Jump The Shark Moments

[JaymeFuture]

Inspired by a comment funkdoc made a few weeks ago, this weeks podcast will be looking at classic "Jump The Shark" moments in wrestling history, and as always, we want your nominations for ones in your own wrestling viewing experience.

 

The question of course, is what moment was the straw the camel's back that made you stop watching a certain promotion, stop watching in general, or that turned friends of yours off the world of wrestling, and why? Feel free to elaborate.

 

As always, the best contributions will be read on the show and you'll be credited accordingly. So what moment stands out for you as when a wrestling company jumped the shark?

 

EDIT - The show discussing Jump The Shark Moments in wrestling history, and your nominations, is now online and available to listen to at the following link: http://squaredcirclegazette.podbean.com/mf/play/5yzejn/SCGRadio61-JumpTheSharkMoments.mp3

[goc]

Seth Rollins ruining the Mania main event with a MITB cash really torpedoed my interest in WWE. At this point I'm not even interested enough to steal their PPVs, I haven't watched a PPV since June when I dumped my Network sub. Usually I would at least torrent their big shows even when I wasn't watching weekly.

[Lust Hogan]

Whenever Hulk Hogan was in WCW and a mummy (The Yeti maybe??) broke out of a block of ice. I stopped watching for a long time.

 

The HHH Evolution Four Horesmen cosplay was another period I stopped. I really disliked that reign.

[TheDuke]

I stopped watching completely for like 11 years when the Invasion angle ended with WCW losing and completely being written out of storylines, although them "merging" with ECW to become the "Alliance" I had already thought was really stupid. I did still kind of follow it up to Mania to see the NWO, but Hogan turning back to the yellow and red was were I completely stopped, a I knew it wasnt getting any better.

[Smack2k]

Whenever Hulk Hogan was in WCW and a mummy (The Yeti maybe??) broke out of a block of ice. I stopped watching for a long time.

 

The HHH Evolution Four Horesmen cosplay was another period I stopped. I really disliked that reign.

 

And then that Mummy (The Yet-ay, at Tony Schiavone proudly said) promptly came to the ring and, with the Giant, Double Humped Hogan in the middle of the ring....that's shark jumping 101.

[BillThompson]

I've stopped watching WWE twice while actively continuing to watch other wrestling.

 

1) When Triple H beat Goldberg back in 2003. I realized it didn't matter who was over or if storylines made sense anymore. Trips was a made man and WCW was dirty, so he had to go over and Goldberg had to lose. I didn't tune back in for about a year after their Elimination Chamber match, and even when I did I realized it was more of the same and I checked out again soon after that.

 

2) When Seth Rollins cached in at WrestleMania 31. It ruined what was a great match, and it made a guy who had almost no heat, was weak as heck, and wrestled a style I didn't care for as the face of the company. I tuned back in from time to time, but when Seth would give a 20 minute rambling promo that elicited no reaction from me, or the crowd I would leave again. Then I'd come back and watch some pimped match of his, think it was either trash or mediocre at best, and I knew that Seth just wasn't a guy I want to watch wrestle, talk, or do anything.

[funkdoc]

wow, thanks =)

 

personally, i consider this to mean moments that caused large numbers of fans to abandon a promotion. think of papa shango being the last nail in the coffin for 80s fans, katie vick doing the same for the attitude era crowd, or justin credible winning the ECW title and holding onto it forever.

 

you could interpret it to mean your own personal jump the shark moment, but i'm more interested in the above...

[Laz]

Not a booking one, but the Benoit tragedy definitely killed interest for a lot of people for a good bit of time.

[Death From Above]

I stopped watching WWE for a while during the Attitude Era and went full WCW when they did the angle where Terri Runnels took a bump that caused a "miscarriage". It was the last straw of Russo inspired distasteful angle that I just didn't want to see anymore of. The angle made me uncomfortable, it was inappropriate for wrestling in general, and the whole show at that point no matter how high the ratings were was terrible.

 

This may have actually been on the RAW where Mankind beat Rock for the title vs. the Fingerpoke of Doom Nitro? I can't remember the whole timeline, but anyway I didn't watch RAW regularly after that.

 

So of course then WCW hired Russo. Great. Just great.

[khawk20]

wow, thanks =)

 

think of papa shango being the last nail in the coffin for 80s fans

 

 

When his voodoo made Ultimate Warrior sick, that was it for me for a few years.

