10 Times WWE Narrowly Avoided Disaster

4. Or Were They?

Stephanie McMahon was a toxic and horrendously counterproductive television character, just the absolute worst. Excruciating.

The snarl, the get-out-of-my-ring cadence, the relentless, oppressive heat, the sheer lack of an actual focus and purpose...why did she hate everyone, faces and heels alike? If she hated everyone, and she did because they all got slapped really, really hard, why did she hold an interest in promoting them in her guise as a wrestling promoter? Just do something else, Steph, Jesus.

You might even smile once in a while!

Not that it made the television any less brutal, but the arrogance of the performer was at least informed by her pivotal executive role. She actually did do something else, and she did it phenomenally well. As Chief Brand Officer, Steph did so much to extract those hundred of millions upon hundreds of millions of dollars from the TV industry as a result of her bloviating marketing-speak which, while odious perhaps to you or I, framed WWE as a legit, clean and philanthropic public corporation removed entirely from the old perception of a blood-soaked CTE-inflicting drug den. Under this revamp, WWE, beleaguered by the Chris Benoit double murder-suicide furore of 2007, became far more appetising to TV buyers, after which the money never did stop rolling in.

Mattel requested that WWE go PG; Stephanie executed that vision to a quite extraordinary degree.