A No Recent Examples rule applies to this trope. Examples shouldn't be added until five years after the era begins. Please also try to avoid Complaining About Shows You Don't Like.
- It's worth noting that Professional Wrestling and the guys at WWE in particular, are known for having photographic memories, acknowledging as canon almost everything that has happened in pro wrestling (in their own promotion and those promotions that intersected extensively with theirs, at least) since the early 1960s, and sometimes even events before then. So according to WWE's bible, as it were, every age (even if it's an alienating one) is considered legitimate, with more recent eras having precedence, and few Retcons. (This means that Doink is still a face, no matter how much that might rankle.)
- In the early '90s, Hulk Hogan had retired to try acting — then came back to wrestling for the competition, The Ultimate Warrior had decided that he was bigger than wrestling and disappeared, and Vince McMahon was on trial for steroid trafficking. Given all of this, one could forgive the WWF for dropping the ball a bit — but with a failure of the scope of the "New Generation" era (1993-1997), which gave us Lex Luger as a main-event Face, Doink the Clown's misguided Heel–Face Turn, Wrestling Doesn't Pay in full effect, the incredibly tasteless Take Thats at WCW in the form of the "Billionaire Ted" skits, and some of the worst pay-per-view events on record (even if you were guaranteed a great Bret Hart and/or Shawn Michaels match every show), there's an awful lot to forgive. 1995 would be the nadir of the A.A.E., since that was supposedly the year the company was at its lowest in losing money. For most of the year, Kevin Nash was WWF Champion, who arguably one of the most limited champions in the ring that they ever had and was unquestionably one of the worst money draws (JBL was worse at the box office). It wasn't entirely his fault, though; he really didn't have much to work with as far as main event feuds went, since the only three wrestlers people wanted to see challenge Diesel were Shawn Michaels, Razor Ramon, and Bret Hart. Problem is, Diesel-Bret III didn't occur until November (after being subjected to the Diesel-Sid and Diesel-Mabel feuds), Razor was saddled with Jeff Jarrett (and then, the 1-2-3 Kid), and Diesel-Shawn II was held off until April 1996note . Not to mention that, as a face, they ruined Nash's character by turning him from a badass into yet another overgrown boy scout goody two shoes babyface when audiences had already grown tired of them. These days, this era only gets brought up for its few bright spots (usually involving the likes of Hart or Michaels) if somebody wants to mock or embarrass Vince and/or the WWE.
- As an example of how thin the roster was at this point the WWF Raw video game, released in November 1994, had to put Luna Vachon in the game just to get the roster up to 12 people, even though she was barely an active wrestler in the WWF. Really the only other viable option to take that spot was Jeff Jarrett, and most fans would probably agree that going with Luna was the right call. Kwang somehow made the Sega 32X port even though he had already been repackaged into Savio Vega by the time it was released. As another example, WWF WrestleMania: The Arcade Game (released in 1995) only had eight wrestlers.
- Despite WCW acquiring many of the WWF's major 80s talent, the state of the programming was no different to the Fed's back in the mid '90s. At that point in time a much smaller company, they tried to emulate WWF's overtly cartoonish characters, coming up with characters such as Arachniman, The Juicer and the Dynamic Dudes. Then there were the infamously terrible skits that TBS helped produce, such as the one where Sting and Jake "The Snake" Roberts shot laser beams out of their eyes. Don't forget about Oznote , although that was probably more TBS wanting to cross-promote than anything else. Even when Hogan himself arrived to the company, he was playing a tired-looking version of his old character, having lost significant muscle mass and trying in vain to exude the charisma he held in his WWF heyday. While WCW did achieve short-term success with the extremely popular nWo angle, many of its non-nWo elements could be considered in an "audience-alienating era" of themselves, particularly if you were a holdover from the NWA & Georgia Championship Wrestling days.
- Speaking of cross-promotion, RoboCop rescuing Sting
from The Four Horsemen, anyone? How about Chucky coming out and burying Rick Steiner with a promo for his movie during an angle where Rick and Scott were feuding?
