10 Steps WWE Took To Become The Most Toxic Wrestling Company Ever

3. ...And, In Harmony, Stephanie McMahon

Stephanie McMahon is chiefly responsible for the transition from booking to writing - and you suspect from her ever-present pompous gaze that she still thinks it's a good idea, despite presiding over an age in which there are fewer genuine wrestling megastars than there have ever been.

Stephanie's is a more insidious brand of toxicity. She anoints herself as this great agent of charity and progressivism when, in reality, she has revealed herself as a fraud. "Philanthropy is the future of marketing," as she once infamously retweeted. As she initiated the increasingly transparent (and problematic) PR drives in an attempt to soften her company's public image, she was only really successful in cloaking the underbelly, making it harder for many fans and observers to believe independent sources (the Wrestling Observer) than WWE affiliates (ESPN) in connection with this year's grim Mauro Ranallo furore. It is enablement through obfuscation.

She may not have inherited her father's wrestling nous, but she d*mn sure inherited his chutzpah; her onscreen character has done as much as anybody or anything to depict the new generation of WWE performers as losers who should count themselves lucky to be employed - or (un)independently contracted, as the very dubious case may be.