This is an interesting topic, and it could be explored in many ways and from different perspectives... As I'm verbose, and I like the sound of my
voice keys, I'll give it a shot.
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...but it's fake! True, wrestling is, when you strip it of all the fancy tricks, a show about big men who pretend to beat the tar out of eachother, while, in reality, they're not out there to hurt their opponent, and the outcomes of the "matches" are predetermined following a scripted plot, apparently based on marketing reasons.
So, while it's just a TV show, and its staged nature is now common knowledge among fans, the on-air competition must STILL be portrayed as legit. Otherwise the whole thing would be ruined.
They can'go like "John Cena will challenge Randy Orton because John Cena is popular and his chase for the gold will sell T-shirts, tickets and PPVs" or "Triple H will get another title shot because we think he's a reliable performer and source of revenue"
A bit of on-screen kayfabe must be kept alive. So we can't really say WWE has jumped the shark because it's fake. It's the nature of the beast.
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"...but it's now targeted to kids!"Heh, maybe so, but excluding the raunchy Attitude Era, where the main focus was on cursing, flipping birds and showing tits, plus on many other over the top shticks [mostly hit-or-miss, no middle ground], WWF/E has always had a place for kid-friendly characters.
And in the end, what are wrestlers, if not real-life Superheroes? Good v Evil, with a healthy dose of cheap comedy and of black/white lines. Just like fairytales, comic books etc.
Life is complicated, wrestling is rather straightforward. Or at least I think it should. The "shades of gray" can work just so long before it all becomes the same gray and you don't even know what's going on.
So, while wrestling has had TONS of stupid and cheesy moments that made us wonder "what the hell did they smoke when they thought THAT was a good idea?" [and this very website exists as a tribute to all of that!], once again, it's part of the game.
For every brilliant moment, there's its horrid counterpart. But in the end, it's another reason to enjoy wrestling: when something "is so bad it becomes good again"
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"... but we're 20/30/40, how could we enjoy ________?"Well, in that case, maybe it's us who jumped the shark!
Jokes aside, that's quite reasonable, but when you willingly sit down to watch something that you know it's partly targeted to kids and teens, you can't expect it to be anything different.
It's like watching a documentary about whales, and complaining about the lack of seals and walruses
It's all sealife, but this one if more specific about ONE category...
Once again, no shark jumped here, as long as the [alleged] Main Target Demographic likes it. And I think there always is something for everybody in wrestling.
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my take At the cost of sounding like a broken record, WWE jumped the shark when they failed to "reinvent" themselves once the Monday Night Wars were over and won.
With no rivals to outdo in ratings every week, thus with no need to rush feuds and angles, they could have rei-revolutionized the booking style and the way a story is told, inside and outside the ring.
Instead they preferred playing safe, and even botched the last interesting Big Storyline they could have told: the Invasion.
The brand split was a conservative way to innovate, moreso because the difference between the two shows was minimal: basically two "conferences" of the same league. Without the Superbowl.
So, almost a decade after WCW's demise, WWE are still stuck in a limbo, halfway back into the more gimmciky side of the early 90s, but firmly rooted in the "real life-like" characters of the Attitude Era.
All of that with storyline archs being rushed as if there still were fans to steal to Monday Nitro...
The result?
- The Big Names of 10 (or 15) years ago are still there, at, or aroud, the Top
- New Characters are pushed and depushed at the drop of an hat, and tend to wear out their welcome because of the angles starting and ending at 300mph
- The midcard is now a huge revolving door, where many guys go through, get a push and are out. Or just stick around forever, swinging back and forth: push-depush-push again-another depush...
- Storylines are getting more and more generic, or so convoluted and overlapping it's almost impossible following, or remembering what its "Day 1" was about.
- Feuds tend to be draaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagged to nauseating levels of "how many times have we seen them fighting?"
- No fantasy in buildups: tag team, run in, ambush, mixed tag, more ambushes, etc etc. What about NO INTERACTION for a while? It'll make the [15415th match between A and B] more special.
So, enough already with that long-winded post...
Bottom line is:
In my opinion
wrestling jumped the shark when they decided to keep it in a permanent status of Monday Night Wars, almost a decade after said war was wonThat's the very reason, to me, for wrestling having become stale and uninteresting: it's been the SAME THING, just with different, often less captivating, characters, since 1996