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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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While I don’t watch wrestling as consistently as I once did, I watch a wider variety now.  I got a case of the fuck its last summer and took 3 months off to relax and got into PWG, wXw and some other indies.  While a lot of people (myself included) have bitched about the bigger feds the last few years, there isn’t a better time to be a wrestling fan.  We have access to so much and there is something that should appeal to everyone.  Anyway...

I haven’t watched a weekly WWE show all the way through since maybe 2001.  I would occasionally get big ppv’s but the last one I dished out $ for was WM 27.  Stopped watching Wcw all together after the finger poke of doom.  Watched the original TNA weekly ppv’s but lost interest once they went to Fox Sports.  I need to check out AEW and more MLW 

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13 hours ago, Ryan said:

No last straw. Abject boredom long ago. I haven't seen either show in full in...a decade? That sounds right.

Abject boredom just got me too. I stuck with WWE alone for so long through a combination of laziness (it's right there in front of me!) and fondness for some of the performers and the sheer amount of backstage stuff available to keep up with when the actual shows were dull.  But the last moment or matches I had any excitement for in WWE were Ronda vs. Becky and Charlotte vs. Asuka at WM. I was so hot for both of those and there had been so little WWE that got me that intense in soooo long.  And then they went far far far out of their way to fuck both of those up.  After that I watched the next couple of RAWs after Mania and they were so boring I realized I was FF through even matches that were probably pretty good because the whole thing was so tedious. Cancelled the network after I realized I had not bothered to watch MitB and did not care to watch the replay or even search to see the results.

I've taken a few weeks off from watching any wrestling...but I can't help myself and now I inevitably find myself lurking around in these other threads trying to catch up on non-WWE things for the first time in a long time. Luckily this new thing is happening and there are more familiar faces and lots of backstage stuff to ease me in.  But I want to catch up on NJPW too and maybe some other stuff. Hearing Jericho at the beginning of the Moxley pod mention how much fun he had there and how much more he felt like a creative artist made me experience more FOMO than I have in the past for not paying attention to Non-WWE stuff.

 

 

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Can't watch while airing due to work and have no Network. When I was unemployed/working different hours, I'd just flip around anyway. If you can watch a whole show they put out without getting disinterested at some point you're a saint. 

Besides, there's so much other good stuff out there I lose no sleep.

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The last straw was the Rumble Roman won where they unceremoniously dumped out all the fan favorites.  I quit my network sub the next day, didn't go back.   Eventually got NJPW World when they signed Jericho, and haven't looked back. 

 

That's when my anger just quit, and I just stopped caring.  I read the recaps here quickly, just in case there's hope for change , but I no longer expect it, and it's really only because I need to pass time at work overnight.  If I worked a day job I wouldn't even do that.

 

 

Edited by alstein
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Of all things, the complete inconsistency of the ridiculously bloated roster(s) & call-ups this year.

- Call up Lacey Evans, Nikki Cross, Sullivan, EC3, and Heavy Machinery around the Rumble to have them appear on both brands with nothing really to do for months on end.

- Top 2 Women on Smackdown roster in Raw Women's title feud for 2 months leading upto Mania killing Asuka and the Smackdown Women's division in the process.

- Arbitrary call-ups of Ricochet, Black, Gargano, & Ciampa, only to retract Gargano when Ciampa got hurt, and then Ricochet and Black being a tag-team for no good reason other than they were called up at the same time... and feuding for tag belts on BOTH brands AND NXT going into Mania.

- 2019 Superstar Shake-Up which was too much of a clusterf**k to even detail here, but clearly not knowing who is going where, switching people back and forth for 2 weeks of TV.

- Wild Card Rule... need I say more?

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21 hours ago, Ryan said:

No last straw. Abject boredom long ago. I haven't seen either show in full in...a decade? That sounds right.

Same here. Nothing big or dramatic, just not really into wrestling as it's presented nowadays. Everything is pretty formulaic and seems sterile. I've just come to grips that modern wrestling has just passed me by. I'll still watch the big shows, check out a match I heard was good and keep abreast of what's going on in the business but I'm not watching week to week or getting invested in it like I used to.

The last time I actively stopped watching was during Michael Cole's heel turn. That was brutal and I just couldn't take him being a jackass on commentary throughout the whole show.

