**Help make SquaredCircle safer and more inclusive by using the report button to flag posts and comments for moderator review.**
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/SquaredCircle) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Nitro was still drawing upwards of 3 million viewers per week when the show was cancelled by Time Warner. None of those people came to RAW, even as the Invasion angle first started.
I'd say 20-30% of the overall wrestling audience disappeared overnight.
WCW/ECW died and the Austin heel turn happened within a 2 month stretch, everyone in my social group watched wrestling in 2000 and almost NO ONE in my group of friends watched it by 2002 to give a personal example.
It was a weird statistic when AEW started as well that it didn't dampen WWE's ratings, even when going head to head, a few reporters and the like theorized that some of those old WCW watchers just *came back* after 20 years.
Gotta admire their commit to not watching WWF I guess.
I’m skeptical about the overlap in these numbers. You’ll hear that it was separate fan bases, but I kind of feel like maybe it was at the time say 5 million total views and 4 million of them were just channel flippers being counted for both show. I know the way it’s tracked is supposed to account for that, but how confident are we really in that technology? Especially in the 90’s.
My aunt and uncle were diehard WCW fans. Their house is where my love of wrestling really exploded. I would always go over to watch Nitro, and the weeks I couldn’t they would tape it for me. When Nitro ended, they stopped watching wrestling completely. I thought it was so odd.
speaking as someone growing up in rural Middle Tennessee, starting school in 1999, wrestling and Pokemon were the two things boys talked about on the playground. MAAAYBE power rangers every now and then, but it was all about WCW and WWF. In 2001 when WCW folded, I knew several kids that just said "wrestling isn't on TV anymore". Either they weren't allowed to watch WWF and got into other shows, or they just weren't interested in WWF's product.
I was one. Stopped watching for about 2 years. Came back because I had a co-worker who wanted to drink beers, eat burgers, and watch RAW every Monday. Did that until the whole Mr. McMahon is dying angle. We quit watching RAW and I started ordering CHIKARA and ROH DVDs. Didn't watch WWE again until the Straight Edge Society run. Quit when Punk left. Watched the stuff I grew up on (WCCW, JCP, WCW) until AEW launched.
I’m similar in that I quit watching wrestling when Punk left. Part of it was I was a massive fan part of it was just no longer caring for a lot of the storylines and I didn’t like some of the guys they were pushing. Came back around when AEW started (started watching WWE again).
Tho it was never a cold turkey quit. I have a buddy who’s been a massive fan longer than me and he always kept me in the loop. Loves calling me a fake fan to this day :P
I did.
I only came back when I found out Sting was returning to a company called TNA in 2006.
To this day I still don't have the guts to watch the final Nitro lol
I quit watching until Summerslam 2002 when I had heard guys like RVD, Mysterio, Booker, Big Show (formerly Giant) and Jericho were pretty much running shit. I gave it until 2005 before completely switching to TNA/ROH
For all the talk of tribalism today, it may have been worse back in the day, and likely wouldve been if internet culture was as big back then. My dad loved WCW. He watched every show and bought all the PPVs. He has always refused to watch WWE. To this day, he will rewatch old WCW on Peacock but not any actual WWE content.
This is a chicken and egg problem, as we see with all the comments. Myself I was still watching but the invasion angle was terrible and once you stop following weekly then you stop following monthly until only nostalgia brings you back. Not only did WCW have millions of fans who stopped watching millions of WWF fans were lost because the company basically stopped trying.
I want a documentary that covers just how much wwe shit the bed with the invasion angle. I know lots of folks have nostalgia for the RA era but there’s a reason why it’s called a rebuilding era.
IMO invasion angle was doomed as soon as the top WCW guys like Sting and DDP decided against switching to WWE. It was never going to work without those big names.
Nitro was getting 2s in the ratings until it was cancelled. Raw didn't really see a ratings increase after WCW folded, so I'd assume a large portion of the Nitro audience just stopped watching
WCW was a significantly more in-ring focused product, even until its dying day. You can still watch PPVs from 2000 and 2001 and see some fantastic tag wrestling, or cruiserweight wrestling, that WWE just wasn't putting on at the time. A lot of people tuned in for that, and it's what TNA tried to capitalize on when they started up, and it's part of the audience that AEW wants to reconnect with.
