Maybe a dumb question, but what aspects of Barrios and Wilson’s (former) positions would translate to what we see on TV? Obviously they weren’t booking matches and angles, but did they have a hand (or at least a say) in the look of the shows or talent acquisition or anything else on the “wrestling” side? I know they were a part of transition to TV-PG, but now that transition is long complete, are they involved at all?
Or is all of that handled by a different group entirely that just creates the product and says “make money from this?”
None (as far as I understand). Pretty much Vinnie K controls everything. They were nothing more than sacrificial lambs. Vince is never going to hold himself accountable.
Finding out about “founder’s syndrome” did more to explain the WWE’s woes than a lifetime of frustrated fandom and head-scratching ever could. Read this list of markers and tell me that it doesn’t diagnose a huge amount of the company’s problems.
This is very astute.
Vince has controlled the company forever, built it into what it is, and for better or worse has always been stubborn to giving up control. Which makes the firings both a roll your eyes moment and a jaw hits the floor moment. George and Michelle essentially scapegoats for Vince, Stephanie, and Hunter.
You can point to ideas like the free trials as something pushed by the CoPresidents or the transition to th PG era. But you have to go further into what happened after BOTH those projects were successful:
PG Era and whatnot, they landed all time rights deals even with the toned down product
Free Trials and shifting PPVs to the Network allowed the Network to scale and reach a respectable # of paying subs that hovered between 1.2-1.5mil. Actual attrition of the subscriptions occurring after free trials ended is not related to the concept of free trials. If anything it’s a further indication of the content being created or PPVSpecials not being enough of a draw. That’s back on creative.
There is so much dead weight on the roster that have been there for over a decade and haven’t meant anything in years - Ziggler, Ryder, Hawkins, Titus, Slater, Axel, Dallas, Primo, Epico, etc
I actually think EC3 has a lot of talent but Vince hates him for some reason. He also hasn’t been ruined by shitty booking like all the guys above
I don’t disagree in general though Ziggler (whether he could be used better or not.) has been in featured spots routinely. He had a title program with Kofi, he has been part of the Roman Reigns program recently. I think this is about the ratings chase destroying wrestling as much as anything. There is only so much TV time and so they spotlight the hot talent. (Or what they perceive as such). AEW does the same with a smaller roster. You get a bunch of segments with your featured guys and other people take a back seat. But WWE has a huge roster that they stick on house shows and “Main Event” (worst show name ever.)
This is very astute.