FanPost

Generational Differences in Wrestling Fans

WWE.com

I'm at an age now where there are a lot of people on this website who have not been alive long enough to be a fan as long as I have, which is about 30 years. I just came to the realization that many of the comments I disagree with seem to come from fans who grew up on the way WWE has done things since they bought WCW and ended the Monday Night Wars. My opinions and preferences are still heavily influenced by the way wrestling was booked when I initially became a fan in the 90s. Below is a list of what I am talking about. Are these views most common among older fans like me? I'm curious to find out!

1. Enhancement matches are good television.

I've stated several times in comments how much I love AEW enhancement matches with people like Daniel Garcia and 2Point0. Usually there is someone who says matches like that have no place on a primetime show. When I started watching wrestling, enhancement matches were 95% of what you saw on TV. The guys getting beat usually didn't get offense in, they were almost like crash test dummies. I'm not recommending we go back to that, but I do enjoy seeing stars give their finishers and win convincingly in an enhancement match as a way to build to their next big match. The WWE method of repeatedly booking them in matches somehow involving their main rivals drives me crazy.

2. Every star doesn't need to be on every week.

A week ago a big deal was made by some of the fact that Alexa Bliss wasn't on Raw. In the meantime we had a short, fun Charlotte Flair vs. Nia Jax feud before Bliss returned. This is good! I wish WWE would do this more often. It doesn't hurt a wrestler at all to be on television a bit less. On the contrary, it helps keep them fresh. The best example of this to me was Enzo Amore. When he was on NXT you saw his act about once a month and it was great fun. Once he was called up to Raw you saw it almost every week and it became annoying fast. Wrestlers appearing on television every few weeks used to be the norm back in the day.

3. Roster splits are a terrible idea.

As AEW signed more people, comments started to pop up saying they needed to do a roster split between their two shows. First, as just stated, every star doesn't need to be on every single week. Second, there is no reason a well run company can't attempt to book their weekly shows so the same stars aren't prominently featured on both. WWE has never been capable of this, so they split their rosters leading to duplicative titles and repetitive feuds. I am hopeful AEW is able to do a better job of featuring different talent on Wednesdays and Fridays without formally splitting in two. This issue didn't come up when I was younger because the rosters were smaller. Every star could pretty easily be featured on a PPV with 8-10 matches.

4. Sometimes it's fine for an act to stay the same.

I often see comments like "This act is tired, so and so needs to try something knew." Sometimes I agree with it, but many times I think this sentiment is the result of some of the issues I've already mentioned. If you don't see a wrestler facing the same opponents every week, their act has a lot more staying power. I would have been fine if Bray Wyatt had kept the same exact act he came into WWE with for his entire career. Many legends of wrestling barely changed at all throughout their careers. How much did Ric Flair, Ricky Steamboat, and the Road Warriors change during their peaks? Often the need to change comes from being on television practically every week for years with little break.


As you may have picked up on in the above list, I'm a fan of AEW, (and used to be a fan of NXT to a lesser extent) because in my opinion they incorporated some of the elements I talk about that have been mostly missing from the main WWE shows for decades. So this isn't a "wrestling was better back in my day" post. This is a 'wrestling is more exciting for me now than it has been in a long time" post. We will see what happens as they develop more of a history and assemble a larger roster. But for now, for me, AEW is doing a great job of bringing some of the booking methods I enjoyed from my early days of being a fan into the modern era.

The FanPosts are solely the subjective opinions of Cageside Seats readers and do not necessarily reflect the views of Cageside Seats editors or staff.