Post-WWE Fandom - for those who cut the cord

[Chili]

Not entirely sure but I think I became a just watch the Rumble/Mania and a bit of NXT around whenever Roman Reigns started getting booed. Liked him but I couldn't be arsed watching the hero being booed for a million years. I think then I watched even less because I was also just deeply bored with the production. 

NXT I sacked off I think when they insisted on doing Ciampa/Gargano another dozen times. Absolutely hated their matches after I think the first one. Just shit, then Adam Cole and the Brewdog Stormfront turned up, looked bland and I just didn't care anymore. 

The stuff with Saudi and generally being a den of shit heads made the decision easier, I think I check spoilers once a month. I don't watch much or anything anymore because I dropped the network. I saw pics of Undertaker and his retirement deal and I won't watch it. It looks hilarious, but I'm not sitting through something like that bad looking. 

Atm I watch AEW Dynamite and I skim through their DARK show. That's about it, unless I get bored and put on a Tagged Classics. I just don't want wrestling in my life as much, and AEW being shiny and new and featuring a cast I barely know with less hours of content fills that. 

Edited December 6, 2020 by Chili

[The King Of Swing]

Like others it was a combination of viewer fatigue, bland/awful television and the company generally being scummy as fuck that put me off watching with any real regularity. 

Think I've dipped in three times in the last 12+ months and got little enjoyment out of WWE. 

Didn't even watch Wrestlemania this year (checked out the big matches later) which I'm fairly certain I hadn't missed since Wrestlemania VI in 1990.

Felt a little shitty for jumping back on the Network a few times exclusively for classic content but eventually realised that I wasn't even watching that anymore and was subbing out of habit, so finally binned it off for good. 

I admit though that AEW, Impact and Stardom have made dropping the company so much easier. If it wasn't for that I'd probably still be moaning in the Raw thread every week. 

Edited December 6, 2020 by The King Of Swing

[Nick James]

@HarmonicGenerator Delay of 7 days I believe. I meant as in first airing being on the network, rather than BT Sport. I used to watch it the morning after originally airing. 

Edited December 6, 2020 by Nick James

[Michael_3165]

Other than a very very very rare match or half show I have cut all ties with the WWE product since around 2010. 

The waning of my fandom started when the WWE decided to make us pay for PPVs. Given we had been extremely privileged to have the PPVs free live on Sky it was a huge shock to my system that I then had to pay upward of £12-15 per event and I simply opted not to bother. I would get Summerslam, Wrestlemania and a few others but they lost a fan when they asked me to pay for the shows. Given the amount of money a Sky Sports package cost at the time I simply couldn't justify spending up to £150 a year extra for shows that had mediocre matches. I still attended WWE shows when they came to the UK until around 2008 but as I began to really disengage with the product I barely knew who the people were and so stopped bothering. 

You know you are onto a loser when barely any show actually matters or has any long-term meaning anymore. Stipulations not being followed through on, themed PPVs (levering feuds into gimmick matches that don't make sense), constant world title wins for the likes of Jack SWAGGER and the like. Urgh! It went from prestige and meaningful to nonsense and that was enough for me.

It wasn't all that much of a shock to the system if I am honest. I had fallen out of love with wrestling in general around that time - I didn't "buy" the product they were trying to sell and the more they moved from old-school wrestling as "wrestling" to the "Universe" I gave up entirely. The final straw came when I couldnt tell the difference between talent, didn't care about the feuds and when the HD era kicked in with the "number one trending on Twatter" nonsense came up every few moments. I was sick of Cole, I was sick of the sanitisation and I was sick of the fact I had no reason to care. I watched wrestling because it was (pardon the pun) raw. It was gritty, edgy, I had to watch every week. Now we have this ultra glitzy, shiny, ulta produced TV show and it has absolutely no appeal at all. 

I watched very PPV from when I started watching in 1996 until we had to pay for them in 2002 (?) I never missed a WM between WM13 and WM26 but haven't been interested enough to even catch them since that time. I can't tell you who headlined any WrestleMania barring 30 and 31 and that's the sad thing. I was a foutain of wrestling knowledge (stats, match finishes etc) and now I couldn't even tell you who was on a show let alone who won. 

