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Where will wrestling be 10 years from now?


goldeneye86

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I think wrestling will be all but dead in 10 years, with WWE still just about surviving.

 

I'd agree with that. It's a dying business. Everything about it now just seems so lame & contrived; scripted promos, cookie cutter wrestlers, no consistency in storylines, very few good workers left, shitty gimmicks & generic forgettable names (Dolph Ziggler, Heath Slater, Brodus Clay, Mason Ryan, Darren Young, etc). I flick it on the odd time now & it makes me cringe. The last full episode of RAW I watched was a pre-Survivor Series promo with Rock & Cena talking for 20 mins about trending worldwide on Twitter; every sentence Rock said, he would follow it with "Now trending worldwide" and Rock implying Cena had a "mangina". It was horrible. I don't think it can ever be cool again. Even The Rock is getting tiring now. It's a tired & lame product in general. I heard it's HHH vs Taker again at Mania. I saw this match 11 years ago at Mania in Houston! I heard Colt Cabana do commentary once and he was 10 times better than Michael Cole - and they fired Colt Cabana a few weeks later. This sort of stuff makes no sense to me. They seem to bury talent for stupid petty reasons, and it just means that nobody gets over, there are no new stars, and stipulations & titles mean nothing.

 

I think UFC has taken it's place in the 16-34 demo, and WWE can't compete with something that's similar, but real. I know some wrestling fans hate MMA, but they're the minority - they're only more apparent on here because this is a fan forum for smart wrestling fans. But most old WWF Attitude Era fans that I know watch UFC now, and they haven't watched WWE in years. Myself & 3 of my friends get together for every UFC PPV show, and any of the big Strikeforce shows. We're all ex-wrestling fans, but we still talk about the "good ol' days".

MMA gives me an emotional rush I haven't gotten from wrestling in over 10 years. Randy Couture defending the honour of MMA against James Toney, Ronda Rousey winning the title, Chael Sonnen when he knocked down Anderson Silva for the first time, Brock Lesnar's comeback vs Shane Carwin, Tito Ortiz choking out Ryan Bader, Fedor's first loss, Henderson vs Shogun, Nick Diaz in everything he does, GSP, etc. I'm on the edge of my seat watching these guys. It's refreshing and it's real, and it's taken over from my love of pro wrestling.

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I think wrestling will be all but dead in 10 years, with WWE still just about surviving.

This, I dont think there will ever be a boom period again (although I hope there is).

The closest thing to a boom period that there is ever going to happen is the attention to this years Wrestlemania.

 

I think there will always be a place for Professional Wrestling, but it's never going to be back up to the heights that it once was. I'm a big UFC fan also, it just doesn't tick the entire checklist for me that professional wrestling does. That might just be the childhood fan in me being bias, either way I've yet to make the full transformation! I've seen more local MMA shows than Wrestling shows lately, guess that shows the future for me eh?

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I wonder if US wrestling will eventually regress back to the territory days, I can see lots of small to medium sized independent companies promoting and streaming shows via the Internet. Lots of small promotions with local and/or cult followings seem to be taking to the Internet to get their product seen, and rightly so. If your product is good and people are willing to pay money to watch it then there's really no need for elaborate and expensive television shows plagued by ad breaks every five minutes. I can't speak for anyone else but I'd rather watch a great show on a shoestring budget than a shitty show that cost hundreds of thousands to put on.

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I can't speak for anyone else but I'd rather watch a great show on a shoestring budget than a shitty show that cost hundreds of thousands to put on.

 

I think the E's made wrestling far too much about the spectacle now for that to be true for everyone now.

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I think wrestling will be all but dead in 10 years, with WWE still just about surviving.

