When did you stop caring?

[air_raid]

I think somewhere between AJ losing the WWE title the second time and realising he wasn’t getting anywhere near it again. It’s shit when you don’t have anyone to get behind. I got back into it a bit when Cody then Punk returned. But not enough to watch regularly.

On 5/8/2026 at 11:08 AM, DavidB6937 said:

I don't think I ever stopped caring. It's just the way life goes in terms of having the time to care.

There is that.

[Johnnyreggae]

2002 I started to fall of the map. I was a huge fan up until this point and then life just got in the way. I never stopped caring and always wanted that Big feeling to return but it just never did. I always made sure to keep up with what was going on and i still watch if something is really worth checking out. Nowadays I struggle with a 5 minute youtube highlight video.

Last time I was really excited was when AEW became a thing but since then I've just dipped in and out.  

[Only_The_Strong_Survive]

Great thread. 
 

I’ve had a fair few lapses over the years. Stopped around end of 2003, think it was due to not having access to Sky unless I was at my Dads. Got back into it around 2008 with Jericho/Michaels, but got bored very easy. Found myself getting massively into ROH with the HDnet stuff as it was different to anything I’d seen before. Went hard on collecting the DVDs from then, actually completed the full collection around 2011. Then started collecting PWG, Chikara and DGUSA also. I just couldn’t get enough but was more into collecting than actually watching the stuff. 
 

Used to love attending shows also. DGUK especially. And the Fight Club Pro shows at the Planet were a great time. Massively wained in interest around 2015 I’d say. I think more from Burnout than anything. I was trying to keep up with ROH/PWG current stuff and watch my massively backlog (worked out if I watched a show a day I could catch up in around 18 months, mental idea). FCP had moved from the Planet at that time also, which didn’t help. Sold all my DVDs (at a heavy loss). Watched the odd Final battle for a few years until AEW showed up and I got the bug again. It had a fair few of my favourites and was easy to consume with 4 PPVs a year and just a 2 hour show. Hell even Dark was great as a 1 hour show back then. Covid hit and I threw myself into work, was out of the loop for around 6 months, then the MeTwo movement happened and I realised most of them are absolute scumbags. Marty Scrull being head of that, I was really excited to see what he was going to do with ROH. Around back end of 2020 got massively back into AEW. 
 

Was absolutely in love with it until the end of 2022 when we lost Jay Briscoe, he was on of my favorite wrestlers from over the years. I just couldn’t bring myself to watch anything ROH related from then on, still dipped into AEW until May 2023 when I became a father. Life takes over and I haven’t watched anything since. Might catch the odd match here and there but simply do not have the time for 2 2 hour shows a week plus a PPV a month, that’s not the format that made AEW appealing to me. I still read about wrestling and probably prefer that even more than actually watching it. 
 

I think age and being a parent changes your perspective on things. I used to be all in on following my local football team home and away never missing a game, watch whatever football was on tv, going to gigs constantly, attending wrestling events and gaming. But now I only go to home games or pick maybe 5 away games to go to a year (and don’t really go for the football, more social), never watch any football on tv at all as it bores me. Pick maybe 2 gigs a year to go to (still go to download every year but now looking at maybe a change to Graspop). Wouldn’t dream of attending a wrestling event now. Gaming time is at a premium, only play story single player games and that’s only 1 or 2 a year. 
 

life goes on, maybe one day both my sons will get into it and I will find that bug again but now I just don’t have any interest. 

[warrior4life]

Loving reading these posts. Stories I connect with.

definitely getting rid of your collection for the first time can be very difficult. 

Edited May 12 by warrior4life

[Johnnyreggae]

I also became more into collecting then actually watching and still do collect a fair few things. Just can't seem to part with all those wwf vhs tapes I have stacked up gathering dust 

[BomberPat]

I've flagged here and there about wrestling in general, but I would struggle to say I ever fully stopped caring. I wasn't watching much when I was 18-21 or so, but still followed everything online and caught pay-per-views more often than not, long after I stopped bothering to watch the weekly TV.

The only time I can think of that I fully dropped off from following wrestling at all was 2009; the death of Mitsuharu Misawa, even though he wasn't a guy I felt any particular attachment to, really shook me up and made me question whether I wanted to continue watching this stuff. Previous wrestling deaths, particularly Eddy Guerrero's, had an impact, but they always felt like something external to wrestling itself, whereas Misawa died in the ring, a direct result of the toll wrestling had taken on his body, and that shook me up a bit. That it came a couple of years after Benoit, with enough distance removed that people had started to question the WWE narrative that his actions had been a moment of madness (the Ring of Hell book was out by this point, and I will have probably read it already) and it was clear that wrestling bore a significant part of the blame for that tragedy as well, made the whole thing feel like something I needed to get shot of for a while.

