10 Ways WWE Can Be Cool Again

No, not by hiring Carlito...

In the fall of 1998, WCW and WWE were at war. Each week, Nitro and Raw would vie for ratings dominance, and despite the fact that Raw would win more often than not, the overall results were staggering: nearly 10 million people were tuning into wrestling each week, opposite Monday Night Football. Even in the first half of 1999, when WCW began to fall to a distant second in the war, Nitro was still drawing more viewers than Raw does today. In the late 90s, wrestling was cool. On Tuesday mornings grade school classrooms, college dormitories, and corporate offices would be filled with talk about what Stone Cold, The Rock, and Goldberg were up to the night before. Even though mainstream media wasn't extensively covering pro wrestling, it didn't matter - it seemed like everybody was watching it, anyway. Wrestling was its own media force. Today, things are quite different. Ratings have sunk, and while Raw's TV audience skews older than its live audiences, it's hard to imagine that most adult viewers find a place to talk about the show in the real world. Hardcore fans know that there's plenty of good wrestling out there, but WWE, at least in most of the world, will always be seen as representative of the industry. If the company isn't hot, wrestling itself seems lame. WWE's product has been anaemic for years, but things are worse than ever. Still, it's never too late. It takes time to change people's perceptions, but it is possible for WWE to become good - and maybe more importantly, be seen as "cool" - once again. Following these ten bits of advice would be a start...

In this post: 
dean ambrose
 
Posted On: 
Contributor
Contributor

Scott Fried is a Slammy Award-winning* writer living and working in New York City. He has been following/writing about professional wrestling for many years and is a graduate of Lance Storm's Storm Wrestling Academy. Follow him on Twitter at https://twitter.com/scottfried. *Best Crowd of the Year, 2013