I guess statistically, Wrestling peaked at Wrestlemania 3, the biggest indoor attendance in history, in the late 1980's. In fact from the moment Vince McMahon started to expand the business from outside his North Eastern power _base_ in the early to mid 80's, wrestling as a whole seemed to be on an upturn, and most of the legendary names that we all remember, such as Roddy Piper, Paul Orndorff, Ric Flair, Hulk Hogan, The Road Warriors, The Hart Foundation, The British Bulldogs, Rick Steamboat, Randy Savage, Rick Martel, Sting, The Great Muta, etc, all stem from this period of time.

Wrestling as a whole declined in the USA in the early to mid 90's, with attendances down for even the big events. I think one of the Wrestlemania events had to switch venue as they had only sold about 15,000 tickets, when they expected to sell about 50,000. Hulk Hogan versus Sgt. Slaughter was the headline match from memory.

The industry grew again on the back of Stone Cold Steve Austin, followed by The Rock.

Now, the industry is in decline again, although there was a glimmer of hope with Brock Lesnar, and the WWE has become pretty stale.

The splitting of the roster of talent between Raw and Smackdown was a huge mistake. Triple H will make sure he is a main event man on RAW and will make sure that hsi TV show will have the majority of better workers and storylines to that of Smackdown.

New talent is pushed too quickly. The very limited Gene Snitsky getting to main event level in a short space of time being a prime example.

One big problem for the industry is that the WWE does not have any major competition. This will make the WWE lazy, at least when the NWA was in place it had a serious competitor, and WCW could always compete on TV if not with live audience attendance figures.

I am not sure who will lead the WWE out of it's present situation, but somebody will at some point, the industry always goes in cycles. People said that the WWE could not survive without Hulk Hogan.......and then along came Steve Austin.

As I mentioned I have not seen much new WWE apart WM20 which I traded for recently and have actually got Sky but no Sky Sports which means I can't get to see how bad WWE is :cry:

What would be good is if WWE managed to please the "internet fans" with using workers like Paul London,Rey Misterio etc better and even perhaps some elements of ECW and the indys and at the same time do what brings in the family/casual audiences with the old names that people remember.

What would be good is if WWE managed to please the "internet fans" with using workers like Paul London,Rey Misterio etc better and even perhaps some elements of ECW and the indys and at the same time do what brings in the family/casual audiences with the old names that people remember.

Internet smarks make up a very small percentage of wrestling fans. If WWE played to the Internet crowd, it would go out of business.

The major problem in all of American wrestling (with the possible exception of ROH), is that 98% of the wrestlers today have no concept of how to work a match without a pre-plan or a _script_. Traditional and successful professional wrestling was made up of guys who could accurately gauge a crowd's mood and responses, and adapt what they were doing in the ring to keep the excitement level building (or dropping-to avoid a riot) until the climax of the match.

None of the "Sports Entertainers" have a clue as to how to do that. Even talented guys like Kurt Angle are lost without their _script_. How many times recently have you seen a match that was just awful, yet the wrestlers work on as if no one was watching? Or they blow a spot and immediately try the spot again? That's not working, that's memorization.

It doesn't matter whether one presents wrestling as a technical contest, a brawl, or a soap opera. If the payoff in the ring doesn't match the fans' needs then it is doomed to failure. A.J. _style_s can do backflips off of Buckingham Palace and it won't mean anything if there was no reason to do it in the first place. Put _style_s (or any of these X Division guys) in a ring and say: "Go at it." "_base_ your match on what the crowd is feeling."
They would all be lost.

For wrestling to improve, wrestlers need to learn how to wrestle-not how to mechanically run through 25 pre-planned highspots.

WWE has a dearth of crowd-pleasing wrestlers at present, which is why it seems like the same 12 blokes facing each other all the while.

The departures of Lesnar, Goldberg, Rock and others have not helped.

Dave

WWE has been in the sh**** for a few years now. Though wwe sucked majorly for the last half of 2004 with the midcard on Raw becoming non existant and stale and SD's main event scene looking totally inferior to Raw's.... the wwe has done very well in creating new potential stars.

Though I don't particularly like Cena wwe have kept his gimmick strong and have managed to get him MASSIVELY over. Also they have done a wonderful job with JBL creating a whole new recognised maineventer out of nowhere with everyone forgetting that he is APAs Bradshaw and people actually buying him as a world champ.

The best job they have done though is creating the beast that is Batista, maybe the screwed up push of Orton unintentionally was a good thing otherwise i don't feel we would see Batista at this level yet.

Now that they have new stars like JBL, Batista and Cena lets hope they can create a few more in 2005. I look forward to see what they will do.

Overall there are many underlining problems with the product compared to a few years back or even Jan 2004. But hopefully in time they will sort themeselves out. If we cut off 5 mins of HHH promo time and gave it to Benjamin or someone else in the midcard it could do wonders. So changing round things if given the chance won't be as difficult as people think.

Melvin (Dave) is correct, the loss of some of the big names, all around the same time, has not helped. McMahon was betting the future of the company on Lesnar, but it didn't work out that way, which is a pity because he had the look and the moves and man handled the Big Show in a way that no one had really done before that.

Goldberg was never going to hang around for long.

The Rock (and now Steve Austin) will make as much money from making one film a year as they did from wrestling all year.

Gene Snitsky and Luther Reigns are both laughable and should not be main event status guys.

Batista is being groomed as the new Brock Lesnar, which may be no bad thing, he has the looks, but is limited in his moves.

Vince should swallow his pride and get round the table with Brock Lesnar and see if they can work out their differences.