I also didn't watch much when Hogan first got to WCW. Was never a Hogan fan and once I figured out that he was going to be doing the exact same Hulk-up, leg drop schtick to Flair over and over again, I stopped trying to watch every week until late 95 when I heard about Pillman being a nutjob and joining the Horsemen.

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Started watching it when I was five and saw the 1991 Rumble, and have only fully stopped between 96 and 98, because I started secondary school and cared what people thought of me, and because I hated Shawn Michaels.

However, I have recently had the life improving revelation that I can just not watch Raw and Smackdown. I'll check out the first half hour of the previous night's show over breakfast, and if it's bollocks, which it invariably is, I read the results once I'm at work and save hours of frustration and/or distracted half watching.

The Ambrose podcast also went some way to confirming how entrenched the malaise is, and why no amount of NXT call ups, or even the Matt Riddle megapush they should have started weeks ago, will fix the intrinsic problems. They produce wrestling shows that are hostage to the idea that they have to present themselves as something other than wrestling shows. I used to watch this shit live till 4AM cos I didn't want to miss anything exciting or unpredictable, now I'll watch the PPVs the next day and that's plenty. At least there's NJPW, Progress and the promise of AEW.

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It definitely isn't an issue of modern wrestling passing me by, it's just being actively sterile and lame along with being boring as hell. You could go a month or two without watching anything and pick right back up because nothing means anything. FTR, I'm not an Attitude Era guy or anything like that. I just don't get entertained by what's there now. I've been a Japan first guy for well over a dozen years now when I actually watch anything now. Also, certain indy stuff when it features guys I like.

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I tuned out when they started doing the guest GM RAWs. Those were putrid.

I came back as a way to bond with my niece and nephew, who became really big fans of WWE without giving a damn about backstage politics or how dumb the writing is. They just simply like to watch wrestling and take everything at face value. It's really refreshing to just watch the show through the eyes of little kids who actually do see Cena and Rey Mysterio as these big heroes and boo guys like Joe and Drew Mcintyre because they're bad guys without caring about anything else.

They also think Dolph Ziggler is lame, so I've taught them well. Muahahahaha

 

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I guess you could sum it up as "RAW is TALK". No one loves a good promo more than me, but years ago it was explained to me like this: Up to two minutes, you're getting yourself over and selling tickets to the show next week; good on ya, this is what the microphone is there for. Just as in baseball where everyone has the same job which is to create runs; in wrestling everyone has the same job and that is to sell tickets to the next show. Two minutes is perfectly adequate to this.  Two to five minutes, your ego is getting in the way and anything you say is repetitious and likely to be forgotten by the audience. In short you are negating everything you did right in the first two minutes by drowning it in talk for three extra minutes that mean nothing. Over five minutes, you are wasting a piece of my life and I am deeply offended and probably not only won't buy a ticket for next week's show, but am probably done with your fed for good.

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I tuned out from 08-13. Daniel Bryan helped get me back into wrestling.

Now, I am starting to rarely watch again. WWE is bad, I'm not into the AEW guys. Impact keeps bringing back ECW nostalgia. The time I ordered NJPW World lead to my credit card getting locked for a week by my back. There's a lot out there but I'm not sure what is for me anymore. 

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27 minutes ago, Six String Orchestra said:

I tuned out from 08-13. Daniel Bryan helped get me back into wrestling.

Now, I am starting to rarely watch again. WWE is bad, I'm not into the AEW guys. Impact keeps bringing back ECW nostalgia. The time I ordered NJPW World lead to my credit card getting locked for a week by my back. There's a lot out there but I'm not sure what is for me anymore. 

D-Bry and Punk got me back for a while too. My stepkids latched on to D-Bry so it made watching the product fun again for me while his run was going on.

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The Helmsley Main Event/Post brand split era very quickly ended my run as a regular viewer.  Trips matches were a bore and his long terrible interviews were the beginning of the end.  The rise of Stephanie McMahon was a huge contributing factor - brutal.  The burial of the WCW talent and the invasion angle was also a major contributor.  I switched the channel to TNA, but their product never captivated me.  ROH was really good at that time, but their production (inept burning lights straight into the camera; would've been fine with just keeping the lights on in the building) made it difficult to watch.  More so the smarky Gabe Sapolsky (and his voice; not quite what I would call 'broadcast quality') commentary made it impossible to watch.  

