10 Uncredited Architects Behind WWE’s Gigantic Success
The unrecognised men who built the recognised leader in global sports entertainment.
It's Vince McMahon's world. Everybody else just gets to live in it.
The perception of the man in 2017 is one of a hopelessly out-of-touch oligarch who has alienated many fans by indulging in his tired vision of sports entertainment. Those naysayers have a point, but forget (or dent their narrative by refusing to acknowledge) that McMahon is, categorically, the most successful man ever associated with the pro wrestling racket.
McMahon knew, in the early 1980s, that the almost socialist territory model had been rendered antiquated by the nascent cable television revolution. He destroyed it by refashioning wrestling as a polished commercial enterprise, one which dominated North America - and ultimately, the entire world. At his creative peak(s), he did so with an iconic cast of bonafide superstar household names. The build to WrestleMania XIX was centred around one question. Who built the house: McMahon or Hulk Hogan?
In the end, that match should have went to a draw. Their relationship was symbiotic. One could exist without the other - but not to the same, insanely lucrative extent.
McMahon - and even his most successful major stars - did not build the WWE empire on his own. He often had to be dragged, kicking and screaming, to reach the conclusion these men hypothesised.
10. Mr. T
Mr. T is known to the wrestling fandom as the Z-list celebrity who repulsed Oedipus by droning on about his mother for two hours during his 2014 Hall Of Fame speech.
It's a shame that relentless display of tedium and unease is going to define him for a newer generation of fans. It's not hyperbole to hypothesise that they might not be there, had it nor been for his contribution to the WWF's national expansion in the mid 1980s.
The WWF wouldn't have collapsed, had the first WrestleMania not been a success. They would, however, have faced financial difficulties sufficient enough to enforce a scaling back of operations - possibly allowing Jim Crockett Promotions an opening into areas into which Vince McMahon had marauded. Mr. T was at the peak of his popularity, bang in the middle of his run in the popular action-adventure series the A-Team when he first appeared at the first WrestleMania. He drew eyes to wrestling that previously considered it a bloody, fringe concern.
Of course, the WWF wasn't; McMahon's vision of it was a zeitgeist-grabbing reflection of Ronald Reagan's patriotic 1980s. Mr T's presence provided a crucial inroad to it.