10 Times WWE Didn’t Learn Their Lesson
2. Vince McMahon's Outside Ventures
Vince McMahon, wrestling's most successful ever promotor, is a famously self-assured man - so much so that you'd expect him to own that inarguable fact.
He doesn't: McMahon has so distanced himself from his exploits that in 2011, when announcing that the initials WWE no longer stood for anything, he claimed that he wanted the company to elevate itself beyond "its wrestling heritage".
Before he even monopolised the North American wrestling scene through the national expansion programme, McMahon had one eye on conquering the rest of the world. One of his first outside ventures, the Atlantic Coast Hockey League's Cape Cod Buccaneers, was a dismal failure. So too was the 1991-founded World Bodybuilding Federation, which was abandoned in the face of his 1994 steroid trial. The XFL in 2000-2001 was perhaps the most catastrophic misadventure in the entire history of U.S. sport, contested by amateurs struggling to grasp its inane rules. David to the NFL's Goliath, the concept was so weak it couldn't even pick up the stone.
WWE Studios is still in existence - but despite clearing mild profits in its later years, it remains synonymous with its early failures and dire critical reception. One need look no further than the trailer for The Chaperone to gauge its standing in the world of cinema.