10 Tough Questions WWE Must Ask Itself In 2021
1. Is It Already Too Late?
Or maybe WWE is just unfixable.
These bad habits are now decades old, hardened by 18 years of inaction. WWE had no reason to change anything between 2001 and 2019 because they had monopolised the marketplace. Rival promotions couldn't even hope to dent Vince McMahon's bloated market share after WCW collapsed. WWE wasn't in any kind of competitive peril, so they stagnated without the motivation to evolve. They got worse.
"Iron sharpens iron" was thrown around a lot when All Elite Wrestling launched in January 2019. That the return of competition to the American wrestling market would spark an upturn in WWE's creative was a commonly-held belief, though it has been proven incorrect. Competition was supposed to drive WWE into tightening its nuts and bolts, breaking bad habits, and improving. Instead, the company of January 2021 is largely the same as that of January 2019 - but with a healthier bank balance.
Perhaps, too, the public perception of WWE (and pro wrestling in general) is too deeply-ingrained to be changed. Wrestling hasn't been "cool" since the Attitude Era. Remove something from the cultural zeitgeist for that long and it rarely returns.
For the good of the business, let's hope this isn't the case.