 

I'd agree with that. It's a dying business. Everything about it now just seems so lame & contrived; scripted promos, cookie cutter wrestlers, no consistency in storylines, very few good workers left, shitty gimmicks & generic forgettable names (Dolph Ziggler, Heath Slater, Brodus Clay, Mason Ryan, Darren Young, etc). I flick it on the odd time now & it makes me cringe. The last full episode of RAW I watched was a pre-Survivor Series promo with Rock & Cena talking for 20 mins about trending worldwide on Twitter; every sentence Rock said, he would follow it with "Now trending worldwide" and Rock implying Cena had a "mangina". It was horrible. I don't think it can ever be cool again. Even The Rock is getting tiring now. It's a tired & lame product in general. I heard it's HHH vs Taker again at Mania. I saw this match 11 years ago at Mania in Houston! I heard Colt Cabana do commentary once and he was 10 times better than Michael Cole - and they fired Colt Cabana a few weeks later. This sort of stuff makes no sense to me. They seem to bury talent for stupid petty reasons, and it just means that nobody gets over, there are no new stars, and stipulations & titles mean nothing.

 

I think UFC has taken it's place in the 16-34 demo, and WWE can't compete with something that's similar, but real. I know some wrestling fans hate MMA, but they're the minority - they're only more apparent on here because this is a fan forum for smart wrestling fans. But most old WWF Attitude Era fans that I know watch UFC now, and they haven't watched WWE in years. Myself & 3 of my friends get together for every UFC PPV show, and any of the big Strikeforce shows. We're all ex-wrestling fans, but we still talk about the "good ol' days".

MMA gives me an emotional rush I haven't gotten from wrestling in over 10 years. Randy Couture defending the honour of MMA against James Toney, Ronda Rousey winning the title, Chael Sonnen when he knocked down Anderson Silva for the first time, Brock Lesnar's comeback vs Shane Carwin, Tito Ortiz choking out Ryan Bader, Fedor's first loss, Henderson vs Shogun, Nick Diaz in everything he does, GSP, etc. I'm on the edge of my seat watching these guys. It's refreshing and it's real, and it's taken over from my love of pro wrestling.

 

Good post. An interesting question coming off that would be this. The WWE's response to UFC was to take wrestling in the other direction - away from realism and back towards children's tv pantomime. There was a big repositioning of WWE as family entertainment, a sort of acceptable, moralistic take on combat. By doing so, has it actually signed its own long-term death warrant? Would a better response have been to go more UWFi, shoot wrestling style? They certainly had the roster for it, at the time: Angle, Lesnar, Benjamin and Haas, etc.

 

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Good post. An interesting question coming off that would be this. The WWE's response to UFC was to take wrestling in the other direction - away from realism and back towards children's tv pantomime. There was a big repositioning of WWE as family entertainment, a sort of acceptable, moralistic take on combat. By doing so, has it actually signed its own long-term death warrant? Would a better response have been to go more UWFi, shoot wrestling style? They certainly had the roster for it, at the time: Angle, Lesnar, Benjamin and Haas, etc.

 

No. I love you like a mild acquaintance, Loki, but that's fucking stupid. For one thing, WWE hasn't moved away from realism. At least not as much as they should. Everyone has a (stupid version of a) "normal" name, and they nearly all have the gimmick of "wrestler who is arrogant" or "wrestler who is friendly." Wrestling would not be served well at all by trying to look more like fake-shootfighting. That would absolutely soliify it as a poor man's UFC, and kill any interest in it when there's real MMA. It should go the other way. More colour, more characters, more show. As a pay-per-view entity, wrestling is probably fucked because of real fighting. But there's no reason at all it can't thrive as a live event and television show, as long as it distinguishes itself from "like UFC, but fake."

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I wonder if US wrestling will eventually regress back to the territory days, I can see lots of small to medium sized independent companies promoting and streaming shows via the Internet. Lots of small promotions with local and/or cult followings seem to be taking to the Internet to get their product seen, and rightly so. If your product is good and people are willing to pay money to watch it then there's really no need for elaborate and expensive television shows plagued by ad breaks every five minutes. I can't speak for anyone else but I'd rather watch a great show on a shoestring budget than a shitty show that cost hundreds of thousands to put on.

 

I would rather watch the big budget show with the higher production values.

 

 

I think wrestling will be all but dead in 10 years, with WWE still just about surviving.

