u/uncannynerddad

Not necessarily when WCW officially died. I’m talking about your moment when you realized the war was over.

It can be something from Nitro, Thunder or a PPV. A booking decision. Someone jumping ship. Something backstage. Hell, maybe you were sitting in the building when it hit you.

For me, it was February 9, 2000. WCW Thunder.

I was there live.

I had attended countless Nitros throughout Oklahoma and Texas. We were Mid-South/World Class country, and we preferred ‘rasslin to sports-entertainment.

I still remember walking into Thunder that night.

The crowd was a fraction of what WCW usually drew. WWF shirts were everywhere and outnumbered WCW shirts. The energy was different. The excitement was gone. People seemed to be there to laugh at the product instead of believe in it.

WCW was still on television. There were still another 13 months before the final Nitro.

But sitting in that arena that night, I knew it was over.

And weirdly enough, I experienced that exact same feeling decades later attending AEW after CM Punk left the company. I’d been to AEW shows when the crowd was electric. This time, the building, the energy, even the feeling around the company had completely changed.

Sometimes you can watch the ratings fall and attendance shrink.

Other times, you can feel it in the building.

So r/midcarder, what was YOUR moment with WCW?

When did you realize WWF had won the Monday Night War?

Was it something you watched on TV? Something that happened backstage? Or were you there live when the air finally went out of the balloon?

Let’s hear the stories, Midcarders.

I made the mistake of wandering over to Dave Meltzer’s X account today.

And holy shit. The man is ALWAYS online.

Arguing with fans. Defending AEW. Explaining ratings. Explaining attendance. Explaining why something that looks bad for AEW actually isn’t bad when you consider the demo, streaming, competition, the phase of the moon, etc.

Dave Meltzer has become the Donald Trump of wrestling Twitter.

Some random guy with 84 followers says Dynamite sucks? Dave is six replies deep explaining television economics.

And this isn’t new. Meltzer crossed the line from covering AEW to advocating for it years ago. At this point, I wonder if that advocacy is actually hurting the company.

AEW has lost hundreds of thousands of weekly viewers from its peak. Crowds have shrunk. Buildings have gotten smaller. Yet every warning sign seemingly comes with a Meltzer asterisk explaining why it’s not actually that bad.

That feeds directly into the AEW bubble: every criticism needs a rebuttal, every bad number needs context, and nobody ever stops to ask the obvious question:

Why have so many people stop watching?

Meltzer didn’t create AEW’s problems. Tony Khan is perfectly capable of booking his own tournaments.

But constantly explaining why the smoke isn’t really smoke doesn’t put out the fire.

Is Meltzer’s nonstop defense of AEW doing more harm than good?

This one is specifically for the old fucks among us who were actually there. When WCW started its decline, why did so many of us keep watching? Because WCW got BAD. Sometimes spectacularly bad. The Fingerpoke of Doom. Titles changing hands every five minutes. Celebrity nonsense. Worked shoots. Chucky threatening Rick Steiner. The Misfits in Action. Judy Bagwell on a forklift. Whatever the hell Vince Russo was doing. And yet… I kept watching.

I watched WWF too. I watched ECW whenever I could get my hands on it. I bounced between all three because wrestling at the time felt completely chaotic, unpredictable and, most importantly, fun. My experience might actually be in the minority, but during much of the Monday Night Wars, I slightly preferred WCW. And I absolutely loved ECW. There was something about WCW’s particular brand of insanity that kept me coming back even when I knew the wheels were falling off.

Hell, it still works on me. I’ll be working and throw on the WWE-maintained @WCW YouTube channel, one of their live watch parties, or an old Nitro in the background. Inevitably I’ll look over and start chuckling because fucking “That 70s Guy” Mike Awesome is on my television, or FUNB Hogan is wandering around backstage looking for Bischoff and Kidman. It’s ridiculous. I love it.

Which brings me to AEW. A lot of us were there at the beginning. We wanted another major wrestling company. We bought the PPVs. We watched Dynamite every Wednesday. We defended it. We genuinely wanted it to succeed. And then, somewhere along the way, a huge portion of the audience didn’t just become frustrated with AEW. They stopped watching.

