When pro wrestling began to suck...

In my opinion, it started to suck more(it sucked at anytime in some departments, like every ongoing show does)when Wrestlers became Drones instead of Superstars and wrestling began to suffer when it started to have amnesia with its stories.

To put it up front, I like wrestlers(not the guys behind) like Bret Hart, Scott Hall, Jake Roberts, HHH, the Rock, Rob van Dam, Booker T, Jeff Hardy, Goldust(although Dustin Rhodes was just horrible as wrestler) and Shawn Michaels. Not to big, but no "vanilla midget". And right now, I watch WWE in Smackdown - Nxt -Raw - Superstars order.

Big problem is the booking of Cena:
People who compare Cena with Hogan(the other PG Hero) astound me. Cena is as lifeless as they come, never learns anything from his matches and never, absoutely never changes or keeps a good storyline going, he's a commercial break without having a break. I don't even buy in the propaganda that he is a shitty wrestler, he's at least average. He has a presence which he isn't allowed to use except for children which makes him the equivalent to Barney the Dinosaur. Just look at Hogan's return to Smackdown, his epic team up with Savage as the Megapowers or his fight against the Rock or Warrior, people of all ages went crazy for Hogan, so its no PG problem.

Second Liners:
Curently, you have Cena to orbit around. It was Hogan in the golden Age, so just compare and think of who you would like to see more often:
Hogan: Savage(no explanation needed I guess), Rude(Tom Selleck after 100+ hours in the gym), Flair(wooo!), Earthquake(his taunt was better than a whole segment of Brodus Clay), Sid Vicious(Ruler of the World!), Ultimate Warrior(no explanation needed), Ted Dibiase Sr(great gimmick), Mr Perfect(Chewing gum made this guy come over), Jake Roberts(...trust me...), Undertaker(no explanation needed), Yokozuna(monster who could do a belly to belly suplex even when extremely fat), Slaughter(american traitor and hero, everybody and their dog hated or loved this guy). Not a single drone!
Cena: CM Punk(over, great upper midcarder, so so main eventer in my book), Daniel Bryan(YES!, but was extremely dull until recently), Heel Big Show(brings in the ratings, tries to get Punk to the dark side like poor Kane tried with Cena. Solid upper midcarder.), Kane(poor guy, so much work at Cena for nothing. Solid upper midcarder), Orton(I like Orton, but I can see why many people call him the king of drones. Main Eventer for me.), Brock Lesnar(aka Bork Laser, lol. Main event calibre, sadly not interested in wrestling), Sheamus(upper midcarder. What went wrong with this guy? First a brawler and now Cena 2?), Ziggler(meh. Just a guy in a pink shirt with a briefcase right now. I liked aggressive Ziggler more), Cody Rhodes(drone and cannon fodder in every aspect, give the man his mask back), Alberto del Rio(remotely interesting sometimes. Most of the times not.), Tensai(Lord Trainbert. Meh.), Kofi Kingston(very good babyface and obviously nice guy. Over, but nobody from WWE gives a shit. Racism? I don't know), the Miz(just meh, beard or not. Upper midcarder), Christian(upper midcarder at least, main event likely.)
Main point here is that nobody of the second liners except punk has been build up to pose a real thread to Cena, even Lesnar was fed to him. Hogan was tortured by his enemies, even when he defeated them in the ring most of ther time. Heels now are cowards in all aspects, pretty boring to watch.

Undercard/Midcard:
Come on, give the guys a chance and a gimmick! Michaels would have never broken out if Santana hadn't put him over at WM and Sherrie's management. I like the booking of Sandow, Slater, Cesaro and Kidd atm.
*How Curt Hawkins can rot on Superstars is beyond me, that guy screams edgy Michaels to me.
*Same with Yoshi Tatsu, give him a proud warrior heritage like he already tries to sell, and let him loose.
*Swagger, all american american. Why does this man not hold and defend the US title as a face, with a manager of course? I am not even american and would buy that.
*Zack Ryder brought himself over. If that wasn't so absurd, I would think Vince hated that and wanted to see it stop.
*And please, let Dean Ambrose debut. I am pretty sure he will flop hard, but I can't stand the howling voices of his fans any more^^

But no, WWE likes to push guys like Ryback(Rob van Goldberg, rolling thunder jackhammer combo ftw!), Jinder Mahal(whose main point is being indian looking...) or Ezekiel Jackson(...).

Diva division:
Sucks big time. I don't get it, is it so hard to push women like Beth, Natalia(!) Neidhard or one of the girls from NXT with an at least average match on Raw or Smackdown? They can do it, we've seen it all with McCool vs. Maryse at the last time.

