Is The Tide Turning In The WWE?

Is the tide turning in WWE? It certainly seems like this could be true, as the weeks since WrestleMania have provided us with possible signs that power is shifting behind the scenes in Stamford, Connecticut. Now let me be clear that I am not saying Vince McMahon is no longer the final word when it comes to booking decisions. It does look as though he may be listening to, and agreeing with somebody else when it comes to pushes, story lines and finishes.

Exhibit A is the WrestleMania main event itself, and two key occurrences, the obvious being the de-push of Roman Reigns. Not only does McMahon’s golden boy not win the WWE championship against Brock Lesnar, but he is the one who gets pinned by former stablemate Seth Rollins when the Money In The Bank winner cashed in that nite. The public outcry prior to WrestleMania XXXI was like a cacophony of noise, a wall of sound coming from both the live TV crowds and the internet fans alike.  Despite the WWE’s best attempts to dismiss it, there seemed to be an agreement between near all WWE fans that it was time for a change. The pushing of Roman Reigns, an unfortunate green athletic wrestler caught in the middle, seemed to infuriate a demographic of WWE fan that Vince McMahon continues to refuse exists: The professional wrestling fan.

The other clue, for some maybe a less obvious one, is the use of color, or blood during the match. For a company who had mandated their wrestlers to avoid chances at busting hard way and outright banned self-inflicted bleeding, this was a shocking moment. Not only was it on WWE’s biggest night of the year, but after reviewing it many felt Lesnar cut his own forehead. Clearly if McMahon knew of this it would signal a marked departure from his previous ‘family friendly’ decree.

The bleeding during WWE broadcasts has continued, most obviously during a SmackDown match between Sheamus and Daniel Bryan. Then later during the Payback pay per view when Dolph Ziggler appeared to headbutt Sheamus on his mouth, and that was when the crimson mask came out.

Another recent sign of a possible loosening of Vince McMahon’s grip on booking is the appearance of some wrestlers that wouldn’t fit the bodybuilder mold that was so clearly sought out during the John Laurinaitis years as head of talent relations.

The high profile appearance of Sami Zayn and then Kevin ‘Steen’ Owens in consecutive weeks on RAW point to, at the very least, a willingness to change things up a bit.

Any simple observer of the WWE, even those unfamiliar with it’s wrestling history, can see that Vince McMahon is a body mark. A fan of the gym rat that spends hours each day lifting weights. After all this was a man who created a professional body building league and was a huge marketer of ICOPRO, a disastrous line of bodybuilding supplements. Roman Reigns is nothing if not a physical specimen despite the fact that they continue to hide his physique behind a military style protective vest. Because clearly thats the logical thing to do when you want to make a young guy look tough. The problem with McMahon’s line of thinking is that it does not align with his current audience, the core of which are wrestling fans.

Professional wrestling fans could care less what a talent looks like as long as they can wrestle, talk and entertain, in that order. Do we want captivating promos? Sure. Many of the top talent in the history of modern pro wrestling not only have been quality in the ring but also on the mic.  What those top talents do not have to be, is a body builder. Certainly it helps to maintain believability if the talent is fit, but they do not have to be a 300lb hulking mass of tanned, oiled muscle. C.M. Punk was arguably the most over talent in the WWE after John Cena, and he was certainly not in the previously mentioned mold.

Daniel Bryan, the man who clearly took the mantle from Punk is also not what one would consider an adonis and yet he was so clearly over with the vast majority of the WWE universe. I am certainly not saying a great professional wrestler cannot look chiseled out of granite, just that they don’t have to be.

If we look at the bigger picture, the overall assumption of Vincent Kennedy McMahon is that nothing has changed within his “universe” and it is still somewhere between 1991 and 2002. The other seemingly obvious delusion of the chairman is that a 70 year old still has his finger on the pulse of the professional wrestling watching public. He is clearly incorrect in either case, woefully incorrect, and it could end up hurting his company’s bottom line.

His ego, his belief in his own vision has blinded him to the reality of passage of time. He, like so many powerful people, is convinced that his ideas are timeless. Where as we know that no ideas are timeless, success in entertainment is based on demand and supply, not the other way around. Especially in an era when corporations, marketers and advertisers have finally been convinced that being different or “odd” is popular. To put it another way, “hipsterism” has gone commercial where as McMahon comes from a conformist era.