The evolution of professional wrestling has been, for lack of a better term, a roller coaster. As of right now, I feel as if we’re going down very fast. I don’t know if it’s the end of the ride, but as far as roller coasters go, if it is, it just needs a little bit of time. We need new wrestlers we can use, we need new ideas, and we probably need a new coaster. Sometimes it feels that we’ve already done everything we can do, but that has yet to be seen.

The beginnings of pro wrestling were rather humble. At the outset, each part of the United States had its own circuit. Each circuit had its own stars, and every circuit kept to themselves, recording their shows and sending them to local television stations and getting their name out the old-fashioned way. This went well for a long time and created a lot of stars, until the owner of the northeastern circuit, Vincent K. McMahon, Sr., passed away. When this happened, the company went to his son Vince McMahon, Jr.

Vince McMahon, Jr. had an idea that would change wrestling forever. I’m sure that every other promoter had the same idea, but these promoters respected the other territories. They didn’t try to interfere in other circuits’ business because they were all making decent money. Vince’s idea was to ship his recordings to every television station around the company, creating a national circuit. This eventually put all other wrestling circuits out of business or forced them to the brink. This gave Vince the chance to create his empire.

Now, the WWE basically holds a monopoly on pro wrestling, aside from smaller companies like TNA Wrestling and a huge assortment of independent companies, like Ring of Honor. It seems like Vince only starts putting things into gear when he has competition, such as the Monday Night Wars, which was a weekly ratings battle between the WWE and the now-defunct World Championship Wrestling, owned by media mogul Ted Turner. How does a man who just owns a wrestling company go up against a man for whom media flows in his blood? Fear. Fear of going out of business. As of right now, though, Vince does not feel this fear because his only other competition is regularly on the verge of bankruptcy.

At the beginning of the Monday Night Wars, Vince noticed he was losing not only his audience to WCW, but also a lot of his top stars, such as Hulk Hogan, Randy Savage, Scott Hall, and Kevin Nash. This forced Vince McMahon to start creating newer and bigger stars. But once again, since he no longer has serious competition, he doesn’t feel like he needs to. When the pressure was on, Vince could create huge stars like the Rock, Stone Cold, Triple H, and the Undertaker, but without that pressure, he just uses his old stars over and over again.

Now, I understand he has created John Cena and Roman Reigns, but is that really it? Out of all the memorable moments he’s had creating new stars in the past, he recently decided to use Triple H and the Undertaker as a main event during one of the biggest pay-per-view shows of the year. It’s as if he’s scared of losing his old fans and just wants to keep business steady. As a wrestling fan of twelve years, it’s hard to watch. I still remember when John Cena started his rise and it was one of the coolest things ever.

I can also acknowledge that a series of events such as Eddie Guerrero dying and the Chris Benoit incident has led the WWE to have less edgy content and the current political environment has also scared Vince to do things like this, but to even get rid of blood on the show? They still use it sometimes, but why so sparingly? Not many people I’ve encountered have a problem with blood, so why use it like this? Most of the people that watch WWE also watch UFC, so there should be no problem with this issue.

In my opinion, we can turn this around, but it won’t be easy. Just use new stars. Brave the storm. You’ll lose some viewers, but you’ll gain new ones. You will put new eyes on your product if you just switch it up. There’s an episode of Kitchen Nightmares I saw where tone of the guys was afraid to change his menu because he didn’t want to lose his current customers and that’s exactly what I see here. Vince isn’t young anymore and older people can get stuck in a mindset that’s very hard to break out of. And as long as he’s still the main man running the company, he’s going to keep business just like this. He needs to give it to Triple H, Stephanie McMahon’s husband and Vince McMahon’s son-in-law. I’m not saying that every new idea will be amazing, but they’ll be fresh and wrestling can evolve.

I want to keep watching, and a lot of my friends today do too, but the more I talk to people about what they thought about what happened on a show the night before, more and more people tell me they just didn’t watch. They say “boring” or “repetitive” mostly, and it’s sad because I never heard those words pertaining to wrestling when I was growing up. Maybe they’ll turn it around, maybe they won’t. All I am sure of is that people want it.