Is WWE (WWF to the old fans) still popular?

When I was younger (8-11) I loved WWF, however now I find it laughable (not an attack, just an opinion).
 
Nobody I know still likes it or talks about it and I never see it advertised or any merchandise on sale.
 
I was just flicking through the sports channels and WWE raw was on so I decided to flick on and it seems exactly the same (crowd wize) They are as pumped as ever!
 
What is your opinion on the matter? Do you love or hate wrestling?
 
As I typed this, Meat Loaf started singing to a wrestler in the ring out of nowhere. It is possibly the most random thing I have ever seen...

Its a fucking soap opera just with less fighting

Its nowhere as popular as it used to be but it still has a lot of loyal viewers and pulls in decent ratings every week. Its been awhile since i watched it but i know TNA wrestling is trying to compete with them. I kinda see now its mainly a pre-teen, teen type of thing where you really love and start to slowly grow out of it.

TBH, it appeals to the younger age demographic now. It's more about storylines and stuff at this stage than it is about some guys beating the hell out of each other. If they spent less time building up a story, and more time with people beating the shit out of one another, it'd be a much more popular topic. The other main reason that I lost interest incredibly quickly was due to the fact it's fake. If there were even some real moments in it all, it would be a more interesting spectacle.

I remember seeing Mankind getting chucked off the top of the Hell in a cell cage and being mesmerised. Damn that must have been painful.
 
@xMP44x I can see what you mean. It looks WAY less violent than I remember.

I used to love it in the eighties. My only gripe was the superstars would always have matches against the "nobodies". However, once in a while on Saturday iirc, the superstars would face each other in matches. It was the best Saturday night programming a kid could ask for. I outgrew WWF almost two decades ago. While I am aware that the superstars no longer have matches against nobodies (smart move), I'm quite surprised it's still popular today. I look at today's generation as being very cynical, and Wrestling being something the internet generation would write off as FAKE = not worth their time. I have not watched it since the eighties, so I'm fairly ignorant to it, but it must be doing something right to still be hooking in fans.

As a kid I loved wrestling.  
I usually still tune in about once a month, just wish they'd cut out the awful women's wrestling. 

Have you seen the southpark episode W.T.F.
Sums it up

"Have you seen the southpark episode W.T.F."

Pro wrestling is dead in my eyes. I still watch the old matches on YouTube and DailyMotion on occasion when wrestling actually was entertaining but today's excuse for American "wrestling" is lame. Mixed martial arts is kicking wrestling's ass and Dana White is a President/promoter with balls. Dana will fire Anderson Silva if he ever loafs again. You think Vince McMahon would have the balls to fire John Cena, Randy Orton or his son-in-law Triple H? Never.

" @armaan8014 said:

"Have you seen the southpark episode W.T.F."

Haha! Great reference. "

 
Sure,its great,and i still like it!
 
I loved Shawn Michaels til he retired this year =( 
 
But i have to say,it was better before.

I liked it back when I was like 10 but it's gotten old for me, after wrestling I got into mma.

Wrestling is for kids and retards. If you grew up and stopped liking it, congratulations, you're not a retard. Though I still think it has some value in watching to laugh at its sillyness occasionally every now and then. Like, once a year.

It's not nearly as popular as it once was, but WWE still brings in solid ratings. Unfortunately, we're in the PG era, where less swearing, no blood, no titillation from the female wrestlers and no chair shots to the head can occur.  
 
Personally, I'm liking TNA a lot. The not-old-timer wrestlers, like AJ Styles, Jay Lethal and D'Angelo Dinero have a ton of personality and always put on a great show. Also I have a huge crush on Velvet Sky so I'm totally biased.

I used to love the damn thing, but since it became WWE... it's really not been the same. I miss all the old dudes!

Yes. It pulls in pretty good ratings.

It's definently not as popular as it was 5-10 years ago, but I still watch RAW most every week with my friend. We actually went to Wrestlemania 25 together (and he managed to get us seats in row 4. Pretty awesome). I think the shift to PG is a little odd (heck, they don't even really allow blood anymore. They'll stop a match so the wrestler can be stitched up if they start bleeding a lot during a match), but if they want to try to get the next generation of audience, I can't really blame them. I don't really watch TNA, and I was kind of wishing they were doing better (they recently tried moving to Monday nights to try to compete with the WWE, but after getting thrashed in the ratings, they moved back to Thursday nights) so there was more competition like during the Monday Night Wars with WWE/F and WCW.

Last year I was still way into it, but some things happened in my life and I didn't have the time to watch it every week like I used to. I actually went to Wrestlemania 25 and the RAW the following night. It was my first live experience at a WWE event, and man, it was awesome. But I'll be the first to say that it's gotten really shitty in the past five or six years. As others have mentioned, WWE is going for the PG demographic now, so anything you have fond memories of from the old WWF won't be happening. I really wish TNA had more of a following so that they could compete more directly with WWE, because as it stands now, WWE feels soulless.

Here's your typical WWE fan. He's going to the PPV on May 23 in Detroit. The picture says it all:  
 

Not as much as I used to. It went from age certificate of 18/15 to a PG now! No blood, punch's don't even look so good anymore either and there's hardly any use of weapons too.  I know its fake but they still go through a hell of a lot of pain to do their job. I prefer TNA more now compared to WWE. I think that WWE was much better back in the 80's until the year 2000. Although going to see it live is still a really great experience.

Again, I used to be a fan, it's just something I grew out of. 

Still enjoy playing the games occasionally, they can be a lot of fun to play with some friends.  But then again, all we do is make our own created guys and use them.  I'd be happy enough if they released a version that didn't have any of the current wrestlers in it at all and just told you to make everything yourself.

As long as there's a midwest and grade school kids the WWE will remain popular.

Yeah I was WWF-obsessed during my childhood years (completely lost interest by 15-16, 2000-01). Obviously being young was a big reason I (and a lot of others) were into it. I could never bash wrestling as a whole even now, due to how big of a part of my kid years it was. It would be like bashing my childhood. But, it's still alright to look back at how cheesy some of it (then and now) is. It hasn't really changed much at all in terms of formula and new ideas, and I think that's another part of why we don't hear about it anymore. Even if we were kids when we loved it, it was new then - it was evolving, becoming more racy, etc. They have nowhere to go now. And as far as I'm concerned the newer characters they've been coming up with will never match up to the awesome simplicity of a hero type character like Bret Hart, for instance. 

i stopped watching after the end of the attitude era and after rock/stone cold left. 

I used to love wrestling but i just cant watch it anymore. It got so terrible its just bad

I haven't been able to really get into that stuff since the days of "The Rock and Sock Connection" and when Edge and Christian used to belt out other wrestlers theme songs on kazoos.  Still catch it on occasion, but without competition, WWE's gotten stale and without comedy I get bored quickly.

Everyone goes through phase where they watch wrestling. It lasts about a year or two then you go on with your life.

i love the WWE, still....

" Have you seen the southpark episode W.T.F. Sums it up "

It's lost almost all of its mass appeal. But it still brings in a ridiculous amount of revenue. 

Has it really lost it's appeal? Or have most of us just grown out of the age when that ridiculous stuff is still interesting. I'm not sure it has really changed that much, but rather we have just gotten older and wiser, and now see it for what it is.

It's repetitive. Really needs some more creative writing? Why not have someone sell their soul to the undertaker and become unstoppable? I think the McMahon's should watch some anime before working on the next story.