WWE

[kenarmy]

Ok is there anybody here that still watches besides me??

[Roadgeekteen]

Is the WWE even considered a sport or is it just a reality show?

[kenarmy]

Is the WWE even considered a sport or is it just a reality show?

It's "sports entertainment"  , but the entertainment is first. And people say it's "fake" , I mean yeah it's scripted.. But people have gotten injured or died from it soooo

[Max Rockatansky]

People have also died trying to preform scripted stunts in movies.  Athletic endeavor I could see, but definitely not a sporting competition.  There has to be an element of an actual competition that whatever WWF is called now to qualify as a sport. 

[texaskdog]

Loved it 1986-2009 off and on...not so much after about 2003.  Can't stand it anymore.  I wish it was the way it used to be.

[Takumi]

I'm one of the people who only watched it during the Attitude Era.

I still laugh at "It's Me, Austin!"  and JR's reply to it.
https://youtu.be/kujo7V9m0gk

[DandyDan]

I am old enough to remember the AWA back before WWE (or more accurately back then, the WWF) took all their good wrestlers. I basically lost interest by college in 1991. I had a roommate for the spring 1992 semester who had a giant collection of WWF VHS tapes and thought it was mandatory that I watch them. I remember telling him I thought it was poor taste.

[Skye]

I still watch it because I love wrestling and don't have cable so I can't watch AEW only Smackdown.

[SP Cook]

People have also died trying to preform scripted stunts in movies.  Athletic endeavor I could see, but definitely not a sporting competition.  There has to be an element of an actual competition that whatever WWF is called now to qualify as a sport. 

This.  This is just not a sport.  It is play acting. 

A few years ago, ESPN had a deal to cover wrestling like it was real, on Sports Center.  To their credit a lot of the media commentators called them out on this.  ESPN responded with the typical "well TV and the movies are scripted too"  line.  To which the comeback was "yes, and CBS News doesn't include reports about how Sam Hanna or Jethro Gibbs saved the world from nuclear destruction" .  ESPN backed down.

[LM117]

I'm one of the people who only watched it during the Attitude Era.

I still laugh at "It's Me, Austin!"  and JR's reply to it.
https://youtu.be/kujo7V9m0gk

Yeah, I was hooked on it during that time and tapered off in the mid-2000's. I still like to watch old matches from back then. I used to subscribe to the WWE Network for that purpose (along with watching Austin's Broken Skull Sessions), but then they moved everything to Peacock.

There's a documentary that Undertaker & WWE came out with last year called The Last Ride. I highly recommend it.

[wanderer2575]

I once went to a Smackdown show, or whatever they called it, many years ago at Joe Louis Arena in Detroit.  I worked for the theater management company handling the production, and every time WWE had an event at the Joe there would be a memo requesting volunteers to be "seat fillers."  I decided to do it once to see what the event was all about.  (The TV cameras show the first few rows of seating during bouts; the role of seat fillers is to jump in and occupy a seat when its occupant leaves to go to the bathroom or get another beer or whatever, so that onscreen it always looks like full capacity.) 

In a word, it was boring.  There were several bouts, and it seemed there was a 15-minute break between each one with nothing happening except the next fighter's little promotional video replayed endlessly on the screens.  The highlight of the evening for me was this:  They had to redo one of the bouts.  Maybe they forgot to take the lens cap off the camera or someone forgot to press the Record button.  The two fighters came back out and fought again and move for move, facial expression for facial expression, it was exactly the same as what they did just a little earlier.  If anyone still thought it isn't scripted, there couldn't have been better evidence otherwise.

I don't care for WWE and don't usually watch it, but I have no problem with the scripting.  Lots of other entertainment is scripted -- TV shows, movies, plays, music.  What amused me was how many fans pretend it isn't, rooting for certain fighters and whatnot.  It's like going to an orchestra concert and having sincere hope that maybe Beethoven's Fifth will be completely different this time, or seeing a James Bond film for the umpteenth time and rooting that maybe this time the bad guy will finally win.

