10 Reasons That Prove Vince McMahon Is No Longer A Creative Genius
What Has Lead To The Creative Fall of WWE's Master Puppeteer...
Vince McMahon is a marketing and advertising genius whose incredible business acumen has allowed his once privately-owned, northeastern pro-wrestling promotion to grow into a publicly traded, global juggernaut that can be seen by millions all over the world today. The strategies and business model developed for his World Wrestling Federation (WWF), known today as WWE, have been copied by many other organizations, including the ultra-popular UFC.
In addition to his self-made business savvy, McMahon has also been called a "creative genius" by people both inside and outside the wrestling business.
While McMahon may still have the marketing smarts that helped him expand the WWF in the 80s and 90s, the creative juices that once generated two peak boom periods for pro-wrestling have long since been absent. From a creative standpoint, the content and quality of WWE's current television programming is close to the worst it's ever been.
Aside from McMahon's own creative void, many point to his decision to expand the creative team to a bloated two dozen writers. When it was primarily booked by two people, McMahon and Pat Patterson, the company was a much more critically-acclaimed product. McMahon has claimed that "growth" necessitates the need of so many writers today, implying that an over-bloated creative staff is required to run a public company and is mutually exclusive to producing quality television.
This reasoning alone shines a bright light on the gaping void once filled by McMahon's creative solutions, but beyond the PR talk and corporate spin, there are plenty more examples...
10. The Decision To Constantly Expand Creative Writing Team
Despite a generally successful creative campaign written and booked by no more than a handful of experienced wrestling minds for the better part of two decades, Vince McMahon decided to expand the writing team in the early 2000s.
When we're talking "expanding the writing team", we're not just talking about adding another creative veteran or two, we're talking about exponential growth. The current team of WWE writers reportedly exceeds two dozen.
In the 80s and early-to-mid 90s, the booking team consisted primarily of Vince McMahon and Pat Patterson with varying degrees of input by Bruce Prichard and later, Jim Cornette, Jim Ross, Vince Russo and a few others. The core was always a tight-knit group and consisted mostly of proven creative wrestling minds.
Nowadays, not only have the writers multiplied worse than Gremlins fed after midnight, but the majority are very young and very inexperienced in both sports-entertainment as well as with life general experiences. They're interested in television and Hollywood, not the wacky world of pro wrestling.
In the pro-wrestling industry, it is a generally accepted fact that the storytelling and booking quality was much better in the 80s and 90s. Why then must WWE continuously add to an overcrowded kitchen full of way too many chefs? This is the first crack in the armour of Vince McMahon, creative genius.