[victory]

Edge and the whole Rated R superstar gimmick with Lita. I couldn't believe what those two were doing on tv. Way worse that anything the Attitude era produced IMO. I'm sure there was worse, but for some reason this just really turned me off as it was so over the top.

[fakeplastictrees]

WWE's Reality Era really sticks out for me as far as recent JJTS moments are concerned, in large fact due to WWE's willingness to maintain a huge amount of kayfabe in one hand while reality, shoots, and legitimate behavior rests soundly in the other. This has lead to several weird situations like the Ziggler/Lana/Rusev post-engagement angle as well as WWE personnel cutting promos about the stupid internet fans and then bragging about NXT Brooklyn selling-out, Youtube views, and Trending Topics. It all comes off like an old crazy man telling his family he will step out into the sun all the while refusing to leave his recliner while kicking and screaming as his family carries him outside for the first time in a decade.

(more on this later)...

[dexstar]

Had a friend in college who was getting into Raw (this was like ... 2006ish or so) a bit after watching it with us a few weeks in a row. Then there was a big show ending brawl (can't remember who attacked who) and JR was screaming about it being a "Katrina-like catastrophe"

 

That was it for him

[Migs]

After the Montreal Screwjob, I didn't buy a WWF PPV for over two years.

[Lust Hogan]

Yuji Nagata getting beaten in a MMA match right before the Tokyo Dome show hurt New Japan for a while.

[PhilTLL]

Had a friend in college who was getting into Raw (this was like ... 2006ish or so) a bit after watching it with us a few weeks in a row. Then there was a big show ending brawl (can't remember who attacked who) and JR was screaming about it being a "Katrina-like catastrophe"

 

That was it for him

Oh FFS. I don't think I ever heard that and it's almost it for me retroactively. Especially dismal coming from a guy who spent years working in Louisiana and Mississippi.

[dexstar]

 

Had a friend in college who was getting into Raw (this was like ... 2006ish or so) a bit after watching it with us a few weeks in a row. Then there was a big show ending brawl (can't remember who attacked who) and JR was screaming about it being a "Katrina-like catastrophe"

 

That was it for him

Oh FFS. I don't think I ever heard that and it's almost it for me retroactively. Especially dismal coming from a guy who spent years working in Louisiana and Mississippi.

 

 

After posting that and looking for the clip I started to think maybe the entire thing was hallucinated, but I texted a friend who also remembered, and found some independent corroboration:

 

http://wrestlingclassics.com/.ubb/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=9;t=066524

 

A little off on the wording in my memory but same principle.

[The Thread Killer]

This angle did it for me. I had been a WWF/WWE fan since the early 80's, and this was the straw that broke the camel's back. It was a long time coming, and there were plenty of things that led up to that point, but prior to that I had always maintained an interest in the WWE product, watched Raw and Smackdown, and pretty much all the PPV's. I can honestly say that since the Triple H/Booker T angle, WWE hasn't gotten nickel one from me that I can recall, and if they ever have, it has never been anywhere NEAR the money I used to spend on them. I paid for every PPV, tons of home video releases, live event tickets and merchandise for years and years, and all of that stopped with this angle.

 

I'm not one of those thin skinned easily offended types, nor am I a knee jerk liberal who takes offense or sees a double meaning in every nickname or catch phrase. It wasn't JUST the blatant racism that offended me about this angle, although that was a large part of it. It was the fact that the WWE later actually tried to claim this story was good storytelling, and stating in an article on their website written by some jackass named Brian Solomon (which later vanished) that it was good vs. evil during which good would triumph. Anybody who knows how the eventual Triple H/Booker T match went, knows how "good" won out in this story. Then they tried to claim the story wasn't actually about race for a while, that was classic. The whole ordeal was just so wrong headed (as opposed to nappy headed, as Triple H called Booker T) that I just gave up.

 

I encourage anybody who forgot or didn't see that angle to click the link I provided. I know it's from Wrestlecrap, but they actually did a good job of documenting how bad that angle was - with sound bytes to prove the case, no less.

[Coffey]

The one break I took from wrestling was right around 1993 when Hulk Hogan was phased out of the WWF main event, with the steroid trial & him eventually going to WCW.

 

From the end of his WWF reign until the nWo angle started, I think I missed all of wrestling. Then WCW got hot & I came back & started watching that.

 

I went from being a kid loving Hogan as a comic book style super hero, to being a young teenager kinda over wrestling to being an older teenager cheering for Hogan as a bad guy.

