I mean i hardly hear anyone talkabout it at all anymore, they all talk about mma or boxing. Not only that, no indy feds draw anymore, japan doesnt care at all anymore about njpw, and tna seems to be having lots of trouble with all of their releases(probably more of a hogan problem than anything). the only promotion thats doing halfway decent is wwe, and their ratings are dropping dramitcally along with attendance. They have to bring stars back from the past to get halfway decent buys due to nostalgia. Is proffesional wrestling dying? Are fans going to mma from now on?

umm if you're talking about wwe then it was never alive... it was always fake...

personally I don't follow any type of sporting events, but do watch superbowl every year. However, Basketball is my favorite sport to watch and hockey is my favorite sport in general.

Professional Wrestling for the most part is dead... it died after WCW and ECW went bye bye... WWE took all their stars and then just kind of dumped them for the most part.. not at first mind you.. but later.. and the Attitude Era Died out and well.. that was pretty much it for wrestling.. no one really cared anymore... I mean.. it was so bad.. in like 2 hours.. they could only do 4 matches with a bunch of no names.. to a point.. with that being said however their is Metro Wrestling... and it seems to be doing okay for a smaller wrestling venue.. but that is about it..

Yes. It's been dying at least since the death of WCW, although I'd really say it was probably inevitable from the moment the WW(W)F went national and killed the territory system. All the stars of the '80s and '90s came out of the territory system, but WCW and the WWF were never good at creating stars from scratch. McMahon was only ever really good at taking other people's developed talent and polishing and promoting them into superstars.

As for Japan, I'm less sure what really went wrong there. Maybe a lot of it is down to the end of the bubble economy and general malaise, their aging population, and whatnot. But I think at least part of it can be attributed to Giant Baba being content to run with the Misawa/Kawada/Kobashi trio for basically a decade and never creating new top tier stars for the whole of the '90s. New Japan was always better about moving up the young guys, but the current crop of youngish top guys (Tanahashi, Nakamura, et al) are just the drizzling shits compared to the previous generation. The only cool guy from this generation was Shibata, and he decided he'd rather get his face kicked as a scrub in in K-1 than be a main eventer in NJPW. I guess that says a lot about where puroresu stands (although I heard he's back now?).

I'm sure the rise of MMA puts a lot of pressure on wrestling, too.

It died for me when WCW went. I still watched for a few years after that but it wasn't the same. I enjoyed the cruiserwieght division and the NWO days the most. Then wrestlers started dying off (literally) and Triple H's rise to power just made me sick.

that invasion thing was just awful too

The WCW vs. WWE thing? I didn't see much of it since I had retreated almost entirely to watching Japanese stuff by that point, but what I saw was really piss poor. It didn't help that most of WCW's biggest names didn't sign with the WWE, but then you had Vince stepping on his own angle by touting how much bigger stars the WWE guys were than the WCW guys like he still had something to prove. The moment that was most emblematic of the whole thing was Rock asking Booker T who the hell he was.

For me WWE in particular began to die when the Attitude Era ended. It was as entertaining as anything on TV during that time as they featured a lot of adult-oriented content. Stars like Stone Cold and The Rock were fucking hilarious week in and week out, and there was a ton of ultra-violent and even sexual content. In the Early 2000's, for whatever reason, the WWE changed, and became more family friendly. For guys like me that grew up during the attitude era the new product seemed lame.

I heard that they changed their ways because of pressure put on them by shareholders when the company went public, but who really knows. At the end of the day it is basically just programming for kids now.

Not only that, but the whole stupid angle pretty much devolved into a McMahon family feud with the different promotions being their playthings. But yeah, Rocky looking at Booker T like he was a nobody heralded the end of good mainstream wrestling for a while like the Fingerpoke of Doom heralded the end of WCW. I was excited about TNA in it's early years, but now I find myself watching it only because I need background noise when playing games are trying to go to sleep.

That + Chris Benoit + Linda McMahon tried to make a couple of runs at the Senate. Like you, the Attitude Era defined pro wrestling for me, but I remember the times before and immediately after it, and I can live without it. What I can't stand is the PG product that is absolutely insulting to the intelligence to anyone over the age of 12. I mean, I'm not expecting some Emmy Award-winning television, but don't make me feel like you belong on Nick Jr.!