Random Rambles: Venting about WWE after dropping it for good

There is no real point to this, outside of me externalizing my own feelings over WWE. It might be a bit stream of consciousness-like and lacking structure.

There are two mediums I've loved for basically my whole life: video games, and pro wrestling. Naturally, the former came first, but I've consistently loved pro wrestling since randomly stumbling on an episode of WWE's Monday Night Raw in the early 2000's (I never did find the episode back when the WWE Network was good and had everything, but I think it had Batista looking for someone in the parking lot or something, going down the stairs weirdly smoothly). I knew it was scripted from the get-go, my parents made sure to let me know, but it didn't change the fact that I was hooked, and it further helped me with my English. I got the video games on Gamecube, especially loving the two Day of Reckoning games.

Over the years, I've dipped in and out of WWE for a year or two at a time during particularly bad lulls, but kept tabs on it anyway. Without many other wrestling promotions airing here on the channels we had, it meant that watching pro wrestling essentially meant WWE or nothing. Still, in the follow-up to Wrestlemania 41, I've dropped WWE for good; I was already faltering, but the return of Brock Lesnar cemented it on the spot.

To be honest, it was very tough emotionally to do this, to truly drop something I've been invested in for over 25 years. With the internet and streaming services, there's so much wrestling available to me now, and while I already knew other promotions were better than WWE (especially since AEW started), not watching it anymore for over a year and looking at it from the outside in... WWE feels like a cult now. 

I don't mean to downplay actual cult survivors or anything, of course, but it's the feeling I get now when I see clips of it on my social media timelines. Sure, sometimes they'll have a genuinely great match or even a story that'll hit just right, but it's surrounded by forced mediocrity and tradition. Seeing talented wrestlers get signed, usually under the impression that WWE is the "top of the mountain" and then wasted as filler until getting unceremoniously released years later gets old, makes me sad, and is just depressing to see.

What WWE has done is turn an art form into a corporate product. Or rather, they've stopped pretending it was ever art in the first place. I was blind to it while engrossed in their system, but now that I'm out, it's so obvious it's almost painful. Wrestlers are held back from performing at their best, forced to follow a "style" that feels corporate and stifled. Once in a while they'll go wild for an especially big show and then get reined in. It's why the "black and gold" era of NXT was so good, they were allowed, seemingly, to go wild no matter what. But that's besides the point.

The point is that, when engaging with anything related to the entertainment industry, regardless of medium, there's (I hope) an understanding that there's almost certainly some darkness behind the scenes, at unknown scales and intensities, but it's always there. It could just be devs forced to crunch on a game, or it could be entire internal cultures of harassment. WWE's darkness is especially pronounced and depraved. From having known scumbag celebrities like Logan Paul on their roster, to dealing heavily with Saudi Arabia, to the countless terrible backstage stories that come up over the years, and not to mention Vince McMahon's interminable list of sins that are still coming to light, there's so much now that it's mind-boggling anyone still gleefully follows them. 

Or it would be, at least, if it wasn't plainly obvious to me as someone that was in that camp. WWE is a company that preys on multiple things to keep fans locked into them: familiarity, the propaganda that they're the biggest (and therefore the best) promotion in the world, a sunk-cost fallacy, and most importantly, the promise of something good on the horizon. It's easy to get into WWE: your country's main sports network (or one of them at least) likely carried their programming back in the day, and now they're on Netflix! Almost all of the big wrestling journalists and publications, or at least the easiest ones to find, are mainly about WWE with other promotions on the side. WWE is what people most talk about on social media, especially during Wrestlemania season. In fact, it's to the point that people will say "WWE" when they mean "professional wrestling," like "Kleenex" instead of "tissues." They're so ubiquitous that some companies foolishly aspire to imitate them, and some fans will lash out if the product isn't similar to WWE's in nature.

But back to the promise of something good on the horizon, they're masters of that craft. Discussions around pro wrestling, at least in the circles I've been around, are commonly about storyline theories. These two wrestlers are in a story, this is likely what's going to be happen, but imagine if this happened instead, that'd be so interesting and could lead to some good drama! It's not even deep, wild fantasies that I'm talking about, just simple storytelling deviations that could be interesting, give both the wrestlers and audience something to sink their teeth into.

And then either the dullest, most predictable thing happens, or a nonsense moment is introduced as a "gotcha." And then it's "trust the process" or "let them cook" before quickly forgetting what happened because there's a new set of keys being jingled. 

Sometimes you'll get a hit, sure. Rarely. But most of the time, it's nothing but the same reheated story beats with different actors.

