NFL
By: Patrick Newsome
What happened to the professional wrestling that I used to watch when I was a child? When I look back and think of my memories of the sport, I can think of the attitude era giants like Stone Cold Steve Austin, The Undertaker, Kurt Angle, and many more names. Along with those names come the storylines I remember fondly that came through the years. Who can forget the amazing dynamic between Triple H and Shawn Michaels when they were living out the jealous friend dynamic which ended in probably the greatest comeback story in wrestling history.
Another Famous storyline that changed the landscape of professional wrestling or sports entertainment as many would call it nowadays is the brand split. Dividing up the WWF/WWE into separate but individual brands Called Raw and Smackdown was amazing. Some could call it a new spin on the territory system, each brand was presented in a way that would make each show stand out from one another with separate, individual rosters and if you couldn’t find your taste on one show, you could wait and find something else you could get into on the other show. The writing during this time in the business was not perfect I’ll admit but it was good enough for this boy to suspend disbelief for two hours every Monday and Thursday every week. The wrestlers were amazing, they had personalities as varied as the gear they wore to the ring, and all the color, swag, and personality made following my favorite wrestlers relatively easy and made me invest the time every week to figure out what happened. Sadly, as time marches on for everybody, it did for me as well and with age, I grew out of the spectacle that is professional wrestling.
Only occasionally going to house shows when I was in college and went onto YouTube to rewatch the old matches and promos I remembered from when I was a regular watcher. Being the fan I was, I decided I would try and get back into wrestling and see if I could follow the present-day sports entertainment. The landscape of wrestling seems to have changed with the times like everything else does and sadly it shows. In an unprofessional opinion, wrestling today is a homogenized mass of talent and storylines that is afraid of the ghosts of its past while trying to be the writer of a television show that no one is sadly watching. In today’s wrestling, storylines are traded out for flashy moves and matches are nothing more than 8 minutes of wrestling sandwiched in between a nonstop barrage of commercials.
There is no flow to any matches, not to mention the scripts given to these people are another story altogether. No longer are their personalities, which would command an entire arena full of people highlighted. Granted in the scene of modern wrestling today there are again two main brands fighting for viewership and ratings. The young upstart AEW was founded by a billionaire wrestling fan and the old-timer WWE that’s as American as Coca-Cola and the Dallas Cowboys
This is one point of view when it comes to present-day professional wrestling. I have my criticisms of the sport today but in all the fog of commercial breaks and bland dialog, I do find an occasional bright spot that makes it worth watching and makes me proud to be a wrestling fan. But my biggest question is who is AEW and how long can they stick around? It seems like a flashback to the 90s when a little promotion called WCW was bucking the trend and challenging the WWE for its viewers. I guess only time will tell.
