10 Ways WWE Can Be THE Cool Wrestling Company Again
3. Move With The Times
No performer on the WWE roster embodies the times.
Hulk Hogan was a ridiculously-built, moralistic hero for the optimism of Ronald Reagan's 1980s. Steve Austin was the foul-mouthed answer to the disenfranchisement caused by the long-term failure of Ronald Reagan's 1980s.
No current roster member comes close to capturing the aloof, ironic, escapist millennial zeitgeist. We make memes from horror in an attempt to cope, and live anxiously in a world in which such horror is almost laughably frequent. In New Japan Pro Wrestling, Tetsuya Naito is the Shuyaku - the leading star. He patrols the ring with a detached cool, so clearly above everything. It's reassuring to live through this man, the giver of zero f*cks. When he finally captured the IWGP Heavyweight Championship in 2016, he flung it up into the air, and cared not if it fell apart upon impact. This sort of institutional disrespect was perfect for an age in which respectable institutions erode with each passing day.
We also live in nostalgic thrall to the 1980s, to which we constantly escape the horrors of modern life. There is but one man in wrestling leading us there...