10 Times WWE Tried To Kill Wrestling
6. Chris Kreski Is Out, Stephanie McMahon Is In
The old naysayers, and the WWF itself, always said that the company did not do "wrestling". They did hokey, broad fluff, pejoratively, which McMahon of course coined "sports entertainment" as a marketing strategy.
This philosophy only fully manifested at the beginning of this century because WWE always did do pro wrestling. The wrestling ring and the wrestling matches that took place inside of it were a giveaway, but less facetiously, the promos were unscripted staring-down-the-lens fire, the cards were presented as planned sporting events (just preposterous sporting events), and the entire, once phenomenal enterprise was booked intricately by Vince's pool with Pat Patterson, and not written by about 800 hacks.
That was until Stephanie McMahon assumed the role of Head of Creative and implemented a system and a philosophy that has persisted ever since.
The heavily scripted promos, invisible cameras, and implausible impromptu developments came to define WWE, as WWE removed itself about as far away from pro wrestling as it could get without definitively becoming something else.
Free of competition - and the pretence of being pro wrestling - the post-2001 version of WWE mutated to become averse, and only adjacent, to it.