The Pro Wrasslin' Thread (WWE, WWF, WCW, TNA, ROH, NWA, NJPW, etc)

[Jumpin]

BasilZero said:

JWeinCom said:

Watching No Way Out from 2008, and what a weird start.

There's a match between CM Punk and Chavo Guerero and the fans are really pulling for Chavo. They're booing Punk, who was the face. Not like Cena levels of boos but definitely noticeable.

This is part of a trend. At the last PPV fans were rooting for Edge over Rey Mysterio, and it was about half and half during the match between Jeff Hardy and Orton.

Feels like the fans are just so sick of the product that they're just being contrarians and rooting for whoever they're not supposed to root for.

Looking back, the cards had a lot of memorable stars but at that present time, 2007/2008 was the waning years of WWE, moreso than 2022/2023.

I felt like the biggest feeling of decline in WWE happened roughly around the period of the ratings decline. Wrestlenomics did a nice graph of the 52 week average, and it shows the viewership peaks for the core demographic peaking right at the turn of the year December 2000 and January 2001; then falling off a cliff starting at the top of May 2001 with staggering decline until the end of 2004. Total Viewership decline began earlier, back in mid-September 2000, and fell off the a cliff in December 2000, although, that cliff ended in mid-2003, and decline slowed down after that.
https://wrestlenomics.com/tv-ratings/2025/entire-history-of-wwf-wwe-monday-night-raw-ratings-1993-2024/


For me, I was a big fan of WWE through the Attitude era, and I do feel that 2000 was the most memorable year with 2001 being the next most memorable, but the stuff following what I thought was the greatest moment of the year, Jericho capturing both titles from The Rock and Austin, I found considerably less memorable. Some stuff sticks out: Dust/Booker, Brock Lesnar, Stacey Keibler & Test, Evolution, Benoit and Eddie's title reigns, and Christian's (Sorry, I mean Jericho's) ass cream. Whereas I found like every feud and character to be fairly memorable from sometime in 1999 until late 2001 to be memorable. I liked the Alliance stuff more than most, but (like just about everyone), I thought it wasn't as good as the stuff before it - missing Triple H and The Rock (until the end) hurt.