Where did former WCW fans end up?

[The Dark Order Inferno]

Watching the antics going on at TNA right now, it brings back memories of when WCW was circling the drain, desperately trying to find a way to stop the bleeding which got me wondering where most of the younger WCW fanbase ended up.

I used to watch WCW on the local ITV station back in the day, Nitro on TNT, Worldwide on Channel Five (POW!) as well as the PPVs and other programming on DSF in German. I watched WWF programming too, but WCW was always the one I'd look forward to and make the effort to catch (Even if it involved watching TV in the middle of the night in a language I barely understand), and when the attitude era kicked in, they lost me as I didn't like Rock, Austin or the crash TV format. When WCW closed its doors, I tried watching the WWF once more, but I started to lose interest during the inVasion as I had no interest seeing guys like DDP and Kanyon be treated how they were, and I didn't have much interest in the guys they wanted to push so drifted away from wrestling until I caught a few episodes of TNA and I was back to being a fan because it was so reminiscent of WCW, both the good and the bad.

[Deleted]

I'd always figured that a lot of the audience was watching Monday night wrestling because it was a hot commodity event every single week, and that many were not wrestling fans at all.

So when WCW's ratings began to dwindle/plummet, many who were fans just went to RAW, while the rest just............went away to non-wrestling interests.

I saw a figure once that said basically 3 million viewers just completely disappeared from watching wrestling in that period where WCW was in its final throes of death.

[Deleted]

WCW had me till mid 2000. I tries to watch WWF but they never had the matches, just backstage stuff that I didn't like. Eventually just stopped watching in 2002.

The Katy Vick angle did it. I wasn't so much offended though, I could just clearly hear the scrape of the bottom of the barrel.

[JTG Fan]

They are probably big into UFC today.

[HMARK Center]

I wound up getting into ROH and TNA (in that order), but in the past few years my viewing habits have dropped pretty big. Obviously I still keep up with the goings-on, but I'm really not very dedicated about it.

[Brother Nero....Wolfe]

Surprisingly, they ended up as M. Night Shyamalan movie fans.

[Super Weak Machine]

Even though I was always a WCW fan first and foremost, I'd watch any wrestling that came on TV (and now, the Internet). I still do.

[Chairman of the Board]

Ratings alone tell us they aren't watching wrestling.

[kamero00]

Most stopped watching, but it seems their die hard fans just became TNA fans.

WWE needs to give that "anything cap happen" feel again. There is no reason to watch live anymore. I am guessing more people watch WWE today, compared to 10 years ago, it's just most either watch it online, or on DVR.

[Deleted]

I'd guess that most tapped out.

[Magic knows Black Lives Matter]

I think most of them just grew out of wrestling. As the boom period ended, wrestling became "lame" and they moved on.

Someone on another forum brought up a really interesting point that I actually agree with. The rise in reality shows took away a bigger chunk of wrestling's audience than UFC or any other sport did. Way back when, wrestling was pretty much the only place that you could see larger than life characters talk shit to each other over minor things and fight on a weekly basis in outlandish situations and places. Now, all you have to do it is turn it to a reality show to get the same result.

[slappy]

I watched WCW but I also watched WWF so I just kept watching it after WCW went out of business.

[Wolf Hawkfield no1 NZ poster]

I would say a lot of them just stopped watching wrestling altogether.

["Cane Dewey" Johnson]

The question is: how many people only watched WWF or WCW versus those who watched both? And then how did fan migration occur? Say fairweather WWF fans jumped off only to be replaced by WCW diehards... there would be no way really to account for this without WWF and WCW's measurements of fan interaction with their respective products.

[Lancers]

Oct 23, 2013 18:44:13 GMT -5 Magic knows Black Lives Matter said:

I think most of them just grew out of wrestling. As the boom period ended, wrestling became "lame" and they moved on.

Someone on another forum brought up a really interesting point that I actually agree with. The rise in reality shows took away a bigger chunk of wrestling's audience than UFC or any other sport did. Way back when, wrestling was pretty much the only place that you could see larger than life characters talk shit to each other over minor things and fight on a weekly basis in outlandish situations and places. Now, all you have to do it is turn it to a reality show to get the same result.

That's actually a very good point. I remember back in the late 90s when a news program would talk about trashy television; the two go-to examples were the WWE (usually with footage of Sable stripping off her shirt to show off the black hand prints over her tits) and Jerry Springer (usually with footage of two redneck women pulling each other's hair out with the crowd cheering them on).

[HMARK Center]

Oct 23, 2013 15:50:50 GMT -5 kamero00 said:

Most stopped watching, but it seems their die hard fans just became TNA fans.

WWE needs to give that "anything cap happen" feel again. There is no reason to watch live anymore. I am guessing more people watch WWE today, compared to 10 years ago, it's just most either watch it online, or on DVR.

To a degree, but I still think that method of booking is very short sighted.

It worked out well for WWF in that time thanks to the rise of Austin and Rock, with the two of them being very much "right place right time" in the pop culture sense for the characters they portrayed.

Yet that era of wrestling drawing such huge numbers was basically a flash in the pan; by late 2001 the fall had already began, and one big factor, I truly believe, was that the audience was basically burned out by the "don't miss a moment!" booking style.

Unless you have characters like Austin or Rock who become real cultural touchstones in their time, people are just going to get worn out by crash TV. You basically had Hulkamania run nearly 8 years, but the Attitude Boom was done in less than 3.

[Glitch]

There were a lot of people who only watched wcw and nothing else, so they stopped watching wrestling after it folded. There's no was pretty much no way Vince was gonna get these people to add to the ratings. If they didn't watch during the monday night wars, they sure as weren't gonna watch when their favorite promotion was being made to look like the scum of the earth.

[Deleted]

Look here is the thing. There were 2 types of wrestling fans back then. Firstly the people who loved sports entertainment and the other fans who loved wrestling matches.

SE fans were WWF while Wrestling fans were WCW.

When Russo joined WCW which was overcrowded with old wrestlers who couldn't wrestle, he tried to turn WCW into a SE company. The WCW Fans, myself included were horrified. We didn't want to see backstage crap, we wanted the matches. But Russo still argues to this day that if a headlock was applied we would change the channel. That is WWF BS. So he killed WCW

When WCW was gone, we didn't have any pro wrestling to watch. WWF wasn't going to help us there, just more SE crap that we didn't want to see in the first place. When two wrestlers are in the ring, the last thing I want to see is a mic in their hands. Wrestle a damn match!

So most fans accepted that wrestling was dead and moved onto MMA and other things.

[Slingshot Suplay]

I watched WWE until the reign of terror, then I just devoted more time into the nba and didn't come back to wrestling until I watched TNA in 2007. Now if they fold, I think I'm done with wrestling because I can't fathom the thought of WWE being the only game in town again.

[Hit Girl]

They all died