10 Times WWE Employees Hated The Current Product

Mick Foley has an intelligence and eloquence that few would expect from a man that built a career out of being brutalised and hit about the head.

Truly, Foley is one of wrestling’s best talkers and storytellers. In an interview with Lilian Garcia, he gave his opinion on the disconnect between WWE and wrestling fans.

Foley framed his critique of the current product around a discussion he’d had with Jon Moxley about how constrained the former Dean Ambrose felt by the WWE format. Foley stressed this wasn’t “an exercise in the whipping of WWE” but he recognised the constraints that a PG product has on talent. Foley was particularly disconcerted about the effect on modern heels, telling Garcia:

“Imagine trying to be a heel in today’s environment where you can’t be offensive […] when you are catering to families, you can actually see someone complaining if a heel was scary […] it is hard being a menacing figure when you are so constrained […] When your most dastardly character trait is that you are trying to be the best at something? It is hard to dislike someone who is yearning to be the best [...]”

Heels don’t have the same effect on audiences anymore. Most of the current successful heels follow the chickens**t model, which, despite its name requiring Asterisks for good taste, is the least edgy heel archetype. Even this model has subverted either into comedy, such as Sami Zayn, or as Foley touched on, begrudged respect due to their “yearning to be the best”, such as AJ Styles. Scariness is okay as long as it’s in a cartoonish ‘The Fiend’ way rather than a more grounded and nuanced portrayal akin to Jake ‘The Snake’ Roberts.