The Damning Legacy Of Braun Strowman

Braun Strowman will be back.

Most do return eventually, and what's especially cruel about his shocking release is that it's calculated. Should Strowman return within 18 months, he still won't be 40, and he will have shedded the stigma as a big, fading guy who is simply there. But for now, he is no longer in WWE, having been released on June 2.

At the turn of the 2010s, WWE had changed - or at least, the fandom projected change onto WWE.

Super John Cena had descended into goofy, overpowered parody. Headliners Shawn Michaels, Batista and Edge were all gone as active competitors by the spring of 2011. Triple H and the Undertaker transitioned into part-time roles. In parallel, the dysfunctional, myopic developmental system proved so fruitless that Triple H, in 2011, drafted up blueprints to shred and transform the bizarre territory emulation model. In short, Vince McMahon was desperate for star power, and, gauging by the demented and cruel exercise that was the original incarnation of NXT, he wasn't particularly well-equipped even 11 years ago to build the next generation.

The NXT game show was a bizarre and counterproductive exercise in sink or swim. It was so mean-spirited and damaging that honestly, who the f*ck knows what the point of it was. There is no other way to interpret the show than through a cynical lens, and the only reasonable explanation is that Vince, irritated by the failure of so many developmental prospects, psychologically projected his own management failures outwards. McMahon is famously impatient. This was McMahon at his most impatient. These men were not getting over as stars. It was all taking too long, damn it. Have Eli Cottonwood cut a promo on a moustache, and if he is stigmatised as an unsalvageable embarrassment in 30 seconds, then good. He wasn't cut out for it.

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