Will Wrestling ever experience a boom period again?

relentless1

G.O.A.T.
So we had the first boom from 1985-1990ish with Hulk as the leading man and Macho, Piper, Warrior, Flair and the 4 Horsemen etc as starring cast members on both sides of the industry.

Then the MNW/Attitude Era which was from 1997-2001ish with Austin as the lead dog and Rock, Taker, Mankind, Hollywood Hogan and the nWo shining bright.

if you'll notice there was about 10 years in between these high levels of fame and fan interaction; its been almost twenty years since then and theres been no boom period in sight.

So is it done? has wrestling hit its peak and forever settled into its own groove, never to reach the dizzying heights of the past? Why is this the case? Lack of true stars? lack of competition perhaps??

Will wrestling ever get to those levels as a cultural phenomenon ever again and if so what do they need to achieve that level?
 
Unless a company is able to become as big as WWE in the U.S., i don't see another wrestling boom happening. The problem is that while their is a wrestling boom happening on the indy scene right now, WWE is still considered the big league for a lot of peoples. They pretty much have the market to themselves right now and got all the bases cover.

The other thing is that while their are stars in the business, you don't have that caliber of stars that you once had mostly because of 2 things, first the way the guys or being trained and secondly because they don'T have big stars to work with anymore. When you look at guys like Cena, Batista, orton, & Lesnar, which i feel are the last real big stars wwe produce, they all got the rub from wrestling veteran megastars that made them look like megastars. If Lesnar didn't destroyed hogan on smackdown and beat Rock for the championship at summerslam, you have a completely different wrestler. Same goes for Cena,Orton & batista.

The other problem is that wrestling, especially WWE, is back to be something for everybody. Back during the first wrestling boom, the focus demographic was clear, they were going after kids primarily, yes you had adults as well but the whole golden era was about kids and families. The second boom was more about the male adults audience, the product was more raunchy and you had more drama and less wrestling. Now in this social media age, you really can't please everybody and trying to get new fans interesting in the product is even harder. So you can't really have the type of wrestling boom that you had in the past because of that x-factor that is social media.

In the end, i don't thing that we will see another wrestling boom like we saw in the 80's and 90's. WWE controls the market and nobody will be able to reach them anytime soon to create a real competition for them.
 
I don't see a boom period for wrestling very likely to happen again.

I think the MNW/Attitude Era was a perfect storm and there are a lot of elements that were in play back then that can't work as well or happen again anymore.

The MNW/AE was created out of competition for viewers and ultimately staying 'in business'. Would Vince McMahon really have switched up Raw to be more raunchy, hardcore, controversial and storyline-driven if Nitro and the NWO weren't being super innovative and captivating a new type of wrestling audience? Probably not. Because he's got no competition now and he's back to playing it safe for the most part.

Plus, back in the AE media wasn't nearly as diversified. Online streaming really wasn't a thing yet, so cable TV still was pretty much the most common form of media. Today, that's less and less the case. Since there is SO MUCH content out there it would be very hard for WWE to clearly have another boom period where it becomes mainstream again.

I've asked this question before but I think it will be really hard for wrestling to be mainstream or in a 'boom' period again because the cat it out of the bag and while it isn't a dead art form or anything, it struggles to even keep it's want-to-be loyal fans due to inconsistencies in storylines, character development and booking. So if someone who wants to be a fan can't look at WWE and recommend it to a friend without having to be ashamed, then how can it ever really have a boom period again?

I'll never say never, but I will say unlikely.
 
Sadly I don't think it will at least not for a long time, I don't believe the current stars can carry a big event like a wrestlemania on their own so I worry what will happen when the current legends/ part timers are gone, As WWE now owns everything there is a very little amount of already established talent being brought in and instead all new talent has come from NXT it feels like all current talent has faced each other multiple times with no dream match scenarios left like we used to have whenever a big name wrestler came into the WWE from another company. Especially bad luck when the biggest name they had been developing Roman Reigns is now gone for unknown amount of time.
I don't even know anyone who watches RAW or Smackdown anymore compared to 18 plus years ago where loads I know including myself who never missed it as well as Nitro, Thunder and ECW.
 
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The fanbase which you can use to boost is the 16-35 years, as WWE is know on the PG era, looking for under 14, meaning having the kid and his/hers parents. And PG system hadn’t work in terms of fanbase, even economically is more over, as PG means a way more money on Vince pocket.
But we are in a ugly time, where fastly st*pid action is more over than storyline (Fornite as an example), so actually they are playing safe, and risk is too much.
 
It will be hard to boom with two brands. Booms seem to be built on singular stars and feuds. With two brands, one may succeed but it will take away from the other. This may be crazy, but if there is anyone I can see building a boom upon right now - it is Velveteen.

