6 Indicators of WWE's Popularity Analyzed

#1 Star Power and Mainstream Appeal?

The present and the past

WWE has created some very well known personalities. Hulk Hogan was a mainstream icon, Stone Cold Steve Austin was legendary and The Rock is the biggest movie star in the world today. Even John Cena has established himself in Hollywood and Kane rather unconventionally won the election to become the mayor of Knox County. WWE always rode on superstardom and larger than life characters. The likes of The Undertaker, the ones mentioned above, Triple H, Batista, and Shawn Michaels were legitimate draws and carried the company.

Today, however, WWE seems to be more interested in promoting itself as an integrated product. The stars it tries to create pale in comparison to ones of yesterday. Roman Reigns is awesome and a real-life inspiration. But, he is nowhere near as popular as John Cena was who in turn was less popular than The Rock and Steve Austin. This is reflected in the fact that Bill Goldberg is the Universal Champion at 53 years old and that Undertaker and John Cena need to be brought back to sell tickets for WrestleMania. Even the entire story about Edge relies heavily on nostalgia and is good in the short run but, shows the company's inefficacy to create stars.

When I was a kid, everyone in school knew who Cena was, who The Undertaker was and who The Big Show was. Watching WWE was not encouraged by parents but, was still fairly popular. Several consumer products such as had WWE related marketing. However, today in college, very few watch WWE and know the current roster. They are empowered and proud and wear t-shirts of their favorite superstars but, hardly ever does wrestling become a topic for conversation. The popularity of Marvel and other digital media has pushed WWE pout of the mainstream and this can be seen as one of the ill-effects of the formation of a separate community of wrestling fans.

To conclude, WWE seems to be in a very different, yet paradoxical situation today. It is still a global giant but does it still have the same magnitude of appeal it used to, but differently? What do you think?

There have been both positives and negatives of this phenomenon and I hope WWE can continue to be the success it is known to be going forward.