While I wasn't really watching for a while then, I still spent time on message boards and in online spaces where wrestling was discussed, so I still had a sense of what was going on, and I'd still watch older stuff on video or DVD - WWE releasing boxsets of guys like Roddy Piper and Ricky Steamboat helped in that regard, and then whenever a mate of mine crashed at my place we used to stick on the Wrestlemania 3 VHS and play "drink when you see Jimmy Hart" until one of us fell asleep. CHIKARA was what got me back into modern wrestling in a big way; I'd become a fan of Larry Sweeney, and I'd seen chat about their shows and written some of them off as the kind of daft indie comedy that I find fun but was probably better to briefly read about than to follow along closely, but over time I got hooked by some of the mad combinations of wrestlers they were booking. The 2011 King of Trios was the big way back in for me, and as much as that promotion has become tainted after the fact, I will always credit CHIKARA for giving me back my love of wrestling, opening my eyes to different ways wrestling can work, and introducing me to a lot of other promotions and styles they worked with over the years.

I got with my ex in 2011 too, and she got into wrestling while we were together, and I've always found any media easier to get into when it's shared - watching a show with someone is more fun than watching it alone. CHIKARA and old Royal Rumbles were her way in, and then the 2011 Summer of Punk and the rise of Daniel Bryan got us both back into WWE in a big way. It was with her that I started watching weekly WWE TV again for the first time in years, though gradually over time we dropped to just RAW, then watching it at 1.5x speed, then fast-forwarding through half of it, then just giving up on it altogether, but by that point NXT was on the rise and we were watching that, we were watching every CHIKARA show, big NJPW events, and Lucha Underground when that came along, and with the advent of the WWE Network she set herself the task of watching every PPV starting from the first Starrcade and moving forward in time - I can't remember how far she got in that, not very far at all from what I remember, but it led to a brief period of time where my girlfriend's favourite wrestlers were Jimmy Valiant, Daniel Bryan, and Ultimate Spider Jr from Osaka Pro.

By that point, we were both working in wrestling - me as a ref and increasingly picking up more behind-the-scenes responsibilities, her as all-purpose crew, driver, running the merch stand, handing out flyers, whatever else was needed. I had the mentality that anyone working in wrestling needed to have a handle on what WWE were doing, because they were the industry leader and set the pace for everybody else, they created the baseline expectation for the audience as to how wrestling works, so I was still watching WWE stuff even though I wasn't really enjoying it. 

 

Lockdown and Speaking Out were probably the closest I've come in all that time to stopping caring again. WWE PPV by that time was unbearable, and NXT becoming NXT 2.0 meant that permanently dropped off my viewing habits as well. Speaking Out hit a few people I know well - someone I considered not quite a friend, but someone I was friendly enough with that I would have defended him against other people, was named, as was someone I really looked up to as a mentor and something of an inspiration, and while I'd dropped off from watching every CHIKARA show, that company being brought down the way it was hit me hard. More than anything, though, I knew people who were speaking out, or talking about those issues more privately, and while that was a horrible experience to go through, it was probably that which made me stubbornly stick with it - I thought, and still think, that as scummy a business as it exposed wrestling as having the capacity to be, that we owed it to those people who were brave enough to speak up (and for God knows how many who quietly gave up or never got started before them) to keep going and try to make it better. So what could have killed my interest actually made me care a lot more, in many ways.

 

Honestly, the closest answer to when I stopped caring is probably "last year", though. If AEW hadn't come along when it did, who knows what would have happened. Dynamite is the only show I watch weekly, the first time I've done that since the mid-2010s. But that's largely because I work from home on Thursdays and it's become part of my routine; I was on holiday lasty week so didn't watch it, and don't feel any urge to go back and play catch-up. So if I end up working in the office on Thursdays, Dynamite probably drops off as well. In terms of WWE, I had already got down to only watching the Royal Rumble and Wrestlemania a couple of years ago, and this year watched neither and felt like I missed nothing - I couldn't say for certain, but I'm pretty sure it would be the first time I've not watched a Rumble at all since 2001. I watched last year's Wrestlemania because friends were hosting, and found that the way WWE presents wrestling just does absolutely nothing for me any more, and the only WWE show I have seen since then was John Cena's Last Match, and I felt pretty much the same about that. I had still clung to that sense of watching WWE because if you're "in the business" you should know what they're doing, but that increasingly felt like the people who have stayed on Twitter despite Elon Musk's ownership, in that it was harder to justify still engaging with such an obvious, demonstrably evil corporation, and the decision to make the jump becomes easier and easier the more abjectly rubbish their product becomes. While I can't rule out catching a Rumble or 'Mania at a mate's place, I can't foresee a world where I ever go out of my way to watch WWE again, I just have zero interest in what they're doing.

