it like I did with TNA, without losing goodwill towards the brand . Crazy that it's been nearly four years already.

[Stennick]

I watched weekly from childhood through about 2002. Then I didn't get Smackdown in my area so I just watched Raw. Once I got out of college I didn't have cable so I stopped watching both. I picked it back up in late 2004. Watched until mid 2005. Picked it back up mid 2006. Stopped watching after the Benoit incident and I have not religiously watched since then and I haven't watched a full episode of wrestling since maybe 2016. 

[Old School Fan]

I quit watching WWE back in 2005 and haven't gone back since (I only follow what goes on in WWE now via websites like WrestleView.com).  Since then, I periodically check what's going on with TNA, AEW and the NWA (either on TV or online) and I watched ROH TV in syndication for awhile until I drifted out of the habit shortly before its syndicated run ended in 2022 (shortly before the Khans bought ROH), now I record Women of Wrestling to watch when the mood strikes me.

[DarK_RaideR]

I started regularly watching WWE during the Guerrero-JBL feud and quit when Punk won the title in 2008. In hindsight, I was new to it all and he was just being such a good heel he literally turned me off the product (so maybe a bit too good of a heel). But worry not, between the terrible booking of the late Vince McMahon era, the blood money deals with Saudi Arabia and many other reasons, WWE made sure I stayed away for a long time.

I binge watched the original ECW stuff (further fuelling my fanboyish dislike of WWE) and then switched to TNA, until Hogan and Bischoff tried to start a new Monday Night War. Pretty sure the straw that broke the camel's back for me was that storyline of Abyss having Hogan's magical HoF ring, but the rest of the product had gone to hell anyway. I'd say that's when I actually stopped watching wrestling, or at least the wrestling that was on at the time. I went back to consume all kinds of weird and obscure stuff building up my knowledge and understanding of it, from old FMW and ROH shows to the short lived Wrestling Society X, lucha classics (including any Santo movies I could find) and old territory stuff. It was Lucha Underground that pulled me back in, then New Japan as Bullet Club was becoming a global phenomenon and the (in)famous Okada-Omega match that broke Meltzer's star rating system. I filled in the gaps with some UK indie stuff, mainly Pro Wrestling EVE that I discovered thanks to a diary on these forums, and a bit of MLW, before NJPW's roster was depleted by Western raids. I kept up with AEW from day one but quit all wrestling during the pandemic era, as I just couldn't watch it with no crowds (and also felt bad for wrestlers having to wrestle during a pandemic. And was also mad at the politics that led Florida to name wrestling as an essential business that had to keep running during lockdowns). After AEW began Collision I decided this was too much content to keep up with and gave up on their weekly shows altogether.

These days I mostly watch AEW PPVs, somewhat begrudgingly since they've really lost a lot of energy/goodwill/momentum/direction/whatever after Brawl Out. I do also watch the occasional WWE/NXT PLE, as well as some TNA shows after they rebranded in January. Oh and I'm catching up on the classic era of King's Road All Japan.

[beemer]

I watched WWF from around 85-92, then WCW and WWF during the wars which were fantastic for the business.  But after WCW folded and it was clear that its fate after being sold was to be buried under the WWE (clearly a two-fold investment for some of the talent but more for the future nostalgia value), I didn't watch nearly as much, if at all for many years.

One of the things that was super-important to the Wars era too was the fantastic AKI videogames on the N64. The first successful series of wrestling games that tried to be less twitchy and more like the actual product. (MicroLeague Wrestling tried, but it was just too ambitious for the time.)

The Rock and Stone Cold really made that era special. S-Tier doesn't do justice to their mic skills. I'd be hard-pressed to think of anyone better and have them both together in the same fed at the same time in their prime with their fantastic synergy? It may never happen again.

But only having one big dog in the WWE made it difficult, you could really feel the difference with them no longer having to compete. WWF's heyday in the 80s was all about McMahon putting the nail in the coffin that you couldn't run a national promotion. Then when he had to fend off Turner trying to duplicate the national promotion (i.e the wars)... To me it was clear just how critical it was for WWF/WWE to have that hunger to put out the best stuff.

I was very happy when AEW came out, and I have watched a bit, but not much since 2022. A lot of it was because I'd watch the Dark shows (I don't have cable) - because I enjoyed seeing what was essentially the equivalent of minor league AEW in those free YouTube shows. And they were a lot like indy level shows with high production values. So seeing Max Caster or Willow Nightingale on there when they were in the "lets see if they stick" phases was cool. A lot of AEW was wanting to see Omega in the US (his 7-star match vs Okada really was incredible - despite having zero investment or background knowledge on Omega and Okada, I was just on the edge of my seat even knowing the outcome since it was several years later).

And bless MJF for possibly inventing the new kayfabe. His promos too - the only thing I've seen other than Punk on the level of The Rock and Stone Cold.

[arlovski]

I started watching in the mid to late 90s as a very young child, mostly WCW and some WWF. At that time I could hardly follow what was happening storyline-wise, but was at least old enough to recognize some people, especially from wrestling video games I had played. I remember that I was very fond of Randy Savage and Bret Hart, who were both by far the most over wrestlers in Germany back then, even known by my parents and their friends, who all thought fairly low of pro wrestling. I also liked Kevin Nash and the Road Warriors. And of course I knew Hulk Hogan.

Didn't watch for a few years, as it disappeared from public tv, but went on to play the WWE games on Playstation, particularly Just Bring It and Shut Your Mouth. SYM is what REALLY turned me and some friends of mine into fans - I loved the storylines and decisions you could make in that game. Legit something A LOT of RPGs could learn from. Sometime in 2002 I noticed, that SmackDown was shown on a German niche tv channel and parallel to that, a friend of mine had RAW on pay tv. This time from 2002 / 2003 until ~ 2006 / 2007, pretty much my early teenage years, were the ones where I watched and enjoyed wrestling the most and really became a regular watcher, who was invested with the product. It was also during that time, that I acquired what I would call a 'taste' in regards to pro wrestling. I didn't just watch what happened in the present, but also lots of wrestling from the past, starting with the Attitude Era and moving on to pretty much everything from the 1960s to the present, mostly in the US and Japan. Obviously, the evolution of the net during that time helped me satisfy my curiosity a lot. 

2008 was the first time, that I had stopped watching wrestling entirely. Didn't read much about it either in the following years. Since 2013 I have checked out various companies now and then and also watched some historical stuff, but never got as invested with any of the new stuff, as I was before. The only stuff I really enjoyed was watching everything WCW from Nitro to closure. I returned to reading dirt sheets occasionally though and I started listening to some of the podcasts a few years ago. TEW also kinda keeps me invested in wrestling in general.