- Speaking of cross-promotion, RoboCop rescuing Sting
- Combine the two previous entries and it's no shock that most people in the business consider the period between mid-1992 and the summer of 1996 to be one huge AAE for American wrestling in general. The crowds were small, the payoffs even smaller, and a wrestling industry that had a couple dozen promotions that one could earn a good living in a decade prior was reduced to 2. If you were an American wrestler making good money during this time period it's because you were working for Inoki or Baba, not McMahon or Turner. The WWF actually lost money in 1994 and 1995note , WCW meanwhile had been in the red for their entire existence and wouldn't have a profitable year until 1997. Many consider ECW to be the bright spot, but while they were drawing a lot of attention (though not as much as revisionist history wants you to believe) they weren't drawing a lot of money. The start of the New World Order angle in 1996 finally started pulling wrestling out of the hole, and the rise of "Stone Cold" Steve Austin and the other major figures of the Attitude Era through 1997 and 1998 would kick off the biggest boom period the business had ever seen.
- And then there was WCW's bigger AAE, which ended up being its Company Killing Era. Exactly when it began is debatable, most fans will point to the Fingerpoke Of Doom (there's a reason it has its own page) but a pretty good argument can be made for it starting a year earlier when WCW badly botched the booking of the match between Sting and Hulk Hogan at Starrcade 1997, and it was only hot-shotting Goldberg through the entire roster that kept ratings and buyrates afloat. Shortly after the Fingerpoke the booking was taken over by a committee led by Kevin Nash, which did a great job of boosting the ratings... of Monday Night Raw. Nash was sacked (as booker, he stayed on as a wrestler) in favor of the freshly poached Vince Russo in October 1999, at which point things got much, much worse. Ratings nosedived even faster and Russo was relieved of his duties and replaced by Kevin Sullivannote , revenues did not improve so the Turner braintrust went with the insane plan of bringing Russo and Eric Bischoff backnote in April of 2000. Six weeks later came the final bullet in the form of David Arquette winning the WCW World Heavyweight Championship. While things were falling apart on camera they weren't much better on the business side, spending was completely out of control and combine that with plummeting revenue (PPV buyrates fell 90% between Starrcade 1998 and Starrcade 2000, house show crowds were back down in the mid 3 digit range) and WCW lost somewhere in the neighborhood of $120 million over the last 18 months of its life. Russo and Bischoff would be gone by October, WCW itself would be gone the following March after new Turner head Jamie Kellner cancelled all their shows and WWE (then still the WWF) purchased the promotion's assets for pennies on the dollarnote . More details can be read on WCW's So Bad it's Horrible page.
- Fans of the WWE have been complaining about the new "PG Era", since it's been erected in 2008, claiming that it's neutering the product for the sake of being "family-friendly" again (as well as claims that it's all a deluded attempt to aid Linda McMahon's hopeless run for the US Senate) in hopes of recovering from the post-Benoit backlash. Then, NXT riot on Raw happens and fans are buzzing about what is the most exciting and freshest angle in years. Then, WWE decides to release the most "over" of the rioters, indy darling Bryan Danielson, because he choked out Justin Roberts with the man's tie on camera. Despite the fact that ten years ago, dropping "Stone Cold" Steve Austin off a bridge and lighting Kane on fire was standard fare, Danielson's actions were deemed too menacing and too violent for the project. Fandom now has even more ammo to proclaim that the PG Era will kill WWE. This seems to have died down after Danielson was brought back to WWE two months later, with many seeing this as merely an excuse to write him out of Nexus and become a solo star. The product’s quality is said to have improved significantly since then.
- If there's any reason besides the PG rating that people have complained about present day WWE, it's people feeling the company is far too formulaic and predictable, pointing partially to WWE's suffocatingly tiny main event scene (especially when it comes to faces), especially their insistence on placing John Cena on a tier far above the rest of the roster for most of his 13+ year career, even when whatever he's doing is comparatively unimportant, and even years after large portions of the audience had gotten sick of him. The controversial departure/firing of CM Punk, the career-ending injuries of Daniel Bryan (almost immediately after they had finally pulled the trigger on him as a main event talentnote ) and seeming going out of their way to demote and bury anyone the audience actually wants to see, typically at the hands of the Invincible Villain faction The Authority, did nothing to help this. Some have even drawn comparisons to the aforementioned 1993-1997 era (even drawing humorous parallels between that era's Diesel and present day's Roman Reigns, whose main event push has been notoriously controversial), as staring in 2014, WWE's ratings have been in steady decline. WWE's main roster has even been consistently overshadowed by their own developmental brand, NXT, since about 2014, carried by great indie talents.
