How WWE Turned Heel
Vince McMahon is an unpleasant man, and that is a fact. This toxic attitude has manifested onscreen so often—Lita’s slut-shaming, Enzo Amore’s shark caging, Jim Ross’ arse excavating—that it cannot be disputed. This is a major part of it—and this attitude intensified in parallel with WWE’s stranglehold over the North American landscape. Any minor threat to WWE’s dominance was considered a pest, an aberration.
“How can it possibly be good, when it’s not us?”
Just listen to the extent to which Daniel Bryan was buried in 2010. The biggest game in town could scarcely believe that this “deformed vegan nerd” had a buzz about him, and crucified him because of it. As we saw during and in the years after the Invasion, WWE grew off-putting in its arrogance. If you didn’t do things the WWE way, you did them the wrong way. Goldberg sold. The Cruiserweights slowed. Everybody within the dying developmental model wrestled the exact same style, and why wouldn’t they?
This style won over the entire world, pal!
Vince, as we learned following his appearance on Steve Austin’s Network podcast, doesn’t hold much respect for his new “millennial” performers, from whom he keeps, per a terrified Sasha Banks, at an unhealthy distance. He sees them as unambitious, afraid of the competition. This mentality, which is true if Vince believes it, is at such crippling odds with his own that it might explain why he lashes out at them in the form of utterly apathetic and inconsistent booking.
CONT'D...(3 of 5)