Have you tried Pro Wrestling on the Nintendo NES? It was a particularly good release, no licensed athletes though. I agree with you for the most part about 8 and 16-bit wrestling games. It seemed 16-bit releases relied HEAVILY on you owning a rapid fire controller - otherwise you were destined to see the game over screen a lot.

With the power of PlayStation and new consoles they were able to do more with the games. Such as giving more out of the ring content. That definitely helped a lot in my enjoyment of these games. Unfortunately, for me at least, the 2K series seems to want to recreate the weekly show as much as possible.

I liked releases like WWF Wrestlemania because you were able to do all this wild stuff that obviously could not happen in real life. It captured the over the top fun of the shows.