By Mike Roe, Torch specialist

I covered a WWE autograph signing last night (you can read my report and see a photo here), and I interviewed a few fans. The consensus seemed to be that they were lifelong wrestling fans, and this is what they'd always done since they were small children. One talked about watching wrestling with his father.

I'm curious whether this is something that is going to be sustained in the generations to come. WWE brought in adult fans in the late '90s and early 2000s through outstanding talent, fresh writing, and became a cultural phenomenon. It became a much more adult product.

Now, they're turning back in the other direction, reaching out more to kids, but there is still much of the adult side to their product. Are we going to see kids raised as wrestling fans to the same extent they were before ever again? I think WWE's in a tough spot now, finding that balance where their product can appeal to all ages, and they don't seem to have the creative energy to find that fulcrum.

Personally, as someone who came into wrestling at age 18 in late 1999, it's not something I experienced growing up with. However, I think that makes me and fans like me more susceptible to being peeled off from the world of wrestling by continued bad writing, bad wrestling, and all the other levels of ineptitude we see on a regular basis in the national wrestling product.

They no longer have the feeling of pure kids entertainment of the '80s product, but they also don't have that sports feel of wrestling from the territory days or the NWA/early WCW product. I think it's possible to serve both audiences, but it takes real skill, and hiring young, inexperienced writers to do this, under the iron thumb of Stephanie and Vince McMahon, isn't going to work.

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