To illustrate this, I managed to get my best friend into wrestling by watching WWE PLEs with me, starting with Wrestlemania 39. He got into it casually, enjoying it for what it was, but also the fact we had an extra activity to do together and excuse to meet up. While he was influenced by my knowledge and explanations, he nonetheless quickly picked up on the WWE formula, to the point that without me prompting him, he'd not only know who was going to win, but even when a false finish was coming (though I had to tell him 'that's his finisher!' to remind him) around 75% of the time, and I have no doubt that he would've gotten better at it had we continued watching for longer.

Of course, predictable storytelling isn't necessarily bad, and sometimes it's the correct choice. But when you're telling half a dozen stories, all with the same template and the same cast of rotating characters over multiple months, you start to crave substance, novelty, anything. And they dangle that carrot in front of you expertly, leaving small hints of cool storyline developments here and there, the promise of something good, something better. And sometimes, the moment happens, and you rejoice! And then you see they clearly had no plans for the follow-up, and it's back to business as usual.

And then, if you look back and really take in what the story was, you realise it was reheated leftovers you've been having for 20 years, with matches that are good but maybe not as good as they could've been, maybe with some dumb ending or moment scattered in there, or a solid, memorable moment that people will be praising for years to come, not caring about its follow-up. They know you don't care about the follow-up. CM Punk's "pipebomb" promo was electric to the point that it brought lapsed fans back to WWE, but what was the follow-up? Outside of an outstanding match with John Cena (that I find a tad overrated, but still), it fizzled out really quickly and was replaced by the same ol', same ol' storytelling. When Kofi Kingston finally won the title, it was an incredible moment where tears were spilled by grown adults, but what was the follow-up? A ho-hum title reign with barely a notable story that ended in an 8-second loss to noted real-life sentient garbage Brock Lesnar on free TV to set up a title match against an aging MMA guy Cain Velasquez transitioning to pro wrestling in Saudi Arabia.

The match lasted all of two minutes, Velasquez lost, and then was promptly released due to budget cuts about six months later.

There's so many examples of this sort of stuff throughout the WWE's history that it's comical. There's good stuff in there, for sure, but it's overwhelmingly outnumbered by this sort of thing, assuming the story even gets to the point where there's a moment that people will remember. It's not just exhausting, at a point you just accept it and accept that that's what pro wrestling is. After all, all the big names go to WWE if they can speak English, otherwise they're either cool indie standouts, or part of a handful of stars in other promotions that people are quietly hoping sign to WWE so they can get "to the big leagues" like they deserve.

So to have this subpar product both on a storytelling and in-ring quality level, produced by a genuinely evil company that cozies up to tyrants while trying to whitewash a sinful history and simultaneously platforming known terrible people like Logan Paul and Brock Lesnar, on top of shoving ads everywhere and wringing money out of fans by inflating prices and gleefully boasting about record gates... I just couldn't do it anymore.

But it was hard to drop it, even though by then I was more of an AEW fan and more interested than ever in indies and international promotions like CMLL, NJPW and Stardom. A lot of wrestling people I followed were WWE focused and some were bending over backwards to justify it, while others dismiss it with a shrug, insisting that them covering WWE is not endorsing them. Not only did dropping WWE leave a void in what I watch in terms of wrestling, it also left a void in what I watch on Youtube and who I follow on social media.

By now, I've mostly filled those voids with different things, thankfully, but I can't lie and say that seeing WWE clips doesn't make me sad and embarrassed. Sad that something I loved so deeply has fallen so far that even someone deeply invested in it could drop out of it with little regrets, and embarrassed that I've ever liked it. I'm not embarrassed that I went to Elimination Chamber in 2023, as that was an incredible experience, my first live wrestling show... outside of seeing Brock Lesnar have a shit match that led to nothing (surprise, surprise) and fucking Logan Paul showing up live. But I feel embarrassed to have ever liked a company and product so devoid of a soul, so outright evil that even when I was staring at its sins dead-on, I shrugged and kept watching. There was always an excuse to keep watching, or a scapegoat to point at.

Even watching old WWE stuff back, I'm filled with discomfort on top of my nostalgia. Knowing the things that were going on backstage even when I first started watching is harrowing to me. I know there's almost certainly darkness in other promotions out there, but I sincerely doubt it's to the level of WWE's darkness... and if it is and comes to light, then I'll just drop them then too. 

Wrestling is just so much better outside of the "fed," man. Because it's often allowed to actually be wrestling, and not corporate slop meant to sell ads and pretend it's something other than wrestling while simultaneously pretending it's above it all.

Now if you'll excuse me, I've got a Stardom show to catch up on.