The Lost Magic Of WWE's REAL Golden Era (And How To Bring It Back)

WWE continues to soar in 2024.

All tastes and takes are subjective, but even in the post-WrestleMania 40, post-The Rock being a television regular, post-Cody's Story actually being Finished, the market leader looks, sounds and feels like its well and truly leading the market. Business is still preposterously good at every financial level. Ratings - even when the company feels the need to filter them through a cynically controlled PR vacuum - are steady. Recently-announced mega events such as WrestleMania 41 in Las Vegas and the first ever two-night SummerSlam in 2026 show that for now at least they have all the ambition to maintain and/or increase their dominance.

More importantly, it's still largely proving to be an extremely enjoyable product to donate time and investment to.

Over two decades after it last occurred, the company has experienced a third boom. In much the same way Vince McMahon himself suggested pay-per-view was a dying medium in the early 2010s when he'd forgotten how to book well enough to promote one, most fans, analysts and observers had considered this large a wave of critical and commercial momentum a thing of the past. Fractured hobbies and interests, the lack of a true wider mainstream monoculture compared to the turn of the millennium, and the abject decline of WWE during the monopoly years had made all of this an impossibility. And yet here we are.

It's been nectar for longstanding lifers - your writer included - to see a creatively fruitful version of the pro wrestling they most enjoy once again. Amidst a raft of internal changes following McMahon resigning in disgrace (twice), the creative shift can be put down to the man that coveted this exact role for almost as long as WWE languished in the storytelling doldrums. Triple H desperately wanted to be credited for making this on-screen magic, if only because he missed what it had felt like when he'd done it once before...

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