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Post by "Gizzark" Mike Wronglevenay on Jul 6, 2020 17:31:57 GMT -5
When I had no access, between 2002-2006 or so, I stopped watching. I've been a fan in some capacity ever since. You missed the Reign of Terror, so you were lucky there. Yep I got to go back and watch just one Shawn vs. HBK match, decide that it was already too long, and not watch any more of themGod being a Raw fan at that point would have sucked. If I had continued in the same vein, when I only had Smackdown, I'd have been thinking I was missing such epic shit on Raw...
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ssdrivin
ALF
Claims to be squishy, has yet to be proven.
Posts: 1,042
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Post by ssdrivin on Jul 7, 2020 4:57:05 GMT -5
I started with the Attitude Era, both in terms of shows and games, and it was only ever WWF that I had any kind of access to (and even then not consistent access), which I think coloured my perception of what wrestling was.
Before I saw AE stuff, I had no real interest, I was only passively aware of what wrestling looked like (Hogan era stuff, very 80s, etc), and the AE stuff gave me something to latch onto, but I think that being the highest high of WWF/WWE was its downfall for me - the only place it could go was down. Which it did. A lot. Many of the wrestlers I'd become familiar with left, retired, or died, the whole style changed, everything got replaced by blandness in the early to mid 2000s and it never really recovered for my tastes. I tried to stick with it, I watched on and off during the 2000s and 2010s, but there were periods where I just stopped bothering for a while because there was no substance left, it seemed so toned down, and there weren't really those characters any more that I could really care anything about.
In the last half a decade or so I've been reduced to more or less just WrestleMania because it's still a big event and I know - or at least I believed - that it'll be the one show that matters. Trouble is, I'm not even convinced by that any more, because it seems to matter less and less, it's not that big exclamation mark I used to see it as and there seem to be so few feuds in it that have the weight to them that a WrestleMania needs.
I did try TNA for a while, a serious effort to get into it, though not for some time now (the last big angle I remember seeing was Aces and Eights) and I did pay up and watch AEW's first proper PPV because I wanted to support what seemed to be a promising new entry into the roster of potential top companies, but I just didn't have the passion to stick with it, despite encouraging signs.
Do I still appreciate what wrestling is? Would I still defend it when people seem unsure of its worth? Do I still understand why other people enjoy it? Yes, of course, all of those things. But I just don't seem to have it in me to put the effort any more into seeking out whatever it is I specifically and personally found in wrestling 20 years ago. I realise I'm allowed to just not care about wrestling and it ultimately doesn't matter if I went cold on it, but what kept me trying for all those years was the knowledge that there's some flavour of wrestling I know I can like and follow. I'm just not sure the industry wants to go in that direction again though, so that style/presentation/approach, along with the passion I once had for it, must remain dormant for the time being.
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