There was a time when there was a buildup for pay-per-views, when there was some semblance of a storyline that didn’t involve someone just showing up and demanding a match. This also involved a buildup for WrestleMania that would already be underway. Instead, the state of the WWE feels more like someone’s throwing darts at the roster to see who faces who.
Self-inflicted wounds
Fans will point to the rise of AEW as the reason behind the WWE’s recent problems, but the truth is Vince McMahon did this to himself. For years, he’s raided other promotions, signing their top talent and then burying them in his mid-card ranks. It effectively neutered his competition as their stars would be gone and they’d have to start over. More than that, fans would follow their favorites like EC3, Robert Roode, and so on. It’s nothing they haven’t done before, but they either pushed that talent to the top or had the top tier talent to allow them to develop.
Now, with a roster full of mid-card talent being pushed into the top tier despite fans’ protests, many of us are looking elsewhere for our sports entertainment.
With the WWE financial woes recently along with fan and talent defections, it was a bad time for Vince McMahon to take the Universal Championship off the fan favorite for a 50 something legend that’s more of a part timer than Brock Lesnar.
The rest of the Super Showdown card, like the Gauntlet match, was suspect at best, though there were a couple of good matches.
More fans are discontinuing their WWE Network membership while the WWE is trying to sell their pay-per-views to another streaming service. In short, just another day in WWE’s play it safe world.
AEW Revolution is coming
With the state of the WWE in flux, AEW’s Revolution is just in time to pick up WWE’s frustrated fans and grow their own fanbase. For a fledgling company with various problems to smooth out, AEW has been doing well just by doing their thing and letting the fans find them. Having the WWE push us away has been an added benefit.
For months, we’ve talked about the Wednesday Night Wars being reminiscent of the Monday Night Wars, but it hasn’t gotten close to that level yet.
WCW had 50 years of established history and fanbase on their side and just needed an energetic new thinker with fresh ideas (Eric Bischoff) to inject some life into it and they were off and running.
AEW is only a few months old, yet has been giving the WWE fits. The signs are there that look like McMahon is panicking, or at least frustrated what he’s doing isn’t working this time. But that’s what happens when you ignore your fans.
It’s safe to say if the late ‘90s WCW would be around now, the WWE may be ready to go out of business.
There’s no Rock, Austin, Michaels, or Undertaker in their prime to save them this time, and they just submarined this generation’s Undertaker (Bray Wyatt) for the potential sake of another mid-carder forced onto us in the form of Roman Reigns.
Simply put, unless it’s a Bray Wyatt-Goldberg rematch at WrestleMania 36, the WWE will be dealing with more self-inflicted hemorrhaging.
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