Why Vince McMahon Has Lost Total Faith In Triple H

Bayley Sasha Banks
WWE

Bayley and Sasha Banks entered counselling, which was significantly less good than settling their differences with some gruesome stamps of the hand in the molten hate-fuelled heat of the best matches of the year.

In 2021, the extent to which the supposed future has not informed the present is really quite remarkable.

The paradigm has shifted into an even more damning direction. Where Vince once comically mishandled the carefully built or preserved talents bestowed upon him, he has now in effect no-sold the very existence of NXT and the Performance Center. NXT has essentially been retconned in main roster canon. It is an incredible development; between the ancient-feeling top of the card and the almost total lack of stylistic change, if a casual fan dropped out of WWE a decade ago, and for whatever reason dropped back in, they'd have no idea that the last several years happened because, through the prism of RAW and SmackDown, they ostensibly haven't. There are NXT "graduates" littered about who haven't yet been vanished, in Damian Priest and Matt Riddle - neither of whom, incidentally, remotely evolved in NXT - but beyond a higher proportion of women's wrestlers, the pre-NXT landscape remains virtually untouched.

By programming Bobby Lashley, Drew McIntyre and The Miz at the top of RAW, Vince McMahon appears to have favoured Ohio Valley Wrestling, Florida Championship Wrestling and Deep South Wrestling as the most effective developmental territories. Deep South Wrestling! This was a system so laughably incompetent that, tired of hearing reports that they simply pretended to book house shows, John Laurinaitis shuttered the whole thing down under cover of darkness in a late-night sting operation.

CONT'D...(3 of 6)

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Michael Sidgwick is an editor, writer and podcaster for WhatCulture Wrestling. With over seven years of experience in wrestling analysis, Michael was published in the influential institution that was Power Slam magazine, and specialises in providing insights into All Elite Wrestling - so much so that he wrote a book about the subject. You can order Becoming All Elite: The Rise Of AEW on Amazon. Possessing a deep knowledge also of WWE, WCW, ECW and New Japan Pro Wrestling, Michael’s work has been publicly praised by former AEW World Champions Kenny Omega and MJF, and surefire Undisputed WWE Universal Champion Cody Rhodes. When he isn’t putting your finger on why things are the way they are in the endlessly fascinating world of professional wrestling, Michael wraps his own around a hand grinder to explore the world of specialty coffee. Follow Michael on X (formerly known as Twitter) @MSidgwick for more!