10 Moves WWE Must Make To Regain Popularity
5. Much Less Stephanie McMahon
If WWE wants to be cool again they need to take Stephanie McMahon off-screen.
As a Creative leader, she failed miserably so now she's trying her hand at the newly created "Chief Branding Officer" position which has come to equal Stephanie exploiting charity for publicity, but I digress...
The ironic thing is that Stephanie has great heel tendencies, but she cannot be considered a great heel when she never receives any comeuppance or when there's never any payoff. Being a nasty jerk for the sake of being a nasty jerk isn't what "sports-entertainment" was founded on, but in 2016, it's the norm because of Stephanie's last name. Is it coincidence, then, that WWE is far from the pop-culture icon it was before Stephanie rose to power? I think not.
Unless Stephanie undergoes a radical ego shift (unlikely to happen) or decides to try her hand at a company not run by Daddy (like Shane did, to his credit), WWE will never return to the level of coolness that it once had. So long as Stephanie's on-screen to emasculate and belittle the so-called "superstars" and/or overstep her boundaries and abuse power behind the scenes, the McMahon vanity project that is today's WWE (read: not cool at all) will continue.