12 Times WWE Buried Itself
11. Shane McMahon Wants To Fix A Broken WWE In 2016
Shane McMahon’s return to WWE in 2016 was a remarkable success story, all things considered.
The pop for his shock comeback on the February 22nd edition of the show was one of the louder ones all year, as was the response that greeted the bizarre news that he’d take on The Undertaker inside Hell In A Cell at that year’s WrestleMania. A WrestleMania that subsequently sold thousands more tickets following the above, which presumably fuelled the egotistical run in the years that followed.
Back in 2016 though, Shane was a welcome presence in contrast to his family members, and his placement alongside Daniel Bryan on SmackDown was nowhere near as suffocating as Stephanie McMahon’s own role with Mick Foley on Raw. More on that elsewhere in this article. Ultimately, ‘Shane-O-Mac’ was once again occupying what most considered to be an un-occupy-able space - the likeable McMahon.
One of the big reasons why was because of how his return was framed - he was the latest to say out-loud just how much WWE sucked. It was all in vague references to ratings, audience numbers and stock prices going down (no lies detected), but the fact bled over to the fiction easily enough for audiences to see his character as a life raft. He wanted control of Raw, of WWE’s short-lived “New Era”, and was going to drive change hitherto unseen for a generation. He ostensibly had to win it by beating 'The Deadman' on 'The Grandest Stage', but as if to prove his point, he lost and then was given the reins anyway before a rebooting of the brand split shunted him to SmackDown before the end of the year.