8 Ways TKO Has RUINED WWE

It's worth noting the obvious as a catch-all caveat before diving in here, lest it needs mentioning before every entry - WWE was not the babyface company before the 2023 TKO deal happened. The merger between World Wrestling Entertainment and Ultimate Fighting Championship didn't magically make the market leaders of either side the bad guys overnight - they'd long been that in order to reach the point where they could even become an all-new corporate legion of doom.

Vince McMahon increasingly leaned into it as a leader. Before he resigned in disgrace twice, he was known and almost celebrated for the autocracy he oversaw, with countless talking heads and colleagues noting how he remained involved in every single aspect of the empire he'd bought and built. It was evident in the on-screen output alone, particularly as younger wrestlers and writers pandered to his increasingly dated and deranged tastes. There could be no doubt who was at the wheel up until the day he departed, and even then the period in which he was allegedly consulting had "creative" flashes of what used to make him tick.

Part of that was a in-built culture of job insecurity, over-arching instability (his own, as well as that of many that worked with him) and a transparent lack of respect for just about every stakeholder other than himself. Customers, consumers - us, you and I - included.

WWE has vastly improved its on-screen product in the years since he departed. But everything else...

The release process within WWE had gotten so brutal before the TKO merger that one of the worst days in company history for it became part of a recent grim lore. 

"Black Wednesday" became shorthand for just how little the market leader cared for talent, calling back to April 15th 2020 - the day hundreds of wrestlers and staffers were released or furloughed by a company simultaneously declaring record profits. 

The ills of the pandemic were at the heart of both these issues - the company had saved a fortune on costs in light of how little they could do, but talent being let go had hardly any options of where to go to work for the very same reasons. It showed a naked lack of humanity from the top down, particularly as people the world over grappled with very similar strains and stresses and were turning to pro wrestling and other hobbies like it for much-needed distractions. 

Half a decade later and the release of Luke "Ridge Holland" Menzies brought some brand new ugly conversations to the fore. Holland was injured while wrestling in TNA in September 2025 on behalf of WWE and earning "NXT money" (a sizeable cut from what he generated on the main roster), then revealed the company would not be renewing his contract when it expired in November. This, despite injury keeping him out of the game at least until early-2026. Historically, WWE has added times to deal in order to a) get every last cent from the talent and b) stop them going elsewhere, but Holland's reveal of this information allegedly expedited his exit, and with it, ended his pay sooner.

A rotten deal for the wrestler all the way around and horrific PR for the group, but that's never seemed lower on the agenda anyway...