I am a bit of a stickler for kayfabe and found that as talent moved online and started posting "real life" pictures from behind the scenes I just thought it went so far away from what I loved with wrestling that I couldn't have cared any less. 

I also found that trying to watch 94879375237984793874 hours of wrestling a week was ridiculous. Who has time to spend that amount of effort and time on a product? If it was an hour an evening it would at least be spread out. Compound that by the nonsensical booking that has permeated WWE in recent years and I have no desire to bother again.

I am one of the few that were not and are not overly concerned about the independent contractor, Ashley M, early deaths, Trump allegiance and Saudi stuff compared to most. I tend to separate my likes with moral/ethical stuff. If I didn't I wouldn't support any company or organisation as they are all dodgy as fuck.

Luckily I then found NJPW in 2017 (proper) and the NJPW World service. Brilliant action, they still treat it with a modicum of respect rather than a circus. I tend to watch occasionaly shows nowadays as my baby takes up a lot of energy. I crave for the "good ol days" of Bret Hart, Shawn Michaels, Undertaker, Diesel, Sid and Austin. Much of it was hokey as fuck bit it meant something to me damnit! 

 

Edited December 6, 2020 by Michael_3165

[Meej81]

Nice to see some different posters in this thread and not the usual harmonic generator, butchi, Devon Malcolm gang and the rest of the weed smokers. Long live this thread 

[Joe Blog]

Someone always spoils it. 

[Lion_of_the_Midlands]

Saw the main matches from Mania, haven't watched anything other than highlights of Pat McAfee since. Can't get into AEW at all, or Impact. I've never watched less wrestling in my life and I'm not missing it. 

[Devon Malcolm]

55 minutes ago, Meej81 said:

Nice to see some different posters in this thread and not the usual harmonic generator, butchi, Devon Malcolm gang and the rest of the weed smokers. Long live this thread 

[The Gaffer]

1 hour ago, Meej81 said:

Nice to see some different posters in this thread and not the usual harmonic generator, butchi, Devon Malcolm gang and the rest of the weed smokers. Long live this thread 

SpursRiot's not back, is he?

[SuperBacon]

37 minutes ago, Gay as FOOK said:

SpursRiot's not back, is he?

Nah, now hes in Ireland, he wouldn't dream of coming on to a website with the words UK in it.

[Mikeymike83]

I've been ambivalent to it for a good 4 or 5 years now. Always little things here and there which kept me tuning in. And added to the fact I probably became a viewer of habit, rather than any particular connection with any one person/storyline etc.

This year's wrestlemania was my final nail moment though. Not particularly a fan of Drew or Braun (I know circumstances on that occasion), and to see them as the flag bearers. Nah, not for me. 

I've mentioned this previously, I'm not a fan of female wrestling. I can appreciate that once in a while a match will stand out from them, but I can't ever help but feel for the most part that they're the most blatantly choreographed spectacles going. The current batch have moved women's wrestling on so far from what it was, but I see that more a factor of how bad it used to be rather than a bar increasingly being set higher each year. On women's wrestling, do they deserve the spotlight/chance? Of course they do, 100% yes. But it just isn't for me.

I can't stand that the company has an influx of these moveset wankers off the Indies. It wasn't what WWE/F ever was. That's not that they shouldn't evolve with the times, but I'm sick of the skinny bellends thinking moves are what make a match. There's seemingly never any thought into whether it makes sense any more (psychology), more of a 'fuck it, let's throw a million kicks and knees in our matches', or let's bust out another superkick. For all the praise the likes of Owens and Cole get at being good bad guys, they don't half like to play up to and pander to what they think the crowds want. For all the blandness that is Baron Corbin,  the fact that he is the companies best, back to basics heel they have is astounding. A truly stinging indication of where the company is. 

They no longer cater for my needs as a wrestling fan. That's nobodies fault. It's purely their way of thinking more money is to be made doing it the current way. And that's fine, but it isn't my tastes.

For all the shit that the mid naughties roster got for being a cookie cutter mould, I can't think of a time that the 'look' is any less appealing. Skinny and under 6"? Muscular and over 6"? Fat and about 6"? Fuck it, dark stubble/beard, long greasy hair and black ring gear. That's what a wrestler looks like! They may have been a bit dross, but good God I can't believe I'm admitting to this... gimme some bloody Luther Reigns and Matt Morgan types. They might not be able to dish out the bantz~, but I tell you what, they at least look like they could rip your bloody head off your shoulders. You know like wrestlers should look like.