That "in the business" excuse became untenable last year too, because I wasn't really in the business any more. I had no bookings last year, and not much in the way of prospects of picking up any more. I started to find going to shows more of a chore; standing around at shows doing nothing when I was used to being busy made me feel like a spare prick, I wasn't enjoying myself, and wrestling is so "what have you done for me lately?" that I started to get annoyed by how, with a few exceptions, people I used to work with barely gave me the time of day any more if I saw them at shows. For the last three or four years I've gone back and forth on thinking that I achieved more than I ever should have been able to in wrestling and being proud of it all, and thinking that I have way more to offer and itching to get back involved, and I've gradually been working my way back in this year, so that period of "not caring" probably ran for less than a year all told, but it also kind of created a mental framework for me as to what giving it up entirely might eventually look like.

[Roy]

Firstly, sorry to hear about your ma @warrior4life - my deepest condolences to you and yours.

I think wrestling fandom for many people of a certain age has had its obvious peaks and (considerable) troughs. For me, I started caring in 1990 and stopped in 1993 post-WrestleMania IX. We didn't have Sky, so my knowledge of WWF was through magazines, stickers/cards and rented video tapes.

I got back into when my family got Sky at the beginning of 1997. I caught a replay of Bret v Austin at WrestleMania and I was hooked again. The presentation was wild: wrestlers brawling into the fans, blood, less theatrics. I was also intrigued to find out whatever happened to my old favourites, who went to what federation and who is now a different character.

By the time I left for uni in 2001, the Invasion had happened and WWF were doing their level best to fuck it up. I had no access to Sky anymore, so left it at that. I could buy the odd PPV through a tape trader - seeing Flair wrestle in the WWF again at Royal Rumble 2002 was too good an opportunity to pass up. Equally, I watched Hogan v Rock at WrestleMania X8 in a 24hr pool hall with some friends. 

Outside of that though, my fandom has been strictly via this forum, WON and the odd podcast. I've been to the odd show over the years in London (Lucha, AEW, WWE, Progress, NJPW) and also did the bucket-list thing of going to WrestleMania in 2016. But in terms of actually regularly watching programming and things like that, I find most of it pretty boring to watch. Nothing means anything anymore, everything looks choreographed to hell and the approach to kayfabe is a real turn-off. 

[DazzM]

4 hours ago, Roy said:

everything looks choreographed to hell and the approach to kayfabe is a real turn-off. 

This is a big part for me. 

I get that the world is a very very different place to when I started watching. Newzz is everywhere, there's no where to hide. Surprises aren't surprises anymore. I can kinda get over that, but the fact that kayfabe is dead is also a big part of kind of shrugging your shoulders.

When you see people being pushed as "couples", or that people despise each other on camera, then you see their real life plaster all over Instagram. Even with the suspension of disbelief it's becomes incredibly hard to become invested. 

It would be cool if they hadn't done "reality" to death. That's why silly things like Danhausen are much more fun to watch, as they're the right amount of ludicrous that wrestling used to be. 

Very few people have character any more. People are just "Themselves with the volume turned up". When really, what we need is a guy who was a cop but got bored of being a cop because he couldn't kick the snot out of people in jail anymore because it was frowned upon, so he joined a place where he can fight and be a cop at the same time. 

It'll never ever revert back to the way it was, but gimmick and kayfabe went a long way to making a product feel fun and enjoyable to watch.

[Roy]

18 hours ago, DazzM said:

When you see people being pushed as "couples", or that people despise each other on camera, then you see their real life plaster all over Instagram. Even with the suspension of disbelief it's becomes incredibly hard to become invested. 

Couldn't agree more. It's one thing to know the business is a work, but seeing everyone all matey matey and all the WWE Unreal stuff (fascinating though it might be) is a bit of a slap in the face. Keep some of the mystery. It also doesn't help that they have courted wealthy adults as the fanbase as driven away children and families, because now you have fans sitting around apathetically during matches. They're only there for entrance, match conclusion and surprise pops. 

Quote

Very few people have character any more. People are just "Themselves with the volume turned up". When really, what we need is a guy who was a cop but got bored of being a cop because he couldn't kick the snot out of people in jail anymore because it was frowned upon, so he joined a place where he can fight and be a cop at the same time. 

For sure. This is what brings back casual fans and keeps things interesting.

[DavidB6937]

I've never particularly seen the issue with the 'real life' stuff.

Unreal and booking etc perhaps, I can see how you can be too exposed to the workings of the business itself, but it makes no difference to me knowing that people are mates off screen or whatever.

Surely if people can accept actors in other shows and get fully invested in things then it's not a million miles away with wrestling? You see them doing press tours and interviews together and then you see them on screen at each others throats. I don't think anyone ever complains about that, so it always seemed like a slightly odd thing to have an issue with when it comes to wrestling.

