YMMV / American Wrestling Association

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• Audience-Alienating Era:
  • The Team Challenge Series. Ridiculous gimmick matches such as the "Turkey On A Pole Match", laughable production values (the infamous "Pink Room of Doom"), and a roster that was composed of only the true loyalists or people who couldn't find work with WCW or the WWF. Even former reliable stars such as Sgt. Slaughter left the company during this time, making the roster thinner than ever.
  • The final year of operations for the AWA in 1991 was so lean on talent that they resorted to replaying old matches from their archives to fill All Star Wrestling. The final episode had a Nick Bockwinkel vs. Verne Gagne match from 1973 as its main event, since there was no one on their roster left who could reliably draw at that point. This also had the effect of making matches they were producing sound extra ridiculous, like when Buck Zumhofe put up his percentage of gate receipts as a stipulation in a light-heavyweight title match. Everyone who knew even the slightest bit about the AWA's fortunes realized that amount was rather minuscule.
• Awesome Music:
  • "Eye of the Tiger" was Hulk Hogan's entrance music during his AWA run. Notable for being one of the first, if not the first wrestler in AWA to use entrance music.
  • The Midnight Rockers used Judas Priest's "Living After Midnight"
  • There was also Badd Company using (what else?) "Bad Company" by Bad Company.
• Harsher in Hindsight: Bobby Heenan jokingly referring to the AWA as "Alzheimer's Wrestling Association" due to the fact that so many of their main eventers were over the hill is less funny now when you realize that most of those main event wrestlers, including owner Verne Gagne, would eventually develop Alzheimer's Disease later in life.
• Just Here for Godzilla: After Hulk Hogan's departure, there were two baby faces who allowed the AWA to remain competitive on a national scale. Hawk and Animal.
• Memetic Mutation: Colonel DeBeers: Tolerant Non-Binary Icon.^note In reference to a promo Colonel DeBeers cut against Sgt. Slaughter, where due to the washed-out colors of television recording of the time, the pre-1994 South African flag he was standing in front of resembled the non-binary pride flag. The absurdity of the idea that Colonel DeBeers is actually be a proud supporter of non-binary folk against Sgt. Slaughter's supposed intolerance caught on.
• Never Live It Down:
  • Two words: WrestleRock Rumble.
  • A better example of never living it down would be the big pink room. In October 1989 the AWA learned that their usual arena, the Mayo Civic Center in Rochester, Minnesota, had been double booked for the second taping and they had to scramble to find an alternative. The AWA quickly booked a local tv studio and had filmed two weeks of matches there. They spliced the footage together with matches from the first taping, and aired them as one show. The result was that for one month the AWA had half their matches taking place in an empty pink room. The reason given on TV for this change was they wanted to prevent run-ins. However several people seem to believe that all the AWA's last year was taped in the pink room, and they did it because attendance had gotten too low to run arena shows. However, due to redubbing and the utter disorganization associated with the TCS, there were TV shows with matches held in regular arenas with the announcers talking about the pink room matches.
• Older Than They Think: Long before "Stone Cold" Steve Austin or The Sandman there was The Crusher, a smack talking, beer-swilling, blue-collar brawler who was fond of using heel tactics despite his face leanings. His tag team partner Dick the Bruiser had these traits as well, but his background as a former Green Bay Packers lineman was played up just as much.
• X-Pac Heat: Many AWA fans would argue that this should be called Greg Gagne Heat. He wasn't helped by his father Verne creating the AWA International Television Title just for him. In fact, Ronnie Garvin, who had been booed as a face against Ric Flair at NWA Starrcade '87, was cheered as a Heel a year later against Greg in their match at the AWA's lone PPV, SuperClash III, and both shows had been held in the same town, Chicago, IL.

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