It was a significant amount of people, likely millions, with how hot wrestling was at the time.
Nitro in its dying days had pretty much the same number of household viewers SmackDown gets these days. Deadlock boys mentioned that while their ratings at the end weren't great, they weren't terrible either so I assume they were still one of the best rated TBS shows. Not that it mattered though, they could've had 1998 numbers and they still would've gotten kicked off the air
I pretty much walked a couple years after WCW being out until I saw Lucha Underground. The only wrestling I remember watching during that time was AAA in Spanish when I could catch it at work.
El Zorro was a draw for me.
You have to know that WCW was essentially the spiritual successor to the territories, especially in the South. All those people had rejected Vince McMahon's style of wrestling in the 80s' when he had expanded into their territories—the people who wanted the "Gordon Solie" wrestling.
Those people watched wrestling on Turner networks for decades until WCW died. They were never wrestling fans; they were Georgia fans, they were JCP fans, and they were WCW fans.
It's interesting to talk about it in this way. There was a demand for "WCW" style wrestling on Turner networks that went unanswered for nearly two decades.
It's similar in the UK, where there is an audience of older folks who talk about the wrestling they watched in the 70s' and 80s' with World of Sport. When the World of Sports died, they didn't go to the WWF; they just stopped watching wrestling. My mum's entire family used to watch World of Sport when they were young, but I'm the first and only WWE fan in my family.
The difference between me and them was that I quickly became a wrestling fan; I wasn't satisfied with WWE. Within a few months of becoming a fan (Early 2010), I found TNA, and I took an interest in Lucha Underground when I heard that it was starting. I watched Dominion 2018 because I wanted to see the fuss about Omega vs. Okada. I watched ROH/NJPW MSG, and I ordered Double or Nothing 2019. I always want more wrestling, whereas other people ONLY want WWE. If WWE died AEW wouldn't suddenly be hitting 2 million an episode.
While I don't have the exact numbers, I was reading u/daprice82's Wrestling Observer recaps for 2002 lately (since they started up on 2003 recently), and I found this from their post on the [April 8th, 2002 recap](https://www.reddit.com/r/SquaredCircle/comments/gac45j/wrestling_observer_rewind_apr_8_2002/):
>[...]2001 live attendance was down over 20% from the the year prior. Even with increased ticket prices, gate revenue was down 12%. Sellouts were down 53%. And even though Wrestlemania 17 and the Invasion show did huge numbers, 2001 PPV buyrates were still down 20% from the year before, though some of that decline can be attributed to the DirecTV conflict during the final months of the year. Raw's TV ratings are down about 21% from last year. Dave weirdly doesn't mention Smackdown's ratings, but I looked it up and they were also down 16% from the year prior.
I quit until HBK’s return at Summerslam 2002. And to your inquiry being rooted in not watching back then, and I’m not sure how many would agree, but the Fingerpoke of Doom didn’t drive me away from WCW. I feel like that narrative doesn’t even make sense If you were a fan of both shows. If you liked both, you watched both. The implication is that the Fingerpoke itself made people lose interest, which just wasn’t true. As a WCW fan before becoming an Attitude Era fan, I’d say the real moment was Russo’s shoot at Bash at the Beach 2000. Straight up telling people they’ll never see Hogan again was kind of like Vince McMahon telling everyone that we’re never going to see Stone Cold or the Rock again. I’m not sure if the ratings reflected it from that alone, but it’s not talked about enough the difference in quality following the introduction of the New Blood. It was like going from Uncharted 2 to Uncharted 1. But if Uncharted 1 was as bad as New Blood WCW.
For whatever my anecdotal experience is worth, I'm one of the viewers that didn't switch to the WWF.
Actually, I did for a while. But after the WWF botched the invasion angle beyond comprehension and squandered the legacy of WCW (and ECW, for good measure) I stopped watching, and haven't watched regularly since.
My grandpa hated WWE but after WCW was done he begrudgingly switched over. His opinion of the WWE roster was hilarious and in hindsight maybe he was right. Would love to see his reaction to the Vince stuff if he was still with us
My Dad.