I came back for the ECW One Night Stand PPVs; which I loved.  I was as excited about WWECW post ONS2 (as I am now about AEW).  The idea of Paul Heyman booking ECW with WWE's backing seemed can't miss.  I was obviously completely and miserably wrong, and only stuck around for a couple weeks.    

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It isn't straws breaking my back - my back's been broken since my transition into puroresu lifer synced up with the SuperCena era. They just keep taking my fucking cast away. It was that way since I was a kid, really, I'd watch it until I didn't like it any more. I jumped ship on the Finger Poke. I tuned out after the Invasion. I didn't even know citing those moments was going to be cliche one day, they just made for suck-ass TV and there was just other stuff to be a dorky kid about about those years.

I checked back in when I was doing very silly backyard stuff with my high school friends cause my shitty high school couldn't fund a decent drama program, but somewhere between Wrestlemanias XX and XXI I discovered the indies and Japan. I checked back in when Punk had his big summer but checked out right about when Kevin Nash got involved. Checked back in when Danielson had his big moment / during the peak of the Shield stuff, but that just turned into the unending Roman march of sadness.

My girlfriend was getting really into NXT. Big Asuka mark, dug all the guys they called up. Look how that fuckin' went. Humanity has 1000 times more entertainment at its fingertips than at any other point, I have no time supporting something like weekly WWE TV that is so visibly poisonous to creative process.

Edited by John E. Dynamite
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It's been on and off for me for a long time. Started with WWF in the very early 90ies, but couldn't watch regularly because of bad scheduling for elementary school kids and my parents not wanting me to watch. 

There were extended periods where WWF/E wasn't on German TV, but I really consciously stopped watching in a gradual progress. And one point, Wrestling didn't feel like Wrestling. Of course, there were also real life getting in the way, Jobs, me going to college (at a later than usual point in life), relationships. But overall, Wrestling grew apart from what I considered to be Wrestling.

Everyone but few exceptions seems to be "happy to be there" and it's truly hard to consider matches and storylines meaningful. I still like watching some old stuff or some documentaries about old stuff, but yeah... even if new Wrestling is athletically impressive a lot of the time, I really don't get into it most of the time. And when WWE tries to put emphasize on dramatic moments, you get shit like badly acted movie dialogues like in HHH vs Taker Hell in a Cell... 

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I stopped watching WWE so long ago, I’ve never seen a John Cena match. Probably stopped watching when I moved out for college and didn’t have cable, and just never really cared to get back into it.

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I've fallen out a couple different times.  I started watching around WM 2, but fell off right around post-WM 6 time.  I honestly have no idea why.  I think it just stopped being as popular with my friends, so I drifted away.  I would see stuff here and there. I remember being shocked when I happened to see Ric Flair on WWF tv.  

I started to check back in somewhere around '95 or '96.  One of the first things I remember seeing when I came back was British Bulldog's heel turn.  I also happened to check in on Nitro when Scott Hall debuted.  That brought me back big time.  I watched WWF, WCW and started buying tapes of Japan and ECW.  I fell off again around mid-2000.  Again, I'd check in here and there.  

Weirdly, what brought me back was WWE starting to release dvds.  Specifically, the Flair and Benoit ones.  It was appealing to finally have stuff I'd had on shitty-VQ tapes in dvd quality.

Since then, I've watched regularly, with my interest rising and falling at times.  A couple of years ago, there ended up being a big group of wrestling fans at my job, so that kept me in it.  Then my daughter got really into NXT, and that was fun to experience with her.  Now, she's not as interested, the Saudi stuff leaves a bad taste in my mouth, and WWE is just flat-out not at all interesting.  It's just so boring.  Nothing matters.  Nothing changes.  I'm excited for AEW even though I'm not a big fan of a bunch of their guys.  I like what they're doing so far, though, and I really enjoyed Double or Nothing.

Really, right now, I'd rather look up old Andre the Giant matches on youtube more than anything.  I'd like to think I'll always watch wrestling in some capacity.  

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Years ago I fell out when they debuted Paul London by feeding him to Brock... I mean Brock ate him alive and didn't give him a single move. That was enough for me to quit them for a month or so. More lately it's been a slow-moving train as I grow less and less interested in the product... NXT Takeover this weekend was the first thing I'd watched from them in months, and even that was only because Cindy was out. At this point even the classics probably won't be enough to keep me subscribed for much longer.

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