In the mid 2010s, WWE started moving to a more reality-oriented product, effectively acknowledging that “kayfabe is dead” in wrestling, and fans are well aware of what happens behind the scenes. During this time, WWE kept relying on established wrestlers and returning legends, but also created new stars. Among these were Seth Rollins, Roman Reigns, and Dean Ambrose, who debuted together in 2012 as the villainous group The Shield, and went on to be multiple-time world champions.
In 2016, WrestleMania 32 set numerous records, with WWE claiming an audience of over 101,000. The actual number was closer to 80,000, but it was nevertheless the third-largest audience ever for a wrestling event, after the two days of Collision in Korea in 1995. Also in 2016, WWE reintroduced the brand split, making the WWE Championship exclusive to SmackDown, and creating the new Universal Championship for Raw. Finn Bálor became the first Universal Champion, but he was forced to vacate the title immediately due to an injury.
WWE also began giving more air time to female wrestlers, a revolution that started in NXT and later spread to the main roster thanks to wrestlers such as AJ Lee, Paige, Becky Lynch, Charlotte Flair, Sasha Banks, Bayley, and Asuka. The Divas division was rebranded as the Women’s division, and female wrestlers started regularly main eventing WWE shows. WWE also started producing matches such as Hell in a Cell, Elimination Chamber, and the Royal Rumble for female wrestlers, also introducing a women’s version of the Money in the Bank. Previously, all these concepts were reserved for male wrestlers. On October 28, 2018, WWE held its first (and so far only) event to only feature female wrestlers, called Evolution.
Women main evented WWE’s flagship annual show for the first time at WrestleMania 35 in 2019, with Becky Lynch defeating Raw Women’s Champion Ronda Rousey and SmackDown Women’s Champion Charlotte Flair to win both titles. Between 2018 and 2019, Lynch had a huge surge in popularity, that made her one of the most popular superstars in wrestling. Also at WrestleMania 35, Kofi Kingston became the first African-born WWE Champion, by defeating Daniel Bryan, who had returned to in-ring competition the previous year.
Becky Lynch as WWE Raw Women’s Champion in 2019. She won the first female-only main event in WrestleMania history (Web Summit, Flickr, CC BY 2.0).
A much more controversial development was the announcement in 2018 that WWE had signed a 10-year partnership with Saudi Arabia to hold major events in the country. The move was highly criticized due to the poor human rights record of Saudi Arabia and the treatment of women in the country, and several wrestlers refused to take part in the first events. Women were initially barred from competing, but they were allowed to wrestle on the shows starting in 2019. Despite a wide range of controversies over the years, WWE has indeed held numerous large shows in Saudi Arabia.
While WWE has held events outisde North America for decades, since that start of the Saudi Arabia deal the promotion has produced more large shows abroad, in places such as in Australia, the United Kingdom, and France. WWE is also set to hold one of these events in Germany in 2024, and already announced their intention to bring their shows all over the world.
As part of their global expansion, WWE introduced a new brand called NXT UK, based in the United Kingdom and centered on wrestlers from the country. After struggling for decades, the United Kingdom wrestling scene was on the rise in the 2010s, and WWE took the opportunity to gather most of the independent competitors in the country under their banner. In January 2017, Tyler Bate won a tournament to crown the first WWE United Kingdom Champion, and a new weekly show, simply called NXT UK, began airing in October 2018. In 2022, NXT UK went into hiatus, awaiting an announced rebranding as NXT Europe.
In order to recruit the best independent talent around the world, WWE also organized tournaments such as the Mae Young Classic, exclusive to female wrestlers, and the Cruiserweight Classic. The latter led to the creation of a new weekly program centered on cruiserweight wrestlers, called 205 Live. The show debuted in 2016 and was discontinued in 2022.
