WWE President Nick Khan: “We will never respond to social media criticism”
While speaking to Sports Business Journal, WWE President Nick Khan was asked what level of fan backlash is required for WWE to change plans for shows. Here was Khan’s response…
“We will never respond to social media criticism. If ratings are down, if revenue is down, if relevancy is down, it’s up to us.
A year ago, we got together — Triple H, myself, a guy named Shawn Michaels who runs our developmental system and is a Hall of Fame wrestler — and we said, ‘Hey, look, we have John Cena on his retirement tour. The Rock came back, and now he’s going to be filming Jumanji and The Smashing Machine. Our other big stars — CM Punk is 46. We have a number of men who are 40 years or older, and they’re performing at a high level. We have to accelerate the next generation of talent. So, what do we need to do to accelerate it?’
Shawn Michaels said, ‘We need to take them on the road so they get the crowd response of a live crowd.’
That’s part of what makes wrestling unique. If you’re getting cheered, great. If you’re getting booed, great. If there’s no response, that’s terrible.
So, you need that live crowd to figure that out. We made the investment in that.”
Khan also noted that plans for WrestleMania 40 didn’t change due to negative feedback from fans…
“The plan was always how it ended up in Philly two years ago. Sometimes it’s a predetermined outcome in wrestling. You want to throw the fans off, you want to let things bake, and then boom — it ends up the way that we wanted it to end up.
It never changed. That was just online rumors and gossip that we were changing it. It never changed.
We convinced Dwayne Johnson to come back. He’s on our board of directors. It was a tag team match. He’s about the same age I am, so two years ago, let’s say he was 50, right?
He was obviously in phenomenal shape. He did everything that we asked of him and then some.
But that was always the result we were looking for.”