WWE Trades Ruthless Aggression For PG | Wrestling Timelines
January 25, 2015 | #CancelWWENetwork
The lame industry plant that everybody despises wins the 2015 Royal Rumble match. This is one of the least well-received creative decisions ever, perhaps the least popular booking decision ever. Of all-time. In history.
Roman wins a match that is cynical in its layout to a darkly hilarious extent. He is portrayed as the best of the worst outcomes. A returning Daniel Bryan is eliminated within 10 minutes. The crowd turns, but they aren’t furious; the scene is too pathetic and expected for outrage. WWE fans have been here before. They vocally react with a collective and sustained groan that sounds like a chorus of vuvuzelas.
Kane and the Big Show dump out multiple cult favourites, among them Dolph Ziggler and Dean Ambrose, like they are rolled-up rugs thought too old and ragged for the house move. They are physically depicted as useless inanimate objects. The idea is that these fossils are so old and over-pushed that it will come as a relief when Roman dumps them out. WWE is aware that Roman is unpopular, but still promotes him to the main event of WrestleMania with a “Well, he’s better than Kane and the Big Show, isn’t he?” masterplan. In the aftermath, the hashtag #CancelWWENetwork trends worldwide to such an extent that Vince is questioned about it by a shareholder. He dismisses it, saying that a small vocal minority weren’t happy because “Santa Claus didn’t come on that pay-per-view” - even though he sort of did, since the next big babyface hero was primed to win the big one at WrestleMania.
Brandon Thurston of Wrestlenomics reckons this did in fact lower viewership. The fans aren’t just ranting online. The TV ratings on the road to WrestleMania 31 are in the worst pattern since 1996.
This sort of thing - i.e., a moment so awful that fans rage-quit in response - becomes a less-than-ideal theme of WWE’s late 2010s. Triple H winning Sting’s first-ever WWE match in 2015; Jinder’s WWE title win; a man winning the first-ever women’s Money In The Bank ladder match in 2017; a 2019 Hell In A Cell match ending via referee stoppage…
The product in the late 2010s is at its lowest creative ebb. WWE prevails regardless - but not necessarily as a result of the switch to PG…