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If you've stopped watching WWE (or wrestling in general) at any point, what was the "last straw"?


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I get to points where my give a fuck just breaks.

Wrestlemania did it this time, but then I went back and watched some WM weekend shows I enjoyed (Bloodsport, Janela's Spring Break) and just realized that Wrestlemania just killed my give a fuck for anything remotely resembling WWE.  But I haven't been watching shit since those Wrestlemania shows, so I feel like I'm kind of phasing out again.

A lot of it has to do with my favorite promotion going down in flames with a shitty-ass final season but I was kind of checked out with that as well for a lot of reasons.  You ever really like something and get so annoyed by a lot of the people that like it that you just completely distance yourself because what you enjoy starts giving you douche chills?

I've also been taking prednisone on and off lately and it makes me one moody motherfucker.  Anything that I might let slide just pisses me off way more than normal and WM weekend landed right in the middle of that shit.

Edited by Tromatagon
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I didn't completely stopped, but after the stuff with Benoit, which was on top of Eddy dying, I just didn't enjoy wrestling like I used to. The last WrestleMania I watched before taking a break was WrestleMania 23 and that was only because I went there live. Beyond that, I really just stopped watching and only really checked in on what CM Punk was doing.

I can't remember what got me back into it full time, but I distinctly remember seeing the Nexus invasion and thinking the Miz cashing in on Orton was really cool. At that same time, I skipped out on WrestleManias 24 through 26. I was probably into watching wrestling full time again after 26.

Right now though, I'm so close to just giving up on WWE. I don't watch Impact anymore because I don't get the channel and I'm not watching it on Twitch, I don't have the time to chase down and check out PWG shit, Lucha Underground is damn near dead, and ROH is just the shits. So I'm pretty much down to NXT, NJPW and hoping that AEW turns out to be the real deal. I still want WWE to get better, but it's fucking frustrating watching this product when 95% of the time Vince is just booking shit to antagonize the audience. The main roster though is still the spot for some of my favorite dudes though, like Joe, AJ, Bryan, Ricochet, Black, Rollins, Drew, Braun, etc.

Anyway, yeah, I'm close to giving up, but every time I'm ready to just say fuck it, we get a Raw which is replacement level which itself is leagues ahead of other episodes, or something else cool happens. It's just in between that stuff it gets tough to watch and it never feels like there's any sort of urgency to regain lost viewers.

More than anything else, I wish I wasn't so down on John Cena. I really miss that dude now and there were people on here who would say that others who shit talk Cena are going to miss him when he's gone. Even though I like Rollins and the rest of the guys I listed and I can even tolerate Roman, there is still no one on the roster at that John Cena or CM Punk level and that itself hurts programs at the top.

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I've taken a few breaks. Stopped in 87 for a year after Watts UWF died. Started again in 89. Stopped August 92,shipped out for BCT. Started again when I finished my time in late 96. 

 

June 2007 was at the Beaumont TX house show,then the Houston PPV  Benoit no showed.  Was at both shows with my oldest son.Learned the following Tuesday morning what happened. Stopped watching until early 98. Stopped again in early 2013. Mostly cause I had 3 Indies near me that ran monthly. 2 of those indies closed up in early 2015. By then I finally had a way to watch the weekly ROH show. Since then I catch pieces of WWE,mostly cause of a few friends that still watch. But between ROH,MLW,NJPW and Highspots Network I get my wrestling fix.

Edited by bobholly138
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I was running on entertainment fumes from the Monday Night Wars until 2003.  I was getting progressively more and more exhausted and fed up with the show, but felt that I had watched for this long and I probably should just keep it going.  Then, literally the moment Hogan came out as Mr. America, I turned the TV off and stopped watching WWE outside of individual matches I heard were good until 2009, which I only started watching again at that point because of how awful it is and I have some friends I do Mystery Science Theater 3000-style viewings of bad movies and the WWE shows fit into that quite well.  I probably still wouldn't be watching to this day otherwise.

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I gave up on WCW after the fingerpoke of doom, only going back to watch 1999 and beyond well after it eventually folded.

I haven't given up completely on WWE, but it's been over 6 months since I've watched a full Raw or SD. Most of that is due to having a baby, but the staleness of the main roster and stunts like Saudi Arabia shows have ensured that I haven't missed it. I can catch up from the ppv video packages without the grind of watching week to week, and NXT is enough to sustain my wrestling fix.

I plan on watching AEW, and hope that it injects some life into main roster WWE, though I'm not optimistic as long as Vince is alive since he's already wrapped up his big paydays for the next several years.

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Sometime in 2014 I stopped watching weekly... not sure about a last straw but it just got so stale and boring. I'll still watch some of the big PPVs or track down matches that are supposed to be great, but fuck watching 3 hours of RAW and 2 hours of SD a week. Nobody's got time for that.

Still love me some NXT though. One hour of easy to digest wrestling per week is perfect.

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I know we like to avoid political talk here, but the company's Trump boostering in 2016 is what did it for me. Haven't watched WWE since November of that year. 

