10 Ways WWE Are Currently Catering To Hardcore Fans
9. Vilifying The Authority
We all realize that Triple H and Stephanie McMahon are cast as the bad guys in the story WWE tells each week on Monday Night Raw; the evil Authority who hold down their most qualified employees in favor of the corporate sellouts and brown-nosers who kowtow to their every whim.
But up until the Shane McMahon storyline, we'd never seen WWE use the real life condition of the company as a part of the angle.
When Shane first appeared, he cut a scathing promo about how wrestlers the fans wanted to see were being chopped off at the knees, guys were being given opportunities they didn't deserve and the ratings were in the toilet thanks to the mismanagement of The Authority.
It's hard to fathom any other company would make their actual failures as a business a part of their marketing campaign, but that's exactly what WWE has done. In doing so, they've shone an even brighter spotlight on these issues that some fans may not have been aware of.
Shane McMahon however, was serving as the voice of the fans who felt disenfranchised and that their opinions were not being taken into account, and they can now live vicariously through him.
While Triple H is probably not responsible for many of the actual problems within WWE, the audience now has an identified target for their frustration.