That’s the difference I’m interested in. WCW could frustrate the absolute shit out of us, and we’d still flip over to Nitro to see what those idiots were doing. AEW frustrates people and they seemingly just… leave. Why?

Was WCW simply more entertaining even when it was bad? Were the characters stronger? Did Sting, Flair, Goldberg, DDP, Booker T, Hall, Nash and everyone else give us reasons to stick around through terrible booking? Was channel flipping itself part of the fun? Did WCW still feel unpredictable while AEW feels repetitive? Was wrestling fandom fundamentally different before social media? Did AEW burn through goodwill faster because of everything surrounding the company, not just what happens on television? Or are we looking at WCW through nostalgia goggles and forgetting just how many people actually did stop watching?

I’m genuinely curious about this one, especially from Midcarders who were sitting there with the remote every Monday night in the late 90s. How long did you stick with WCW, and why? And if you were once an AEW viewer who checked out, what did WCW have that kept you watching that AEW doesn’t?

Midcarders, we need to address something that’s been happening behind the scenes.

Over the past several months, a very small group of Sickos unhappy with the conversations and criticism surrounding AEW in this community have taken their issues with us well beyond disagreements about professional wrestling.

Members of our team have dealt with targeted harassment across Reddit and other platforms, personal photos being taken and redistributed, attempts to follow people into unrelated communities, impersonation-related activity, and other behavior that has absolutely nothing to do with wrestling.

We’re not posting screenshots. We’re not naming people. We’re not interested in turning this into subreddit drama.
But we are establishing a zero-tolerance policy going forward.

And that goes both ways.

This applies to harassment directed at our moderators, our members, and people completely outside our community. That includes moderators and members of other wrestling communities, including the basement. Being on the other side of the fence doesn’t make someone fair game.

Disagree with us. Criticize WWE. Defend AEW. Tell us Tony Khan is Booker of the Year or Triple H couldn’t book his way out of a rest hold.

Just keep it about wrestling.

Call Tony Khan a dork. Call Triple H a doofus. Tell someone their wrestling take is the dumbest thing you’ve read all week. We’re not interested in sanitizing wrestling discussion.

But there’s a line between talking shit about wrestling and invading the privacy of the actual person behind a Reddit account.

Doxxing, digging up and distributing personal photos, tracking people across platforms, contacting family members, impersonating people, or trying to uncover someone’s real-world identity crosses that line immediately.

Don’t be a Sicko.

You don’t need to know what a wrestling fan looks like, where they live, who their family is, or what they’re doing outside Reddit because they said something mean about your favorite fake fighting company.

Argue with the username. Leave the human being behind it alone.

The second someone starts targeting people personally, distributing personal information or photos, impersonating people, organizing harassment, following people around Reddit or other platforms, or encouraging others to participate, you’re done here. Permanently.

And if a Midcarder is caught doing this to somebody else, the exact same standard applies. This isn’t a rule designed to protect “our side.” It’s a rule against being an asshole over professional wrestling.

If you witness this behavior, report it and send the mod team whatever evidence you have. Do not retaliate, brigade another community, or start harassing someone on our behalf. We don’t want that either.

Where appropriate, activity will be documented and reported through the proper channels. Some of what we’ve experienced has already reached that point.

We started r/midcarder because we wanted a place for long-form, open wrestling discussion. That means you’re going to encounter opinions you think are completely ridiculous. That’s the point. Debate them. Make your argument. Tell someone why they’re wrong.

What we will not allow is wrestling tribalism becoming real-world harassment.

Thankfully, we’re talking about a handful of people. The overwhelming majority of you, whether you watch WWE, AEW, TNA, NWA, MLW or whatever else, understand that none of this is remotely worth targeting another human being over.

It’s professional wrestling. Grown adults pretend to fight in their underwear.

Act accordingly.

— The Midcarder Mod Team

Look, we spend a LOT of time around here dissecting AEW as an alternative to WWE. And, frankly, AEW gives us plenty of material.

