Ever since Vince McMahon returned to WWE like Freddy Kreuger in the last two minutes of a Nightmare On Elm Street film, there’s been a lot of talk about who could take over operations of everybody’s favorite wrestling monopoly.
What’s been discussed less, however, is how the new ownership could affect things on the ground level, for us as fans of the WWE product.
While we don’t know exactly who will buy WWE, or when, or even if they will, what we do know is that a sale to anybody could have huge ripple effects across the company, and across the wrestling industry as a whole.
Here are just a few things a sale of WWE could mean for the product:
Official End Of The PG Era
If there’s an upside to WWE being sold to a big shady megacorporation, its that the product could be tailored to whatever the buyer’s interests are instead of being beholden to skittish advertisers and out-of-touch shareholders.
This would obviously depend on the company, but if WWE ended up in a position where it didn’t have to rely on television advertisers anymore (like in the case of, say, a Netflix or an Amazon picking them up), we could see a return to the days when wrestlers were allowed to bleed and had a swearing vocabulary larger than the word “crap”.
It’s difficult to say whether this would necessarily be a good thing; while those of us who grew up with the Attitude Era might miss the days when wrestlers didn’t feel like they were made for lunchboxes, AEW kind of fills that niche or us now (and also the older I get, the less cool bleeding seems to me).
In moderation, though, it could be pretty cool; imagine a product that was 90% PG, but busted out the swears and razor blades for particularly intense feuds? Or even a separate, more adult-oriented WWE brand?
Crap, I think I just invented Raw Underground.
More Interpromotional Stuff
Thanks to the MCU, which pretty much dictates the direction of all popular culture at the moment, media companies are really big on two things: making us care about obscure characters we’ve never heard of before, and cross-promotional media.
While WWE has historically been pretty insular, refusing to work with other promotions for fear of accidentally putting them over (Impact is one crossover pay-per-view away from dominating all of wrestling, I swear), other companies might welcome the opportunity to create a “wrestling multiverse” of sorts.
While AEW is already kind of trying to do this, their execution leaves a lot to be desired, often leaving more casual audiences (and even some hardcores) confused and irritable.
A company like Disney, that specializes in making audiences care about its IP, would be far better at telling the average fan why they should care about that coin drop sound effect they just heard.
WWE: The Movie
In professional wrestling, the actual act of wrestling is really just a vehicle for storytelling (no matter what the purists tell you).
If a company that specializes in traditional storytelling takes control of the Big Dub, it stands to reason that they’ll use the IP at their disposal to try and make something that’s more appealing to general audiences: you know, like a regular movie.
It’s kind of wild that something like this doesn’t already exist. Vince McMahon has never been shy about the idea that WWE is basically just a movie studio where all the actors are enormous, beefy stunt men; why not just cut out the middleman and commit some of those stories to screen the old fashioned way?
Undertaker vs Kane, Bray Wyatt’s funhouse, John Cena the wrestling superhero; the stories are already there, they just need a good script.
Wrestling Off-Season
Wrestling isn’t really a sport; it’s a soap opera about a world where shirts are banned and ladders are more dangerous than guns.
That being said, its performers are still athletes, and having to put their bodies through the kind of wear and tear that wrestlers do 51 weeks a year takes its toll, as we’ve seen be the case with many wrestling legends (often to tragic effect).
Were the company to be bought be a corporation that specializes in something like sports or dramatic television – where off-seasons are the default for even the most popular products – we might see a world where wrestlers are actually able to spend time with their families instead of constantly traveling around the country to get beaten up by Otis five nights a week.
WWE Straight Up Closes Down
But Ryan, why would a company buy WWE just to destroy it?
I don’t know, man; why would Warner Brothers Discovery trash a Batgirl film starring Michael Keaton after it had already been filmed. Do I look like a billionaire CEO to you? I’m wearing a Spider-Man dressing gown.
While it’s unlikely that anybody would buy WWE just to cease its operations (unless Tony Khan gets an extra big birthday cheque from Shaddy this year), there’s a world where the purchaser just doesn’t really get around to doing anything with it.
Honestly, companies buy properties all the time just to sit on them, either purposefully or just because they can’t think of anything to do with them. It’s why we still don’t have a proper Dark Tower movie yet (that one doesn’t count).
That, or they try something with the property and it just flops. If Raw 2.0 doesn’t work out, they aren’t going to say “well gee fellas, guess we better try again – think of the fans”. They’ll stick Monsoor in a cupboard somewhere and forget he exists.
Actually, maybe it won’t be that different after all.
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