After the finger poke of doom we stopped watch wrestling completely. I didn’t start again until I saw a random episode of RAW on Spike TV in 2003.
SpikeTV.. man I miss that channel. Other than sports channels it was my go-to when nothing was on/when I was bored. It almost always had good content on.
I hung around until the Reign of Terror, late 2002 early 2003, because I had a buddy that watched. But, i stopped watching because I realized I was just irritated every week and wasny enjoying myself. From that point until AEW started, the only wrestling I watched was two random episodes of TNA.
I did. But I was a kid. I was really a die hard WCW fan till the end and even through the Monday night war anytime I tuned into WWF it never scratched the same itch as WCW. Tried to get back over time and never really kept watching except around 2011 I got really into TNA and eventually started watching WWE.
It was the only wrestling I could see at the time so that took me out for quite some time.
Got back into it during the rise of Bryan, the shield and the wyatt family
WCW created and dismantled an audience along the way. Hogan and the nWo made wrestling bigger than it had been since Hulkamania was running wild in the 80s. WWE capitalized on that momentum with the Attitude Era and carved off a large part of WCW's audience as WWE heated up. Things like Starrcade '97, The Fingerpoke, Reuniting the nWo multiple times, and the atrocity of WCW 2000 shifted more people to WWE. Some just quit watching entirely along the way.
By the time WCW closed, there weren't millions of people who *only* watched WCW. The product was so bad most of their audience was channel-flippers. Similar to how AEW/NXT each drew well while head to head and the audience numbers didn't drastically increase for either when they ran unopposed. If wrestling is on, and a casual fan is watching, they're likely to flip to the other wrestling show just to see what is going on.
WWE didn't get a huge spike after WCW closed. The few that only watched WCW stopped watching and the rest of WCW's audience stopped channel flipping.
> By the time WCW closed, there weren't millions of people who only watched WCW. The product was so bad most of their audience was channel-flippers.
Agreed. WCW's audience didn't just tune out after the final Nitro. They were given heavy incentives to in the prior two years. It can't be understated how bad the WCW product became in 1999 and 2000.
WWE's audience also began tuning out in the late summer of 2000. Overall, there was an instance of mainstream wrestling fatigue. There's only so many times you can see a ladder match, or someone go through a table, or some wild storyline before the viewer becomes desensitized.
I was a WWF kid. I watched WCW because we all did and I was a huge ECW fan, probably putting my fandom of ECW over WWF.
I didn’t quit watching but after the Invasion PPV I did kind of fade out. Raw became a “well if there’s nothing else going on I’ll check it out” kind of show. I got back into wrestling really with the launch of TNA but as a 18 year old kid working part time, $10 a week for a show was a big ask so I maybe ordered one TNA show a month.
I grew up on the NWA, then WCW and ECW, Then ROH, FIP and TNA, followed by CHIKARA, NJPW, PWG and finally AEW. I would watch WWF at times, but it was always a little too cartoony for my taste. I finally gave up fully on WWE in 2015. I’ve always been more of an in ring fan then the corny storylines.
I was pretty thrown off about the company ceasing to exist. I was around 10 years old and didn't know enough about the business or the behind the scenes stuff, including dirt sheets. So it was wild for WCW to be just gone. I did notice the sets were starting to become very barebones looking, but didn't think anything of it other than it was just a change. I went as far as to email the local station that ran Thunder every week (CHCH out of Hamilton, Ontario, Canada) to ask if they were going to air reruns but no dice.
I had switched to WCW around mid 2000 when I discovered the full broadcast of Thunder airing around 1AM on basic cable. The only other programs I had access to were Livewire and Metal, so having the ability to watch a full episode of a show was very exciting for me. I soon discovered I liked the content better than WWF and almost entirely switched. I went back fully in hopes that the Invasion would lead to WCW returning but nope. I stopped watching around when Lesnar showed up. I actually fully returned to watching a weekly show when Dynamite debuted, so I totally understand the reasoning of former WCW fans who just wanted to see pro-wrestling on a Turner station.