The terrible booking. The bloated roster. The spot-fest matches. The endless tournaments. At times, it feels like The Young Bucks & Friends on Wednesdays. We can armchair quarterback Tony Khan until the Jaguars win a Super Bowl.

But let’s turn it around.

What does r/midcarder actually WANT from a WWE alternative?

Because I absolutely want one.

Personally, I still want the spiritual successor to WCW that I thought AEW might become in the beginning. But Dynamite has become more Nitro cosplay than actually capturing what made Nitro three action-packed hours every week. It’s wrestling presented like anime, where everyone has specials to blow through before the match can end.

Give me a new company with its own identity. More emphasis on stories and characters. Matches that actually build somewhere instead of backflips, superkicks and superhero poses. I want cruiserweights. Hosses. Technical wrestlers. Tag teams that matter. Personal feuds. Managers. Weird shit like the Dungeon of Doom. Different wrestling styles throughout the card.

WCW gets dinged for all the WWF retreads, but look at what they actually did with some of them.

Hulk Hogan became Hollywood Hogan. Scott Hall and Kevin Nash became the Outsiders. We got the nWo. And alongside them you had Sting, DDP, Goldberg, Flair and an incredible cruiserweight division introducing an entire audience to something different.

They weren’t just signing WWF guys and saying, “Hey, remember this guy?” like AEW has increasingly become.
They took familiar names and created something new with them.

And yes, WCW was at its hottest when it was going directly at WWF. Competition is fun. But I don’t need my alternative obsessively reminding me that WWE exists. I want it to build a world interesting enough that, for two hours, I don’t give a shit what WWE is doing.

So, let’s forget what AEW is doing wrong.

You’re handed the money, the TV deal and the pencil. What does YOUR alternative to WWE look like?

What are you stealing from WCW, ECW, TNA, the territories, modern WWE or even AEW?

What would actually get you to watch every single week?
Book it, Midcarders.

Midcarders, lend me your ears and I’ll sing you a song.

We’ve all seen the studies and warnings about kids growing up glued to iPads and short-form content. Constant stimulation, instant gratification, attention spans and IQs getting absolutely cooked. Give a kid enough flashing lights and dopamine hits and eventually sitting through anything that requires patience starts feeling like homework.

Has AEW done the wrestling version of that to a generation of fans?

Because sometimes I genuinely wonder.

For decades, wrestling was built around psychology. You worked a body part. You sold an injury. You built heat. You gave the crowd a reason to care about the people involved. Matches told stories, and those stories existed within larger stories that made you want to come back next week.

AEW feels like somebody threw all of that into a blender and hit MAXIMUM WORKRATE.

Dive. Kickout. Super kick. Canadian Destroyer. Kickout. Everybody stands around waiting to catch somebody. Kickout. Fighting spirit. Kickout. Super kick. Super kick. Someone gets dropped directly on their skull. Kickout. Everybody gets their shit in. Meltzer gives it 4.75 stars.

Then we’re told by the basement we just witnessed great professional wrestling.

But did we?

Or did we watch a gymnastics routine performed inside a wrestling ring?

The problem isn’t athleticism. Most of their roster is ridiculously talented. The problem is that athleticism without psychology eventually becomes noise. If everything is spectacular, nothing is spectacular. If nobody sells anything, nothing matters. If every match needs 15 near-falls, the first 14 become meaningless.

And I think AEW has conditioned part of its audience to expect exactly that.

A slower match is “boring.” Selling is “resting.” A headlock is wasting time. A match that doesn’t feature six dives and somebody landing on their neck didn’t “cook.”

Meanwhile, the basic things that made wrestling compelling for generations, characters, psychology, pacing, storytelling, anticipation and consequences, become secondary to the next GIF-able sequence they can post in the basement.

AEW is wrestling for the tablet generation.

It’s constant stimulation masquerading as substance. Flash something shiny on the screen every 15 seconds or the audience starts reaching for another app.

And after enough of it, I wonder if some fans have simply forgotten how to watch wrestling that asks them to actually invest in something rather than immediately rewarding them with another move.

