10 Things You Didn't Know About WWE In 1995
3. Was The Worst Year Ever THAT Unpopular?
Well, yes.
The WWF faced genuine financial turmoil. Never before was the WWF further away from the pop culture zeitgeist. Where in the '80s, the promotion was in perfect synergy with the bronzed musclemen that dominated the box office, in 1995, the Fed was completely out of step with the cultural moment. It's not as if the pop charts were full of waste management specialists and evil baseball players playing Smoking Gunns-style country-fried rock on the radio.
The reduced version of history is correct: Paul Heyman was the only notable pro wrestling promoter who got it, and it's fortunate for Vince McMahon that, by the time he eventually caught up, wider culture had leaned yet further into edgelord schlock. Vince's basest impulses were in loving unison with South Park and Dead Or Alive and the like. Jiggle physics were in and Vince - curiously enough - was into that sort of thing.
The thing about 1995 is that more than one pay-per-view actually out-performed its 1996 counterpart. WrestleMania XI beat XII (340,000 Vs, 290,000), and SummerSlam 1995 beat '96 (205,000 Vs. 157,000).