>>19115360It was. We all grew up watching WWF but by the early 90s it was sort of just that thing we watched when we were kids but grew out of.
WCW with the nWo angle brought a lot of us who had tuned in back. WWF then started leaning into edgy stuff, but it was a Russo-directed riskier product so a lot of people didn't tune into it for a while.
Once they dropped Russo (and WCW made the mistake of picking him up), the tides shifted pretty dramatically. I was in high school at the time and wouldn't give WWF the time of day until around 1999/2000, then I found myself watching more of that than WCW, which was becoming a bit cringe.
I think they figured they needed Russo because they needed younger stars. They coasted on the old stars like Hogan because that's who everyone wanted to see for a while but that only lasts so long and they didn't do a great job building guys to take their places.
