10 Things WWE Suddenly Wanted You To Care About (After Programming You To Hate Them)
In which Hulk Hogan ages backwards.
Vince McMahon is a creature of impulse.
He operates on a week-to-week basis in accordance with his whims. He has absolutely no regard for continuity, and expects you to fall in line. Think back to every dropped development of 2019. It is the Ultimate Thrill Ride.
Mojo Rawley used to look into a mirror, before being told that his Two out of Three Falls match has been cancelled at the last minute. That's not fair. Let's give Vince some credit: he is professional and prepared enough to complete the final draft of Monday Night RAW four minutes before it airs live. The Revival were presented as humiliated pissants, until Shane McMahon needed a couple of heaters, and so they were dressed in suits. We have deduced from the Robert Roode reinvention that Vince really likes a moustache...
...for six days.
Kevin Owens likes Sami Zayn, every now and then, and simply does not. Zayn doesn't turn on Owens subsequently because he has no interior life. He is a character who hates wrestling fans and blames them for everything. It's your fault WWE sucks. And Baron Corbin's, obviously. Such terrible, ratings-killing work must be punished! With a lengthy Universal Title programme!
2019 has accelerated this old mentality to a chaotic and fascinating extent, but it is as old as the man himself...
10. Women's Wrestling
In the early 2000s, women's wrestling in WWE was essentially a platform on which to put Jerry Lawler over on commentary.
The work put in by the women was incidental to everything. The "matches" were secondary to Lawler's riffing; if one of the women dared perform something remotely athletic, Lawler graded the move on his ability to see more of her body.
"Impressive big boot from Stacey Keibler," Jim Ross would say, putting over her flexibility.
"Yeah, and you can make out the crevice of her labia too, JR!" Lawler would say in response, in the process of an over-sexed meltdown.
This all changed, in 2015, after AJ Lee called out Stephanie McMahon's hypocrisy on Twitter. The Chief Brand Officer, maintaining that hypocrisy, subsequently put herself over as the new spokeswoman of the Women's Revolution initiated by her husband, Triple H. The NXT to main roster adaptation was awful, at first, and indicative of systemic attitudes: the women were positioned in cliques for purely aesthetic reasons, but after a time, the content levelled up with - and merited - the rhetoric.
That rhetoric was insufferable - "Thank you for no longer being perverts, and giving women a chance!" - but WWE is undoubtedly better for this PR initiative; the women's matches are often the most physical and most over on pay-per-view cards.