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While it can be very easy to champion the cause of emotion in sports entertainment, the almighty dollar still remains undefeated
By Andrea Hangst - April 10, 2023
As we all know by now, Vince McMahon has come back into a position of power in the WWE that he had apparently relinquished months ago.
An Italian vacation, a dye job, and a mustache later, he recently returned to at least some semblance of control, his fingerprints on WrestleMania 39 to an extent, but to the RAW afterward, without question.
It’s exhausting. McMahon’s behavior is exhausting. It’s not as though the months that Paul “Triple H” Levesque steered the ship was flawless; It’s more like an, “oh, this again” feeling that McMahon, newly reinstalled as WWE’s executive chairman as part of the WWE’s acquisition by UFC parent Endeavor, means the chaos begins anew. The episode of Monday Night RAW that aired after WrestleMania, with its myriad reported last-minute alterations, is a clear example.
However, it is curious to see how anyone could change this in any effective way. Fans flooded social media to “let Endeavor know” about all of the both allegedly and provably horrible things that McMahon as a person and WWE as an entity has done over the past decades. Among that contingent are those who also believed that attending last Friday’s WWE SmackDown event in protest would make a difference.
So very many of WWE’s and McMahon’s decisions and behaviors, which include the incorrigible, are well-documented. Endeavor isn’t without its obvious flaws. And among UFC and its chairman, Dana White exists a lot of both smoke and fire, which he lit himself for a long, long time.
But to think that Endeavor had no idea what they were going into with McMahon and the WWE is incredibly short-sighted. There is, however nothing to gain by trying to tag them on social media about the many exposes of McMahon and his laundry list of variously alleged and/or proven unethical, bizarre, vindictive, and abusive actions.
Endeavor knows. As a business entity, it does not care. Because: Business entities do not care. That’s the point. That’s capitalism. McMahon is set to make over $3 billion, personally, from this deal. As far as Endeavor, we are talking $23 billion-plus in total assets between UFC and WWE.
It’s true: The tweets, the social campaigns, they rarely matter.
As fans, we take professional wrestling very personally. But at the very top of things, the WWE-level top of things, it is an entertainment company and a media conglomerate, now, most of all. It is, to use the phrase: “This Business.”
When the fans do things like choosing to buy a PLE to complain about it or tickets to a nationally-broadcasted show to yell in person, the meaning behind the actions does not matter. That people are spending the money to do so, or even just spending the time to talk about it on Twitter or Reddit or wherever is capital. As long as any amount of time, money, or attention is coming in, it doesn’t matter if it is good or bad.
“Bad press is better than no press.”
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