A few days ago I was shopping through a thrift store looking for various discarded bits of retro pop culture memorabilia when I came across an item which grabbed my attention. Sitting on a shelf near assorted picture frames was a solitary 8x10 photo of WWE superstar John Cena.
I almost never run across pro wrestling memorabilia in second hand markets anymore. In the late 1990s the stuff was everywhere. Every flea market, thrift store, and yard sale seemed to have a never ending assortment of NWO and Austin 3:16 T-Shirts, a vast assortment of Jakks Pacific action figures, and discarded pro wrestler biographies. But those days are long gone. Now, I stand staring at a single 8x10 framed photo of John Cena and the only thing I can think of is… that is so uncool.
Yes, sadly, WWE has a serious coolness problem and it’s been a long time coming. Please don’t kill the messenger, I am on your side as a forty-year plus fan of pro wrestling. In fact, this very website is putting together the most comprehensive 2000 year history of pro wrestling, adding hundreds of pages per month to our archives. I love pro wrestling, so please hear me out, I want this fixed as badly as you do.
Hop in a time machine with me and let’s set the dial back twenty-five years ago to the late summer of 1995. Pro wrestling was in a pretty sad state then too. Hulk Hogan had been too good for too long. He was now in WCW still doing the same tired red and yellow, leg drop, beat the monster of the month club routine which had been all the rage ten years earlier. He was even teaming with “Macho Man” Randy Savage in the fall of 1995 to beat up an entire stable of cartoon characters ranging from Kamala to John “Earthquake” Tenta now dressed up as a shark, to his old friend Ed “Brutus Beefcake” Leslie now wearing face paint and acting insane calling himself Zodiac.
WWE (then WWF) wasn’t faring much better. The Undertaker was feuding with the purple clad Mabel. The Godwinn family of hog farmers were supposed to be something we could get behind. They literally had a school teacher as a character and a (no kidding) pirate.
But things were about to explode in a big way. Within three years, millions of fans were tuning into two rival shows on different networks. Hulk Hogan turned heel and formed the NWO with Kevin Nash and Scott Hall. Steve Austin uttered the now legendary Austin 3:16 line, The Rock would evolve from sappy do-gooder into the most electrifying man in sports entertainment and Bill Goldberg would be delivering the spear and jackhammer to record crowds on the other channel. Wrestling would be cool.
By September 1998 pro wrestling was booming. Both WWE and WCW were running head to head on Monday Night and if ever a show was preempted then records were broken. Dave Meltzer of Wrestling Observer Newsletter wrote in his September 7, 1998 issue, “[WCW] Nitro set an all-time Monday night ratings record with a 6.03 rating (5.08 first hour; 6.62 second hour; 6.39 third hour) and 9.27 share in an average of 4,485,333 homes per average minute, making it the single most watched pro wrestling television show in the history of cable. This breaks the complete show record set by Raw on 4/27 [1998] when Nitro was moved from its regular time slot due to the NBA playoffs with a 5.69 rating and 8.18 share in 4,188,000 homes headlined by a Steve Austin vs. Goldust WWF title match.”
Let that sink in for a minute. The pro wrestling viewer universe in September 1998 was over 4 million people. Contrast that with today where the average viewing audience for WWE Monday Night RAW (which is always unopposed by other pro wrestling shows now) basically does half of that (according to the September 7, 2020 Wrestling Observer Newsletter the first hour of WWE Monday Night RAW on August 31, 2020 did 2,104,000 in the first hour and dropped below 2 million for each of the next two hours).
On Wednesday nights there are two pro wrestling shows running against each other: WWE subgroup NXT and the Tony Kahn owned AEW, neither show has broken 1 million viewers in months whether opposed or not. The conversation is no longer about the missing two million plus viewers, but rather about microanalysis of key television demographics and haggling over hundreds of thousands (sometimes just thousands) of preferred demo viewers rather than the mass collapse of popularity in pro wrestling over the last 22 years.
WHen wrestling was cool - Bill Goldberg as WCW World champion.
The reasons for the exodus of pro wrestling fans are myriad. The epic collapse of WCW in 1999-2001 can not be overstated. A combination of horrendous and insulting storylines combined with substantial financial mismanagement lead to the alienation of a large number of pro wrestling fans, many of whom never returned, despite several strong years by the last man standing- WWE.
But somewhere in that murky twenty-two years, WWE also lost its way. Pro wrestling company TNA (Total Non-Stop Action) rose and fell and eventually evolved into the still existing company Impact (though ratings for that show are negligible). Newcomer, AEW, shows promise and started off with a strong grass roots fan base, but as of September 2020 their Wednesday night AEW Dynamite television show was pulling in under a million viewers each week as is their opposition- NXT.
The cord cutting phenomenon also factors into this story. Despite wrestling pundits arguing for years that “cord-cutting” was more myth than fact, in actuality, millions are fleeing higher and higher cable TV and satellite bills for more à la carte streaming services. According to The Economist in the third quarter of 2018 to the fourth quarter of 2018, 1.1 million subscribers in the United States left traditional satellite and cable in favor of internet based streaming television. This decline continued into 2019 as cable and satellite lost 1.4 million subscribers. Even if every single one of those losses were pro wrestling fans, then pro wrestling is still missing over half a million people. Pro wrestling has a coolness problem.
found in the dictionary under: Most disingenuous looking human being.
