WWE in 2018 is the worst it's been since....?

[Toe Jay Simpson]

In ‘95 you at least had the Hart’s bringing the house down every time they wrestled each other. Shawn was also on another planet back then.

 

[woof]

This. The talent is there, it's just the booking/writing is extremely lazy. This era shyts all over the 2006-2011 era that featured:

LOLCENAWINS Reigns of Terror
A Pirate who might have a thing for his sister
The Boogeyman
DX coming back twice with Dad Joke gimmicks
Everything having to do with Hornswoggle
Guests Hosts every week
b*stardization of ECW
shytty Midcard

There was a lot of shyt those years, but they also featured creative peaks that absolutely destroy anything going now.

There's not even a chance of them hitting on something on par with Punk/Jeff, Flair-Batista-Jericho/Michaels, Jericho/Rey, Michaels/Undertaker (both Mania builds), Rey/Punk, etc. Hell, even Edge's 2006 run, from the Foley stuff and his Cena feud, blows away what's being booked these days.

 

[Mantis Toboggan M.D.]

This is off the head

-3 GREAT matches on WM19
-brock and kurt Angle beef
-Chris Benoit and Kurt tearing it up on the Royal Rumble PPV
-Kane unmasking

Sounds like a good year to me

Raw in 2003 gave us some of my favorite Scott Steiner mic botches, a great HBK vs Jericho feud, hurricane vs the rock, rock vs Austin, Goldberg making his debut, superhero in training hurricane and rosey, personally I really enjoyed the triple h vs Kevin Nash hell in a cell match, Orton beginning the legend killer gimmick, hbk becoming a full time wrestler again, Kane unmasking, team Austin vs team bischoff at the survivor series, the start of the Orton vs Foley feud, and the HBK vs triple h title match on the last raw of the year. It had plenty of problems, but there was entertainment to be found too. I didn’t even go into the good things that happened on smackdown.

 

[g-ice]

Hasn't been this bad since the celebrity guest bullshyt but even then that shyt was sooooo bad that it was unintentional comedy at times.

This shyt here though is just utterly bad on all accounts because it's lazy and not motivated.

 

[Rell84shots]

Yes that 5 year period was terrible... I was mostly into TNA and ROH at the time, WWE was all background noise.

Except 06 wasn't all that bad, 07 is where the wheels started to fall off. 2007 started off good but by the end RAW was completely unwatchable. Smackdown was decent but it couldn't compare to the greatness of 02-06. I'm just glad I can get my old school fix on the network.

 

[TOAD99]

It’s pretty bad

I’m seeing more and more indifference towards the product and that’s when you know shyt is horrible

I love wrestling and all but I can’t be bothered to even look at the results anymore

 

[Mantis Toboggan M.D.]

It’s pretty bad

I’m seeing more and more indifference towards the product and that’s when you know shyt is horrible

I love wrestling and all but I can’t be bothered to even look at the results anymore

That’s always worse than a disgusted and angry crowd. Apathy is the worst feeling a promotion can generate, and they’ve create a product so dull, uninspired, lacking in consequence, and repetitive that people just don’t care anymore. I don’t see how long term this is a sustainable business model, actively chasing away viewers. Will networks keep giving big deals to a promotion that makes a point to alienate its customers?

 

[Sypress]

lay off 1995

it had solid main events and very memorable moments

















































the memories

 

[Saysumthinfunnymike]

Damn... looking at those posters from PPV's around 2010, I don't remember ANY of those matches and I watched all of them. Yet, if you ask me about a match from the early 90s I can probably tell you everything about it.

This has been a bad year though. I keep asking. Where the fukk are the storylines and vignettes? They aren't trying anything. They just have one guy wrestle another guy for 4-5 weeks straight and then they move on to the next and everyone is stuck treading water. Boring is the right answer. Totally boring.

 

[Mike the Executioner]

There was a lot of shyt those years, but they also featured creative peaks that absolutely destroy anything going now.

