How WWE Grew To Hate Itself
As if it wasn't apparent by the on-the-nose ornaments in Vince McMahon's office or 95% of bullies winning in the storylines in the end, WWE has almost always been emotionally insecure. Years of not acknowledging other companies could have been argued as sensible business had the philosophy not been undermined by some utterly rotten attempts at doing so.
McMahon's crap patter and a fundamental misunderstanding of what people liked about WCW Nitro bled through the Billionaire Ted skits in 1996. Triple H called AEW a "p*ssant company" in 2019 before it made his pet project eat sh*t in the Wednesday Night War ratings most weeks. The narrative has always been that they like competition, but in reality the only sort is the one they can create themselves and dress up as a battle won, rather than an actual battle won.
More's the pity too. 1997's Raw is awash with the experimentation and ambition already draining from the nWo-heavy show on the other side. NXT, back pressed a little bit against the wall, was in your writer's opinion a superior product than AEW's offering for much of Dynamite's early days. WWE are great in the clinch, but they'd rather not enter it to begin with. They'd rather hate themselves than hate actual competition.
Their recent major success stories feature them barely solving problems they caused and fooling all of us enough to support the recovery. They "fixed" a Bray Wyatt they broke in the first place. Daniel Bryan's "YES!" chant got louder for him the second they gave it to The Big Show. They pushed Kofi Kingston in a push driven by 10 years of not pushing a guy that deserved a push. They pretended they invented women's wrestling in 2015 when they were at the heart of the indifference towards it for decades prior.
A year and change removed from WrestleMania 35 and still feels the zenith for that movement. WWE monetised what it meant to be 'The Man', but even that had roots at the heart of the organisation's self-hatred.
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