About a decade ago, UFC began to skyrocket in popularity. Lapsed WWE and WCW fans, many of whom had stopped watching wrestling after the Monday Night Wars, found a new interest. Before long, UFC's Pay-Per-View buyrates were regularly tripling those of WWE. While Vince McMahon stuck his head in the sand and tried to claim that UFC, as a real sport, wasn't competition, fans knew better. The issue isn't that WWE's results are predetermined - everybody knew that when the company broke records in the late '90s. The problem is that WWE's product began to feel increasingly fake after the boom period ended. Stories became convoluted and poorly-executed, often finishing up with participants worse off than they started. By contrast, the stories UFC tells - which typically involve men and woman who want to beat each other up for money, recognition, and sometimes to settle grudges - are easily relatable for fans. The fact that they are real doesn't factor into the equation the way WWE's brass thinks it does. Even today, the best-received WWE programs - like last year's Kevin Owens-John Cena feud - are the ones that hew closest to the tried-and-true "two people who want to beat each other up" formula. Yes, wrestling will always be more theatrical than MMA and other sports, but it doesn't need to be ridiculous.
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
