Too Bleak Stopped Caring / Professional Wrestling

• While WCCW has experienced tragedies that were beyond their control such as the deaths of their stars, at that point fans have grown weary of horrific events, let alone from the Von Erich Family. When Fritz Von Erich had a kayfabe heart attack after being assaulted by The Fabulous Freebirds in an attempt to revive the Von Erich/Freebird rivalry, this did little to stop the diminishing returns the company was experiencing. Never mind that fans were tired of the tragedies in WCCW, but people have grown wise to Fritz's attempt to use tragedy to bring more eyes on the company that was now on the decline.
• This trope was one of the main causes of WCW's decline.
  • While the nWo were cool for a while, they were the bad guys, which meant that the nWo ultimately needed to lose. General consensus among wrestling fans is that the New World Order should've ended at Starrcade '97, after Sting defeated Hulk Hogan for the WCW World Championship. But the nWo story just kept going, on and on, with no end in sight. After years of watching the villains run roughshod over everyone, the whole thing just became depressing - people felt like the nWo was never going to lose, so people changed the channel.
    • Probably worth pointing out that the people were right - the nWo never did lose any kind of blowoff in any of its forms, even the WWE version. Every iteration of the faction just kind of fizzled out due to injuries or someone getting fired. Goldberg was the only person to consistently have the upper hand against them, but even he was eventually marginalized by backstage politicians.
    • Really not helping matters here was the nWo giving off a very bleak, almost dystopian image to begin with, particularly the "The following announcement has been paid for by the New World Order" segments, which were almost like WWII propaganda films. The lone nWo PPV, Souled Out 1997, probably provides the best example of how bleak this whole angle was. The entire set was black, both commentators were heels, there was an evil heel referee (wearing an nWo shirt) for every match, and the whole show just has a stark and depressing atmosphere.
  • The Death of WCW talks about this from a booking standpoint. According to the author, the best way to make money is to create a match fans are willing to pay to see. However, fans won't pay to see a match if they can easily perceive a winner. The apathy created by the nWo storyline factored into pay-per-view bouts as well. Not only was lead writer Eric Bischoff trying to put PPV matches on regular TV, but the sheer apathy of the heels running roughshod constantly make it a drain to see. Fans began to perceive who the winner would be that money stopped coming into the PPV matches.
  • Also not helping WCW's cause (as detailed in the same book) was Bischoff's feud and subsequent burial of Ric Flair, who was WCW's biggest and really only draw before the nWo angle and basically synonymous with WCW. When he wasn't being kept off TV altogether because he and Bischoff were suing each other he was jobbing in the JCP/NWA/WCW strongholds like Charlotte (his hometown, no less) and Atlanta, usually in incredibly embarrassing fashion. This eventually led to the diehards (i.e. people that were watching WCW before Hogan) to abandon the company and for the most part abandon wrestling in general. This really kicked in right around the same time as the "Fingerpoke of Doom" and was a brutal 1-2 punch they never recovered from.
• The inVasion angle of the summer of 2001. When WCW and ECW unexpectedly decided to team up against WWE, the WWE writers sabotaged the concept by casting every WCW and ECW representative as a heel. The leader of the WWE team was Vince McMahon; his opponents were his children Shane and Stephanie and ECW chief Paul Heyman, all of whom were Jerkasses. At the actual pay-per-view event, WWE trounced the WCW/ECW Alliance so thoroughly that when "Stone Cold" Steve Austin defected to the Alliance, it was hard not to see this treachery as WWE getting its just desserts.
• "The Authority" storyline^note Which has been going on in some form or another since 1998, though "The Authority" didn't come into use until the 2010s. Of course now Triple H is running the company for real and Vince and Steph are gone, where Triple H and wife Stephanie set themselves up as bad guy corporate leaders of the company, pushing guys who aligned with them into the main event title scene under the guise of such actions being best for business. The trouble is that The Authority never had any fierce competition. The kayfabe reason that "Stone Cold" Steve Austin couldn't be fired during the Attitude Era was because he was too popular. The Authority had no such counterbalance, as top faces like John Cena never set themselves up in opposition. Unlike with the nWo, there was not even the hope of a masked savior waiting in the wings to bring down the machine, since the few superstars who tried to stand up to the Authority failed in their efforts, including said masked savior when he finally debuted. And so, fans watched as The Authority ruled the roost until the fans got sick of it and turned away. Over the course of the last 25 years or so the amount of people watching wrestling has shrunk to about a quarter of what it was during the boom period of the 90s. This and the previous two entries are the main reason why. It also killed the evil boss character trope in wrestling (which probably isn't a bad thing), as reception to this angle was so poor^note As in ratings and attendance tanked, when you only draw a crowd of 8,000 people for a Survivor Series event that has a Tournament Arc that ends in- what else- a blatant screwjob, you've got a serious problem that no promotion has done an evil boss angle since.
