10 Banned Photos WWE Don’t Want You To See
WWE: a shadowy place on which the light sometimes shines.
WWE is extremely careful when curating their image to the wider public - or at least, this is the idea.
For years, the promotion outright refused to market itself as pro wrestling. This amused (or even incensed) the fandom, but it was savvy. The TV and advertising industries were each appalled at the form, believing its fans to be poor idiots who could not afford the wares hawked in the commercial breaks, rendering them pointless. WWE was sports entertainment and was better than the tawdry wrasslin’ industry, which the great, benevolent Vince tried to save from itself.
WWE does things the right way. They don’t encourage gory self-mutilation, like AEW (even if, as was thoroughly predictable, they did before and have since). WWE isn’t a cult in which certain beliefs and behaviours are imposed; they are a family. WWE makes their own stars, and they wouldn’t dare go crawling back to the old dinosaurs. WWE’s heroes are reputable people who act as genuine role models to their young fans. Vince said this in the early ‘90s (!), so it must be true!
The thing is, while WWE wants to control everything, that isn’t entirely possible…
10. Rivals Working Through Their Spots
You know wrestling is predetermined. You’ve known this since you were a child, or at least most of you have: certain stan accounts on X, suggesting they didn’t play outside enough in their youth, seem to believe it’s real.
It isn’t.
But you’d like to suspend your disbelief, ideally. You know that the wrestlers work collaboratively, and that many have forged genuine friendships or at least a sense of mutual professional respect - but you don’t need reminding of that.
You’d like to believe that, for example, Drew McIntyre and CM Punk legitimately couldn’t stand one another - that Drew thought Punk was a toxic presence and that Punk thought Drew was an uninteresting wrestler with a try-hard sense of humour who was only relevant because he deigned to work with him. You’d like to think that they turned up for work after exchanging curt WhatsApp messages mapping out the direction, never saw one another during the day, and vented for real in agreed-upon (but very tense) verbal exchanges.
This head canon was rather difficult to achieve when photos of the Raw roster leaked. Many rivals - including Drew and Punk - were captured hanging out and blocking their segments.
There’s only a sliver of magic left, if any. Stop ruining it.