How will the wrestlers from the 80s/90s be seen by future fans/wrestlers?

[JRH]

Hogan's death got me thinking about this, how will future generations of fans see guys like Hogan, Savage, Andre, Flair, the Von Erichs, Austin, Rock, Goldberg, etc? Will they still be considered legends, or will they eventually go the route of guys like Thesz, Verne Gagne, and Bruno, where they're known to be big stars, but the fans have never seen their matches (though the fact that all those guys have much more available and higher quality footage than Thesz, Verne, and Bruno does help)? As for wrestlers, will we see wrestlers influenced by them (even if just partially), or will they be more influenced by the guys of the 2000s on up?

[Laz]

The same way you don't see many current filmmakers influenced directly by classic movies from the 30s-60s, but rather taking the ball from those whose work in the 70s-00s was impacted by them, is how future generations of fans and talent will view the 80s/90s workers. 

So expect a retro wave sometime in the next decade.

[Dav'oh]

Sorry to be literal, but they'll be seen in three-minute clips, given the alarming drop in attention-spans.

Their theme song, them posing, a couple of big moves and a raised arm, all set to some shit music. Why watch Flair-Windham 90 minute draws when a Tik-Tok clip can tell me everything important about the Nature Boy? (Hardcore fans excepted.)

Live crowds will be conditioned enough to pop for legends' returns, so their egos should be fine.

[El-P]

They already are passé and have been for a long time. Even a guy like Dax Harwood who says he's influenced by Bret doesn't work remotely like Bret apart from a spot here and there. The current generation is already mostly influenced by the 00's generation (Styles, Lethal, MCMG, Angle, Orton, Hardies, KENTA, Marufuji and so on). The younger guys are already influenced by the current/2010 generation of the Bucks, Omega, Ospreay, Ricochet, Swerve. And so one. As it should. 

[JRH]

4 hours ago, Dav'oh said:

Sorry to be literal, but they'll be seen in three-minute clips, given the alarming drop in attention-spans.

Their theme song, them posing, a couple of big moves and a raised arm, all set to some shit music. Why watch Flair-Windham 90 minute draws when a Tik-Tok clip can

To be fair, occasionally I'll just decide to watch one of Brian Zane's reviews of PPV matches as opposed to watching the full match, especially if time is a consideration.

[El-P]

7 hours ago, Dav'oh said:

Their theme song, them posing, a couple of big moves and a raised arm, all set to some shit music.

It just occurred to me that you just described every Joe Hendry match ever.

The one thing that will change comparatively to the previous generations, is that now most wrestlers are actual wrestling fans (well, apart from the wannabee influencers, but that's for another discussions) . That and the fact popular culture now is basically geek culture, and geek culture is a lot based around references. Add the fact everything is available in one click, there might be a different approach than the different generations in term of picking up stuff from the past and making it compatible with the never stoping evolution of the craft (honestly that's what happened with guys like FTR, really, who are two millenials wrestling geeks who just fancied themselves as Arn/Tully/MX while not putting on a retro style show and totally adapting to their own time, so basically we've already seen that starting with the 2010's generation, the first who really benefitted of the Internet as a direct ressource, as opposed to being forced to buy and trade tapes).

I for one can't wait to see how the generation raised on being able to watch *everything* thanks to quality streaming will produce. See ya in 10 years !

[ohtani's jacket]

There's a lot more footage available of the 80s and 90s stars than the older stars. Whether anyone will be interested in watching that footage, I'm not sure. There is retrospective interest in older WWF wrestling in terms of podcasts and YouTube video and so on, but it's dwarfed in terms of people's interest in the current product. I imagine that it's always been that way. People are more interested in whatever the latest thing is than older pop culture. Until they get to a point where pop culture passes them by and they gravitate towards the stuff they grew up with, but for the future generations that will be wrestling from the 2010s and beyond.