10 Times Wrestling Ruined What You Loved
Friendships, Phenoms and finances left in a state of ruin by "this great sport"
Perhaps it's unfair to consider "wrestling" the sentient being required to make this article's title actually work.
Wrestling is nothing without the contributions of promoters and stars, with the formers in particular having so much say in what the industry looks like in any given generation. Titus O'Neil's recent Monday Night Raw opening speech scanned as the transparent propaganda it was, but the content of it was a reminder of what Vince McMahon might actually think about his show. That he's so far wide of the mark is shocking, if not particularly surprising.
Tony Khan is a different kettle of fish entirely, though he's probably not beyond wrapping the kettle in barbed wire and setting it on fire for weapon spot that has less than a second to register as Dynamite rolls on. More of that recent excess elsewhere in the list, though. In defence of the AEW president, he's not yet played host to the sort of real life sludge and scandal that's engulfed just about every other wrestling boss to come before him.
That seems to come for everybody in the business, and the same thing happened with these too...
10. NXT's Golden Era
When NXT blossomed as a luxurious Sports Entertainment micro-buffet in 2014, the sheer impossibility of its existence was part of what made it so magic.
As Impact and ROH fell away as captivating and viable North American alternatives in the early 2010s, there were constant and relentless calls for WWE specifically to move forward from the gluey stasis it was trapped in. As it turned out, some of them were coming from inside the house!
Triple H had been the main roster's top heel between a SummerSlam 2013 turn and The Authority's Survivor Series 2014 defeat, but he was ready to babyface himself with the online fan service NXT provided. A mix of former indie darlings and (relatively) home-grown talent meshed magnificently against a feeling of optimism that they'd solve main roster problems too.
'The Game' working through his own creative golden era perfected the mix, and until he got swallowed up by a need to ape the super-worker style the black-and-gold brand became by 2018, the project was every bit as special as you remember.