7 Ways WWE Have Slowly Manipulated Us Into Optimists

7. Kevin Owens

What a moment in pro wrestling history. A disgruntled worker grabs a microphone, and gets to say how he really feels about the broken state of a misguided company. We hear scathing comments from someone who is upset with seeing his dream company turn into a nightmare. Oh, that was the June 27th episode of Raw from 2011, sorry if that was at all confusing to you.

What we got on SmackDown was a scripted summary of problems that have been plaguing the WWE for ages. Not a bad thing, but calling it a pipebomb is certainly a stretch. The only negative things said by Kevin were that he tried to be a “good company guy”, and that Shane calling himself the 'Best in the World' makes him sick. That is all good feedback but is it really more than just pandering to what we say every week? He even listed off names of wrestlers who could use more television time, like he was writing a WhatCulture wrestling article.

Sure, you can look at this as a step towards WWE admitting they're wrong and accepting their mistakes, but it feels like they're desperately picking up the pieces of their declining viewership whilst not delivering on promises they make. After all, like Kevin said, we were supposed to be the authority remember? But here we are watching Shane still hog up time to the point that he was on commentary during the main event that night. It made that Stunner feel much less like a breakthrough, and more like repeating the same old storylines. Which brings up the next point…