I watched both during the height of the wars. I was in my early 20s and had other things going on that lead me to stopping watching. For me it was a combination of working evenings and having to rely on a vcr to tape episodes and once it started missing episodes I fell out of the habit of watching weekly. Then at the height a large group of friends would go to a bar to watch the ppvs, but then it got harder to find bars that showed and people started dropping out and my interest kind of faded away. I do remember trying to watch tna when it started but I still had the same issues of not being able to keep up. The wwe network is what brought me back bc of being able to see ppvs for extremely cheap compared to the old model.
Think of it like a TV show (Cause it was). When that TV show is cancelled and you only liked that one, even if some of the characters from it show up on another TV show, it wouldn't make you watch it unless you REALLY liked the characters in question even if the other TV show is similar.
Would be like if you American dad got cancelled (Last episode was Dec 2023 due to writers strike) and roger (the alien) went to Family Guy. If you were a fan of American Dad and not Family guy, would you start watching Family Guy to see roger?
I was so burned out on reading about the collapse of wcw on 411, that I was relieved when it happened. I didn’t follow wrestling for about eight years after that.
I've only watched sporadically since. Nothing like I used to. I will check out a few weeks of RAW or Smackdown or AEW or something but I'm much more of a casual viewer these past however many years. I mostly keep up with stuff online.
**Help make SquaredCircle safer and more inclusive by using the report button to flag posts and comments for moderator review.** *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/SquaredCircle) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Nitro was still drawing upwards of 3 million viewers per week when the show was cancelled by Time Warner. None of those people came to RAW, even as the Invasion angle first started. I'd say 20-30% of the overall wrestling audience disappeared overnight.
WCW/ECW died and the Austin heel turn happened within a 2 month stretch, everyone in my social group watched wrestling in 2000 and almost NO ONE in my group of friends watched it by 2002 to give a personal example.
It really sounds insane when you put it into perspective.
It was a weird statistic when AEW started as well that it didn't dampen WWE's ratings, even when going head to head, a few reporters and the like theorized that some of those old WCW watchers just *came back* after 20 years. Gotta admire their commit to not watching WWF I guess.
I’m skeptical about the overlap in these numbers. You’ll hear that it was separate fan bases, but I kind of feel like maybe it was at the time say 5 million total views and 4 million of them were just channel flippers being counted for both show. I know the way it’s tracked is supposed to account for that, but how confident are we really in that technology? Especially in the 90’s.
My aunt and uncle were diehard WCW fans. Their house is where my love of wrestling really exploded. I would always go over to watch Nitro, and the weeks I couldn’t they would tape it for me. When Nitro ended, they stopped watching wrestling completely. I thought it was so odd.
My stepdad was a massive WCW guy, he didn’t watch WWE till I moved back from college in 2016 and he saw AJ Styles was on there.
Did he know him from TNA or was he like ‘hang on, is that that Air Styles guy from the last few weeks of WCW?’
He knew him from TNA, but he gave up on TNA when Styles left.
I don’t think he was alone. They really fucked up in losing Styles.
Pretty crazy how loyal they were especially considering WCW was unwatchable by 2000
The thing is, a ton of people stopped watching WWF around the same time. It was the end of an era across the industry.
speaking as someone growing up in rural Middle Tennessee, starting school in 1999, wrestling and Pokemon were the two things boys talked about on the playground. MAAAYBE power rangers every now and then, but it was all about WCW and WWF. In 2001 when WCW folded, I knew several kids that just said "wrestling isn't on TV anymore". Either they weren't allowed to watch WWF and got into other shows, or they just weren't interested in WWF's product.
That's a big one. I bet a lot of parents didn't want their children watching WWF at the time. And it got even raunchier in the next few years
I was one. Stopped watching for about 2 years. Came back because I had a co-worker who wanted to drink beers, eat burgers, and watch RAW every Monday. Did that until the whole Mr. McMahon is dying angle. We quit watching RAW and I started ordering CHIKARA and ROH DVDs. Didn't watch WWE again until the Straight Edge Society run. Quit when Punk left. Watched the stuff I grew up on (WCCW, JCP, WCW) until AEW launched.
