[headstar]

After watching Raw and SmackDown clips from the 2000s, I couldn't help but notice that many wrestles who looked young between 2000-2005 look fucking old in 2007-2008.

Example:

Jericho looked like a pretty boy in 2005. Jericho leaves, comes back in 2007 and looks old.

Even younger wrestlers like Carlito and Chris Masters looked awful by 2008. What happened? Did the switch to HD reveal that wrestlers were aging horribly?

 

[DGenerationMC]

I'd say the beginning of 2008, I remember there being some marketing campaign being regularly mentioned on the shows then.

 

[Geeee]

I remember watching the first episode of Raw in HD and one of the active feuds was that HBK was JBL's manslave...which was super weird

 

[Chrome]

Yeah early '08 IIRC.

 

[Jabez Makaveli]

Early 2008, which was also when they started using all trons for every stage

 

[SmackdownvsRAW2005]

It happened a week after this segment:

 

[Tommy-V]

They started broadcasting in HD on January 21, 2008.