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The more I think about it the more I think that the general shift in pop culture has really hurt the popularity of wrestling. What I mean is that, during the 90's, wrestling was peak programming, especially for kids, in terms of wanting something edgy. You had violence and swearing and things were sexualized and it was wild.
Now I'm not suggesting a return to that attitude era style program would fix WWE. Quite the contrary. I think what happened is that everything else on TV has gotten so edgy at this point that the things that made wrestling stick out to people are just the norm now. There are tons of programs that fill that niche that wrestling was uniquely suited to during that boom in the mid/late 90's. And while everything else seems to get edgier, WWE has been going the other way. They no longer have that same spark and even if they did they'd just be lost in the sea of everything else now.
It's also just plain stale too. Over the 30 years I've watched wrestling, they've done all the angles to death. There are only so many ways you can spin the same kinda scenarios before they are just done and need to be locked away for awhile until they can be fresh again. But with as much content as they have produced I understand why this has happened and don't think it was some intentional thing. Creative literally has just hit the wall. We need entirely new angles and scenarios and what not to freshen things up. Something that doesn't feel like we've seen it a hundred times before. I dunno what that story is but someone out there has to be able to figure it out and come up with something that will work. I think maybe LU was onto something in this regard. Would have been interested to see where they would have went had they had the recognition and budget of a company like WWE.
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