10 Moves WWE Must Make To Regain Popularity
How can WWE become cool again?
Fans of the Attitude Era remember. Fans of the Rock-'N'-Wrestling Connection or Hulkamania Era remember. Even fans of the two week period in 2011 where CM Punk was taken off WWE television remember.
Remember what? These fans remember a time when WWE used to be the cool thing to watch.
Way back in the early-mid 80s and late 90s, WWE was an incredibly popular product that was among the coolest and most popular shows on television. Fans today experience a world in which pro-wrestling is more acceptable that it was, say, during the New Generation period or another time in which the business saw a downturn, but it is nowhere near as popular as it was during its peak periods.
Back when WWE presented Hogan and Savage, and later Rock and Austin, as the company's top superstars, WWE was a pop-culture phenomenon. So what does WWE have to do to get the company back to a place where viewers aren't ridiculed for watching the product? Even more, what could WWE do, and what specific moves could they take, to bring the genre of pro-wrestling and the brand of WWE back to mainstream popularity? We'll cover these 10 moves in detail in the pages ahead.
10. Focus On The Future, Not The Past
One of the biggest complaints fans of today's WWE have is the fact that, year-in and year-out, the promotion emphasizes the stars of yesterday over the stars of today and tomorrow.
Just take a look at the past 10 years of WrestleMania and you'll see this in action. Since 2007, WWE has featured the following superstars in multiple marquee WrestleMania matches: Ric Flair, Shawn Michaels, The Undertaker, Triple H, The Rock, Batista, Bret Hart, Vince McMahon, Hulk Hogan, Trish Stratus, Brock Lesnar, Sting, nWo, D-Generation X, Stone Cold Steve Austin, Mick Foley, and Shane McMahon. All of those names are stars from a past era. Granted, not all of those names actually competed in a match (though 90% did), but all of them were presented as focal points of the match and/or show.
While a few of those names were still major, full-time stars towards the end of the 2000s, all of them have since retired or are no longer working a full-time schedule. In spite of this, they were all featured prominently at WrestleMania.
In the past, WWE would use the stars of yesterday to put the focus on the stars of tomorrow. Today, they seem stuck in the past with their priorities out of alignment.