I’m kinda struggling on how to start this week. I really am. This week’s column was going to focus on everything that proves beyond any reasonable doubt that Vince McMahon is a foolish senile out of touch idiot who NEEDS to fully and completely step down from ANY involvement with the booking for the good of the product. Mostly I planned to focus on NXT and Vince’s bullshit comments about Cesaro not “connecting” and how no one in the company but Cena is “hungry” to succeed. But Metalhead Doug beat me to the Cesaro points, and said pretty much everything I’d planned to about him. That he WAS connecting and Vince stunted it.
Then the Rumble happened and it was a gloriously bad trainwreck of utterly stupid ignorant booking that proved Vince, who has the final say on booking and decides who gets pushed, has NO idea what his audience wants and clearly doesn’t even care. He honestly seems to still believe that the audience will like what he thinks they should like. But again, pretty much half the Pulse wrestling staff have already said everything there is to say.
So I’m struggling to think of a new way to look at all of this that hasn’t already been said, and I can’t. And that’s really the crux of the problem here. There really IS only one logical realistic way to look at this; Vincent Kennedy McMahon is a severe detriment to the continued success of his own company and he needs to be forced out of power for the survival of the company.
No one really ever thinks about the possibility of the WWE going out of business. It’s a media juggernaut that’s over 60 years old. It’s a cultural institution. The idea that it could ever fold is unimaginable to most people. It’s like imagining McDonalds going out of business.
But imagine if McDonalds ignored its customers, took it’s most popular and in-demand sandwiches off the menu, and tried to force everyone to love a few really bad sandwiches that taste horrible and don’t appeal to their target market. How long do you really think the company would survive on such a business plan? Imagine if iTunes took down every popular music catalogue in their inventory and replaced it all with only Polka collections. How long do you think it would sustain itself as a viable music service?
Well that’s exactly what WWE is doing under the leadership of Vince McMahon. And that’s not speculation either. They’ve let enough people look backstage for these to be known established facts.
So let’s look at those facts for a moment.
- The only WWE Wrestling show the company produces that Vince is NOT in control of booking is NXT.
- Raw, Smackdown, Main Event/Supstars, and the monthly PPV’s are written by WWE Creative
- WWE Creative is staffed mostly by failed sitcom writers.
- Very few wrestlers with booking experience sit in on Creative
- Vince is still the Last Word. He determines what happens on TV, who gets pushed, etc.
- The Last WORD for the booking on NXT is Triple H.
- For almost two years now, NXT has outperformed EVERY main roster WWE product as far as audience reception.
- IWC sites like IP, and mainstream sites like TV Guide agree that NXT is the best show WWE produces.
Now what is a common thread amongst these established inarguable facts? Simple. The best written, most widely enjoyable, and most well-received by both wrestling and non-wrestling media alike show the WWE is putting out is the one that Vince has ZERO involvement in.
Meanwhile the main roster shows are floundering. Ratings are at an all-time low. Management often seems to be deliberately antagonizing the audience. The booking clearly shows an undeniable and detrimental disconnect with what the audience wants. Wrestlers that get passable reactions at best are pushed to high hell. Wrestlers that the audience are clearly audibly passionate about keep getting embarrassed on tv and held down.
It’s fact that had CM Punk not abruptly quit last year, Daniel Bryan’s amazing Wrestlemania Moment wouldn’t have happened. It was common knowledge that the plan for Mania until that point was a Batista/Orton match no one wanted, a HHH/Punk match that would have probably been decent but served no productive purpose booking-wise, and Daniel Bryan shunted off to the mid-card with Sheamus. Punk leaving left them in a panic and forced them to improvise. And what they came up with was one of the best Wrestlemanias we’ve ever gotten BECAUSE the audience was given what we ACTUALLY WANTED, instead of having what Vince wants shoved down our throats.
Now this year Vince is determined, at the expense of his own success, to prove it was just a fluke, an aberration, and that the audience is as stupid and pliable as he believes us to be, that we’ll like whatever he tells us to like. Once again, Vince is refusing to listen.
And now it’s cost the WWE in a way even Vince can’t ignore or pretend is no big deal.
The WWE Network, already woefully underperforming, already a commercial failure given the subscription rates they assumed they’d have compared to what they actually are, had it’s servers partially crashed last night by a mass revolt of unsubscribers. I haven’t seen any figures estimating how many of their meagre 700’000 subscribers they lost, but to crash a server it had to have been a sizable number. And it’s news, it’s out there. They can’t hide it. Vince can’t pretend it didn’t happen and he can’t pretend it didn’t happen solely because of backlash against the horribly insulting Rumble booking.
The audience had loudly and passionately made it clear that only three, maybe four names would satisfy them as Rumble winners; Daniel Bryan, Dolph Ziggler, Dean Ambrose, and possibly Bray Wyatt after his performance last night. Hell Dean and Dolph were the ONLY guys not relentlessly booed after Bryan’s insultingly boring and anti-climactic elimination. The audience has been loudly and vocally telling Vince who they like and what they want to see, and he completely ignores them, because he can’t admit he’s wrong. Because he can’t relate to his own audience.
And now it has demonstratably hurt the company. And it’s squarely on Vince.
And at the end of the day, the WWE IS a publicly traded company. They have stockholders to answer to. And with ratings at a 15 year low, which translates to loss of revenue, something NEEDS to be done to right the ship before it sinks completely. And when the reason the product is failing and alienating it’s audience can be blamed on one man, the logical solution is to remove that man from his position. If you’re running a restaurant and you catch the manager spitting in the food, you fire him. Vince may be a principle owner but he’s not the only one. HHH has proven with NXT that he can book a good cohesive entertaining show that gives the audience what it wants. As long as he stopped putting himself in main event storylines and focused on pleasing the audience, the product would improve greatly.
For the good of the product, Vince needs to be forced to step down, relenquish all involvement with the product, and let someone else take over. Because if things don’t change drastically, and soon, Wrestlemania will be a huge disaster and hurt the company’s future.
Cesaro, Ziggler, Ambrose, pretty much the entire NXT roster, they ALL prove that Vince is full of shit. They all bust their ass. Hell they had a potential draw in Justin Gabriel who quit because they refused to utilize him in any meaningful way. But if you’ve ever watched the JBL & Cole Show on Youtube, you know Gabriel is a fucking legit badass and could easily have been utilized into a box office draw. This is a guy who literally juggled fire. Not torches where he caught the unlit ends, but actual fireballs. As in the fire was landing in his bare hands. Can ANY of you honestly say that a good booker couldn’t have gotten him over on THAT alone? But no, Vince doesn’t like little guys, so off to Superstars he went.
Vince doesn’t know what gets over anymore. He hasn’t in years. He doesn’t care about his audience. Honestly I think he resents us. He’s spent decades treating “wrestling” like a cuss word, trying to pretend he’s not a wrestling promoter. He’s ashamed of wrestling’s carny roots and I think he resents us for wanting to see WRESTLING. And he’s hurting his own company to spite us. He’s risking his grandchildren’s futures to piss us off and alienate us. But we’re the audience. We’re the people who made him rich. And if he can’t or won’t start trying to succeed by giving the audience what they want, he needs to walk away. Because the way he runs the company is like cutting off his nose to spite his face.
And that is most definitely NOT what’s best for business.
We now return you to waiting for news that Roman Reigns was lynched trying to escape Philly intact.
