4. Characterization Is At An All Time High
There has always been "characters" in wrestling as opposed to real personas, but there was a bit of a backlash at some point against having a roster full of "characters" in the late 90's/2000's. All of the smarks were screaming about it being too fake and not credible enough. And you know what, the wrestling industry actually listened to you and changed accordingly. Starting infamously with Hall and Nash, it gained momentum thru ECW, it escalated with the likes of Kurt Angle, Chris Benoit and Eddie Guerrero and peaked with Brock Lesnar and John Cena. Yes they kept at the fake names and characters as well but most were viewed as terrible and usually ended up going about their future endeavors and sent back to the Indies (Mordecai, Eugene, The Boogeyman, ). And why not, the most popular performer at the time was "Stone Cold" Steve Austin (a fake name by the way) because he was relatable to a lot of the viewing public and represented a certain "class" of realism never really seen before , so why not keep up with that momentum. But as you smarks always do you have come full circle. Now I read a lot of complaints about there NOT being enough characters and some even point out that this is was made the WWE great back in the day.....well, to quote Vickie Guerrero, EXCUSE ME? But you same people that say the WWE was at its best in the 90's were probably the same people who weren't even watching it back then. I hear names like Shawn Michaels, The Undertaker, Steve Austin, The Harts, Vader, Rocky Maivia, Hunter Hearst Helmsley, Jake Roberts, Razor Ramon, Big Daddy Cool, The British Bulldog and MIck Foley thrown around all of time as PROOF that the 90's was the greatest era of WWE wrestling. Well then, for those I have to ask this question, if that was the "golden age" of wrasslin then why weren't you watching???? And if you weren't watching, how do you know? Let's look at the lowest ratings RAW has ever gotten and look at the wrestlers involved. September 25th, 1995 featured The Smoking Gunns vs Yokozuna and Owen Hart for the Tag Team titles and the Undertaker with Paul Bearer vs the British Bulldog....RAW, October 14th, 1996. featured Shawn Micheals vs Steve Austin for the then WWF championship....Raw, March 3rd, 1997 featured the crowning of the first ever European champion with a match between The British Bulldog vs Owen Hart, not to mention a WWF championship match between Mankind and Psycho Sid and an Intercontinental Championship match with Rocky Maivia facing off against Vader. And it opened the show with Bret Hart vs HHH. Now according to all of you smarks out there, this show especially should've have been a ratings giant with these classic "characters", regardless if Bischoff gave out the results or not. That right there is the definitive show for the modern day smark but none of you were watching. The lack of ratings almost caused Vince to close the doors to Titan Towers forever. Yet here you all are, 15 years later, complaining about the exact same thing that you are all screaming for to come back....it makes no sense. There are so many "characters" (I really have to emphasize that word for some of you) and good ones at that in the current product that your argument becomes redundant. And lets just name one of the top ones off the bat, Damian Sandow, the modern day Genius. He would never fit the mold with the name of Aaron Haddad, and we would have never been fortunate to see this up and coming bonafide legend strut his stuff and make wrestling worth tuning in for every week. Add to that the reintroduction of managers with the likes of Paul Heyman and Zeb Colter and you have yourself a full and complete roster right there.speaking of the roster.