 

So the break for me, not necessarily a Jumping-the-Shark moment was Hogan leaving WWF.

 

Which instantly made me think of him winning the title again from Yokozuna after Bret Hart lost which was a super Jumping the Shark moment. People were tired of the same old shit.

[Mad Dog]

I didn't watch any wrestling for about 5 years after Benoit killed his family.

[DMJ]

Stopped watching wrestling entirely for a good 4-5 years around the end of 2000. To be honest, I'm not entirely sure what the final straw was - but Undertaker as a biker, the switch over to TNN, the nu-metal inspired theme songs and oversaturation of the WWE brand, and the fact that the war with WCW was essentially over by the end of 99', my fandom was weakening just as the WWE was seemingly going more and more mainstream.

 

As weird as it sounds, though, I can say with 100% certainty that it *wasn't* the Austin heel turn. My fandom was already pretty dead by then.

 

To be honest, I actually think the moment that made me say, "Fuck this shit, I'm gonna start going to see punk bands and try to meet chicks" was the "I did it for the Rock" angle. I was a big Austin fan and when he came back only to feud with Rikishi, who I never saw as anything more than a midcard comedy character and the ratings just seemed to go up and up and up...I knew there wasn't anything "cool" or "outsider" about being a wrestling fan.

 

So, yeah, I'm going to say that Rikishi's push was the jump the shark moment for me for the WWE.

[Parties]

I can't recall if I ever stopped entirely, but 2003-2004 RAW was a dull, cynical show that became really distasteful and depressing to watch. "HHH/Evolution cosplaying the Horsemen" is a good way of putting it, but there were so many bad (or badly booked) acts that I disliked: La Resistance, 3 Minute Warning, Steiner, Kane, Michaels, Hurricane, Heidenreich, Snitsky, Simon Dean, Eugene, the Dudleys, Conway, Nowinski. It was like all the gross parts of roided-up early 90s WWE spliced with the saddest parts of ECW and dumbest parts of WCW.

 

Smackdown was of course far better, but something about Thursday made it a show I caught even less often in those pre-DVR/uber-internet times.

[NotJayTabb]

I've stopped watching WWE twice while actively continuing to watch other wrestling.

 

1) When Triple H beat Goldberg back in 2003. I realized it didn't matter who was over or if storylines made sense anymore. Trips was a made man and WCW was dirty, so he had to go over and Goldberg had to lose. I didn't tune back in for about a year after their Elimination Chamber match, and even when I did I realized it was more of the same and I checked out again soon after that.

 

Yeah, this drove off a number of my friends too. There used to be a bunch of us who would chip in to watch PPV's together, and that EC match was the final straw for them. We'd spent two years getting more and more frustrated as Triple H charmlessly beat a load of our then favourites (Jericho, Booker, RVD), so we were all hoping that Goldberg would put us out of our misery once and for all....then one sledgehammer shot ended all that hope. I'd not seen my friends so deflated since England lost to Argentina in the 98 World Cup. Some of us watched Mania XX the next year out of habit, but the group was halved, and most of them gave up on wrestling entirely.

[grapplin' apple]

For me, it was 1989 WWF and the Zeus vs. Hogan feud. It's the point that I stopped watching wrestling because that angle was so....corny. I've always generally hated celebrities involved in wrestling, and this is one of the most egregious examples of bad celebrity usage. Even though '89 was a great year for WCW, towards the end of that year I felt that it had drifted too far away from how it was presented in JCP.

 

I also think I was disheartened that many of my Crockett heroes (JCP was always my favorite followed by World Class and then AWA followed by WWF) "transformation" in the WWF. I couldn't believe what Dusty, Arn and Tully, Ronnie Garvin, and the Sheepherders were turned into in the WWF, particularly the Sheepherders because they were terrifying to me as a kid. I grew up devouring the Apter mags and my next door neighbor was a HUGE JCP/southern territories fan which shaped my views on how wrestling should be presented.

 

I didn't get back into it until mid-'95 with the advent of Nitro and have been a hardcore since. I watched casually from about '90 to '94 meaning watching the Clash once a year and maybe catching a Raw. If we received SMW where I lived, I'm sure I would have gotten back in a few years earlier.

[Loss]

Benoit offing his family considerably dropped my interest until the yearbook project started, and even then, it was Benoit killing his family combined with all the other ugly stuff it exposed about wrestling.