Vince McMahon is retiring from the WWE
At 77, time for me to retire.
Thank you, WWE Universe.
Then. Now. Forever. Together. #WWE #thankful— Vince McMahon (@VinceMcMahon) July 22, 2022
Jaybird
Jaybird is Birdmojo on Xbox Live and Jaybirdmojo on Playstation's network. He's been playing consoles since the Atari 2600 and it was Zork that taught him how to touch-type. If you've got a song for Wednesday, a commercial for Saturday, a recommendation for Tuesday, an essay for Monday, or, heck, just a handful a questions, fire off an email to AskJaybird-at-gmail.com
After about a bajillion scandals, Vince McMahon is finally retiring.
Which means that he’s no longer going to be involved with creative.
Which means…
I have no idea what it means.Report
It’s truly uncharted territory. HHH’s success managing NXT and return to WWE simultaneous with VKM’s retirement could be a sign things will improve, or it could be just a means of comforting shareholders. IMO, their product has been awful in recent years. I love AEW, though, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see WWE take some ideas from AEW. And talent. MJF’s contract goes a whole mother year and a half, and I bet TK won’t release him without some major concession.Report
I honestly tried with AEW but completely gave up about two months ago. Its a shambles with no leadership chasing a niche audience and that’s all they’ll ever have. Blew a huge opportunity with WWE in shambles.
I suspect Vince out of the way now that his Code Red worked to move the old man out is part of the overall sell the company plan, but we will see…Report
The last month or two has been rough, no doubt. Word online is that so much of the long term and short term booking got ruined by injuries and other issues. Jeff Hardy’s DUI, injuries to Adam Cole, Danielson, Punk… And the MJF issues, which seems obviously not a work now that he’s been awol for so long.
And I won’t deny that it’s geared toward wrestling fans. That is part of what I loved about it immediately, the inside references and throwbacks. I also love the wide variety of wrestling styles from various promotions.
Probably the thing I like most is that everything doesn’t revolve around one guy. That’s always been VKM’s MO. If you weren’t the champ, you didn’t matter. Well, there’s a certain amount of silliness to that on its face when we’re talking about a scripted faux competition. Being the champ doesn’t mean you’ve won a competition, unless it’s the competition of just being more entertaining. Bc wrestling isn’t a competition. It’s a story.Report
I mean, for all the hate it gets online, one guy/group being the center of a promotion and being higher than everybody else has been the core of every successful promotion, including non-WWE stuff – Lawler, Inoki, Baba, Misawa, Jack Brisco, the Von Erich’s, Flair & Dusty – yes, other people can be booked strong, but even during the Attitude Era, if you actually look at those shows, The Rock was always clearly the #2 until Austin got hurt for a nearly a year and then he became the core of the show.
I also think people are overrating how much WWE is going to change – after all, for all the hate it gets online, it’s still basically the #1 show on the night it’s on when there are no other sports, they’re going to do what, 4 stadium shows this year, every Peacock show has bigger viewership than ever, Mania just did 50 million viewers in India, etc.
Will some of the more weird VInce-isms probably stop? Sure.
But, they’re not going to go back to signing every 30-something indy guy who has been killing himself for 10 years.
Look at NXT 2.0 – it’s almost doing the same ratings Black & Gold did by the end of it’s run, without having a bunch of indy guy and gals on the show who think they should be main eventing Mania because a 1000 people in a small arean once chanted ‘You Are Awesome” at them.
The future of the WWE is still in NXT right now – young indy wrestlers like the former Rok-C and Cora Jade, former athletes like the Creed Brothers, and legacies like Bron Breakker, and that’s going to be true whether or not Triple H, Steph, and the true greatest Khan in professional wrestling are in charge or Comcast/Universal finally buys them.
Also, frankly, NXT 2.0 is more exciting and interesting to me than much of Black & Gold was, at the height of a bunch of wreslters who were basically “Guy Who Is A Guy Who Is Good At Wrestling” facing each other in 30 minute matches with 9,546 kickouts.Report
I’ve been watching AEW over WWE lately, though I still check in for the WWE PPVs. AEW is such a weird mix of some really good stuff with some really weird stuff. When they treat the wrestling seriously, I love it, but then they do goofy comedy stuff that just doesn’t work for me. I also feel like they are starting to bring back the worst of the nineties “surprise heel turn” every week.
Also, with the number of people getting injured, that suggests something needs to change. Most of their top stars are out right now. It’s possible to work an exciting match but still be safe about it.
I’m interested to see what will happen to WWE with Vince gone. I’m not expecting it to suddenly become a different show, but maybe it will get more exciting again. For a long time I feel like it has been very paint-by-numbers.Report
The Seven Deadly Steps match.
The Dive Outside The Ring.
I don’t mind the former quite so much. It’s why people watch, after all. You do start to notice the pattern when it’s EVERY GOSH DARNED MATCH though.
We used to mock the whole “90% of the show was squash matches” thing that they had going on in the mid-80’s but it protected the product in a weird way that I didn’t appreciate at the time.
I think that the dive needs to be removed entirely and brought out like the tombstone piledriver. Only one or two trusted people get to use it, only at PPVs.
AEW is weird. It’s like they looked back at the 90’s WCW and said “let’s do that”. You’d have a lucha libre match and then two behemoths beating the crap out of each other and then a comedy skit involving the big names out to eat at a restaurant and then a midcard belt match that ended in a non-finish and then a comedy match where the face would lead the audience in a dance and then the NWO would come out and ruin the night and everybody would throw their trash into the ring.
Some of that stuff was great. You’d have something for everybody whether they’d been watching for 25 years or whether it was their first show.
But, dang.Report
BTW, FWIW some news in WWe landReport
My goodness. I just am curious as to whether that means that Prichard is demoted or whether that means that Prichard is boxing his stuff up as we speak.Report
Does Triple-H have any sort of track record as a booker?Report
The NXT Black-and-Gold era was his.Report
NXT was fully his baby from concept til they took it away from him, so yes and IMO a pretty good one. This is a different beast of course, so scalable is the question.Report
Checking the internets, 205 Live was also one of his.
Which makes me feel a lot better about the future direction of the company.Report
I would not be surprised if AEW loses their network deal after it runs out, as bad as it has gotten now. There are three years of ratings to go off of, and the Discovery umbrella brand doesn’t want this on their branding.Report
Something I hadn’t taken into account:
Report
Now get rid of John Podhoretz.Report
Bruce Prichard is now head of creative.
HHH and Stephanie reportedly have static with him.Report
Bruce is a Vince guy and will have him in his ear and as his goon still. Look for the new regime to try and move him.Report
One thing I was thinking about last night is that damn Miz/Logan Paul storyline.
I’m wondering how much of the D-List Celebrity thing is Vince.Report