9 Ups & 11 Downs For WWE In 2025
7. WWE Unreal
Had the WWE Network been enough of a success with enough people, it might have stuck around a bit longer before being replaced by a combination of the company's growing Netflix archive and beloved Vault YouTube channel. Perhaps due to choice paralysis or a niche audience being even smaller than first thought, a lot of old footage went largely ignored, instead serving more of a purpose appearing at random now, or being re-re-discovered thanks to online megafans sharing the wealth.
What the service did pioneer on a more regular basis was the behind-the-scenes documentary, with the likes of the 24, 365 specials tracking wrestlers' every move and specials on The Undertaker, WrestleMania and others replacing DVD boxsets that dominated the 2000s historian market.
This is where Netflix's Unreal fit nicely as the next logical step. Or where it should have done, anyway.
Instead - and in keeping with too much of WWE's 2025 output - it became consumed by company-wide vanity. Vanity from Triple H to present himself as the overlord of all things, none of them bad. Vanity from the rest of the head-nodders around the table including-but-not-limited-to lifetime toadies Bruce Prichard and Michael Hayes navel-gazing their way through another WrestleMania season while putting the squeeze on others in acts of self-preservation. Vanity from Nick Khan and associates to totally no-sell objective declines in key business areas, while predictably talking the whole operation up as never better. And even vanity from select talents for episodes we've not even yet - Becky Lynch's regrettably irritating message to the small portion of the audience actually worked by Seth Rollins' injury storyline is a clip destined for Season 2 along with the rest of the indifferent tale.
Conspiratorially, as Season One aired against the backdrop of mid-year mid-decline era WWE, it felt increasingly like the product was making content for the show, rather than the other way around. Only bad can come of this, regardless of how nice the Gorilla position diagrams were.