I’ve been watching wrestling since I was five years old. I had nobody in my family that liked it before me, I was the first. Talking about wrestling on podcasts and writing about it, that’s been going on for me for four-five years. Some people were inspirations to me in regard to how they talked about wrestling. Roddy Piper who may not have been the best wrestler, he was a maestro when it came to the microphone. Jim Cornette is often haled as one of the best managers in wrestling history and also was a great talker. I was always inspired by his “my opinion” segments he used to do. But as good at being talkers as they were, both have their flaws. Roddy Piper nowadays is not as good as in the past whenever he’s on WWE TV to do a segment. Look at the last few times that WWE has had him do a “Piper’s Pit” segment.
All due respect to Roddy Piper, but the guy’s words now sound as slurred as a drunk guy on a bender on St. Patrick’s Day. As for Jim Cornette as much as his criticisms about wrestling are accurate, he’s unfortunately the kind of guy that if he had his way, wrestling would never have changed. It would still be as it was in the days of Ric Flair and Ricky Steamboat at their prime or even the days of Bruno Sammartino.
Unfortunately we are in a time where generations collide and it’s got nothing to do with either the attitude era or ruthless aggression or even the PG era. It’s got to do with generations of wrestling fans. The generation that thinks that things are fine as is and that the WWE is a well oiled machine with a large abundance of life left in it. Then you have the generation that saw the ruthless aggression and attitude eras and the Monday night wars and where that left that generation is seeing that the innovation and evolution in pro wrestling was in fact possible.
Unfortunately that generation is the only one who sees that as possible and that hope has taken hits by the WWE putting the promotion in park and lifted up the emergency break. Nothing is accomplished when moving backwards or standing still, as it’s all about moving forward. All the gripes about the WWE is that it’s standing still. Why? Because they don’t know what their identity is anymore and they’re now trying to compete with everyone except they don’t know how.
Easy answer, you can’t compete against everyone. It’s a winless situation.
Pro wrestling will always have a place but it will never be more mainstream than things such as the NFL and UFC is a good dozen or two country miles ahead of WWE. What is the answer for the WWE? I don’t have a clue. But then again, neither do they. It’d be funny if it wasn’t so sad
The Shark Attack 