10 Reasons Why WWE Needs To Fundamentally Change Everything About The TV Product
2. Authority Figures
The Steve Austin Vs. Mr. McMahon feud worked perfectly because it made sense.
McMahon was the outed figurehead of the WWF, his corporate baby; Austin was the renegade hero who tore down the walls of his company and his psyche alike. Odds were stacked against Austin; he overcame them to give McMahon his comeuppance. The series, totally novel for its time, was an ebbing and flowing wave in which practically every person with even a passing familiarity of wrestling was swept up. The Authority Figure is now a McGuffin, the returns of which have diminished for years and years.
Current RAW General Manager Kurt Angle exists to dampen backstage squabbles, performed in what might as well be a school playground, and make the schoolchildren settle their differences in the ring. His job is to make matches and he often only does that when they materialise, as if by magic, in front of him. Dafter still, those matches are often framed as punishments for the heel roster. They're meant to wrestle for a living.
SmackDown to its credit does attempt to create a universe in which the role isn't totally redundant. It is the Land of Opportunity, and thus needs people in a position of power to hand out those opportunities - but that doesn't necessarily mean we need to see Shane McMahon nor Daniel Bryan every single week.
The Jack Tunney model worked perfectly. Reverting back to the sporting framework of old - in which cards were announced in advance under the pretence that wrestling was real - would spell the end if this contrived and impossible format.