10 Architects Behind WWE's Demise
9. Stephanie McMahon
WWE has this bizarre inability to just not f*cking get that people either get it or they don't.
From personal experience - and one gathers your experience, if you even acknowledge your wresting fandom, which many don't out of fear - certain people will look upon you as a f*ck-brained numbskull when it is revealed that you like wrestling. They don't know nor care that it's as diverse as any medium, or that we are quite aware it is fake. It is to them that patently bullsh*t con in which the 'roided-up, death-haunted mutants don't defend themselves from an inbound, wildly exaggerated punch. They think you are too stupid to realise that boxing exists.
Stephanie McMahon was promoted to Head of Creative once the last century turned, and her big, genius idea was to appeal to these people, instead of - and f*cking get this and hate this, for they deem you stupid - a still very sizeable collective wrestling audience with just one channel to choose from.
Ex-Hollywood writers staffed a writer's room that now resembled the human evolution chart in reverse. They were monkeys knocking out sh*t from their typewriters as WWE devolved into a grotesque, nebulous version of a crummy action adventure TV show.
The existing audience shrank, gradually, over time, but it was OK, because when the last embers of when this was wrestling headlined WrestleMania, year on year years later, it made WWE look really big.