WWF. Especially during the attitude era. It was like 1998 through 2000 that nearly everyone was into wrestling, especially with what the WWF was doing and some of what WCW was doing with NWO. But, as the years piled on, it seemed like the flaws became more apparent. I look back at that period now and was like “…why did we like this again? and what from it did people want?”. Because some people want swearing back, they want buckets of blood back, they want sex appeal back .etc
That was just car-crash television and I learned later that what both promotions were doing back then, were doing whats called hot-shotting. It’s a wrestling term where you’re booking things in a seemingly appealing matter that audiences want to see. That’s what they were doing and it did honestly work for a long time.
If there was anything I’d want out of wrestling anymore these days, is competent booking and for matches to feel like and be big-fight moments. The cat is out of the bag for what wrestling really is, it’s just about characters, smoke and mirrors and highly choreographed moves that when they look routine, stand out.
At least some of the video games were still fun.
Isn’t wrestling the Days Of Our Lives for guys?
I never understand why people like it, watch any other combat sport and actual fighting takes place.
Wrestling is theater on steroids…literally.
It is, at its best, the peak of stupid trash reality television in a live show format. Nobody watches Pro-Wrestling for the intellectual and deep content, they watch it for fun. Its satisfying the same stupid lizard brain that gets off to giant monster movies.
I say this as someone who loved the Attitude Era and watched a bit of the 2016-2020 WWE era.
I always thought it was just acceptable softcore porn for gay people. Like being gay wasnt as accepted as it is today. It was an insult in schools. It was a constant witch hunt and if someone thought you were gay you were fucking finished.
It was cool, however, to watch incredibly muscular guys, oiled and sweaty, in their underpants and tight vests, repeatedly try to lie on top of eachother, and doing flips that involve ramming their crotch against the others butt.
That just sounds like a game of Rugby.
Sounds like you understand it perfectly, you just don’t appreciate it.
The first season of GLOW talks about the connection between soap opera and wrestling, btw, in addition to being damn fine television.
That’s pretty close. But people don’t watch it for the fighting…or rather, they don’t watch it to see one person put their combat skill against another to see who is better.
It’s more like a mostly-improv stage play with some pretty impressive stunts and acrobatics. When the show is on, every performer treats the situation as deadly serious and “yes ands” as hard as they can.
My favorite thing is when someone has to pretend that their opponent has real magic powers.
Don’t besmirch Days like that, wrestling is Passions for manly men.
Yes it is. The fighting is just connecting tissue.
I’d love to read about all those wacky and preposterous story arcs they had over the years.
Edit: I don’t know what Days of our lives is but I understand it’s a soap opera.
A friend won tickets to a local one and it was a lot of fun. It was like a huge group of LARPers and everyone got to participate in the spectacle in their own way. Definitely not a gender thing, either.
I guess it was like one of those themed restaurants with actors and events through the evening, where the whole point is everyone can get into it and have fun on a pirate ship or in Dracula’s castle or whatever the theme is.
But, I struggle to see how it could go to the scale and detail of what’s in the US. Watching it on TV seems more concerning than entertaining too. I had a housemate that played a White Mage in FFXI, and Pineapple Juice was how the class restored mana points. Dude started drinking nothing but pineapple juice IRL. That’s probably the only way I can explain “Pro Wrestling” in the US. It must be targeted at that guy.
Yeah, because watching people ACTUALLY beat each other into a bloody pulp is REAL entertainment for REAL men!!
Soap operas are stupid and not entertaining at all!
Sort of. My great grandmother watched wrestling matches in the 1950s in the south. Apparently it was the same stuff back then. My grandma always rolled her eyes when her mother would talk about it. Its just entertainment.
But you kinda pegged it. Some of the outlandish and crazy shit was entertaining. You could actually watch the heel get taken down or the face triumph over insurmountable odds. In actual fighting sometimes the asshole just wins.
Yeh. I always thought that the audience was kids and teen boys.