Were the early 2010s superior to the early 2020s?

it was just as bad in some ways, it’s just the gum has lost all flavour now.

Personally think that everything post Wrestlemania 26 up until the Pipebomb was pretty garbage. I’d easily take the last year over that year.

Until the pipebomb, 2009/2011 was truly awful. It was when they started gimmick PPV’s, stopping matches for the tiniest bit of blood, removing the edginess the product once had, swapping the WWE title every other month between Orton and Cena.

It was really hard to watch guys like Edge whose whole gimmick was “Rated R” be water down or the violent matches like HIAC become nothing more than a match inside of a cage.

The Guest GM was bad but then when it was that stupid computer, it was even worse

NXT was cool and Nexus was great, for about a week until Cena destroyed the whole team at SummerSlam by himself.

Wade Barrett broke free and looked to win the title just to lose a series of matches to Orton and Cena

The list of terribleness goes on

There were some stand out moments though and that was Punk. The SES was great, his whole Smackdown heel run was great.

Really the perfect way to describe Hell in a Cell these days. “A match inside of a cage”

No, even with all of the releases and recent missteps, the early part of the last decade was a dark time for WWE. I always point to the main event of Wrestlemania 27 as a microcosm of how dysfunctional WWE was back then. The fans in Atlanta booed the WWE's centerpiece with a passion, and not because they were all behind Miz. They, and much of WWE's loyal fanbase, just hated Cena that much. Moreover, WWE used their biggest match of the year as a vehicle to promote the Rock and his involvement in the next WM instead of focusing on their current stars of the time. The company was just throwing things at the wall to see what stuck, and which very little did. Even the things that eventually did work, like Danielson and Punk, had more to do with those guys getting themselves over rather than WWE having a vision for renewed vitality.

Punk was getting away with SO MUCH during that period. Remember when he started drawing Stigmata on his hand wraps? Hahaha. I thought he was going to get so much crap for that from the Chrispies

For me personally, no. It's really tough for me to think of any time that I dislike more than the early 20s. Between the Thunderdome, the way that social justice has steered the product, the way the company just LOVES to pat itself on the back publicly, the insane number of firings, and just the overall visual and auditory presentation I really am not much of a fan anymore. I've said before that I will always love WWE for what it was, and for what it meant to me, but the product today is very much not for me. There's very little that I like about it, and very few guys that I can get behind. There are a handful of guys that I like and support, but that number is lower than it's ever been.

The early 10s were not my favorite period either, but there was still some really great stuff. Some of the all-time greats were still active like Taker, Michaels, Jericho was there and in one of his greatest iterations, JBL, Kane, Batista, and Edge. I liked guys like Del Rio (at the time, not anymore. He's one of the most despicable individuals ever to step foot in a WWE ring, but I digress), Sheamus, and a young Drew McIntyre. That said, I despised (and still despise) CM Punk and he was a big enough part of the show that I almost stopped watching altogether. The aforementioned all-time greats were either winding down or very much at the end of their primes (Kane specifically was never the same after returning with the mask). Orton was stale, HHH was stale and transitioning into more of an office capacity, Cena was getting REALLY stale at this point, even Taker was a bit stale aside from the HBK matches..speaking of whom, Michaels retired in March of 2010. Aside from Bryan and a few select others here were no obvious new stars on the horizon. This was also at the tale end of the 'All guys have to be 6'5, jacked, have trunks, short hair, and tattoos' period' that brought us some of the most forgettable characters of all time.

All said, I'd take the early 10s over the early 20s any day. The presentation wasn't great, but it also wasn't completely over the top at the time. There also was still some really great stuff (Nexus, Shawn/Taker, Hall of Pain) I'd rather have all of those legends than all of these nobodies of today. Most of the guys that I liked have been fired or have left for greener pastures. Nothing was worse in the history of wrestling than the Thunderdome, and I'm still exhausted even thinking about it. I've sampled other shows in WWE down-periods, and I was more of a WCW guy during the Monday Night War, but I never completely stopped watching or supporting WWE. This is the first time that has changed. I consider myself a strictly AEW guy now and WWE I'll watch casually at best.

Del Rio's first 2 years was great, and lets not pretend it wasn't