- Another issue is the production and formatting of shows. While WWE's shaky camera work and annoying announcers have been drawing criticism even as far back as the Attitude Era, the bigger problem in the 2010s was the USA Network throwing a truckload of cash at WWE to extend Monday Night Raw to three hours, while at the same time adding another hour to the "Big 4" PPVs. Unfortunately this extra time has only resulted in a heavy amount of Padding and shows that are just a slog to watch.note Going into the 2020s one of the bigger complaints is overwhelming amount of commercials and the fact that they are usually shown during the matches, in other words a lot of the wrestling on a wrestling TV show isn't actually on TV. The problem has got even worse with the PPVs (now referred to as "Premium Live Events") since the WWE Network was folded into NBC's Peacock service, now that they're no longer bound to time constraints every PLE is at minimum four hours and the Big 4 will often run over five (or in the case of WrestleMania, two 5+ hour shows on back-to-back nights). Both Vince and former head producer Kevin Dunn leaving the company by the end of 2023 has helped alleviate some of these problems, time will tell what effect Raw moving to Netflix in 2024 will have.
- Is it possible to have an A.A.E. within an A.A.E.? If so, the RAW's infamous "Celebrity Guest Host" era (circa late 2009 - early 2010) certainly qualifies. USA Network mandated there would be more celebrity involvement, so WWE started bringing in celebrities who functioned as weekly General Managers. Most fans hated it, as many of the celebrities hogged screen time for terrible segments (usually involving Chavo Guerrero Jr.'s feud with Hornswoggle where the latter won every match they had), didn't even look like they liked wrestling, and were often using their spot to shill whatever project they had going at the time (there were a few hits such as Seth Green, Shaquille O'Neal and Bob Barker). The only exceptions to this were those guest hosts who were (former) wrestlers (most memorably, Bret Hart in his first WWE appearance since 1997). Thankfully, the gimmick ended some time after WrestleMania 26, with the guest hosts being stripped of booking power and becoming regular old celebrity guests.
- WWE's Women's/Divas Division had something of a golden age in the early 2000's, with Lita and Trish Stratus carrying the division well along with several other talented women. Once they both retired at around the same time, the division fell off a cliff. While the women were largely chosen based on their looks before this, it was around this time where WWE seemed to stop taking the women's in-ring ability into account at all, instead compiling a roster of almost entirely former models and cheerleaders who could barely wrestle (there were a few of exceptions to the rule such as Mickie James, Beth Phoenix, Natalya Neidhart, A.J. Lee, and Paige, but they ended up being Demoted to Extra and/or released from the company). They eventually inflated the roster with so many mediocre women that they created a second Women's Championship, the Divas Championship, which fans complained looked like a toy and nicknamed the "Tramp Stamp Title" for its gaudy pink and silver butterfly design.note Then things got even worse when WWE retired the actual Women's Championship shortly afterward when they mass-released many of the most talented women. WWE even essentially gave up on maintaining the heel/face dichotomy for its women's division, instead opting to have the women be whatever suits the situation best, with wrestlers just suddenly being heel or face for completely unexplained reasons. The perpetual push of the largely untalented Bella Twins as the centerpieces of the division, regardless of if they were heel or face at the time, also turned many people off on it. In 2012, WWE suddenly had a new star on their hands in A.J. Lee when she was moved to play a managerial role for Daniel Bryan. Her work as a love interest like Bryan, CM Punk, Kane, John Cena, and Dolph Ziggler was heavily praised and gave her the popularity boost she needed to re-energize the Divas division a year later. Meanwhile, WWE developmental saw newcomers Paige and Emma tearing up the scene and Charlotte Flair, Sasha Banks, Bayley, and Becky Lynch arriving shortly thereafter. WWE sought to capitalize on this, but their attempt to engineer a "Divas Revolution" in mid-2015 failed so spectacularly that it became co-winner of WrestleCrap's "Gooker Award", with "highlights" including one half of the aforementioned Bella Twins, Nikki, saying "Wins? Loses? Who cares?" (What's worse, Nikki was actually being praised at the time by critics for improving her in-ring work.) Fortunately for everyone, 2016 was able to do what 2015 couldn't and truly get WWE women's wrestling back on track. For starters, more women have gradually come up from NXT developmental to round out the women's roster further, including Bayley, Alexa Bliss, Carmella, Asuka and Ember Moon; the Diva's Championship was retired along with any mention of "Divas" terminology and the Women's Division was reborn, complete with two Women's Championships (one for Raw and one for SmackDown, due to the re-emergence of the Brand Split) and eventually Women's Tag Team champions as well. Women also now get to compete in their own pay-per-view Gimmick Matches that used to be exclusive to men, including Survivor Series, Money in the Bank, Hell in a Cell, Elimination Chamber and Royal Rumble. They even got their own all-women PPV, which was critically acclaimed as one of the best of the year! Between all those advances and a Triple Threat match between Becky Lynch, Charlotte Flair and Ronda Rousey being the main event of WrestleMania 35, it's safe to say that this particular Audience-Alienating Era has well and truly come to an end. If anything, women's wrestling in WWE might be better than ever!