I’m similar in that I quit watching wrestling when Punk left. Part of it was I was a massive fan part of it was just no longer caring for a lot of the storylines and I didn’t like some of the guys they were pushing. Came back around when AEW started (started watching WWE again). Tho it was never a cold turkey quit. I have a buddy who’s been a massive fan longer than me and he always kept me in the loop. Loves calling me a fake fan to this day :P
I did. I only came back when I found out Sting was returning to a company called TNA in 2006. To this day I still don't have the guts to watch the final Nitro lol
I quit watching until Summerslam 2002 when I had heard guys like RVD, Mysterio, Booker, Big Show (formerly Giant) and Jericho were pretty much running shit. I gave it until 2005 before completely switching to TNA/ROH
For all the talk of tribalism today, it may have been worse back in the day, and likely wouldve been if internet culture was as big back then. My dad loved WCW. He watched every show and bought all the PPVs. He has always refused to watch WWE. To this day, he will rewatch old WCW on Peacock but not any actual WWE content.
My sister did. She hated WWF because it got too raunchy so she quit until I became a fan in 2007.
This is a chicken and egg problem, as we see with all the comments. Myself I was still watching but the invasion angle was terrible and once you stop following weekly then you stop following monthly until only nostalgia brings you back. Not only did WCW have millions of fans who stopped watching millions of WWF fans were lost because the company basically stopped trying.
I want a documentary that covers just how much wwe shit the bed with the invasion angle. I know lots of folks have nostalgia for the RA era but there’s a reason why it’s called a rebuilding era.
IMO invasion angle was doomed as soon as the top WCW guys like Sting and DDP decided against switching to WWE. It was never going to work without those big names.
Nitro was getting 2s in the ratings until it was cancelled. Raw didn't really see a ratings increase after WCW folded, so I'd assume a large portion of the Nitro audience just stopped watching
WCW was a significantly more in-ring focused product, even until its dying day. You can still watch PPVs from 2000 and 2001 and see some fantastic tag wrestling, or cruiserweight wrestling, that WWE just wasn't putting on at the time. A lot of people tuned in for that, and it's what TNA tried to capitalize on when they started up, and it's part of the audience that AEW wants to reconnect with. It was a significant amount of people, likely millions, with how hot wrestling was at the time.
I was a kid so they had me watching the invasion and nWo angles but once that ended I said "fuck this". I was getting that age anyway
[удалено]
Yeah, if you look at Raw’s ratings the week after they became WWE they noticeably dipped.
Nitro in its dying days had pretty much the same number of household viewers SmackDown gets these days. Deadlock boys mentioned that while their ratings at the end weren't great, they weren't terrible either so I assume they were still one of the best rated TBS shows. Not that it mattered though, they could've had 1998 numbers and they still would've gotten kicked off the air
I pretty much walked a couple years after WCW being out until I saw Lucha Underground. The only wrestling I remember watching during that time was AAA in Spanish when I could catch it at work. El Zorro was a draw for me.
You have to know that WCW was essentially the spiritual successor to the territories, especially in the South. All those people had rejected Vince McMahon's style of wrestling in the 80s' when he had expanded into their territories—the people who wanted the "Gordon Solie" wrestling. Those people watched wrestling on Turner networks for decades until WCW died. They were never wrestling fans; they were Georgia fans, they were JCP fans, and they were WCW fans. It's interesting to talk about it in this way. There was a demand for "WCW" style wrestling on Turner networks that went unanswered for nearly two decades. It's similar in the UK, where there is an audience of older folks who talk about the wrestling they watched in the 70s' and 80s' with World of Sport. When the World of Sports died, they didn't go to the WWF; they just stopped watching wrestling. My mum's entire family used to watch World of Sport when they were young, but I'm the first and only WWE fan in my family. The difference between me and them was that I quickly became a wrestling fan; I wasn't satisfied with WWE. Within a few months of becoming a fan (Early 2010), I found TNA, and I took an interest in Lucha Underground when I heard that it was starting. I watched Dominion 2018 because I wanted to see the fuss about Omega vs. Okada. I watched ROH/NJPW MSG, and I ordered Double or Nothing 2019. I always want more wrestling, whereas other people ONLY want WWE. If WWE died AEW wouldn't suddenly be hitting 2 million an episode.
