Following the seismic shift in WWE with the departure of Vince McMahon amid sexual misconduct allegations on Saturday SummerSlam was the first test of the new regime.
The first major show was a success both artistically and aesthetically with 40,117 fans at Nashville’s Nissan Stadium. The visuals were impressive and gave the show a look different from the weekly TV shows and all but the biggest major events.
The show was long with special effects, like Brock Lesnar using a tractor to tip over the wrestling ring in the main event, as well as a match with outside celebrity Logan Paul.
What has happened in the last few months has been a rollercoaster ride. Vince McMahon’s daughter Stephanie and son-in-law Paul “Triple H” Levesque are now running the wrestling side of things. For nearly two decades, this was the expected result at some point. Pro wrestling might take forever, but even Vince wouldn’t be around to pilot the ship at some point. The question was always when that would happen. The manner and timing of this came as a surprise, but the succession plan has seemed to have been talked about forever.
But things have changed a lot in the past year. Levesque had his bosses completely revamp his vision for NXT, which meant a major loss of power within the company. Then he suffered a major heart problem. Some of the talent and others behind the scenes he selected for “his team” were fired.
On May 19, Stephanie, Chief Brand Officer, announced that she was taking a leave of absence. It was said at the time that the furlough would be protracted and a replacement was named on June 6. Catherine Newman joined from Manchester United Media and was hired as Executive Vice President and Head of Marketing.
Then, on June 24, when her father resigned as CEO after reportedly paying a woman working at the company in exchange for an NDA to cover up their relationship, Stephanie was named interim CEO. Her father resigned from the position pending the indictment’s investigation, but remained head of the creative department, which is the most important position in the company from the point of view of wrestler fans and wrestlers.
On July 2nd money in the bank Las Vegas pay-per-view show Vince McMahon assured the talent he wasn’t going anywhere.
He then announced on July 22 that he was retiring, which was actually a resignation as more stories from that past emerged. That meant Vince wasn’t responsible for creative direction for the first time in over 40 years. Someone else will decide which wrestlers to hire, which wrestlers to get fired, who gets TV time and who doesn’t, who wins, who loses, who gets famous and what the storylines are.
With Vince out, Stephanie’s role was no longer interim. She is co-CEO, the other co-CEO is company president Nick Khan. Stephanie will be responsible for the wrestling product and the promotion of the product seen on TV and in the arenas. Levesque has been named Head of Creative, meaning he’s in charge of the stories, talent, contracts, deciding how to push the stars and who the stars are. Khan’s role would be to run the business, negotiate the various television and other distribution deals, and hire and build the non-wrestling side of the front office.
For wrestling fans, the question is how is the product changing and how is it staying the same.
Levesque didn’t provide any answers over the weekend, just saying watch and find out.
The show didn’t seem much different from the previous product. So far, the only notable changes are that Becky Lynch, who’s been the company’s biggest female star in recent years, is a babyface again. She had returned after giving birth last year and was surprisingly slit like a heel. It was a mixed bag. On the one hand, having Lynch as a heel opponent allowed Bianca Belair to rise to greater popularity. But in doing so, they battled the fans at every turn. Lynch was cheered at most shows unless she would insult fans enough to boo them. It was constantly fighting the fact that fans wanted to cheer for them, so bringing them back to Babyface made sense.
In addition, he brought in a new women’s sales stable Raw, consisting of Bayley, Dakota Kai and Io Shirai (now Iyo Sky). They will apparently quarrel with Lynch and Belair, who reconciled and hugged after a year-long program.
Bayley returned after a year out with a cruciate ligament tear. Kai was one of the main female stars on NXT until Levesque no longer had power over that brand, and then she was fired. Shirai was also involved with NXT, the development brand, although she was by far one of the company’s best wrestlers. And it was obvious that the decision to record her was made at the last minute when she was performing SummerSlam, the video had her name as Io Shirai and wasn’t even changed to her new ring name. The name change was made because company policy for new hires generally states that they do not want them to use a real first or last name, or a previous name that they used earlier in their career. The idea is that the company owns full rights to each name. Shirai (real name Masami Odate) had become a big star in Japan under the name Io Shirai.
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The only other immediate change concerned Max Dupri. Formerly known as LA Knight, he was known as a wrestler on NXT for being a strong speaker. He was raised on SmackDown not as a wrestler but as a frontman for Maximum Male Models, two wrestlers who hadn’t been used much and had been repackaged to do vignettes modeling athletic wear. After just a few weeks, Vince removed him from that role and replaced him with an assumed sister, Maxxine Dupri, a model who had just started on NXT television. Levesque brought back Max Dupri in his first week of work.
