When the WWE officially announced the launch of the WWE Network, it was a major high point in the history of a company who has made a career of setting new trends in the professional wrestling industry. Half Netflix-style streaming service, half carrier of original content, it serves to change the business model of an industry it has all but taken over. The Network is sure to open up new revenue streams, thereby increasing profits and making investors and stockholders very, very happy.
Because who doesn’t want to watch WCW Uncensored ’95 over and over again?
Yes, these should be the grandest days in the company’s history. But yet, they could very well be the darkest times that the WWE has ever seen. Sure, the Network may be the future of the industry, but the present is crumbling around them like a sandcastle during high-tide. There hasn’t been this much internal strife within the organization since the mid 90’s, when Eric Bischoff and WCW nearly put Vince out of business.
And cornered the market on hair gel.
The roots to this internal calamity can be traced back nearly two years prior, to April 1, 2012 at WrestleMania 28. The opening match on the card pitted the management-favoured Sheamus against the World Heavyweight Champion, Daniel Bryan. I don’t need to tell you how good a worker Daniel Bryan is, but it’s worth noting that he was gaining traction with live crowds with his stellar workrate and his “Yes!” chants.
The stands at Mania 28 were even filled with “Yes!” signs and banners, far and away more for him than his opponent. Bryan had held the title for a while leading in to this match, and with the WrestleMania tradition that the faces should prevail in title matches, it was widely expected that Sheamus was going to win the match. It was how he won that set the wheels of collapse in motion.
Although it was a great day for translucent people everywhere.
Rather than have a solid 15 minute bout that no doubt would have stolen the show, the decision was made to end the match in less than a minute. 18 seconds to be precise. It was decided that, once the bell rang, Bryan would turn to give his storyline girlfriend AJ Lee a good-luck kiss, only to turn back around and eat Sheamus’ Brogue Kick finisher for the loss.
OK, there’s my good luck kiss. Now let’s have a great ma…PCHHUHH!!!
As Sheamus was handed the belt, you could see that half the Sun Life Stadium crowd was confused as to what just happened. That confusion turned into anger the next night on Raw, when a frustrated audience chanted “Yes!” and “Daniel Bryan!” most of the night, even when others were competing in matches.
It was the start of a trend. A vocal fanbase letting the management know that they weren’t happy with how things turned out, and they weren’t just going to sit idly by and accept it. Only thing is, the management decided not to listen.
Pictured: Management
Over the next few months, once the obligatory Sheamus rematches took place, Bryan kind of drifted around. He was fed to CM Punk as cannon fodder, humiliated in a never-pleasant WWE Wedding angle, and put into a go-nowhere tag-team with a guy he was feuding with at the time.
Thing was, Bryan made all these things work in his favour. The rematches with Sheamus showed the world what a great match could have taken place at WrestleMania. The matches with CM Punk were Match of the Year calibre, and the tag-team with Kane got over like gangbusters.
As a matter of fact, even in its short run, Team Hell No can be looked upon as one of the best tag-teams of the past decade. And all the while, fan support for Bryan grew stronger and stronger.
And gave birth to one of the oddest catchphrases in modern times.
You would think that the corporate brass would take advantage of this newfound overness, hitch the wagon to Bryan and watch the profits roll in. But of course, it didn’t.
As a matter of fact, the WWE went so far as to try to attribute the “Yes!” chants to others, having the likes of AJ Lee and The Big Show do the chants in order to get the heat off of Bryan. The fans rejected this, and kept cheering their guy.
After a nearly year-long run with the Tag-Team Championships, Team Hell No lost the belts to Roman Reigns and Seth Rollins of The Shield. This set into motion a storyline that Bryan, having taken the pin that lost them their tag titles, was obsessed with proving he wasn’t the “weak link” of the team.
From there he adopted an ultra-aggressive in-ring style that the fans took to immediately, producing arguably some of his greatest WWE matches to date. The fans who hadn’t already latched on to the Bryan Bandwagon were starting to catch on, and he was receiving endorsements from some of the stars of the industry, both past and present. We were witnessing the birth of a true breakout star.
