10 Wrestling Moments That Will Make You Really Feel Old
It's been 17 years since Undertaker chucked Mankind from that cell.
As is often noted, the professional wrestling business never has any real time off. Sure, Lucha Underground is trying out the concept of season-long runs, but the rest of the industry simply never stops.
What that largely results in is a slightly hazy recollection when it comes to timeframes and just exactly when certain events took place. For lack of a better term, quite often shows and PPVs just blur into one, week after week, month after month, year after year. Before you know it, rookies have become main eventers, main eventers have retired, faces are now heels and vice versa, and far too many former talents have had sad endings.
To some, Hulk Hogan’s WWF heyday may seem like only yesteryear, whereas to others it may feel like somebody like Edge only retired last year, and then there’s those who look back at extinct promotions with the thought that their demise was a fairly recent occurrence.
When the realisation sets in that these events happened far longer ago than you’d care to admit, that’s when you start to feel old and realise just how long it is that you’ve been watching wrestling in some form or another.
With that said, in a read that will have you checking yourself for grey hairs, here’s 10 wrestling moments that will make you feel mighty old.
10. WCW Hasn't Existed For 14 Years
Now whilst World Championship Wrestling would briefly live on as part of the then-WWF’s Invasion angle, the promotion itself ceased to exist way back in 2001; a whopping 14 years ago!
It doesn’t feel all that long ago that fans saw Shane McMahon turn up on the final episode of Nitro and reveal that he’d purchased the company..
In real terms, it was Vince McMahon who purchased Ted Turner’s ailing wrestling company, picking up the naming rights and tape library for a measly $4.2 million. Ever the competitive sort, Vince saw this as one final kick in the nuts to Turner and those associated with the one-time rival company. It also brought closure to the Monday Night Wars, although in reality WCW had stopped being a competitor way before then.
What followed was a half-assed “invasion” of available WCW talent; a talent pool that was bereft of the major names of WCW’s heyday, which led to ECW superstars aligning with WCW and also the turn of certain WWF superstars in order to make the Alliance seem like a threat.
It’s 14 years since WCW was put to bed, and it’s fair to say that it’s 14 years since the WWE saw any form or real competition, with the current product certainly reflecting that.