If you don't know who Vince McMahon is, then I don't blame you. He is the head of the
WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment). He is credited as being one of the smartest men in the wrestling industry. He took a small territorial company and turned into a world-wide business that has offices in a few different countries. Not too shabby, don't you say? However, In all my years of watching wrestling, which for the last almost ten years it has been off and on, I've noticed that wrestling has gone from wrestling entertainment to entertainment wrestling.
Though McMahon has taken a company and made it one of the best small businesses in the country (ranked in Forbes' top 200), the product he delivers to people is lacking in....well....creativity. In the past 10-12 years the one thing I've noticed that wrestling has emphasized more vulgarity, sexuality, violence, and
de-emphasized wrestling. Now I know you're thinking the violence part is an oxymoron, but instead of focusing on wrestling, they have gone to fighting. And it's not just fighting, but well, theatrical assault and battery.
Wrestling has come from the sideshows and carnivals to returning to the sideshows on the television set. You have midgets wrestling normal people....wait. No, they're not wrestling. They're just running around trying to be caught like a leprechaun. You have the vixens showing off everything they possibly can without getting pulled from network TV, and then showing a little more on cable TV, and of course showing almost everything on pay-per-view. All this while marketing to kids as well. On Friday nights if you're not going out like normal people, you might sitting in front of TV watching soap operas that happen to mix a little bit of wrestling in with it.
And all this is to do two things---make money and get ratings, which in turn, makes money. Anything that the simpleton mind can think of, the
WWE will throw up on the TV. If it doesn't work (like killing of the boss), we'll just pretend it didn't happen. If people don't tune in to watch it, get rid of it. And that includes your own wrestlers. Who cares if it's not the wrestlers fault. After all, they're just following what the uncreative writers told them to do. And what would they do? Go against the writers and get fired for sure, or do what they say and flip a coin on whether or not they'll be there in a few weeks. Not like a contract means anything. You may have a contract, but that can always be torn up...just not by the wrestlers.
Who cares if you've been casts as a Muslim American (even if you're Italian) and told to go out and re-enact a beheading that is quite similar to those terrorists are doing on the next website over. Although, it will not be the writers fault, or the boss' fault, who even though he's a "genius" didn't see the crap about to hit the fan. And when it does, is it the writers fault? The bosses fault? Of course not. They're all geniuses. However, it is the wrestler's fault because he went out and did what he was told to do. And why? He likes to put food on the table.
But it's okay if a certain storyline doesn't work. Why? They'll just push a few half naked women out to "strut their stuff." And afterwards, before hand, or during, they can market to your kids and mine so they can watch the great programming on TV...or the half-naked women. Whatever you call it. This is the formula--half-naked women, silly story lines with oddities and other off the wall ideas, flashy and not so flashy wrestlers and other personalities who get on the microphone and talk a lot, oh, and some wrestling.
I'm not against wrestling. I love wrestling. I loved wrestling. When I was a kid I used to sneak out of bed and watch it. I used to get up Saturday morning and watch
WWF Superstars. But what I watched then was wrestling. And it was entertainment. What's on now is entertainment, along the lines of Jerry Springer, and some wrestling. Its ideas that are thrown together that people hope work. It's half-naked women that "creative writers" feel the show can't do without (and apparently are kid friendly). As
Zell Miller said about the democratic party, "I didn't leave the democratic party. The democratic party left me." Real wrestling has left me. It's anything except well thought through, creative, imaginative ideas, put together rolled into a ball with wrestlers knowing what they do best and allowed to do it, to form a product that is creative and suitable for what it is being marketed as. It is not people with great ideas being shot down because you don't like that person or because there's some sort of "political motivation" behind it.
It's not ideas like spending as much time developing and thinking on the "mid-card" segments as you do on the headliners, because God knows you can't have people that are popular on the mid-card. It's not ideas that actually make sense. It's not having to step so far out of reality you think that you have to disconnect from logic and reason to watch and believe.
However, in a world of bulky "entertainers" and "superstars," not wrestlers; a place where we're asked to disconnect from reality for a little bit, one of the biggest things we're asked to believe is that Vince McMahon is a genius. A man who cannot sell some of the greatest wrestlers in the world to the world without having to throw in some sideshow attractions and some busty brunette busting out of her clothes, is not a genius. A man who does not realize that to make a great product you must concentrate on all the product, not just the most important parts, is not a genius. A man who markets near pornography to kids, who sells sex and violence and labels it "kid friendly" is not a genius. No, he is an idiot, in all sense of the word. And no matter how nice he may be, how many people kiss up to him, or hate him, or love him, or think he's great, or evil. Truth is truth, not mixed with politics or opinions, or the invitation to disconnect from reality. Vince McMahon is an idiot.
Note: There are great wrestlers out there. There are great writers out there. Most of them more than likely work for Vince McMahon. However, that still does not changethe fact that Vince McMahon is an idiot.