10 Reasons Why WWE's Problems Aren't Going Away

Matt Riddle is the perfect modern Vince McMahon babyface: he boasts a legitimate sports background, he's ripped, he's handsome, he can absolutely go, he has the no-f*cks disposition needed to gain his respect, and he naturally wears the big smile out there unnaturally imposed on so many others.

The very second he came under his auspices, he became a bully by ganging up on Sami Zayn alongside Keith Lee as part of a weird beat-down angle.

It's a terribly minor thing - that episode of SmackDown, laid out by Vince, was otherwise excellent, civil war plot hole aside - but it was illustrative of the macro doom so pervasive in the company. It's almost impossible to receive an individual development in good faith without casting a weary eye to the big, grim picture. McMahon booked this angle because he values cruelty and obnoxiousness as appealing babyface characteristics. This is a man who tortured Jim Ross for years under the belief that it was funny. He is a bad person operating as if he is a good person, and models his babyfaces after himself.

This is a man who cannot track his own product, who is so controlling that near every word uttered by his announcers is his own, a man who turns badass killers into jokes because they happen to be funny, then contrives to make them not funny.

This is a man who who has lost the plot, and it might actually be true, and not just a callous complaint.