10 WWE Creative Secrets The Writers DON’T Want You To Know
6. They DO Write To Appease Vince McMahon
The general perception of the writing staff is that they don't matter, Vince McMahon heavily edits their stuff to his liking, and that, eventually, they learn what the job is: make the evil psychopath happy, and collect a very decent pay packet with your psyche intact.
This is a reductive assessment - one shaped, perhaps, by the embittered outgoing unreliable narrator of an ex-writer. For self-preservation purposes, the writer needs to deflect the criticism to avoid a certain stigma. Writing for WWE - lowbrow trash consumed by idiotic poors, in the eyes of the "legitimate" pop culture arena - is itself a suboptimal entry on the CV. The idea that the idiotic poors also thought the writer was stupid is hardly good for their future employment prospects.
Then again, ask yourself this: why are there so many embittered ex-writers willing to bury a regime that some, like Dan Madigan as reported in Matthew Randazzo V's 'Ring of Hell', have compared to "Stalinism"?
Possibly because they do write entirely for Vince.
"WWE operates likes a cult," Madigan continued, saying that a writer might as well not be there if they aren't an "unquestioning" ass-kisser.
Former writer Kevin Marshall echoed this take: "Basically you're sitting there trying to write for [Vince] and you're trying to figure out what he wants."
Bear in mind, Marshall was released over a decade ago. Dave Schilling, who wrote for WWE as recently as 2019, said virtually the exact same thing in an interview with Fightful (although he was far less scathing, it should be stated): "It's all about what Vince likes. A lot of these broad caricatures are things that Vince likes."
So is creative writing in WWE just a game of trying to come up with the most puerile insult?
Yes and no...