10 Reasons It's NEVER BEEN BETTER To Be A WWE Superstar
Putting smiles on faces, and heels. How has WWE become the place to be?
Edge's last WWE match on the August 18th edition of SmackDown was quite the piece of business, and not just because the 49-year-old tore it up with Sheamus in an impressively physical effort.
It was, somewhat remarkably, nice.
WWE is not the organisation that - in the words of Gorilla Monsoon - resembles that remark all that often, but the 'Rated-R Superstar' got to wrestle one of his best friends for the first time in front of his hometown crowd and even pick up the victory. It headlined too; SmackDown went off the air to the sight of a future AEW signing and/or Hall-Of-Famer who'll potential never wrestle for the company again.
It was a maple leaf-red carpet for the multi-time former WWE/World Champion. Again, nice. Charitable almost. Did those within the company believe they'd seal Adam Copeland up for years to come, or were they simply willing to let him ride out on a high because there's enough to celebrate without worrying about the opposition?
Such is life, bizarrely, in WWE. Too naive, or a reasonable reflection of life behind the scenes with the market leader? Ultimately, in a Vince McMahon-helmed company, the title of this very piece should ideally come with an asterisk and a footnote as a reminder that "plans change, pal!", but otherwise...
10. Triple H's Tastes
The thing everybody must remember about Triple H before doing too many backflips about his longstanding presence as WWE's chief creative force is that he was trained by the monster he replaced.
Vince McMahon's violently whimsical mood swings notwithstanding, Hunter shadowed his Father-In-Law for over a decade before being able to try it himself on the main roster. It can't and won't not be WWE to the core - 'The King Of Kings' has taken the throne from the maddest old crone to ever rule the kingdom - but in ways big and small, the man once responsible for an in-ring "Reign Of Terror" has tried to twiddle enough knobs and flick enough switches so the machine functions to actually get wrestlers over instead of working around a autocratic septuagenarian's bad takes.
It's obviously a work-in-progress. Hunter hasn't quite figured out what to do with former NXT passion projects Johnny Gargano and Tommaso Ciampa, and theres a magic bean-feeling buyer's remorse about the booking of Karrion Kross and Hit Row, but he's overseen WWE's strongest PLE year since 2000, when, appropriately enough, he was in the in-ring form of his life.
The buildings were sold out then, too...