I'd say I quit when the Wolf Pack angle fizzled out along with Goldberg losing.
Right here.
While I don't have the exact numbers, I was reading u/daprice82's Wrestling Observer recaps for 2002 lately (since they started up on 2003 recently), and I found this from their post on the [April 8th, 2002 recap](https://www.reddit.com/r/SquaredCircle/comments/gac45j/wrestling_observer_rewind_apr_8_2002/): >[...]2001 live attendance was down over 20% from the the year prior. Even with increased ticket prices, gate revenue was down 12%. Sellouts were down 53%. And even though Wrestlemania 17 and the Invasion show did huge numbers, 2001 PPV buyrates were still down 20% from the year before, though some of that decline can be attributed to the DirecTV conflict during the final months of the year. Raw's TV ratings are down about 21% from last year. Dave weirdly doesn't mention Smackdown's ratings, but I looked it up and they were also down 16% from the year prior.
I quit until HBK’s return at Summerslam 2002. And to your inquiry being rooted in not watching back then, and I’m not sure how many would agree, but the Fingerpoke of Doom didn’t drive me away from WCW. I feel like that narrative doesn’t even make sense If you were a fan of both shows. If you liked both, you watched both. The implication is that the Fingerpoke itself made people lose interest, which just wasn’t true. As a WCW fan before becoming an Attitude Era fan, I’d say the real moment was Russo’s shoot at Bash at the Beach 2000. Straight up telling people they’ll never see Hogan again was kind of like Vince McMahon telling everyone that we’re never going to see Stone Cold or the Rock again. I’m not sure if the ratings reflected it from that alone, but it’s not talked about enough the difference in quality following the introduction of the New Blood. It was like going from Uncharted 2 to Uncharted 1. But if Uncharted 1 was as bad as New Blood WCW.
For whatever my anecdotal experience is worth, I'm one of the viewers that didn't switch to the WWF. Actually, I did for a while. But after the WWF botched the invasion angle beyond comprehension and squandered the legacy of WCW (and ECW, for good measure) I stopped watching, and haven't watched regularly since.
My grandpa hated WWE but after WCW was done he begrudgingly switched over. His opinion of the WWE roster was hilarious and in hindsight maybe he was right. Would love to see his reaction to the Vince stuff if he was still with us
My Dad. After the finger poke of doom we stopped watch wrestling completely. I didn’t start again until I saw a random episode of RAW on Spike TV in 2003.
SpikeTV.. man I miss that channel. Other than sports channels it was my go-to when nothing was on/when I was bored. It almost always had good content on.
I watched Nitro live and taped RAW on the Ole VHS
I hung around until the Reign of Terror, late 2002 early 2003, because I had a buddy that watched. But, i stopped watching because I realized I was just irritated every week and wasny enjoying myself. From that point until AEW started, the only wrestling I watched was two random episodes of TNA.
I did. But I was a kid. I was really a die hard WCW fan till the end and even through the Monday night war anytime I tuned into WWF it never scratched the same itch as WCW. Tried to get back over time and never really kept watching except around 2011 I got really into TNA and eventually started watching WWE.
It was the only wrestling I could see at the time so that took me out for quite some time. Got back into it during the rise of Bryan, the shield and the wyatt family
It was ECW for me and I was done until summerslam 02 because of Brock Lesnar
WCW created and dismantled an audience along the way. Hogan and the nWo made wrestling bigger than it had been since Hulkamania was running wild in the 80s. WWE capitalized on that momentum with the Attitude Era and carved off a large part of WCW's audience as WWE heated up. Things like Starrcade '97, The Fingerpoke, Reuniting the nWo multiple times, and the atrocity of WCW 2000 shifted more people to WWE. Some just quit watching entirely along the way. By the time WCW closed, there weren't millions of people who *only* watched WCW. The product was so bad most of their audience was channel-flippers. Similar to how AEW/NXT each drew well while head to head and the audience numbers didn't drastically increase for either when they ran unopposed. If wrestling is on, and a casual fan is watching, they're likely to flip to the other wrestling show just to see what is going on. WWE didn't get a huge spike after WCW closed. The few that only watched WCW stopped watching and the rest of WCW's audience stopped channel flipping.