- Before all this, the Women's Title had its own Audience-Alienating Era in the late 90's during the Attitude Era, as its focus on shock-content and putting emphasis on titillation with regards to its women meant that genuinely talented women like Luna Vachon, Ivory, and Jacqueline were put aside in favor of good-looking but green wrestlers like Sable, Debra, and The Kat, or comedy acts like 76 year-old Fabulous Moolah or Hervina (aka Harvey Wippleman in cheap drag).
- The few years before that weren't great either, with the women's division consisting of 2 people: Madusa, called Alundra Blaze in the WWF, and whoever was on a per-date deal to work with Madusa at that particular moment. We had a ray of hope when the WWF imported 7 wrestlers from All Japan Women's Pro-Wrestling for an 8 woman elimination tag match at Survivor Series 1995... only for Vince to give up on women's wrestling entirely (for a while anyway) and give Madusa her release a few days later. He didn't even bother getting the belt back, which gave her the opportunity to show up on WCW Monday Nitro and throw it in a wastebasket and get herself blackballed from WWE for two decades.
- New Japan Pro-Wrestling was the toast of the 90's in Japanese pro wrestling...and then Antonio Inoki started to feel the pressure of MMA's popularity, alongside a number of legends of the sport either leaving and creating their own feds or just straight up retiring right around 1999. What resulted was that for most of the 2000's, NJPW had the dual problem of "Inoki-isms" polluting the product, not pushing many young stars, and giving pushes and title shots to people who didn't deserve it (namely: MMA guys thanks to Inoki's insistance). It took a buy-out of Inoki and nothing less than a herculean effort by Hiroshi Tanahashi to pull NJPW out of this Audience-Alienating Era and back into the popular consciousness of both western fans and Japanese fans. It also helped that one of Inoki's reviled MMA Creator's Pets, Shinsuke Nakamura, proved himself to be a charismatic wrestler in his own right under Bushiroad's ownership.
- Ring of Honor:
- The company had a big one from October 2008 to September 2009, right when Adam Pearce took over booking duties from Gabe Sapolsky and Jim Cornette was hired as executive producer. This change was most evident with the line between the big shows (PPVs, TV Tapings, Anniversary shows, Supercards of Honor, etc.) and everything else. Most of these "B-shows" (even said so by Austin Aries, which did not sit well with many people) had traded quality for a more streamlined approach. As good as it sounded on paper, being stuck with a B-market label turned fans off from the product. The Final Countdown Tour in September 09 helped ROH regain fan confidence (along with the Austin Aries, Kenny Omega, and Davey Richards de-facto round robin in October and November), ended the audience-alienating era and set the stage for their bounceback in 2010.
- From 2016 onward, under the ownership of Sinclair Broadcasting, the company entered another Audience-Alienating Era. ROH's TV show was criticized for low production values and odd timeslots, and Sinclair refused to modernize the program or seek a national TV deal; WWE had signed away most of their top wrestlers, leaving them with a depleted talent pool; an utter inability to build any younger stars (Keith Lee was bafflingly booked as a tag team lackey, pushing-50 Steve Corino and BJ Whitmer took up main events, and Matt Taven won the ROH World Championship in spite of fan apathy and his in-ring mediocrity); and an overreliance on their partnership with New Japan Pro-Wrestling, which caused NJPW talent to get pushed at their own wrestlers' expense.
The most emblematic show of ROH's flop era was 2019's G1 Supercard, co-promoted by ROH and NJPW. ROH's matches were largely ignored, while NJPW's matches were highly praised. The ROH Tag Team Championship match suffered from some baffling and dangerous booking: Enzo and Cass made their ROH debut by doing a run-in, but no one in the match was informed of the spot, so they legitimately thought some fans had jumped the rail and fought back. The match caused immense fan backlash, match co-winner Tama Tonga viciously insulted the promotion on YouTube the next day, and there were reports that NJPW was reconsidering their working relationship with ROH. Those reports would be accurate, NJPW ended the agreement and started promoting shows themselves. Add in the Young Bucks, Cody Rhodes, and Kenny Omega leaving to form All Elite Wrestling, the COVID-19 pandemic, and Sinclair's own serious financial issues (namely the very ill-advised purchase of Fox's RSNsnote ), and ROH would collapse and finally be sold to AEW financial backer Tony Khan in 2022.