 

I'd agree with that. It's a dying business. Everything about it now just seems so lame & contrived; scripted promos, cookie cutter wrestlers, no consistency in storylines, very few good workers left, shitty gimmicks & generic forgettable names (Dolph Ziggler, Heath Slater, Brodus Clay, Mason Ryan, Darren Young, etc). I flick it on the odd time now & it makes me cringe. The last full episode of RAW I watched was a pre-Survivor Series promo with Rock & Cena talking for 20 mins about trending worldwide on Twitter; every sentence Rock said, he would follow it with "Now trending worldwide" and Rock implying Cena had a "mangina". It was horrible. I don't think it can ever be cool again. Even The Rock is getting tiring now. It's a tired & lame product in general. I heard it's HHH vs Taker again at Mania. I saw this match 11 years ago at Mania in Houston! I heard Colt Cabana do commentary once and he was 10 times better than Michael Cole - and they fired Colt Cabana a few weeks later. This sort of stuff makes no sense to me. They seem to bury talent for stupid petty reasons, and it just means that nobody gets over, there are no new stars, and stipulations & titles mean nothing.

 

I think UFC has taken it's place in the 16-34 demo, and WWE can't compete with something that's similar, but real. I know some wrestling fans hate MMA, but they're the minority - they're only more apparent on here because this is a fan forum for smart wrestling fans. But most old WWF Attitude Era fans that I know watch UFC now, and they haven't watched WWE in years. Myself & 3 of my friends get together for every UFC PPV show, and any of the big Strikeforce shows. We're all ex-wrestling fans, but we still talk about the "good ol' days".

MMA gives me an emotional rush I haven't gotten from wrestling in over 10 years. Randy Couture defending the honour of MMA against James Toney, Ronda Rousey winning the title, Chael Sonnen when he knocked down Anderson Silva for the first time, Brock Lesnar's comeback vs Shane Carwin, Tito Ortiz choking out Ryan Bader, Fedor's first loss, Henderson vs Shogun, Nick Diaz in everything he does, GSP, etc. I'm on the edge of my seat watching these guys. It's refreshing and it's real, and it's taken over from my love of pro wrestling.

 

Good post. An interesting question coming off that would be this. The WWE's response to UFC was to take wrestling in the other direction - away from realism and back towards children's tv pantomime. There was a big repositioning of WWE as family entertainment, a sort of acceptable, moralistic take on combat. By doing so, has it actually signed its own long-term death warrant? Would a better response have been to go more UWFi, shoot wrestling style? They certainly had the roster for it, at the time: Angle, Lesnar, Benjamin and Haas, etc.

 

Nah, not really. They can't 'out-real' the real stuff. What's the point in trying? That's just a losing battle taht would make them look even more shit. As you said Herbie - yes, they're losing market share on the older demographic. But that's why redirecting themselves at a younger audience was a sound business move. This doesn't mean it's a dying business as a whole it just means that you're not the target market. Which is why you find it tired and lame - you've grown out of it. That's fine. But it's not an indication of the state of the business. There are still millions of fans worldwide.

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yes, they're losing market share on the older demographic. But that's why redirecting themselves at a younger audience was a sound business move. This doesn't mean it's a dying business as a whole it just means that you're not the target market. Which is why you find it tired and lame - you've grown out of it. That's fine.

Yeah, that's a good point. If they're not after my business, then fair enough. But even during the attitude era, when the demo was supposed to be 16-34 males, tonnes of kids still liked WWF at that time - they were never excluded. It was always a PG product, IMO, and kids have always liked it. It's just PG + lame now.

 

If anything, calling it PG and targeting kids will turn kids off. Kids aspire to be like older kids, and they want to watch what older kids watch, and wear what older kids wear, etc. I remember reading in The the Observer a few months ago that WWE state the majority of it's viewers are kids now, when they're actually not. I don't have the stats, but they're out there.

 

But it's not an indication of the state of the business. There are still millions of fans worldwide.

