13 Ups And 23 Downs For WWE In 2020
1. The Buck Stops Here
At the end of the day, all the failings of 2020 (the ones not directly tied to the global pandemic) have to be laid at one man’s feet: Vincent Kennedy McMahon.
You can blame poor booking, poor writing, a lack of enthusiasm or poor execution by some of the wrestlers, but it really all starts and ends with Vince. We’ve all heard the stories of Raw and SmackDown being rewritten at the last minute, sometimes with rewrites happening as the show goes on the air. This is not how a major company should operate, but when everything comes down to the whims of a 75-year-old man who doesn’t sleep, that’s what can happen.
Just look back at this past year: the go-nowhere feuds that last forever, the gimmick matches like the eye-for-an-eye match or Firefly Inferno match, the numerous wrestlers whose pushes vanished, the haphazard booking, the abrupt changes that don’t make any sense, the idiotic segments that seemed like they were written to entertain only one person… everything has to be laid at Vince’s doorstep. And the ratings and countless critics’ reviews bear that out.
2020 was a hugely profitable year for WWE in a year in which the company was forced to rethink a lot of things. And we shouldn’t hold stuff beyond their control against them. But many of the items listed here were well within Vince’s ability to correct, adjust or avoid altogether. Simply put, Vince McMahon is the biggest negative about WWE in 2020.