During the 2000s and 2010s, the lack of major alternatives to WWE in the United States created a demand for niches that WWE was not fulfilling. While NXT covered some of this ground, many fans were still looking for something different. TNA (renamed Impact Wrestling in 2017, and reverted to TNA in 2024) and ROH lost many wrestlers to WWE in the late 2010s, and both promotions were in decline. Several small promotions instead gained more exposure thanks to the Internet.
After struggling for years, the NWA saw a resurgence under a new ownership in the late 2010s, and transitioned to being a singular promotion instead of a coalition of companies. In 2019 they launched a television program called NWA Powerrr. The NWA began to reestablish a territory system in 2023.
In the late 2010s, NJPW saw a huge surge in popularity outside Japan, thanks to the commercially successful villainous group Bullet Club, insipired by the nWo, and the series of matches between Kenny Omega and Kazuchika Okada, that received universal acclaim and are regarded as some of the best matches of all time. Other wrestlers who contributed to NJPW’s rise are Hiroshi Tanahashi, Shinsuke Nakamura (who joined WWE in 2016), and Tetsuya Naito, just to name a few. NJPW began expanding to the United States, holding several shows in the country starting in 2017 and creating the subsidiary New Japan Pro-Wrestling of America in 2019. In December 2023 Tanahashi, now regarded as one of the best wrestlers of all time, became president of NJPW. Around the same time, NJPW was announced as a founding member of United Japan Pro-Wrestling (UJPW), a coalition of Japanese promotions that includes AJPW, Pro Wrestling Noah, and various other companies. The 2010s in Japan also saw the rise of World Wonder Ring Stardom, a women-only promotion now known all over the world.
Hiroshi Tanahashi in 2016. He won the IWGP Heavyweight Championship (the main title of NJPW from 1987 to 2021) a record eight times (ゾーヒョー, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0).
On September 1, 2018, NJPW, ROH, Impact Wrestling, CMLL, AAA, Major League Wrestling (MLW), and the NWA came together to organize All In, the largest independent wrestling event in decades. Promoted by former WWE wrestler Cody Rhodes, son of Dusty Rhodes, and tag team of real-life brothers The Young Bucks, All In was a massive success, and became the first non-WWE and non-WCW event to sell more than 10,000 tickets in the United States since 1993.
The success of the event inspired the creation of a new wrestling promotion, called All Elite Wrestling (AEW). The new company was led by Rhodes, The Young Bucks, and Kenny Omega, and financed by billionaire Shahid Khan and his son Tony Khan, who became the president of the promotion. AEW produced their first event, called Double or Nothing, on May 25, 2019, which ended with the debut of Jon Moxley, a former world champion in WWE with the name Dean Ambrose.
On August 31, 2019, at the All Out event, wrestling legend Chris Jericho became the first AEW World Champion after defeating “Hangman” Adam Page. AEW began airing their first weekly show, called Dynamite, on October 2, 2019, bringing wrestling back to TNT for the first time since the closure of WCW. With globally renowned wrestlers and a large financial backing, AEW became an immediate success, and was described as the first true WWE competitor in almost two decades.
Kenny Omega as AEW World Champion in 2021. He is one of the founding members of AEW and an executive vice president of the promotion.
WWE responded by moving NXT to Wednesday nights, at the same time as Dynamite, even before the new AEW show began airing. This led to the Wednesday Night War, a competition similar to the Monday Night War between WWE and WCW. WWE pushed NXT as its third brand, but AEW won in the ratings most of the times. NXT was ultimately moved to Tuesday nights in 2021, ending the war. A few months later, WWE revamped NXT as a developmental territory, dubbing the change as NXT 2.0.
In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic severely affected wrestling, and promotions started to hold shows without spectators and produce cinematic pre-taped matches. In WWE, WrestleMania 36 was the first WrestleMania to be taped and to be held in two separate days, airing on April 4 and 5. Every WrestleMania has since been held on two days. Later in 2020, WWE moved their events to the ThunderDome, a bio-secure bubble with fans attending virtually on screens surrounding the ring. In 2021, wrestling shows started to go back to venues with spectators.