Yes, there are millions of fans worldwide & they generate millions of $$ each year; but that's mostly down to how many revenue streams they have and the fact they've been around so long with great market penetration in dozens of countries. But, every one of their revenue streams is dropping year on year; they are becoming less popular, despite targeting kids. Some drops are in the double digits. So the fans aren't growing - they're dwindling. These are facts. Nearly everything is down: PPV, Live Event Gates (-3.2%), Live Attendance (down 4.6%), TV ratings are stable compared to 2010 but down from 2009, Merchandise, Magazine, Computer Games, Website Traffic, etc.

 

The 13th Feb Observer does the 2011 vs. 2010 vs. 2009 business analysis.

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No. I love you like a mild acquaintance, Loki, but that's fucking stupid. For one thing, WWE hasn't moved away from realism. At least not as much as they should. Everyone has a (stupid version of a) "normal" name, and they nearly all have the gimmick of "wrestler who is arrogant" or "wrestler who is friendly." Wrestling would not be served well at all by trying to look more like fake-shootfighting. That would absolutely soliify it as a poor man's UFC, and kill any interest in it when there's real MMA. It should go the other way. More colour, more characters, more show. As a pay-per-view entity, wrestling is probably fucked because of real fighting. But there's no reason at all it can't thrive as a live event and television show, as long as it distinguishes itself from "like UFC, but fake."

 

You're undoubtedly right, Pity. I think the concept of that sounds better than the reality - it's actually all the silly storylines, crazy characters, and tassles that keep me tuning in week after week.

 

Perhaps I should watch some actual MMA, but I've tried, and it just looks like homo-erotic humping. In a cage. I'm actually marginally more embarrassed by it than wrestling, and that's saying something. I think I'll stick to the noble art of boxing/bottling for my "real" fight kicks.

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But it's not an indication of the state of the business. There are still millions of fans worldwide.

Yes, there are millions of fans worldwide & they generate millions of $$ each year; but that's mostly down to how many revenue streams they have and the fact they've been around so long with great market penetration in dozens of countries. But, every one of their revenue streams is dropping year on year; they are becoming less popular, despite targeting kids. Some drops are in the double digits. So the fans aren't growing - they're dwindling. These are facts. Nearly everything is down: PPV, Live Event Gates (-3.2%), Live Attendance (down 4.6%), TV ratings are stable compared to 2010 but down from 2009, Merchandise, Magazine, Computer Games, Website Traffic, etc.

 

The 13th Feb Observer does the 2011 vs. 2010 vs. 2009 business analysis.

 

Yeah.. the numbers don't lie, business is on a downturn. But I don't think there's sufficient data there, particularly in analysis over such a short time period, to confidently predict it as a sign of a dying industry. It is an industry that is going through a lot of change in its working practices and business models. They're still discovering new ways to exploit existing and new revenue streams.

 

For example, as this conversation is about the industry as a whole rather than WWE - the whole Ring Ka King thing. There's always been a bit of money in licensing to International markets but now there's a concerted effort to capitalise on areas that haven't been oversaturated and exhausted.

 

 

 

 

Perhaps I should watch some actual MMA, but I've tried, and it just looks like homo-erotic humping. In a cage. I'm actually marginally more embarrassed by it than wrestling, and that's saying something. I think I'll stick to the noble art of boxing/bottling for my "real" fight kicks.

 

You should watch some competetive Tae Kwon Do. That really sorts the men from the boys.

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Perhaps I should watch some actual MMA, but I've tried, and it just looks like homo-erotic humping. In a cage. I'm actually marginally more embarrassed by it than wrestling, and that's saying something.

I've always had that problem with MMA as well. I don't mind the strikes so much, but they do this too much:

 

b04dc244928e019380833a9f9f614a3c.jpg

 

It's not even a novelty move in UFC. All of the MMA ground grapples just look like sex positions, actually. I'd do picture comparisons but the NSFW rules and spoiler tag/pictures incompatibility make it too much of a chore.

 

Edit: In fairness, stuff like the Tombstone or the setup for a powerbomb looks really iffy as well. But at least wrestlers don't stay in those positions for ages.

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