I think that combined with other things to sort of turn me off wrestling as a whole (Hogan's hatred of black people and then dismissal of it being a problem, which I guess the company has brought him back too) because frankly, it's sort of hard to get invested in wrestlers when they turn out to really not like me without, you know, having even met me. So I backed off of wrestling quite a lot, and even now, I watch minimal wrestling.

It's hard because I do love wrestling, I really do, but I don't love a) watching guys cripple themselves with dangerous styles and b) having to be cautious about investing myself in a performer and then having a video come out or a tweet be sent that makes me question why I'm putting my time and money into following them. 

I'm sort of paralyzed in that way. I'd like to come back to it, but maybe only if all the performers worked '70s WoS style and stayed the fuck off Twitter so that I could know less about them. 

I do still post here, but that's because I love you guys and gals (or if you don't identify with a gender, I love you too). So I vaguely know what's going on in the company, but that's also because the company is big enough that I might visit ESPN or Deadspin and get headlines right up front, along with whatever you post here. 

Edited by Smelly McUgly
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Just found better things to do over time.

Discovered tape trading in 2001. Was a better use of my time than sitting through a RAW aired super late that I'd already read the results of at school earlier that day.

Started full time work around about the same time people stopped buying tapes and downloading instead a few years later. Watched where I could. Smackdown 2005 is still the worst hangover cure known to man.

Still watch but have better priorities. If I'm home sick on a Tuesday, I'll watch it. If not, so be it. It's no bigger a part of my life than any other TV show I watch, and their respective ebbs and flows of creative merit.

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There was never a straw that broke the camels back for me, especially with WWE, it was more a general apathy with the industry/characters/styles and it wasn't what I was into. 

I keep up with results and happenings but outside of that I have no interest really. 

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2007. And not even the Benoit thing.

It was the fake Trump/fake Rosie O’Donnell match on a Raw leading up to that Wrestlemania angle. It was so bad and idiotic that I basically decided I was never giving WWE a dime again. Since then I watch maybe one Raw a year until it inevitably pisses me off and I switch the channel, and the only PPV I’ve watched since then was Mania 25, and only because my friend already paid for it. No Network, no NXT, nothing.

You’d think that for someone so devoted to not supporting them I wouldn’t talk about them either, but alas.

As it stands, I am a professional wrestling fan who fucking loathes WWE and I am just now accepting that part of my identity. My only fear now is their obvious intent of becoming the only game in town, because if they buy up or shut down all the indies and achieve singularity, then there’s going to be no wrestling at all left for me.

I’m highly skeptical of AEW’s potential for success, but at the same time I’m convinced that they’re wrestling’s last hope.

Edited by Super Ape
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1 hour ago, Zakk_Sabbath said:

@Smelly McUgly That line about Hogan not liking you without having met you absolutely broke my heart

Aw, it's okay man. As an adult, I know that it is what it is and at least I can make a few wry jokes about it.

Who I really feel for are kid fans. If this came out when I was five and rocking a Hulkamania shirt, I would have known enough and been young enough to have been hurt by that. I think it sucks for kids who are fans to realize at some point that the wrestler they loved so much doesn't like them for their race or gender or sexual orientation or whatever.

I think, to make a larger point, that kayfabe is both impossible in the Information Age, but also more needed than ever because wrestling is best enjoyed IMO with your brain off and with less knowledge about the people behind the characters that they portray on a wrestling show.

Edited by Smelly McUgly
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On 4/22/2019 at 3:13 AM, AxB said:

I think he's still in jail for beating up Christy Mack. He quit MMA to be a pron actor.

He was sentenced to life in prison (with possible parole in 36 years) 2 years ago.

 

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1 hour ago, Smelly McUgly said:

Who I really feel for are kid fans. If this came out when I was five and rocking a Hulkamania shirt, I would have known enough and been young enough to have been hurt by that. I think it sucks for kids who are fans to realize at some point that the wrestler they loved so much doesn't like them for their race or gender or sexual orientation or whatever.

I think New Jack was talking about that in his first shoot interview, where he was saying he was the biggest Dusty Rhodes fan as a kid, but as an adult he considered Dusty to be a racist and regretted his fandom. Unfortunately it was an RF shoot, so rather than ask him to elaborate on how Dusty was racist, or argue that Dusty just really appreciates Black Culture without intentionally disrespecting African Americans, they just said "Um. Wow." really unenthusiastically and moved on to the next question.

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I think I'm in the weird minority where the whole Benoit thing actually brought me back into wrestling - the previous 5 or so years I had just fallen out of it because I was in my early 20's and was busy doing all the stuff associated with that while not having cable so it wasn't easily accessible. 

The Benoit murders made me re-find this board, which in turn got me reading about wrestling again which slowly got me back into it. 

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I hope this doesn't come across a patronizing response but the only time I ever dropped completely out was probably around 2008-2010 and that was because I was in college and didn't have cable nor Internet at my home (we were real punk rock). Even then I would download the PPVs from school on a jump drive and watch them on my computer a home.

The times I recall myself being disillusioned was after Eddy's death and really the string of deaths around that time period. 

I dunno, I watched every Nitro and Thunder until the very end. I'm not sure what could drive me away completely. 