Several small promotions suffered heavy financial losses during the pandemic, and had to close. Among these was ROH, that went on a hiatus in December 2021. ROH was acquired by Tony Khan a few months later, and has operated as a kind of developmental brand for AEW ever since, while remaining somewhat separate from the main AEW product. Meanwhile, WWE was heavily criticized for releasing several wrestlers and employees during the pandemic, citing budget cuts, despite registering record earnings.
Since its inception, AEW has often collaborated with other promotions, mainly exchanging talent with Impact Wrestling and NJPW. Fans started to refer to the concept of wrestlers appearing in promotions different from the one they ususally compete for as “the forbidden door”, and in 2022 AEW and NJPW began co-producing an annual event called Forbidden Door, in reference to this. This concept also arrived, albeit in a very limited form, in WWE, with Impact Wrestling competitors appearing in the 2022 and 2024 women’s Royal Rumble matches. Until a few years earlier, WWE barely even acknowledged the existence of other promotions.
Now with a wide range of valid alternatives, wrestlers are able to change companies more easily, and various performers have moved between WWE, AEW, NJPW, TNA, and smaller independent promotions. Several former WWE wrestlers have signed with AEW, such as Bryan Danielson (Daniel Bryan in WWE), Adam Copeland (Edge in WWE), and Mercedes Moné (Sasha Banks in WWE), as well as top NJPW stars including Jay White, Kazuchika Okada, and Will Ospreay. After leaving TNA in 2014 and briefly wrestling for WWE, former WCW legend Sting also signed with AEW in 2020. On August 27, 2023, AEW held its first major event outside North America when they produced All In at Wembley Stadium in London, England, in front of over 72,000 spectators (AEW claimed an attendence of 81,000), one of the largest crowds in wrestling history.
A notable development in AEW was the return of CM Punk to wrestling. Punk had left WWE in controversial fashion in 2014 and effectively retired until August 20, 2021, when he debuted in AEW to a thunderous ovation. Punk soon won the AEW World Championship, but was suspended from the company after a legitimate altercation with Kenny Omega and The Young Bucks after the All Out event in September 2022. Punk returned to AEW on June 17, 2023, on the inaugural episode of new weekly show Collision, but he had another real-life altercation with a fellow wrestler, this time Jack Perry, at All In in August. Punk was fired from AEW as a result, and shockingly returned to WWE that November.
CM Punk in 2022, during his time in AEW (Ralph Arvesen, Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0).
Another unexpected move was the return of Cody Rhodes to WWE in 2022. Rhodes had left WWE in 2016 citing creative frustration, and worked around the world in promotions such as ROH, Impact Wrestling, and NJPW, before becoming an instrumental part in the creation of AEW. In WWE, Rhodes immediately became a fan favorite and one of the most popular superstars in wrestling. He later became involved in a years-long feud with Roman Reigns, the top heel in WWE.
Reigns had been pushed by WWE as a heroic babyface since 2014, but the character was intensely rejected by fans and critics. Reigns returned from a hiatus in 2020 as a villainous character, and won the Universal Championship on August 30, 2020. He then went on to defeat every challenger, also beating WWE Champion Brock Lesnar at WrestleMania 38 in 2022 to unify the titles in the Undisputed WWE Universal Championship. A new World Heavyweight Championship was introduced to Raw in 2023, with Seth Rollins as the inaugural champion, while the unified title became exclusive to SmackDown.
Reigns successfully defended his title against Rhodes at WrestleMania 39, and became the longest-reigning champion in WWE since Hulk Hogan in the 1980s. The four-year-long storyline has been praised for its complexity and character work, and has been described as one of the best in wrestling history, despite being sometimes criticized for its length and a few convoluted developments.
Roman Reigns as Undisputed WWE Universal Champion in 2023 (Iojhug, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0).