Going to try and not start a fight like I did last time....but I gotta rebut some of these.

You think Rob Van Dam is a good wrestler and isn't a drone? He has had almost the exact same match since 2002! Even his specialty matches, (Ladder, Hardcore, ect,), are all becoming the same. He hasn't done anything different in years and his refusal to put other people over is getting annoying. Aside from Orton, because RVD was leaving, who else has gotten a major big time win over RVD? Jeff Hardy? Is that it?

With Cena...the IWC has been talking the same shit about Cena since 2005 and apparently have not watched any of his stuff since 2005. I used to hate him myself, but around 2010, the guy really started to impress me. His work has improved, he has added new moves to his set, while keeping his usual signatures, has had several impressive matches over the last few years, and for someone so "lifeless" he has still drawn the loudest reactions of any superstar on the roster, with only Rock and Lesnar's returns drawing louder. He's become a decent to good talent who can be very entertaining and, while less often, very serious as well. The IWC loves to hate the guy, but honestly, they hate him because the IWC hates everyone that is popular.

Punk, Bryan, and Ryder were the IWC's main guys, the ones they just lavished love and praise upon. Then the three of them got their pushes and won titles....and the IWC just dropped them flat and turned on them. Thats what the IWC does and it is all they do. They lavish and praise and build a guy up and flat out demand that WWE pushes them, and if that person gets pushed, they turn right around and slam that guy because now, all of a sudden, he sucks. The IWC is dogs chasing cars. They have no idea what to do if they catch one, so they try to catch another. The IWC cant support a wrestler, because they don't by the PPVs that they main event, they don't buy his merch, they don't do anything outside of typing. So when Ryder got a push, and the IWC backed away, not knowing how to support someone who got what they needed, they turned on him and then he got dropped. Miz, Christian, Del Rio, Ziggler, Rhodes, all of them got the same treatment.

Sheamus still brawls, but he did expand his moveset and is trying to learn to do promos. Not to mention he has been putting on really great matches this year alone. Ziggler is one of the best "young guys" in the company right now and is certain to be a champion in the future. His shirt color, his tights, his hair, everything he is doing right now is making him stand out from the others in the company, and it will hopefully pay off soon. Rhodes is insanely talented and has future main eventer written on him, his promos are entertaining and his fued with Big Show was way better then anybody expected, if not as good as the Big Show vs Mark Henry fued. Del Rio is entertaining, a good showman and decent talent, but probally not World Title worthy except for short 3 month reigns here and there, still better then Mysterio, the Underdog that rarely loses.

Lesnar was fed to Cena!? Did you even WATCH that match?! Lesnar DESTROYED Cena! It was 15 minutes of Lesnar just raping the crap out of the guy! Cena's win was out of lucky shot that came because Brock took his time to play around. Seriously, another issue I have with the IWC's attitude, is that anytime a wrestler loses even one match, then "now he's a jobber, now he's being fed to this other guy" blah blah blah. Lesnar looked just as badass after the loss as he did before it. His mauling of Cena let him keep his credibility after his loss. Now after his match with HHH at Summerslam, THEN we will see if he is going to be fed to someone or able to keep credibility afterwords. The Cena/Lesnar match was just fine.

Ill agree with you that Hawkins and Tatsu need to be moved up more, and that Ryder deserved better after working his ass off to get noticed without any help from WWE. But Swagger? Swagger isn't worth it. His moveset just reeks of Kurt Angle, even without that intention, and, partly due to his lisp, his promos are crap. The guy is permanent midcard, the Swagger as champ experiment bombed. Santino gets a better reaction just with his Cobra puppet. As for Dean Ambrose...fuck that guy. He's an asshole who got big over in the worthless trash heap called CZW. Then he has the nerve to say its Mick Foley's fault that guys in CZW do what they do. Thats bullcrap, Foley didn't grab Ambrose and force him to use glass tubes and cheese graters and shit, that was all Dean Ambrose's choice, and if he had any real talent whatsoever, he never would have had to join CZW in the first place.

As for the Diva's....Who cares? Sure they haven't been good since 2005-6ish, but they occupy a total of 8 minutes out of your life. Just sit back and enjoy the eye candy.

In short, the IWC (And Harrier, just to be clear, I'm actually not labeling you as an IWC guy exactly, so don't take offense, although I will say that your views are similar to their's, I'm still keeping you and them seperate, so this last part isnt about you.) has no idea how to enjoy wrestling, has no idea how to support a wrestler once they get a push, and, while they complain of the lack of new main eventers, they choose to utterly shut down and bitch about every single new main eventer that comes along, and constantly wish that the shitty Attitude Era would return. Personally, I want 2002-2005 back. But that is wishful thinking, so I just watch the show, and some stuff is meh, but on the whole, I'm very entertained by what I see.

