Exposing The Biggest WWE Lie Ever Told
WWE will tell you that wrestling was a niche thing happening in bars before it exploded onto MTV, NBC and pay-per-view under Vince’s grand vision. If anything, pro wrestling overall declined in popularity in the United States after Vince signed Hulk Hogan, bought out his rival’s regional syndicated TV slots, and raided his competition for their top talent. WWE will not use the word “monopoly” when glorifying the promotion’s rise to national prominence because they see it as a dreamer’s rags-to-riches story - another irony, since the WWF’s moneyed New York territory was the ideal base from which to launch. But that’s what it was: WWE monopolised wrestling in the U.S., and in doing so, fewer people watched the rest. The stars all went with Vince in the end, even Dusty Rhodes.
By the time Ric Flair made the jump in 1991, the territory system was long dead. (In another measure of the Memphis territory’s popularity, Lawler was the last big name hold-out.) With no stars left anywhere else, of course the WWF was able to weave its way into the fabric of Ronald Reagan’s glossy 1980s Americana. And the WWF was very big, not just the biggest wrestling outfit. Its wild cast of characters was known to the American public, allowing Hogan, Roddy Piper and Andre the Giant to briefly flirt with Hollywood. The WWF was big, but so were many other companies until Vince scooped their stars. Every other promoter suffered, and badly, dragging down the national attendance average.
Drawing on his exhaustively researched database of historical information, Dave Meltzer of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter calculated on X that, in the 1950s, the total attendance for pro wrestling in the United States was 25 million. In the 1970s, the number reached 10 million. In 1983, at the advent of the cable boom, the number climbed to approximately 13 million. By the late 1980s - by which time WrestleMania 3 had taken place - the number had actually more than halved. About 5 million people attended pro wrestling events in the U.S. in the late 1980s. During the halcyon days in which Hogan body-slammed Andre and the Mega Powers exploded, significantly fewer people attended live wrestling shows than before Vince McMahon went national. Vince McMahon did not save wrestling; if anything, he nearly destroyed it. Why does WWE tell this blatant lie, then, now, forever?
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