5 Reasons why Vince McMahon seems to be losing control of WWE
Disclaimer: Please note that these are the views of the writer and not Sportskeeda as a whole.
While WWE will always have its loyal fans who defend the company and its creative choices to the end, the general consensus is that WWE has underperformed in recent months, if not years. That’s particularly true given how talent-rich the company is.
In the absence of companies that can compete with WWE’s resources and having mined so much of the top tier talent from smaller promotions, one would think that WWE could put on a golden age of programming.
Instead, longer shows, underutilizing popular stars, and questionable creative direction, on the whole, have risked alienating the audience and the locker room alike.
In his visit to Chris Jericho’s podcast, the former Dean Ambrose (now Jon Moxley) went into detail about how frustrated he was with WWE. He singled out Vince McMahon specifically, as well as the company’s structure of writers for miscasting him, blowing big moments, and not taking his ideas and preferences into consideration.
There are two sides to every story, but Moxley’s account does seem consistent with what we’ve seen on screen and complaints from other stars. This article looks at five reasons why Vince McMahon seems to have lost control of his company.
#5 Falling out of touch with top talents
When people tell the story of WWE’s national expansion period or the Attitude Era, one of the common threads is that Vince McMahon was totally in sync with his top talent. The two sides complemented each other perfectly in McMahon’s booking and marketing and the talents’ performance, whether it was Hulk Hogan running wild representing the United States, or Stone Cold Steve Austin and The Rock captivating the Monday night television audience.
While McMahon may still have good relationships with some talents today, the way that Jon Moxley described the creative process in WWE suggested that he’s not in tune with everyone. Moxley, in particular, is a former WWE Champion and a guy who was booked in the upper-mid-card to main event range for pretty much his entire six-year-plus run on the main roster.
For McMahon to so fundamentally disagree with Moxley on the nature of the Dean Ambrose persona and character suggests that McMahon is losing his grasp on what his Superstars want or how they see themselves. McMahon and the talent don’t necessarily have to agree about everything, but when they seem to disagree about everything from big picture philosophical issues to how individual promo segments are executed, it’s a big problem.