[BomberPat]

I think the problem with wrestling is that it wants to have its cake and eat it too. In one segment, Dominik and Liv Morgan are a couple because that's how their portrayed on-screen, but in another segment from the same company Charlotte Flair is making barbed remarks about Tiffany Stratton's relationship with another wrestler who has never been linked with her in kayfabe at all. They expect you to know both, and to treat them as equally valid.

AEW was pretty awful for it in in the very early days, of saying "Shawn Spears is one of Cody's best friends!" - is he? Why have I never seen them interact at all, then?

 

Even as far back as 2003, I remember talking to a mate about the Kevin Nash/Triple H programme, and there was a point where they teased Nash coming out to help Trips, and he had no idea why anyone would buy it, because he had no clue that they were friends. Because nothing on the TV show had ever told you that, you were expected to understand the backstage relationship.

Edited May 13 by BomberPat

[Supremo]

The sad part is that they think the blurring of reality and fiction is where the magic is, but I’d struggle to think of many examples where that’s really the case anymore. The best stuff of recent years has almost always been the purely fictional elements, like Roman Reigns being a mob boss, Sami Zayn being trapped in a murder cult, Cody Rhodes overcoming endless obstacles to win the big shiny belt and the Rise and Fall of Hangman Adam Page (x2). None of it needed shoot elements. In fact, it was finding out who Hangman is shoot willing to grab a Wimpy with that killed that ride dead.

I’m convinced that pro-wrestling as a whole would improve dramatically if relying on insider knowledge and scripting worked shoots became outlawed.

It’s something that struck me watching back the old In Your House events. The introduction of proper characters like Kane and Christian, introduced as brothers of Undertaker and Edge, with them building a mythology around it. That’s the stuff I miss. Nowadays, that’d never happen. They’d consider it vital to explain that Edge and Christian were actually best friends, who grinded on the Independants together. Kane would come in and rather than just pretending Fake Diesel and Isaac Yankem had never happened, his very first promo would be him banging on and denouncing those gimmicks, explaining this was the, “real version,” of himself.

[LaGoosh]

1 hour ago, DavidB6937 said:

Surely if people can accept actors in other shows and get fully invested in things then it's not a million miles away with wrestling? You see them doing press tours and interviews together and then you see them on screen at each others throats. I don't think anyone ever complains about that, so it always seemed like a slightly odd thing to have an issue with when it comes to wrestling.

The difference though is that, say, in Heat during the famous diner scene between Al Pacino and Robert De Niro is that the characters don't bring up the actors personal lives or reference behind the scenes incidents from other movies they had worked on. WWE do that shit all the time.

I know in real life the people who portray Kenny Omega, Hangman and the Young Bucks are all long term best mates. But during the build for Omega/Hangman vs the Young Bucks I was fully invested because it was an entirely fictional story with fictional characters with a shared character history. There was nothing from real life brought into the story at all. Which is exactly how it should be. If I had seen an out of character interview with any of them it would have made no difference to me because there was a clear line between the fictional and the real. Once the line is blurred then it fucks the whole thing up.

I'm perfectly happy with the idea of a behind the scenes WWE show, but the lines of fiction and reality are blurred in that as well. The line between fiction and reality needs to be clear I think.

Edited May 13 by LaGoosh

[DavidB6937]

Yeah, I can get that. I get why there'd be frustration with the mix and it doesn't particularly make any logical sense. The annoyance surrounding that makes more sense to me.

[Supremo]

My working theory as to why WWE are so obsessed with worked shoots is that Triple H himself died on his arse and was going absolutely nowhere playing the Greenwich Blueblood character.

It was only once they drilled into the reality of him carrying Shawn’s bags and scripted him to be HBK’s dickhead sidekick on television that his career finally came off life support. In his mind, that was probably a pivot point. It was only once he started playing an exaggerated version of himself that it all clicked into place. And now decades later we’re all suffering this shit because he’s a rubbish character actor.

“The best characters are the wrestler’s real personalities turned up to eleven,” is the type of self-fulfilling, self-congratulatory bollocks typical of the pro-wrestling industry. Easier to say that than ever admit that maybe you should write better characters, or demand better performances. In TV or films, actors are lambasted if all they ever play is a version of themselves. That shouldn’t be the zenith!

More than anything, I find the whole thing unnecessarily restrictive. Whilst we’re probably past the point of Undead Wizards shooting lightning bolts out of their fingers, pro-wrestling can still be whatever you want it to be. You can tell any story, with any characters, so why would you force yourself to base so much on reality? Compared to the cast of crazy, wild characters you could come up with, the majority of pro-wrestlers are creepy, bitter, oddball weirdoes!

“The reality is even more exciting than the fiction.” Only because your fiction is shit, mate.

Edited May 13 by Supremo