12 Times WWE Buried Itself

12. The McMahons Apologise For WWE Being Bad And Change Nothing

In a segment that transpired to be rooted in a belief Triple H had that WWE were about to sign The Elite and stop AEW ever existing, all four McMahons took the ring at the start of the December 17th edition of Monday Night Raw to acknowledge that they hadn’t been producing a particularly good show for a while.

Already, the concept of the speech was flawed. “A while” wasn’t really fleshed out, and nor could it be - by admitting that the creative machine hadn’t really been well oiled since the year 2000, the company stood to risk alienating various TV paymasters that had only just agreed to make SmackDown the first ever billion dollar wrestling show thanks to an eye-watering new rights fee deal.

Furthermore, while Paul Levesque, and both McMahon children remembered the point of the peace offering and tried to show a modicum of contrition for a rotten period, Vince had already forgotten/ignored the brief before they’d even got to the apology. Long into his senile/disaffected troll era as a creative “force”, McMahon was bollocking the fans for their reactions throughout, and didn’t have any of the enthusiasm faked by the other three in the ring.

The message was anything but clear - we are going to make WWE better, but it’s already the best and you shouldn’t complain so much anyway. Get It?