WrestleMania -- Headline CentralMarch 14, 2004 / The Christian Science Monitor offers this on professional wrestling
.... World Wrestling Entertainment Company... weekly television audience has fallen sharply...as viewership declines for the nation's premier wrestling federation, some see an opportunity for foreign wrestling to gain ground among American fans.
Two contenders are already beginning to make inroads: Japanese pro wrestling, commonly called puroresu, and Mexican-style contests, known as lucha libre. If either can land a television contract in the United States, some industry observers say, they could begin to take market share away from the already weakened WWE.
"One way to look at this is that this is exactly what pro wrestling needs to reinvigorate the industry," says Robert Thompson, director of the Center for Study of Popular Television at Syracuse University in New York. "Pro wrestling in America was to the sport of wrestling what an episode of Jerry Springer was to a conversation, and the weight of that style is what ultimately caused it to collapse. There's something about [puroresu and lucha libre], however, that does seem a little less tongue-in-cheek, a little less bathed in the irony that pro wrestling in this country was absolutely floating in....