[hbelkins]

I used to watch WCW back during the era when Kevin Nash and Scott Hall were lured over from WWF (as it was called then) first as "the outsiders" and later as the NWO. I lost interest before the WCW/WWF merger.

Prior to that, back in the 1980s, i watched something called Mid-South Wrestling that featured Bill Dundee, Jerry "The King" Lawler, Joe LeDuc, and others. Lance Russell was one of the commentators.

My wife and her sister got to watching New Japan on AXS a few years ago, but New Japan's television contract went away, so they migrated to WWE. Those two went to NYC a couple of years ago to see a NJPW event. Just recently, they, along with their mother, went to Louisville on a Sunday night for a WWE match.

What I've always wondered is how the championships are determined. Is it really a competition of whose agent can negotiate the best contract?

[bugo]

The Memphis territory was called CWA. Mid South was a promotion owned by Bill Watts that was based in Tulsa and Shreveport. This promotion was briefly renamed the UWF and was bought by Jim Crockett Promotions. All of their titles were unified with the NWA titles, and many UWF talents did very well for themselves in JCP/NWA/WCW and the WWF: Sting, Eddie Gilbert, Steve Williams, The Freebirds, Rick Steiner, Shane Douglas, Terry Taylor, The Dingo Warrior/Ultimate Warrior, Jim Ross, Brad Armstrong, Chris Adams, Ted DiBiase, The One Man Gang, Big Bubba Rogers (Big Boss Man in WWF), Jim Duggan, The Sheepherders, and the Junkyard Dog. Watts had delusions of grandeur and thought he could take the UWF national and compete with the WWE and the NWA, but he ran out of money and had to sell.

[johnandmegh]

The thing that got me into pro wrestling was actually renting WCW/nWo Revenge on the Nintendo 64 from the local video store - teenage me was drawn in by the game, but also by the spectacle that it portrayed, and that time period of pro wrestling was certainly all about the spectacle (nWo on one side, and the Attitude era on the other).

We don't have cable, or a cable-equivalent streaming package, anymore so I don't really watch, but I follow the goings-on at least a little bit. Nothing IMO will compare to the NXT shows that were run in Columbus in 2019 and 2020, back when NXT was a super-indy - the energy in the small venue there was unreal.

[bugo]

Those THQ N64 wrestling games were great. WCW/nWo World Tour, WCW/nWo Revenge, WWF Wrestlemania 2000 and WWF No Mercy were some of the best games ever made. The new AEW game Fight Forever is loosely based on the N64 games, with old school graphics.

[jgb191]

I used to back in the 1990's and probably peaked around 1992-1994; it was finally the end of Hulkamania, and then Bret Hart and Undertaker came up on the main event status, but the one downside was that it happened to be during the roster overhaul.

Since 1994 my interest gradually declined; then it sharply declined after the Montreal Screwjob in Survivor Series 1997 because of Bret's departure from the company, and my interest abruptly ended in 1998, and I have no interest ever since 1998.

My all-time favorite superstar was Curt Henning, better known as Mr. Perfect....in my opinion the best technically sound performer I've seen in the ring.  My favorite tag-team was Hart Foundation.

[bugo]

I started watching wrestling in the mid 1980s, but I stopped watching about 2000, right before WCW went under. I didn't watch at all until a couple of years ago when I saw a CM Punk/Maxwell Jacob Friedman promo. I thought MJF was hilarious, so I started watching it because of him. I still don't watch the WWE very often, but I keep up with AEW.

Here's the promo in question:

[amroad17]

I'm one of the people who only watched it during the Attitude Era.

I still laugh at "It's Me, Austin!"  and JR's reply to it.
https://youtu.be/kujo7V9m0gk

The only performer in WWE who gets those type of boos nowadays is Dominik Mysterio.

Also, The Rock made a live appearance on Smackdown in Denver last Friday and the crowd about lost their minds.  I hadn't heard a pop that huge for nearly 10 years.  It was louder than the last few pops Stone Cold received when he made appearances.