This decision seems rather mixed. Shaun Ricker, who plays Dupri, is far superior to his “sister” as a speaker and as the guy who would do the interviews for the male model crew. It seems Maxxine will remain part of the group. However, the group itself has been largely a failure so far. And there was some awareness as last Friday’s segment, which had been promoted for two weeks, was filmed backstage rather than in front of fans in the building.
The Vince McMahon scandal and curiosity about what’s coming next has fueled increased curiosity and both higher television ratings and increased ticket sales at live events in recent weeks.
But pro wrestling is a marathon, not a sprint. And in the long term, there are numerous questions. The economic health of WWE is not one of them. Most of the money comes from guaranteed and contractually escalating television and streaming rights fees. The current deals expire at the end of 2024. Because WWE TV gets high ratings, Raw usually wins Monday nights on cable except during football season; knock down usually battling for first place on network television on Fridays unless there’s a major sporting event; The feeling is that more TV networks and streaming services want shows that largely guarantee a consistent weekly audience 52 weeks out of the year.
Levesque has pioneered a variety of different types of wrestlers while managing NXT. He and his chief lieutenant, William Regal, enlisted the best independent wrestlers they could get from around the world, along with recruiting high-level athletes who had never done professional wrestling, and trained them from scratch. Because the independent wrestlers were so much more advanced, they stood out in NXT and became prominent characters.
When Levesque lost power and the company fired Regal, who now works for competitor AEW, the company took a sharp turn in a new direction. The focus has been on recruiting collegiate athletes who are good looking and preferably already have a strong following on social media. The idea was to find men and women who looked like stars and train them to be professional wrestlers.
This led to a dichotomy with WWE’s main competitor, AEW, which was focused on signing the best independent wrestlers with the idea of showing great matches on television. AEW has had its projects too, notably Indian-born 7’3″ Satnam Singh, uniquely muscular former Jacksonville University basketball player Jade Cargill, and Olympic bronze medalist boxer Anthony Ogogo. But they’re the exceptions. For a time, things looked that way looks like the marathon can figure out which strategy is most effective.
But with Levesque at the helm, WWE looks set to return to both recruit collegiate athletes and try to sign the most talented independent wrestlers. But that was not an internally announced change of direction.
It also appears that Levesque and Stephanie McMahon will only be more combative with AEW. Although it hasn’t been announced yet, an internal memo at WWE noted that there will be an NXT special dedicated to Peacock on September 4th. There’s no chance the date, the same date as AEW’s next pay-per-view show, All out, is just a coincidence. Ironically, that’s the battle plan Vince used consistently throughout the 1980s, particularly at major events where Jim Crockett Promotions had scheduled pay-per-view shows. In fact, two of the WWE traditions that royal rumble and survival series first debuted as counter-programming of competing events.
But since NXT, which was televised against AEW, switched from Wednesday to Tuesday after losing 74 of 75 weeks and a renewal attempt in the 18-49 demographic knock down where it would go head-to-head AEW rampage On a Friday, Vince hadn’t done any counterprogramming.
Levesque’s role was to destroy AEW on TV and it seemed like history would say he lost in the marathon.
In fact, the marathon has only just begun. The belief is that Levesque will have a broader view of who can be a star than his mentor Vince. But that remains to be seen, as what he’s done for a smaller brand doesn’t necessarily mean he’ll adopt the same strategy for a larger brand that caters to a broader audience. Many believe the corollary of this is that key talent will leave AEW when their contracts expire, but we’ll see how that plays out over the next few years.
Many of AEW’s top stars (due to their size, as well as their faster, harder, and more acrobatic ring styles, and their greater emphasis on in-ring skill and less on talking) weren’t Vince’s cup of tea when it came to the kind of wrestlers he believed that they could be headlining. These artists were aware of this and AEW became their target. But if WWE, under Levesque, reevaluates the idea of who can make headlines, it will greatly change both WWE’s and AEW’s product.
If that’s the case, and WWE, with its $1.1 billion in annual revenue, is heavily looking for AEW talent once their contracts expire, it’s going to result in major changes to the landscape. The beneficiaries of this competitive shift seem to be the top wrestlers – and at least in the short term, the fans as well.
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