Why WWE's Biggest Story In YEARS Has Already Failed
Vince McMahon is no longer a promotional Big Dog, and The Tribal Chief is being made to suffer.
An ardent belief for WWE loyalists and wrestling apologists alike in 2021 was that Fox's SmackDown still embodied the Vince McMahon dog-and-pony show of old.
What "old" that even was exactly wasn't specified - was it a legitimate financial golden era of the late-1980s, the UK/European boom of the early-90s that sold out Wembley Stadium, the forever-lauded Attitude Era, the underrated 2016 SmackDown Live renaissance, or even the 10 years or so condensed into a Ruthless Aggression docu-series spreading misinformation to the masses?
Regardless, that's apparently what the billion dollar wrestling show has been for the bulk of a year, despite subjective creative regression on screen and objective commercial decline at the box office. This, in spite of the total free hit of crowds returning in July and SummerSlams and WrestleManias doing particularly well in stadiums.
At the centre of all the perplexing praise stands Roman Reigns, Universal Champion, with a single finger in the air and a single issue agenda - getting everybody to acknowledge him as the only person on the show that actually matters. As longstanding Champion, it at least makes sense as a concept, but would graphs and figures not be point upwards if it was working? To understand what this current stint is supposed to be doing - and ultimately why it's failing - we must reflect on the state of the table before Roman Reigns became the head of it.
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