There's not even a chance of them hitting on something on par with Punk/Jeff, Flair-Batista-Jericho/Michaels, Jericho/Rey, Michaels/Undertaker (both Mania builds), Rey/Punk, etc. Hell, even Edge's 2006 run, from the Foley stuff and his Cena feud, blows away what's being booked these days.

This is why I'll never understand why people look at the product from 10-11 years ago like it was that much worse than it is now. I said this in the other thread, but they still knew how to book competently back then. There were still stakes to what was going on. If two guys hated each other, they would be put in a feud for multiple months. Simple as that. They actually knew what long-term booking was.

This point has been made over and over, but it just makes me sick how Sasha and Bayley are forced to wait for months to get their feud going, then it stalls for some weird reason, then they remember they were supposed to feud, then they get put in therapy or risk getting fired. But if it was ten years ago, they would have been guaranteed a WrestleMania match just off that fight in the locker room.

 

[DaHNIC82]

Go back and look at the Attitude Era and tell me that creative was great, there was a lot of bullshyt going on during that time but the wrestlers were able to overcome it with their personalities. Kurt Angle was a great wrestler but he was hilarious as well, now you have people who can wrestle their asses off but they're boring as shyt. Kevin Nash had a point with the vanilla midgets comment and it got a lot of people in their feelings. Some are being held back by creative(Sasha) and some just don't have that big time appeal(Balor).

A guy like Kurt Angle would have been Cesaro status in todays booking

 

[Osmosis]

I wasn’t watching in the mid 1990s so I can’t attest to how bad that era was but this is the worst I’ve ever seen it. Worse than 2003, 2004, 2007, 2009, 2010. It’s as bad as wrestling can possibly be.

 

[Osmosis]

I’m actually baffled that people don’t recognize how truly bad this product. You don’t have to go back too far to remember when the company actually exerted some effort: it was only a few years ago when the WWE had Bryan’s ascension, the Authority, the Shield and Wyatt Family booked credibly, Punk’s feud with Heyman, the Rhodes family vs. the Authority, Ziggler vs. ADR, all happening simultaneously during football season.

 

[Rell84shots]

I wasn’t watching in the mid 1990s so I can’t attest to how bad that era was but this is the worst I’ve ever seen it. Worse than 2003, 2004, 2007, 2009, 2010. It’s as bad as wrestling can possibly be.

Again outside of Triple H these years aren't considered bad by anyone. You had the incredible Jericho/HBK feud, Eddie/Angle, Lesnar, Thuganomics Cena, legend killer Orton, prime Trish/Victoria, Booker T & RVD and most importantly Hollywood Rock.

 

[2CT]

the difference between the product now and in past eras is that now it's safer than it's ever been and it seems like Vince & Co are terrified of taking risks to add some entertainment value to the program

the scripts are completely sterilized with absolutely no envelope pushing content, i know they market mostly towards kids nowdays but the smash mouth promos of AE/Ruthless Aggression and even some of the late 2000s is apart of what made the show great TV

the feuds lack compelling storylines and the characters are missing the proper development to get the viewer interested and engaged in what's going on, they often do things with little to no explanation and just be like regarding plot devices when if they would just take a small amount of time to provide an explanation it would do wonders for the overall story

Ellsworth comes back to help Carmella beat Asuka....but why? they are that lazy that they can't even come up with a worked reason for his absence, he's just back and on top of that nobody even knows the reason behind the Mella/Ellsworth relationship to begin with because that hasn't been explained either

The Bludgeons debut and go directly after tag teams for 3 months, whoop all their asses and take the titles, then all of a sudden they go after a singles competitor in Daniel Bryan outta nowhere just cause

then Kane comes back to help Bryan after they damn near tried to kill each other last time they were on TV together, why you ask? just cause

really it just comes down to creative laziness and an unwillingness to do anything that would add some excitement to the shows, like @Cobratron said this shyt is "can miss" TV to the fullest and that's a big part of why it's so shytty right now