But a boom is still doubtful as WWE and pro wrestling still has a stink on it.
 
You forgot two very important aspects for the wrestling "booms" of the 80's and late 90's. The advent of cable television in 1980's which coincided with Vince McMahon taking the WWF national. Pro wrestling was no longer strictly regional. Fans from the East Coast to the West Coast could watch Hulk Hogan, Andre the Giant, King Kong Bundy, Macho Man whenever they were on TV not just when they visited their territory. On that note it was not so much as a "pro wrestling boom" than strictly a WWF boom. Many territories closed during period including the Tampa territory, Minneapolis and of course Jim Crockett Promotions. So it's hard to call it a pro wrestling boom rather than a WWF boom similar to what the NBA experienced in the 1990's and the NFL in the 2000's.

The second "boom" period coincided with the rise of the Internet. We were all glued to the "dirt sheets" as we longed for the behind the scenes info that was hidden from us all these years, "Kayfabe" was broken. We became obsessed with who was jumping ship next after the stunning departure of Hall and Nash to WCW. It was not so much the product inthe ring as to the "behind the scenes" aspect of the business that gave us the drama. It would give rise to the "worked shoot" promos on RAW and Nitro. The rise of Mr. McMahon and of Vince Russo and demise of WCW.
 
WWE will never have another boom period until Vince dies. Wrestling outside of WWE is bigger now that it has been since the territories.
 
No and, like I said in a similar thread, I don't think WWE wants to to have a boom period. Normally boom periods involve a sharp rise and fall of WWE's share prices since the boom period normally involves a generational superstar like Hogan or Austin being the top guy and drops once said top guy is no longer hot.

I think with WWE's business model it's all about steady revenue generation and growth especially in other business areas that doesn't involve the actual wrestling product (i.e. maybe buying other companies, the Saudi money, ad revenue, the WWE network, etc.).
 
The only remotely possible way I see something like this happens is if another turf war breaks out between WWE and some other promotion and that's not likely to happen. For that to happen, a promotion would have to have access to immense financial resources, either via its owner or through investors who trust the people in charge of running the promotion to run the promotion as they see fit, and a real TV deal for a real show on a real network. What I mean by a "real" sort of deal is that it'll have to be a show that's episodic and new each week like Raw or SmackDown, not taped weeks or even months in advance and/or shown through a syndication TV deal, that airs on prime time television on a network that gets lots of viewers in the first place. ROH is syndicated and its current crop of episodes were taped 5 or 6 weeks ago, Impact is sometimes taped months in advance and is on a piddly network that they're parting ways with sometime next year, and New Japan is on AXS TV, has been for years, and is really nothing more than a clip show in which matches that've taken place often months in advance on big shows like Wrestle Kingdom or select matches that're part of the 10,000 tournaments New Japan has each year are cherry picked to air. As far as a network goes, one of the broadcast networks like NBC, ABC or CBS, even the CW, are examples but are highly unlikely. As far as cable networks go, networks like Freeform, WGN, AMC, MTV, even HBO or Showtime are possible; Freeform is owned by Disney so a family friendly product will be required, WGN has been around for a long time and isn't exactly a powerhouse but it could provide a place for a company to grow and increase its worth, AMC, HBO and Showtime are all critical darlings now who might consider pro wrestling to be too low brow, MTV could certainly use something besides showing marathons of Ridiculousness episodes and Jersey Shore spinoffs. Streaming services like Hulu, Amazon and Netflix are also possible but that's a crapshoot. I'm also fairly sure that networks like Syfy or FX are out of the running as I have little doubt that WWE would insist, through the new contracts t signed with Fox and NBC Universal earlier this year, that no other wrestling content, unless it's WWE produced of course, can run on any networks under the Fox and NBC Universal umbrellas.

There are rumors that Cody, the Young Bucks, Adam Page, Kenny Omega, Jim Ross and Chris Jericho are forming a wrestling promotion and that the co-owner of the Jacksonville Jaguars is a financial backer. Allegedly, they filed for a bunch of different trademarks, most of which contain "Elite" as part of the name of the promotion and that mail, phone calls or both regarding the promotion have been delivered to the Jaguars stadium. Said co-owner is Tony Khan, he's 36 years old, and his father is Shahd Khan, the other owner of the Jaguars. Khan, Sr. was ranked #70 in this year's Forbes 400 and has a net worth of about $7.4 billion. Now IF all of this is true, then this new company having access to that sort of financial backing is a big deal for them but, again, if it's true, they're still in the very, very early stages of anything and unless contracts and legal papers have already been drawn up and signed, it could easily fall apart at any given time; as a result, it's way too soon to read into or expect much out of this at this time.
 

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