Despite its renewed popularity, wrestling has been hit by several scandals in the past few years. In 2020, the industry was shaken by the Speaking Out movement, that revealed several instances of physical, emotional, and sexual abuse in wrestling, especially against women, involving numerous wrestlers. That same year, Tessa Blanchard became the first women to win a major world title when she obtained the Impact World Championship, but she was hit with bullying and racism allegations around the same time.
However, the largest scandal hit WWE chairman Vince McMahon. In July 2022, McMahon stepped down from his position and later announced his retirement amid allegations of hush-money paid to cover affairs with former WWE employees. As a result, Triple H became the new head of creative, marking a significant shift in content production. For years, Triple H was praised for his work in NXT, and since he assumed his new position on the WWE main roster, many critics pointed out an increase in the quality of the product.
McMahon surprisingly returned to his position as chairman in January 2023, leading the company toward a merger with Endeavor, the parent company of MMA promotion Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC). In April 2023, WWE and UFC announced the merger under a new company called TKO, with the deal finalizing that September. As WWE held 49% of the stakes of TKO, this marked the first time that the company was not controlled by the McMahon family.
McMahon was on the TKO Board of Directors until January 2024, when new allegations of sexual trafficking and sexual abuse came to light, forcing him to resign. Amid a wide range of other allegations of misconduct that span several decades, and an ongoing federal investigation on the case, TKO and WWE also began distancing themselves from McMahon. Also in January 2024, Netflix announced a deal with WWE to start airing the promotion’s programming starting in 2025.
Another event from January 2024 was the return of The Rock to WWE as part of the TKO Board of Directors. The Rock also returned to WWE shows, confronting Roman Reigns and hinting at a match between the two at WrestleMania XL. However, this was met with intense fan backlash, as many wanted Cody Rhodes, who had just won the 2024 Royal Rumble, to face Reigns and avenge his loss of the previous year. As a result, The Rock turned heel for the first time in over twenty years, and aligned with Reigns. The Rock and Reigns defeated Rhodes and World Heavyweight Champion Seth Rollins in a tag team match on the first night of WrestleMania XL, while Rhodes finally beat Reigns the following night, winning the Undisputed WWE Universal Championship in a match that saw the interference of several wrestlers, including John Cena, The Rock, and The Undertaker. In total, Reigns held the Universal Championship for 1,316 days, the fourth-longest reign as world champion in the history of WWE.
As of 2024, WWE still stands as the main wrestling promotion in the world. In the past few months, the company, and wrestling as a whole, has experienced a rise in popularity that it has not seen in decades. This has mainly been credited to the increased quality of the content, especially when compared to the latter years of the McMahon era in WWE, the rise of WWE alternatives, and the great work of many wrestlers.
AEW firmly stands as the second-largest promotion in the United States, while TNA also maintains a certain level of popularity. ROH is now a subsidiary of AEW, while the NWA and a range of other small promotions have also garnered the attention of wrestling fans. NJPW now has a global appeal, and leads the Japanese scene, while CMLL and AAA are still the largest promotions in Mexico. Smaller promotions exist in Europe and other parts of the world, but they never reached the level of popularity of North American, Japanese, and Mexican companies.
Wrestling has now overcome the idea of kayfabe, with fans well aware of the inner workings of the industry and often interested in what happens behind the scenes, a fact that is acknowledged by both wrestlers and promoters. Fans are even often able to shape wrestling storylines, expressing praise or criticisms toward each decision. Women’s wrestling is now treated with the respect it deserves, but allegations of decades of misconduct toward women performers still cast a shadow on the industry. Several controversies still often hit wrestling, and in-depth investigations have brought to light many past issues, most notably the highly acclaimed series of documentaries Dark Side of the Ring. Despite being still plagued by many premature deaths, the wrestling industry has definitely improved in many aspects over the past few years, including the treatment of addiction, injuries, and health issues of the performers.