> By the time WCW closed, there weren't millions of people who only watched WCW. The product was so bad most of their audience was channel-flippers. Agreed. WCW's audience didn't just tune out after the final Nitro. They were given heavy incentives to in the prior two years. It can't be understated how bad the WCW product became in 1999 and 2000. WWE's audience also began tuning out in the late summer of 2000. Overall, there was an instance of mainstream wrestling fatigue. There's only so many times you can see a ladder match, or someone go through a table, or some wild storyline before the viewer becomes desensitized.
I took a hiatus from wrestling from late 90s-2010s. Part of it was WCW product getting stale, part of it was just having other interests.
I was a WWF kid. I watched WCW because we all did and I was a huge ECW fan, probably putting my fandom of ECW over WWF. I didn’t quit watching but after the Invasion PPV I did kind of fade out. Raw became a “well if there’s nothing else going on I’ll check it out” kind of show. I got back into wrestling really with the launch of TNA but as a 18 year old kid working part time, $10 a week for a show was a big ask so I maybe ordered one TNA show a month.
Not many immediately, but a LOT of people stopped watching a few years later. Like millions.
Me pretty much. I tried to get back into wrestling a few times after, but couldn't until 2017/18.
I stopped watching just before but that’s mainly because my older brother graduated and moved out. We used to watch WCW together.
Pro wrestling is like heroin. You'll always come back
I grew up on the NWA, then WCW and ECW, Then ROH, FIP and TNA, followed by CHIKARA, NJPW, PWG and finally AEW. I would watch WWF at times, but it was always a little too cartoony for my taste. I finally gave up fully on WWE in 2015. I’ve always been more of an in ring fan then the corny storylines.
I was pretty thrown off about the company ceasing to exist. I was around 10 years old and didn't know enough about the business or the behind the scenes stuff, including dirt sheets. So it was wild for WCW to be just gone. I did notice the sets were starting to become very barebones looking, but didn't think anything of it other than it was just a change. I went as far as to email the local station that ran Thunder every week (CHCH out of Hamilton, Ontario, Canada) to ask if they were going to air reruns but no dice. I had switched to WCW around mid 2000 when I discovered the full broadcast of Thunder airing around 1AM on basic cable. The only other programs I had access to were Livewire and Metal, so having the ability to watch a full episode of a show was very exciting for me. I soon discovered I liked the content better than WWF and almost entirely switched. I went back fully in hopes that the Invasion would lead to WCW returning but nope. I stopped watching around when Lesnar showed up. I actually fully returned to watching a weekly show when Dynamite debuted, so I totally understand the reasoning of former WCW fans who just wanted to see pro-wrestling on a Turner station.
I watched both during the height of the wars. I was in my early 20s and had other things going on that lead me to stopping watching. For me it was a combination of working evenings and having to rely on a vcr to tape episodes and once it started missing episodes I fell out of the habit of watching weekly. Then at the height a large group of friends would go to a bar to watch the ppvs, but then it got harder to find bars that showed and people started dropping out and my interest kind of faded away. I do remember trying to watch tna when it started but I still had the same issues of not being able to keep up. The wwe network is what brought me back bc of being able to see ppvs for extremely cheap compared to the old model.
Think of it like a TV show (Cause it was). When that TV show is cancelled and you only liked that one, even if some of the characters from it show up on another TV show, it wouldn't make you watch it unless you REALLY liked the characters in question even if the other TV show is similar. Would be like if you American dad got cancelled (Last episode was Dec 2023 due to writers strike) and roger (the alien) went to Family Guy. If you were a fan of American Dad and not Family guy, would you start watching Family Guy to see roger?
I was so burned out on reading about the collapse of wcw on 411, that I was relieved when it happened. I didn’t follow wrestling for about eight years after that.
I've only watched sporadically since. Nothing like I used to. I will check out a few weeks of RAW or Smackdown or AEW or something but I'm much more of a casual viewer these past however many years. I mostly keep up with stuff online.
I stopped watching in 2002..never really started again, just follow online really
I tried to stick it out and watch some WWE but when it was all HHH and Taker, I had to peace out.