8 Big Lessons WWE Must Learn From 2018
Only going forward 'cause they can't find reverse.
Perhaps "should" may have been more appropriate for the title of this article. Few people - if any, anymore - tell Vince McMahon something he might not want to hear, not least something he could perhaps reflect upon in order to do differently.
WWE insulate themselves from needing to learn lessons, but that doesn't mean it isn't a worthwhile pursuit all the same. The good and bad of the year has been covered in several excellent retrospectives on this site, but nearly all of the alleged hate comes - despite the bile of those below the line - from a place of love. It as a company (or a product, at very least) that most entered into a relationship with a long time ago - time enough that divorce is no longer an option.
To learn is to grow, and to grow is to nurture something pre-existing and make it already better. At the start of 2018, few assumed WWE could become as financially enormous as it did when FOX and USA agreed to those eye-watering television deals. Here on the cusp of 2019 (or in it, depending on when you read this), few assume the organisation will ever throw its arms around consumers instead dishing out yet another dig in the ribs.
It is better to live in hope, than fear. Though try telling that to some particular groups of people in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia...
8. Fans Won't Buy Vision 2030...
...so don't try and sell it.
Crown Jewel was surely the murkiest McMahon Family sh*tshow of all time, knocking Greatest Royal Rumble into second. As a wrestling show it was a foul-smelling turd swirling in the toilet bowl that is WWE's relationship with Saudi Arabia, and that's before the mountain of crap the company swerved just to even book it.
And if you think three references to excrement is a bit heavy-handed for one paragraph, it's nothing compared to the amount of bullsh*t the company were required to spew during April's maiden offering. The rhetoric and visual aids were so dated Michael Cole and others may as well have been selling Saga holidays rather than championing a mythical brighter future, but that's not why WWE are there, and everybody knows it.
Vince McMahon could drown in a pool of cash outside his Connecticut country pile...but he fancied a second pool. That's why there'll be nine more years, and that's why there'll be no retrospective look at all the "changes" when he gets his product the f*ck out of there in 2028.