  • Not helping the issue was the rise of Roman Reigns during this same time, who was seen as a Creator's Pet by the fans of the era. The fans hated Reigns so much that they began to root for the Authority over him, creating a very cynical fanbase where the fans felt like they'd never see what they wanted to see. Things didn't get better until Roman violated the Wellness Policy three months into a championship reign, forcing the company to suspend him.
  • Also not helping was Brock Lesnar and his complete dominance over the WWE roster since ending The Undertaker's WrestleMania undefeated streak. As the WWE entered the latter half of 2015, people began to start seeing problems with Lesnar's overprotective booking, as both Dean Ambrose and Randy Orton fell to Lesnar quickly. Lesnar's world title title reign also invoked this, since Lesnar showed up for barely even a quarter of his 500-plus-day title reign. Combine all of the above together, and fans were routinely able to predict a winner of matches, and it was quite often someone they didn't want to see win. The resulting apathy and cynicism drove people to change the channel en masse.
• An ongoing angle in SHINE is whether the promotion should be honoring long time veterans or showcasing up and coming talents. The angle worked by pitting a heel on one end of the argument against a more compromising or apathetic baby face, giving matches good heat. But then the angle ran into SHINE's tendency to book heel vs heel, so the audience wasn't too enthused by "Dinosaur Hunter" Leah Von Dutch vs 1940s throwback Thunderkitty...till Dutch turned face later that night.
• This trope is why heel vs. heel matchups are typically undesirable from a booker's point of view: the audience would have no one to cheer. When there is a heel vs. heel feud, it's usually a sign that one of them is about to turn face (for example, Sheamus versus Randy Orton in January 2010 — and even then, that only happened because Randy was getting cheered so often despite being by far and away the biggest dick in the company (not named Batista) at the time that they had no choice but to turn him face).^note Babyface vs. babyface matches generally aren't much better because you need someone to boo just as much as you need someone to cheer, plus you run the risk of the crowd turning on Babyface B if Babyface A is more popular.
  • Jack Swagger's first Raw match against Big E. Langston was a great example of how not to book two heels against each other, as the audience crapped all over both guys and their match, despite them not messing anything up. They did appreciate Alberto Del Rio coming out though, in one of the few moments his response really wasn't tepid on Raw.
  • As for an example of how to avert this, The Wyatt Family versus The Shield. Careful build-up and Bray Wyatt's charisma led to a heel-on-heel match that had fans cheering before anyone stepped in the ring. This was a rare case when all the stars aligned for such an event, as the Shield featured three of the top new ring workers in the company breaking into the main event scene, while Bray Wyatt's convincing portrayal of a Deep South cult leader gave the company the first top heel of his kind in nearly twenty years since the debut of Mick Foley, so despite being the bad guys, fans had ample reasons to cheer for both sides. Careful coordination then made sure that both groups had largely differing agendas that made a feud between them believable from a fan standpoint.
  • Another aversion was a brief 2002 feud between Chris Benoit and Kurt Angle before their reluctant tag team alliance. There were two big factors in why the audience embraced this (and Benoit, who elevated into the upper midcard again post-neck surgery) despite the heel vs. heel slant: first, their quarrel was over something pretty funny (Benoit laughed at Angle getting Stinkfaced by Rikishi; Angle held down Benoit so he could get the same treatment), and second, both were such phenomenal workers that they could get the crowd engaged even as bad guys. Thus, their Unforgiven 2002 match was an instant classic that received multiple mid-match ovations and was part of the beginnings of the fabled SmackDown Six.
• WrestleMania 32 was an unfortunate study in this; every match leading to the main event either was undone the next night on Raw (Zack Ryder winning the IC belt, The Undertaker def Shane McMahon), or had the heel win (The League of Nations def The New Day, Jericho def AJ Styles, Brock Lesnar def Dean Ambrose, Charlotte winning the Triple Threat for the new Women's Championship, Baron Corbin winning the Andre the Giant Memorial Battle Royal), and the final bout crowned major Creator's Pet and X-Pac Heat recipient Roman Reigns WWE Champion over the heel-but-still-preferred Triple H. In fact, the event was so hated that not only was it immediately moved into Fanon Discontinuity, but the company itself began to ignore or outright negate its results afterwards with its booking, including mercifully pulling the plug on the aforementioned Authority angle, implying that they were subtly and silently acknowledging that they had screwed up and that this was their way of apologizing.
• In WWE NXT, Shayna Baszler's run as women's champion is becoming this for some fans, who increasingly feel that there are no credible challengers. To make matters worse, as of October 2019, all four of the NXT titles are held by heels, as well as two of the three NXT UK championships - NXT UK tag team champs Mark Andrews and Flash Morgan Webster are the only remaining face champs in either NXT brand.