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With WWE’s immaculate growth over the years, entertainment wrestling has changed the landscape for pay-per-view events, which attracts a huge number of viewers. Thanks to its emotionally gripping storylines and its star appeal, it celebrates one of the greatest PPV events, the WrestleMania. Each year, this exclusive Ple not only delivers jaw-dropping moments but also surpasses the fans’ expectations by bringing in some of the biggest names together under the same roof.

Wm Xiv at Fleetcenter, Boston, Massachusetts. Credits: WWE

The 14th edition had set great expectations for the fans, as it was supposed to be a ‘big one.’ The company, which had some years, started to attract wrestling enthusiasts as it started to pick up business, kicking off the Attitude Era. Additionally, it started to show signs of maturity from The Rock and Triple H, where both showed signs of becoming main event names that would attract a huge crowd.

The world of sports entertainment is in mourning today, as it was confirmed this morning that legendary WWE Superstar George 'The Animal' Steele, a.k.a. William James Myers, has passed away at the age of 79. The pro wrestler's death was confirmed by his wife Patricia, who revealed that he passed from kidney failure last night in Florida. The wrestling legend had been in and out of hospice care since April.

TMZ broke the news of George 'The Animal' Steele's passing last night, although wrestling promoter Eric Simms of Ess Promotions had previously shared that the late wrestler had entered hospice care, asking fans to pray for him, before he ultimately passed. This morning, a number of WWE Superstars took to Twitter to pay tribute to this wrestling legend, and the WWE released a statement, confirming George 'The Animal' Steele's death. Here's the full statement below, which reveals how he...

WWE.com

Professional wrestling is, at its heart, a story of winners and losers. For every groundbreaking, era-defining figure such as Steve Austin or John Cena, there lies a trail of victims in their wake. Most admittedly have had their moment in the sun – but what about the losers that never win?

As some of you might be aware, I’ve made quite a habit of losing challenges on our official YouTube channel (WhatCulture Wrestling). I know exactly what it means to be a jobber – it’s in my Twitter handle for goodness’ sake – so who better to guide you through the murky, depressing world of WWE’s most desperate losers?

Jobbers can take many forms, from the classic Hogan-fodder of the golden era to comedic modern-day superstars, none of whom could ever seem to buy a win. Sometimes unremarkable and generic, sometimes silly to the extreme, these wrestlers are...

WWE.com / Twitter.com/Sheltyb803

Attitude Era aficionados will be particularly interested in the internet response to Raw this week. Not only did the show itself feature a war of wards between old foes Chris Jericho and Stephanie McMahon, Twitter saw Taka Michinoku and Sunny grab the social media spotlight.

As per usual, the online wrestling community also couldn’t help tearing apart WWE for every little mistake or perceived weakness. It goes with the territory around this time of year (who could forget the overwhelmingly negative response to both the 2014 and 2015 Royal Rumbles?), but this week’s criticism took the cake – especially with even poor old WWEShop.com in the firing line.

It only makes sense that, as we near the most highly-pressurised period of the WWE calendar, the internet’s reaction to a disappointing Raw is particularly vitriolic. Everything matters a little more now. We’ll suffer bad Raw after bad Raw,...

WWE.com

Paul Levesque is currently a top ranking official in WWE. He wears a suit and tie and helps to oversee many areas of the business, most notably the development of future WWE talent and Nxt. He’s still good for one or two matches per year, but the days of Triple H working anything more than that are over.

In his day, Triple H was a helluva worker. Many top stars, including Kurt Angle and Steve Austin, have gone on record as saying he is one of the best ever. It’s hard to argue with them. It took him a while (almost four years) to hit his stride in the company, but once he found his groove, he was untouchable.

The Game’s best in-ring year was probably 2000. He had great matches with everybody that year, from The Rock, Chris Benoit and Chris Jericho down to Taka Michinoku.

WWE.com

A lot of people have been talking about Benjamin Morris’ 538 piece, “Are Pro Wrestlers Dying at an Unusual Rate?”

Like Morris, I am neither an actuarial scientist nor a demographer. So, our interpretations of the data should be taken with a grain of salt. My results were somewhat different from Morris’ due to a difference data set and changes in how we calculated actuarial predictions.

Differences in methodology from Morris

I also used Social Security Actuarial Life Tables, but my “expected mortality rates” for the age groups were not the same as Morris’. For each wrestler, I calculated what their age would have been as of today. Then, based on gender, I looked up the number of lives (out of 100,000) that were expected to still be alive and converted that to a percentage. His analysis looked at wrestlers who were on 20+ WWF PPVs through 2002. I went with a...

After about a month of taking in what the WWE Network has to offer I thought we could take a look at some of the things that are worth your time on there, and even just to pick up on DVD. Every PPV event from WWE(F), WCW and Ecw is included on the on-demand section of the network, which means there is hundreds of shows and thousands of hours worth of wrestling to dig through, so I wanted to whittle it down to ten shows that I feel are worth watching, and the reasons will be highlighted too.

Let’s begin with an obvious one shall we?

WWE: WrestleMania 1

Held in Madison Square Garden in New York City, the very first WWF pay-per-view ever presented and a show that lit the fuse on the rocket that became sports entertainment and the concept of pay-per-view. The show isn’t...

One of the best things to come out of the Monday Night Wars was the cruiserweight division. The competition between the WWE and WCW forced each company to come up with new ways to retrain their viewership and gain new followers. WCW completely one-upped the WWE with its cruiserweight division. Even as the WWE tried to compete with its own Light Heavyweight Division, their roster paled in comparison to WCW’s. Whereas WCW at the time had Rey Mysterio Jr, Dean Malenko, Eddie Guerrero, Chris Jericho, and Ultimo Dragon tearing down the house on the undercard, the WWE had its poster boy for the division Taka Michinoku, who was just as exciting as his WCW counterparts, but they also had wrestlers like Brian Christopher, Scott Putski, and a handful of leftover luchadores they did very little with.

During the Invasion storyline the WWE made the Cruiserweight Title its go-to title...

Full Disclosure: I am absolutely crazy about the Royal Rumble. It’s been a passion of mine ever since I was a kid, and has evolved into a near obsession of mine as I have grown older. I’ve done statistical analyses of each Rumble in my spare time. I’ve watched and re-watched the most memorable ones until my eyes go bleary. It’s one of the biggest reasons that I am a fan of pro wrestling, because it offers everything that the WWE has built in the past year. Since it is such a fixation of mine, and because getting to talk about it makes me somewhat giddy, I’ve decided to write a series of articles on the event in preparation for the big showdown on the 27th in Phoenix. Like (almost) all of its past incarnations, this year’s match looks like it shouldn’t disappoint,...