Fuck the oh so clever fans for being pretentious pricks. With their oh so clever chants. And their oh so charming selves. Shove your 'clap, clap, too sweet' bollocks up your arses. They are the most entitled, bollock head fans of any sport. And our own football, has shockingly bad fans.

Vince loves his HD, computer graphics production so much that he's finally succumbed and at age 72, give himself a bloody face make over. He's an absolute nutter too, who gets more and more erratic with each passing year.

Feuds and match sequences which last for about 6 months. It's not even good, well paced, thought out long term story telling either. It can't be, because they've decided they need 4000 hours of prime content each week. Even if they had every wrestler that is alive today under contract, they'd still exhaust every possible match and scenario within the year because they have too much tv time to fill.

 

And after all that nonsense which infuriates me (And there's plenty more reasons too), I'm still a wrestling fan at heart so I still give them nine pounds and ninety nine pence every bloody month because I love the old school stuff. And am a sucker for all the podcast/documentary type shows they produce. The absolute selfish bastards. Don't they know I'm trying so bloody hard to cold turkey myself off them forever now?!

Edited December 6, 2020 by Mikeymike83

[sukhy]

First time I started to tune out, after years of watching every single week since about 1997, was in 2012. The finish to the main event on Raw 1000 with Big Show turning up to have another run as a main eventer was too much for me to handle. 

Started to tune in when The Shield turned up, and then Daniel Bryan got me hooked again, but when he had to give the belt up in 2014, I started to just tune into Rumble, Mania, Summerslam.

To be honest, there were still some standout moments that I really enjoyed from 2014 til now, Seths cash in, Brock destroying Cena etc. They were all worth feck all, because they led to stories I couldn't care give a crap about.

Started to then read the results of the weekly shows, and B PPVs online, because a storyline about "The Authority" going on for what felt like forever, with no pay off, is not it for me. 

I'll have a look at the Rumble match every year and I'll skim through portions of Mania if something catches my eye, but I don't trust WWE to produce a product that I can be invested in on a weekly basis, so I just don't watch. 

Nowadays I just click onto Twitter and if something pops up, I'll give it a look. 

 

Sorry if this is a bit jumbled up, I just didn't want to say I was sick of Stephanie McMahon and Triple H doing 20 minute promos at the start of a 3 hour show. 

Edited December 6, 2020 by sukhy

[Michael_3165]

I'm really curious as to what keeps us on here... Is it habit? I find I flick through a select few sites and this happens to be one of them. 

[Chris B]

16 minutes ago, Michael_3165 said:

I'm really curious as to what keeps us on here... Is it habit? I find I flick through a select few sites and this happens to be one of them. 

I do still like talking about wrestling. I'm still watching AEW and NJPW, so I like reading responses to those, and they're generally pretty interesting on here. 

The off-topic stuff is interesting here. The site having been here for so long is interesting, because you've seen a lot of people mature. There are discussions on here, and takes on things, that I don't think we'd have seen on here 10 years ago. And for such a male-predominant site, I think that's a pretty cool thing - I've found it pretty heartening (especially over a few years where there have been few things to feel heartened about).

Also, I've seen a lot of support going on here. Sure, there can be arsey behaviour too, but it's seemed like a supportive, positive group overall. There aren't many of those.

[Yakashi]

I will watch something on YouTube maybe once every three months on average but I don’t watch any of the shows and haven’t for years. I guess there’s two reasons.

1. They’ve finally passed the level of cuntery that I’m ok with and, morally, I just can’t give them any of my time or money. They’re absolutely despicable people and, even though deep down I know they always have been, I just take more notice of it now. They seem to handle every situation in the most deplorable way they possibly could and show no signs of stopping.

2. The shows are absolutely shit, every match is the same, every wrestler that is good gets turned into a robot doing the same thing as everyone else and they have no stars. It’s boring. And as much as AEW rides the spectrum between amazing and embarrassing, I’m never bored. Heel Roman sounds great, but after years of horrendous booking, I’m giving him the credit for that and not them. Everything else sounds just as shit as it was years ago.