Since Mania, I've been on a burnout and have watched nothing but the occasional Champion's Carnival match so I guess that counts. 

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  • 1 month later...

My interest in WWE started declining around 05 when one of my best friends (and absolute best wrestling friend) started dabbling in some activities that took him away from wrestling. We were both from Long Island, grew up together, he moved to Buffalo when we were 13 (around 2001) but one of the ways we still kept contact together was that we'd talk on the phone ever Monday night and essentially hate watch Raw. Once he got involved with some other stuff, I didn't really feel the need to watch Raw by myself anymore and by 05 I was a huge ROH fan anyway so I was still able to get my wrestling fix.

By the end of 08, I started to get involved with life stuff (nothing bad, just a product of getting older) and I largely stopped following everything. I crept back in a bit during the Summer of Punk and Bryan's run in 2014 but they were cups of coffee at best. The presentation had changed so much in terms of the buzzwords and everything feeling overly produced yet sterile that Raw didn't feel like a pro wrestling show anymore (congrats, Vince).

Thankfully I have WWE Network and absolutely love being able to watch both wrestling I grew up with and wrestling from before my time. I'm hopeful AEW will produce some good stuff.

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I stopped watching the main roster WWE shows around Elimination Chamber. I didn't really have a huge breaking point reason, it was just fatigue, overload and generally little entertainment return for time invested in viewing content. I thought I would probably check back in and watch Mania, but I ended up skipping it and seeing the results I am fine with that. Despite cutting those shows out I now probably watch more wrestling than ever before. NJPW, AJPW, DDT, Stardom, Progress, OTT, RevPro, C4, Eve, Evolve, AAW, AAA, CMLL and really just on and on. My wrestling fandom was always a bit more linked to the indies and now with resources to watch so much content it can be too much as well. However it is too much of stuff that is new and fresh and different. Even the bad stuff can still be fun especially in the scrappy dirtbag diy feeling bottom tier indies. So yeah still love wrestling just like diversifying a lot more. Oh and AEW holds virtually zero interest due to the main players involved.

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I can honestly say I haven't been missing WWE even a little. Between MLW, Ring Of Honor (though, seriously, enough with god damn Matt Taven), Impact and All Japan's streaming service I've got more than enough to keep me busy watching. 

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Seth Rollins being the focal point. I can’t think of a blander, less inspired choice to be the lead on a prime time tv show, and I suffered through eight seasons of Ted Mosby. I watch smackdown some, and I’m excited for AEW, but I haven’t watched a full Raw in ages...

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I gave up after Mania this year, cancelled my Network sub as well. Mania was a horrifically long show. I had been on the outs since the Middle East shows and mania tipped the balance.

haven't watched NXT in forever, never watched the UK show.  It’s the first time I’ve given up on WWE since 1994, when I was 14 and started getting into skating and meeting girls, I thought wrestling was “for little kids”.  Here I am at 39 still watching this nonsense!

got back in around 1997 and watched continually until this year, no matter how bad it’s gotten.

Stuck with WCW and ECW until the end also.

I tried to watch Monday’s Raw to see if there was any reaction to AEW but there was not, it was terrible.  

Ive said on other threads MLW, Impact and now AEW should be more than enough to keep me satisfied at the moment!

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I didn't follow the WWF from around 1995 until the debut of Shotgun Saturday Night because they ending up pulling all syndicated programming. I didn't realize that was what it was until many years later. So when I saw Shoutgun Saturday Night on WCIU in Chicago, I marked out like crazy.

 

I became a fan of Chikara as a result of of some "friends" who were happy to "share" at XWT. The first show I remember seeing was Cibernetico and Robin and I was blown away by Cheech and Cloudy vs The Olsen Twins. Like a lot of people, I was turned off Chikara when they did the storyline shutdown of their promotion at the height of their popularity.

TNA fucked up one too many times: Aces and Eights was my last straw. 

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Its all been a long, gradual decline for me. I remember back with the CM Punk stuff, when his "contract was up" and he left at MITB, i was all excited about the possibilities with the angle. Then a few weeks later he turns up on Raw in ring gear, and that was it. Why was he in ring gear? He's not on the card, and the show is gonna end in 30 seconds. You're there to just show up, hold up a belt, then fade to black. Why are you wearing your gear? DAMMIT WHY IS HE IN RING GEAR?! 

As you can tell, it really bothered me. It opened my eyes to how watered down the product was. How formulaic it was. You couldn't say "belt" or "fans", you had to structure your promos in a certain way, say "WWE universe", "title opportunity". Nothing appeared organic. It all seemed written, and produced. Of course, its a TV show, so I know it is written and produced. But when I watch a TV show, I want to be immersed in it, not thinking about why it's so badly written or produced. The show became 3 hours long. 3 hours of wrestling and maybe 5 minutes of it meant anything. But the next week it didn't mean anything, because they'd forgotten about it, or wanted to forget, or chose a new direction. It all became mind-numbing, to the point where my girlfriend introduced me to someone and they said "Oh I heard you're a big WWE fan" and I felt slighted by that remark. I was actually offended, and quite embarrassed for the first time in my adult life, for liking wrestling. It's all gone down hill from there. 

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