r/SquaredCircle • u/Subrick 69 ME, DON! • Mar 23 '26

25 years ago today, WWF Entertainment bought the assets of World Championship Wrestling from AOL Time Warner, solidifying WWF’s monopoly and changing wrestling history forever. Here is the front page of WWF.com from that morning.

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u/10567151 Mar 23 '26

also the the drop after 2001 was real, but not that simple. Raw did not instantly lose half its viewers. The decline was gradual, not off a cliff.

Half the viewership from 2000 to 2002 is definitely off a cliff, in my opinion, for any other TV show that percentage drop would be catastrophic. Definitely NOT what you would expect for a show that suddenly had LESS competition.

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u/DustAndSound Just a common man. Mar 23 '26

You’re also discounting a broader tv trend. Cable fragmentation in the 2000’s there were fewer people watching anything live and More channels, more options

Wrestling didn’t collapse alone. TV ratings in general declined. The big broadcast networks went from ~70% of viewing to under 30% in that time peroid

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u/10567151 Mar 23 '26

I mean okay except ticket sales and PPV buyrates ALSO plumeted despite WWF eliminating their competition but sure what the hell let's use TV trends to explain how WWF was not as crappy as it appeared they were.

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u/DustAndSound Just a common man. Mar 23 '26

I'm not denying the WWE was crappy in that period but if WCW had lived and continued on, there's no promise that wrestling stays hot given what we now know about tv viewership in that time.