The Really Weird Secret WWE Is ACTUALLY About
What's Pearce's issue with Drew McIntyre?
Drew is not a disruption to the show, nor does he hold any values that Pearce can't sanction. McIntyre isn't a convincing underdog, if that's what they're going for. He's f*cking massive. He's neither Steve Austin nor Daniel Bryan. He's Drew McIntyre: a hard-working babyface built in the classic WWE image. Nobody could possibly have a believable issue with him. And yet Pearce does, because one act is a goodie, and the other is a baddie - and because moronic admin staff are the central characters on RAW and SmackDown, a show themed on systemic mismanagement.
In the finale of The Wire, an otherwise seminal TV show, an on-the-nose montage is shown of various characters being replaced by their spiritual successors. The cop who gives a sh*t is replaced by another cop who gives a sh*t toiling in the futility of corruption, which extends to the next shift in a political landscape that does nothing to prevent the next failed generation from succumbing to addiction. Everything proceeds cyclically in a broken system. WWE's TV product from 2002 onwards isn't too dissimilar to it, in a weird, indirect parallel. Between the firings of Vickie Guerrero, Brad Maddox and Baron Corbin, WWE is actually telling a sobering story of its own institutional failings. WWE is a satire of capitalism. F*ck the Mega Powers Exploding; it's the most effective long-term story the company has ever penned.
WWE is also 'Succession', only...not good. A fading force of a founding presence is still clinging to power, and everybody underneath him is a craven dipsh*t with an inability to actually succeed him.
Even the best thing WWE has going for it is an indictment of itself.
CONT'D...(5 of 6)