The management could deny Bryan’s popularity no longer, and decided to put him in the SummerSlam main-event against John Cena for the WWE Title.
However, Cena was leaving the company for a few months to have surgery on his injured arm, and Bryan was used solely to get the title off of Cena, so that Money in the Bank holder Randy Orton could run with the belt. Once again, the fans were denied what they wanted to see, and they let the WWE know about it.
Except that guy on the left. He’s cool with it.
And now, here we are. Time for the Royal Rumble. Bryan and the so-called “Yes Movement” are at an all-time high. Not only in terms of wrestling popularity, but mainstream as well. It seems like the only logical scenario would be to have the uber-popular Bryan win the Royal Rumble and go on to main-event WrestleMania. I mean, it’s a foregone conclusion, right? There’s no way you can mess this one up!
So instead of doing the logical thing and riding this massive wave of Daniel Bryan momentum, they decided to give the Rumble win to Batista, who had literally not wrestled a match in nearly four years and was brought back to the company due to his large size and friendship with Triple H.
Batista was so completely blown up and sucking wind after only a few minutes of work. The fans in the first three rows passed out from oxygen deprivation! And here’s the coup de grace – Bryan wasn’t even included in the Royal Rumble match.
The fans fully rejected this turn of events, booing the allegedly face Batista out of the building. Even mild-mannered company men like Mick Foley openly took shots at the WWE and their management, asking aloud if they “hated their own fans”.
We haven’t seen abuse of TVs like this since Impact debuted.
Before you write this story off as a pro-Bryan “whine piece”, don’t bother. Because it doesn’t start and stop with Daniel Bryan. No, the roots are seeded deeper – much deeper – than this.
Not only have Vince and Company been dealing with the complete fan rejection of their storylines, they’ve been dealt an even bigger blow with the abrupt departure of one of their biggest stars, CM Punk.
Punk had reportedly been upset with the direction of his character for some time, widely believed to be his face turn after his WrestleMania 29 match against The Undertaker. Punk knew that he was never going to overtake company man John Cena as the top babyface of the company, so he wanted to become its most hated heel.
He was doing a great job as a bad guy, but for whatever reason, they decided they wanted him to switch. And as the months progressed, his push got smaller and smaller. So with his contract expiring in the summer and his current feud with The Authority not getting a lot of heat, he decided to go home.
Artist’s rendition of Punk’s exodus.
There are a lot of stories going around the web about why Punk finally decided to go home, and what the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back really was. But as of now, he’s not talking about it, Vince isn’t talking about it, and none of us know what’s really going on.
Regardless of rhyme or reason, Vince has a serious problem on his hands.
The fans have widely rejected his new returning babyface Batista, they’re responding more negatively to the likes of Randy Orton and John Cena, and now one of their top draws has taken his ball and went home. And despite having a roster full of honest-to-goodness talent, he’s pushed them so poorly over the years that it’s going to be hard to make any of them credible again.
Pictured: Uncredibility
Not to mention, it’s being rumored now that one of Vince’s top heels in Alberto Del Rio is unhappy with his position in the company and could very well leave once his contract expires.
Couple that with the frustrations of guys like Dolph Ziggler, who have the talent and the fan support, but for some reason can’t get a push, and the good times the WWE should be experiencing are turning into a nightmare.
So what needs to be done? What does the company need to do to quell this rebellion from not only their fans, but the talent they employ?
It may be a lot easier said than done, but maybe they should go back to listening to their fanbase.
In the past, it wasn’t that much of a foreign concept. They listened to the crowds, and if a guy was getting a good reaction, he’d get a push. If he wasn’t drawing much heat at all, they would pull him from TV and repackage him, or they’d send him on his merry way.
Somewhere along the line, mostly after WCW went out of business, Vince decided that since he had “won” the American wrestling wars, everything should be shaped and formed into his own image and if anyone disagreed with his vision, they were wrong.
There’s no denying that Vince McMahon could be the greatest wrestling mind to ever live, as hard as it is for some of us to admit. But if he doesn’t come back down to reality quick, and start listening to the fans, he could be set for a major fall from grace.
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