10 Worst Years To Be A WWE Fan
8. 1990
The very year your writer first clapped eyes on Vince McMahon's vision of pro wrestling, included here to both assuage accusations of nostalgia bias and to acknowledge that the said vision was on the slow road to ruin.
The Ultimate Warrior's rise and feud with Hulk Hogan provided end-of-the-world visuals at the Royal Rumble and WrestleMania, but the scale proved rather literal - the United States boom period was ending along with 'The Hulkster's title reign.
Warrior, as a proto-Diesel/Shawn Michaels/John Cena/Roman Reigns/Seth Rollins, was stripped of his uniqueness the second he sported the belt worn so proudly by Hogan for much of the prior decade. The product seem to lose a bit of a sheen underneath him, as evidenced by the big babyface title wins at SummerSlam 1990 failing to stop the show feeling heel-heavy and the Survivor Series 1990 birthing the f*cking Gobbledy Gooker just minutes after protecting next WWE Champion Sgt Slaughter (!) in defeat.
The men were still massive and the bombast was almost as big, but everything else was about to shrink.