Opinion: Pro Wrestling’s In-Ring Product Has Never Been Better — So Why Is the TV Struggling?

The argument has been made before, but it keeps gaining traction: professional wrestling is, by most measurable standards, thriving as an athletic and entertainment art form — yet its television presentation is increasingly failing to capture audiences the way it once did.

A newly published opinion piece makes that very case, tracing the historical relationship between wrestling and the small screen to help explain the disconnect. The piece points to the territory era, when local television served as the lifeblood of regional promotions, and to the Monday Night Wars of the late 1990s — a period fueled largely by the personal rivalry between two billionaires determined to outmaneuver each other in the ratings. That era produced some of the most culturally impactful TV wrestling has ever generated.

Today, WWE and AEW still find themselves in periodic head-to-head competition, clashing on the cable and streaming landscape on what the piece describes as a near bi-monthly basis. But the competitive fire between promotions, the argument goes, no longer translates to the kind of must-see television that once had millions glued to their screens on Monday nights.

The broader implication is a fascinating tension: the wrestlers are better trained, the matches are more technically sophisticated, and the overall quality of the in-ring product is arguably at an all-time high — yet something about the television format, or how wrestling fits into the modern content landscape, is leaving fans and casual viewers cold.

It’s a question the industry will need to wrestle with seriously. Great matches don’t automatically make great television, and figuring out that gap may be one of the defining challenges for both WWE and AEW as they negotiate new media rights deals and chase broader audiences in the years ahead.