- The Undertaker's overall supernatural gimmick is an aversion to the Audience-Alienating Era. His character is firmly from the era of ridiculous gimmicks of the late 80s through the mid 90s, yet is essentially the same character in the modern era, trappings and all. Many fans just accept that when he appears, he's essentially a character out of time. On the other hand, his "American Badass" time (2000-2003), the only time he left the supernatural aspect of his gimmick, is seen as an Audience-Alienating Era itself.
- TNA
- While TNA has always been divisive among wrestling fans, Hulk Hogan's tenure as the on-screen authority figure from 2010-2013 is generally considered its all time low point (and that includes TNA's pre-2004 years, which were so terribly booked and vulgar that even the company barely acknowledges anything from that period). In fact, TNA from that point onward is often looked at in this light. Despite making large improvements since Hogan's departure, this period was so damaging to the company and its reputation that it has essentially been in perpetual danger of going under ever since, with issues including wrestlers getting either late or no payment and serious production flaws, causing most of their signature top talent (including TNA Original AJ Styles, Sting and Samoa Joe), to depart. Most fans have given up on TNA and absolutely refuse to watch it, and TNA has been bouncing around from network to network trying to maintain it's TV deal, and just barely succeeding.
- TNA, now rebranded simply as Impact Wrestling (though rebranded back to TNA in 2024), would be purchased by Canadian company Anthem Sportsnote . The company would also buy AXS TV, meaning Impact now has a permanent home, albeit one on a high cable tier. Anthem has managed to clean up the company's financial issues and while it could probably be considered an indy promotion at this point everyone is at least being paid on time and Impact intends on sticking around for a while.
- Much like the WWE Divas' example above, the TNA Knockouts suffered this after the first departure of their top star, Gail Kim. Memorable incidents include Jenna Morasca vs Sharmell, The Beautiful People becoming a Spotlight-Stealing Squad, the "lock box" title change, the introduction of Karen Jarrett as an authority figure, and even a Fingerpoke Of Doom — and this is barely scratching the surface of what happened over the course of this period. Even after Gail's return in 2011, the division was still in the rut (for example, Eric Young, a man, remained one half of the Knockouts Tag Team Champions with ODB for over a year until the titles were finally vacated and retired by Brooke Hogan), and it wasn't until 2013-2014, with the debuts of Taryn Terrell and Havok and the return of Awesome Kong did the division really begin to recover. Just like the Hogan example, this period was so damaging to the division's reputation that their contributions to the mainstream rise of women's wrestling have been either glossed over or forgotten entirely.
- While TNA has always been divisive among wrestling fans, Hulk Hogan's tenure as the on-screen authority figure from 2010-2013 is generally considered its all time low point (and that includes TNA's pre-2004 years, which were so terribly booked and vulgar that even the company barely acknowledges anything from that period). In fact, TNA from that point onward is often looked at in this light. Despite making large improvements since Hogan's departure, this period was so damaging to the company and its reputation that it has essentially been in perpetual danger of going under ever since, with issues including wrestlers getting either late or no payment and serious production flaws, causing most of their signature top talent (including TNA Original AJ Styles, Sting and Samoa Joe), to depart. Most fans have given up on TNA and absolutely refuse to watch it, and TNA has been bouncing around from network to network trying to maintain it's TV deal, and just barely succeeding.
- Crossed with Badass Decay. Heidi Lovelace was a Champion and main eventer in several promotions. Ruby Riott is lucky if she wins a match. This unfortunately still rings true of her as Ruby Soho in AEW.
- At the same time as the WWE Divas were having their Audience-Alienating Era, Japanese women's wrestling was having one as well. All Japan Women's Pro-Wrestling and GAEA both closed their doors in 2005, and while JWP and LLPW were still around, they were unable to fill the void and become a national promotion. The scene was dominated by those wrestlers who had established themselves in the early-mid 90s and not yet retired, and, akin to the WWE divas, many new wrestlers came from the idol industry and didn't have the wrestling fundamentals of previous generations (although the remaining veterans insured that the product was still above what most of WWE was doing at the same time). It's telling that this was the time when Kana wrote her "manifesto" about the state of Joshi that got her heat from most of the establishment. It was only when World Wonder Ring ST★RDOM established itself as the new top joshi promotion in the mid-2010s that the Audience-Alienating Era ended.
