We always knew there would come a day when Vince McMahon stopped ruling over the WWE landscape with an iron fist. Many thought that day wouldn’t come until the man who was once the ultimate heel passed away, but in the end, it was another part of his on-screen persona and revelations that the character wasn’t far from reality, that forced the publically traded company to usher Vince out of the back door.
Disclosing $14.6 million in unrecorded expenses paid by the company personally by Vince over the years may end up just being the tip of the iceberg. The man was the last true carny, a product of a bygone era in both his personal and public lives. I am not here to speculate on how things will go for Vinc personally, but I am interested in how the change in the very foundation of the WWE corporate and creative structures will impact the product on my TV.
Here are three things we could quickly see happen with WWE programming:
NXT 1.0
Moving Triple H to the forefront of WWE creative on main roster shows is something that WWE fans have been anticipating for a long time. Trips cut his teeth on NXT, turning that program from an entirely illogical reality show, to a true developmental brand, to an Indy SuperShow, before being told to take the program in a completely different direction with NXT 2.0.
It is the third of these concepts that fans need to focus on. While The Game will not make the main roster into an NXT clone, there will likely be some overlap in terms of what we saw during the peak years of NXT at the back end of that last decade.
One way we could see this is by Trips hiring top Indy talent or – dare we say it – AEW guys with a promise of an actual main roster push. This was something Vince could never figure out, losing stars like Keith Lee and Aleister Black in the shuffle because he didn’t know how to use them. Triple H will not have that problem.
Returns
There are plenty of talents over the years who have left the WWE because they were at odds with the real-life version of the Mr. McMahon character. Bret Hart is perhaps the most famous wrestler on this list, but the two most recent examples would be Sasha Banks and Naomi.
Ironically, it is the hiring of another McMahon family member as co-CEO that seems to have made this more of a possibility. Stephanie McMahon took on the CEO role alongside Nick Kahn and Steph is known to be well-liked backstage by all and especially by the female talents. I am not sure there would be much more dramatic of a way to usher in a new era than by The Boss returning to TV asap.
The Little Things
Those that know wrestling know that Vince is weird. Heck, he ran the most important wrestling company in the history of the business and refused to let his talents call it professional wrestling. The joke is so well known that Chris Jericho has made his 29874th career character change with that as the focus subject.
With Vince gone, perhaps we can get back to calling it wrestling. Perhaps they will be title belts instead of championships. Maybe the word hospital will be mentioned instead of the cringeworthy and completely syllable-heavy local medical facility.
Perhaps, down the line, we will even get a set change and new production ideas. Changes will be steady, WWE is still a success with its core demographic of kids, but changes will happen and I for one am ready.
Always remember folks. Pro Wrestling is Real.