So I’ll throw it to you, r/midcarder:

Has AEW actually changed what a generation of wrestling fans considers “good wrestling?”

And more importantly, has it changed it for the worse?

Wanted to give everyone an update on my original post about both of my M64 Pro Controllers developing sticking/creaking D-pads after only a few hours of use.

ModRetro support has now gotten back to me and asked me to return the controllers. They’re issuing an RMA/return label, and once they receive the faulty units, the plan is to send replacements.

I was also contacted directly here on Reddit by one of ModRetro’s engineers, who had seen the video I shared of the issue. He said they haven’t been able to reproduce the sticking on the controllers they have in their office and specifically wants to get his hands on mine so they can investigate what’s happening.

I made sure to clarify with both support and the engineer that this happened independently on BOTH of my Pro Controllers. The first started creaking and physically sticking after a few hours. I switched to the second controller, and after roughly an hour of use, it began doing essentially the same thing, including getting stuck when pressing right.

So, as of right now, ModRetro is taking the issue seriously and their response has been encouraging. I think it’s only fair to give them credit for that.

I also want to keep documenting the process here since several other people reported D-pad issues in the original thread. It gives everyone a better idea of how ModRetro handles these early hardware problems and what to expect if you run into the same thing.

I’ll update again once I’ve shipped both controllers back, when ModRetro receives/inspects them, and when I get the replacements. I’m also very interested to hear what their engineering team finds when they tear into these two.
Hopefully this ends up helping them identify whatever is causing it.

I’ll keep everyone posted.

Original post: https://www.reddit.com/r/ModRetro/s/GmMKt6gCKk

I received my M64 and Pro Controllers on Tuesday, but I was traveling for work and didn’t actually get a chance to sit down and play until Friday.

After just a few hours of game time, both of my Pro Controllers are already having issues with the D-pads. They’ve started creaking pretty badly when pressed, and worse, they’ll occasionally get physically stuck in the pressed position.

It’s happening on both controllers, which makes me wonder if this is a more widespread issue rather than me just getting unlucky with a bad controller.

I’ve already reached out to ModRetro support about the issue but have yet to receive a response, so I figured I’d check here and see if anyone else has experienced the same thing.

If you have, did it get worse over time, or have you found a fix?

I really like the controllers otherwise, but having this happen to both of them after only a few hours of use is pretty disappointing.

Happy Friday, Midcarders.

This was a pretty big week around r/midcarder.

We hosted our first-ever AMA with Nick LoPiccolo, and it couldn’t have gone much better. Huge thanks to Nick for taking the time to answer questions from the community, and thanks to everyone who stopped by and kept the discussion respectful and engaging.

We also crossed 10,000 Midcarders. That’s a milestone I honestly wasn’t sure we’d ever hit, so thank you all for helping build one of the best wrestling communities on Reddit. Here’s to the next 10K.

In the wrestling world, Tony Khan managed to work himself into a shoot before finally granting Tay Melo her release, while over on SmackDown, CM Punk’s reign as WWE Champion seems to have breathed some life back into the blue brand. SummerSlam is starting to feel like it has some real momentum behind it, which is exactly what you want heading into one of the biggest shows of the year.

Outside of wrestling, my father-in-law is visiting this week, so if you don’t hear from me for a while… send help.

Other than that, I’m hoping to relax as much as possible before August, because I’ll be traveling for work for most of the month. Not exactly how I would’ve chosen to spend the last stretch of summer, but it is what it is.

As always, this thread is open for whatever’s on your mind.

Want to talk WWE, AEW, TNA, NWA, MLW, SummerSlam, television ratings, backstage drama, or who had the best promo of the week? Go for it.

Want to talk movies, TV, comics, games, sports, work, family, vacations, or anything else? That’s welcome too.

Pull up a chair, restore the feeling, and tell us:

What do you want to talk about, Midcarders?

It’s funny, Midcarders, how that happened after reports came out saying he refused to let her leave.

And now the basement is applauding him for doing the thing he could’ve done from the start. What a generous billionaire. Thank you, Tony!