I actually enjoy to argue about wrestling, think there is no really heat argument here " title="Wink" />

*RvD is repetive, yeah. You have seen one RvD match, you have seen probably 50% of his matches, you watch a second, you've seen them all. But you just know he can do better, the same as you could expect with the Hitman(diverse covers, wicked suplexes etc etc), and you hope for the one action that shovels him out of the routine, making the match more exciting for me.

*I just can't find excitement in a Ryback match, and I really tried to give a chance. He was actually better as Skip Shefield in my opinion.

*Cena is at least average as a wrestler and delivers at least at PPVs in the ring, no questions asked. It's his extremely boring, hypocritical and stale presentation making him unpopular in the IWC. I don't even think Cena is responsible for that, it's WWE trying to hold on the one sure draw they have like you said. And for the Lesnar match, it was probably a bad comparison and he got more beat up then usual. But seriously, have you seen any match where Cena doesn't get beat up and returns smelling like a rose? Return to RAW after the match with Rock for example. Grinning like a dumbass and he was a good sport at Wrestlemania but nothing important happened there? People booed the shit out of him in the RAW after WM and celebrated Brock Lesnar, but in vain. He rises above hate but dunks Cole(who granted, is annoying as shit) in BBQ sauce? Just let him loose clean!!! then and when to a guy in a feud that is not the Rock(twice per year maybe to an upcoming superstar, at a B-PPV like NoC or Elimination Chamber?), then I would be pretty happy with him to sell merc and grin into the camera. His trollface while AAing Wade Barett some time ago was quite funny and outraged probably every smark available^^

*I wouldn't be mad if Punk returns to his upper midcard position, Bryan staying there and Ryder staying solid Midcard. But which people will excite us as top guys when Cena retires or gets hurt? Hogan -> Warrior -> Hart -> Michaels-> Austin/Rock -> Cena -> ? If Cena is the only top dog left, will he job like crazy for the new star(s) cause of no alternatives or Jericho returns when he is 50? Giving new guys prolonged chances please?
Shawn Michaels for example was actually an average wrestler and horrible promo guy when part of the Rockers. Janetty carried him, and I think even Michaels knows that and is thankful, you could probably see it when they reunited against La Resistance or even more when he jobbed to him for the IC Belt, as fucked up as he probably was then. The first solo adventure of the Hitman bombed royally at Survivor Series, and lets not talk about jobbing Edge in WCW or Hardy in WWE.

Mid/Undercard:
*The first guy with a halfway gimmick among the drones coming to my mind is A-Ry. Bad to Average ring worker. But his theme is kicking, the A-Bomb motion is a nice touch and the man has some presence. Where is he? Superstars.
*Sin Cara Negro. That was brilliant by accident, Sin Cara had a Nemesis from the start! But look where he is now, riding a Bike in NxT as a mexican gangster...
*I honestly laughed at the Genesis of McGillicuty(From this moment on, now, this moment...) and would like see him get a second chance at the big league.
*I thought that Swagger is crap while he was champ, thought he was crap as contender for the IC, and horrible as a team wrestler with Ziggler. But as you with Cena, I watched a match with him where he did not get squashed and realized that he can really go in a ring, Kurt Angle style. Maybe that makes him indeed Kurt Angle 2, but Angle isn't there anymore, and I prefer to have a Midcard angle over no Angle(ok, he's in TNA, but still) in WWE at all. He of course desperately needs a manager or a valet talking for him, maybe an all american american diva(Kaitlyn?) turning him face and into an honest patriot?

I am with Tai on this one. You HArrier are absolutely wrong about everything.

I love RVD... but seriously, the guy can't sell a story. His reaction to everything is the same. Won a championship, he is down with it. He lost the title, he is down with it. Abyss tried to murder him, he is down with it.

And Cena. I hate Cena because it is fun to hate Cena... but he has improved a lot. His matches with CM Punk are awesome.

Was it a contest to see who could write a longer post about pro wrestling?

+1 Tai

One thing I have to disagree with is Cena's reactions getting louder. That's incredibly false. His reactions have been growing colder by the week. He no longer entices a crowd to boo him fiercely or cheer him enthusiastically. There will be the tiny "Lets go Cena-Cena Sucks" chant every now and then, but it's becoming to be that the crowd doesn't seem to care anymore, which is VERY bad. Also Merchandise sales? False. Cena drawing more ratings? False