Enter: John Cena. On June 24, 2002, John Cena appeared on WWE RAW meeting an open challenge by popular star Kurt Angle. John Cena had been around for a few years prior to this and had gotten attention by pro wrestling insiders early on due to his head-turning look and perceived aptitude for pro wrestling and charisma. He looked like a superstar. No one can question that.
Nor can anyone question the work ethic of John Cena. From that point forward, John Cena put in the work to become the top star in WWE. There was only one problem- the fans took exception to John Cena being pushed down their throats. Despite the fact that John Cena checked many of the same boxes as previous era mega-stars Hulk Hogan, Steve Austin, and The Rock, there was an underlying resentment toward John Cena by the fanbase. Many times over the years, John Cena was met with more boos than cheers despite being the top “good-guy/babyface”. His smile was a little too smiley. His morality was a little too moral. He was just too, well… good for his own good. It came across as disingenuous and pretentious.
Yet, John Cena was ordained by the pro wrestling powers on high (Vince McMahon) to be “The Man”. He was endorsed by all the right people. He said and did all the right things. His dedication to charity work can not be questioned.
what might happen if you told a writer to imagine a character who was trying to be so cool they became a parody.
Then something even stranger happened. As the mass mainstream popularity of the previous era waned, wrestling fans and journalist seemed to ignore it. Don’t misunderstand, the ratings were discussed, the decline was talked about regularly, comparisons were made, questions were asked, but the dichotomy is that conversation was offset by a continued conversation about John Cena’s “popularity” and how John Cena was a “draw”. In fact, over and over again, wrestling fans were fed the misleading line that John Cena was the only thing that could move ratings. He was a draw.
Except that he really wasn’t. WWE’s popularity was steadily declining. To call John Cena a draw is actually analogous to bailing water out of a sinking boat. Yes, perhaps John Cena was like using a bigger bucket to bail out water but the ship is sinking never-the-less. Maybe it’s sinking slower when John Cena was around but it is sinking anyway.
This is not to say nor suggest that the mega-push of John Cena was the cause of WWE’s decline. The reasons are myriad and complicated. Among the most important factors are: the inability or unwillingness to make new and younger stars, embarrassing lowbrow humor, lack of continuity, and inability or unwillingness to follow through on storylines, pushes, and stipulations.
WWE fans get fed their next meal- Roman Reigns… whether you want it or not.
Enter: Roman Reigns. As the John Cena era wound down and Cena began appearing less and less frequently it was time to make a new mega-star. Perhaps this time someone would catch fire to the degree a Steve Austin or Rock did. Alas, poor Roman Reigns. Reigns has many of the same qualities as the aforementioned superstars did. He was big (a usual requisite for Vince McMahon to consider you), his interviews were good enough, and he was part of a hot faction early on. Then came the nauseous cramming of Roman Reigns down our throats as well. Rinse and repeat the John Cena formula.
The speculation and chatter among pro wrestling writers and podcasters seem to come to the conclusion that Vince McMahon has now decided to make the brand name “WWE” the biggest star. No longer will he be beholden to a single superstar to carry the bulk of the load of popularity for his company. In many ways, this makes sense. It theoretically weatherproofs the company against injury, scandal, or burnout by the face of the company. It also is historically not as effective. If one studies pro wrestling history thoroughly enough then, almost without exception, pro wrestling’s popularity explodes when a new act gets hot and strikes a chord with the audience. Seldom ever does a company “get hot” based on good storylines and matches alone. WWE has none of the above.
All of that leads to this conclusion. WWE and pro wrestling as a whole needs a hot new mega-star who speaks to the popular culture. Just as Bruno Sammartino spoke to the working class ethnic culture of the WWWF in the 1960s, and Hulk Hogan appealed to the larger than life superhero big-80s fans. Just as Steve Austin’s bad ass “Stone Cold” persona resonated with the anti-hero popularity of the 1990s and The Rock’s charisma and snarkiness played to the young adults of the era, pro wrestling needs somebody cool. Someone naturally hip and interesting and you can’t manufacture that.
That type of charisma and coolness can only come from a natural place, something that resonates. WWE has even had glimpses of that over the last decade only to shut it down because it didn’t fit their plans. How big could Daniel Bryan have been had WWE put their machine behind him instead of cutting off his legs at every opportunity? Daniel Bryan still had tremendous success but how much more could it have been? There are other examples and I only mention Daniel Bryan because he made the most of his rising fandom despite efforts by WWE to stifle it (WWE WrestleMania 28 is virtually the embodiment of everything wrong with WWE and it’s “star making” process. How did Sheamus work out as a mega-star?)
I still believe there is no lack of fanbase waiting for pro wrestling to deliver a new savior. But who will it be? Will AEW be the first to unlock the formula in this generation? Will WWE finally relent and get behind the next grassroots superstar? Or will the next mega-star of pro wrestling come from a direction we don’t even expect? Who knows? But it’s way past time for a new savior for pro wrestling to emerge and maybe, just maybe it’s time for Vince McMahon to step out of their way.
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