One of the biggest criticisms WWE used to face was holding onto talent they had no plans to use, keeping them under contract while their value and momentum faded. AEW fans spent years insisting Tony Khan was above that.

Turns out… not so much.

Whether you believe Khan’s timeline or the earlier reporting, the end result is the same: another wrestler wanted out, and now Tony and the basement are taking a victory lap because he’s finally letting it happen.

And right on cue, the “she was never that good anyway” posts and comments are already starting to trickle in. Funny how that always seems to happen the moment someone leaves AEW. One day they’re part of the family, the next they’re apparently expendable.

r/midcarder, where do you stand? Is Tony handling talent releases any differently than the WWE regime AEW fans spent a years criticizing, or is this just another example of the same clown show with better PR?

No VHS tape. No WWE Vault. You get one shot to experience one event as if you were sitting in the crowd that night.

For me, it’s SummerSlam ’91 at Madison Square Garden.

Yes, mainly for Bret Hart vs. Mr. Perfect, which I still think is one of the most perfect wrestling matches ever (pun intended).

But it’s also the roster. That card was basically a who’s who of early-‘90s wrestling: Legion of Doom, Ricky Steamboat, British Bulldog, Kerry Von Erich, The Nasty Boys, Hulk Hogan, Ultimate Warrior, Sgt. Slaughter, and plenty of others. It’s the WWF I picture when I think back to being a kid falling in love with wrestling.

The atmosphere, the packed Garden, the iconic look of the show… it just feels like stepping into a time capsule of everything I loved about that era.

What about you, Midcarders? If you had one trip in the DeLorean to attend any wrestling show in history, where are you going and why?

There was a point where Matt Riddle looked destined to be a WWE main eventer.

The guy oozed charisma, his laid-back "Bro" character was over, he could go in the ring with anyone, and RK-Bro proved he could be part of one of WWE's hottest acts. Personally, I always enjoyed both his character and his in-ring work.

Then it all unraveled.

Incident after incident, off-screen controversies, and a reputation for rubbing people the wrong way. Publicly calling out Goldberg and creating unnecessary friction with a Hall of Famer certainly didn't help his standing backstage.

These days, I've enjoyed his work in MLW alongside Killer Kross, and it's a reminder that the talent is still there. But I can't help but wonder if the WWE chapter of his career has already been written.

We've seen WWE welcome people back before. Enzo & Cass seemed untouchable for years, yet they're slowly working their way back into the conversation.

So what do you think, Midcarders? Does Matt Riddle ever get another shot on the biggest stage, or has his WWE story been written for good?

Buddy Matthews carried the conversation.

Rhea carried the caption.

That’s about as accurate a snapshot of AEW’s mainstream relevance as you’ll find.

Midcarders, was Buddy done dirty here, or is this just the brutal truth?

Happy Friday, Midcarders.

It was another busy week around r/midcarder.

We watched two World Championships change hands on TV, with CM Punk and Kenny Omega both walking away with gold. We also continued following Paramount’s evolving strategy, which reportedly includes cutting back its sports portfolio as part of its cost-saving plans. But don’t worry, I’m sure this is the week the Sickos convince us AEW has absolutely nothing to worry about.

In between all that, we debated, laughed, argued, and somehow managed to survive another week of internet wrestling discourse.

Outside of wrestling, I’ve got a pretty good weekend lined up.

I’m planning to hit our local producer-only farmers market, which is consistently ranked the best in the country. The plan is to grab an empanada, some Jamaican jerk chicken, and thumb through the vintage vinyl.

I’ve also got a date night planned with my wife, and at some point I’m hoping to catch Evil Dead Burn. Reviews seem to be all over the place, but it’s Evil Dead… I’m in.

As always, this thread is open for whatever’s on your mind.

Want to talk WWE, AEW, TNA, NWA, MLW, the indies, ratings, television deals, or whether Punk and Omega winning World titles in the same week was just a coincidence? Go for it.

Want to talk movies, TV, comics, games, sports, work, family, your weekend plans, or the best thing you’ve eaten lately? That’s welcome too.

Pull up a chair, restore the feeling, and tell us:

What do you want to talk about, Midcarders?