The Changing Tide of Professional Wrestling

Are mainstream wrestling fans becoming less patient and harder to impress? It would seem that way, when examining the list of title reigns by length and the development of new matches in recent years.

Long gone are the days where Bruno Sammartino held the World Title for 8 years (1963-1971) or Hulk Hogan was tops for 4 years (1984-1988). In fact, there were precisely zero WWE Championship reigns in the 1990s which were longer than one year. Diesel came the closest, holding the belt for 358 days between 1994 and 1995. Not surprisingly, no WWE wrestler in the 2000s has come close to a Championship title reign lasting for more than a year. The 1970s featured 4 such occurrences while the 1980s had 3. Another reign spanned from the 70s into the 80s (Bob Backlund) and yet another from the 80s to the 90s (Hulk Hogan). This means that from 1970 to 1990, there were 9 different times that a WWE wrestler held the Championship belt for longer than a year. From 1990 to 2007 (just three years less), it hasn't happened once. What does this mean for wrestling and its fans? Potentially, it could be a product of WWE management, ensuring that the titles will change hands frequently enough to pique interest among the fans. More likely, the blame falls on the fans who fall in love with a wrestler at the start but get bored with the gimmick within a few months (see John Cena).

Matches have changed too, but this has been even more recent than all the title swapping addressed above. As recent as 1994, we were able to enjoy classic technical matches such as Bret Hart vs. Owen Hart at WrestleMania X. We saw a slight revival of this in the early 2000s when Chris Benoit and Kurt Angle feuded, but it wasn't enough to take away from the prevailing trend in the WWE. New match types include Inferno matches, First Blood matches, Elimination Chamber matches, Punjabi Prison matches, and many more. I may be dating myself with this statement, but I remember when a Cage match or a Falls Count Anywhere match were a huge deal, and specialty matches like a Casket match or a Buried Alive match were legendary. Now, it seems like just another day at the office when the WWE drops the cage for a match as routine as Shawn Michaels and John Cena in a gauntlet match on RAW. Again, is this a ploy by the higher-ups at WWE to garner ratings, or is the fans who cannot appreciate a well-worked, technical wrestling match?

I would tend to lean towards blaming the fans. In this post-Attitude era where just the show business and pyrotechnics remain, the collective attention span has dropped to a point where the fans look for bigger and better stunts accompanied by short title reigns and exciting title changes. The WWE, to some extent or another, needs to return to its roots of technical wrestling or it runs the risk of raising a generation of fans who do not truly appreciate the sport.