The WWE/AEW Age Divide - What It Actually Means
Right as half of the audience disappeared and the boom went bust around 2002, a generation that now makes up much of the main roster discovered the only game in town.
Liv Morgan was born in June 1994. 16 years old in 2010, watching the company squander The Nexus. Younger that but, as per family anecdotes, inspired by the dreadful Divas division post-Lita and Trish Stratus nonetheless. Sasha Banks has been one of the best things about the entire company since her 'Boss' character clicked in 2014, but her idolisation of Eddie Guerrero was in its infancy when he passed away suddenly in 2005. Austin Theory was 10 in 2007, a year of real life tragedy, unprecedented controversy and a company in dangerous and confusing flux. It was this chaos that informed a choice to give the career a go. At 23 and 24 respectively, NXT mainstays Rhea Ripley and Velveteen Dream probably don't even recognise the company they work for based on the one they used to watch.
On and on all that goes. They get in through establishing a relationship with the seemingly kindly Triple H. They find out how little that matters when they make the real money on Raw and SmackDown. A weird life, but one they perhaps haven't yet figured out the big problem with. The Ruthless Aggression docuseries told a pack of f*cking lies about what it was like to actually live through that era, but everybody loves the first wrestling they watch, and many of these wrestlers (and extremely tolerant younger WWE fans) are those people.
Dean Ambrose, Luke Harper and The Revival weren't those people, and simply had enough of it when something so much more their speed came into existence. Cody, with WWE not really his inspiration to get into it in the first place, was the perfect compromise between entitled Second Generation star, Sports Entertainer and Pro Wrestler to steer some of the changes.
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