MR. TITO: Corporations Weaken Wrestling Promotions (WWE, WCW, ECW, TNA, and AEW)

Bravo to the producers of Vice’s Dark Side of the Ring on the 3-part Total Non-Stop Action (TNA) documentaries. Wow, some of the best historical wrestling content ever produced, and it could have been made better had Dixie Carter participated. She didn’t, and thus was pretty much unloaded upon and most evidence presented points to her deserving it. Dixie was the daughter of the Panda Energy owners who invested in TNA and usually with corporations, getting into bed with them means staying in bed with them and munching on whatever they ask you to munch on.

Folks, this is the consistent pattern that has RUINED professional wrestling… Anytime it becomes more corporate, it starts to suck.

Everyone rejoiced during June 2022 when Vince McMahon stepped down and Triple H resurrected his executive career by returning to oversee talent and creative. Vince, especially since returning to the USA Network during the late 2000s, had become a total yes-man to corporations and they helped dictate his content with the PG era and trying to push squeaky clean babyfaces at the top. He even let a toy company help him terminate Mandy Rose.

Triple H had a great 2022-2023 run… Just as he was about to have another great year with 2024, the TKO Corporation, which was formed to serve as a holding company by Endeavor to oversee both UFC and WWE, placed The Rock on the TKO board of directors. Suddenly, creative was forcibly changed for Wrestlemania 40 (lucking out for the better on that event), but since Wrestlemania 40, WWE has been a bit wobbly. Creative has been micro-managed by TKO’s executives, especially since Endeavor actually represents several WWE wrestlers as talents, and TKO has shown their greedy side by jacking up the prices on everything.

Now, the WWE is offering major discounts on SummerSlam seats, as nosebleeds were $76 that reduces it down to $25. That’s a MASSIVE 67% discount and a major admission of defeat for (a) absurd price gouging of WWE fans and (b) creative micro-managing that has caused your top stars to DECLINE in value. 2 years ago, WWE has more equity in Roman Reigns, CM Punk, Seth Rollins, Gunther, and others on that WWE roster. Now, each are worn out and tired after working in front of worn out and tired WWE fans who have lost chunks of their disposable income supporting this overpriced promotion.

F around and find out, TKO… In just two freakin’ years, you have already ruined the AWESOME ATM machine that was WWE with the Bloodline receiving better creative with Triple H in charge during 2022-2023.

And as we’re finding out, Vince McMahon sold out to Endeavor to help protect him financially against any legal issues coming Vince’s way from HIS own bad behavior.

Getting back to TNA, I always wonder if Dixie Carter was influenced by the McMahon family who put themselves on television as the authority figure. Dixie did that, as well as taking more power backstage. As you saw from the TNA documentary, which can be easily proven as fact, Jeff Jarrett was sent home during July 2009 after Dixie Carter felt betrayed that Jeff would start dating Karen Angle without telling Dixie about it. However, it appears that Dixie may have been planning this for a while OR a bunch of people were inducing her to cause such a powerplay. Let’s see, here, who benefitted from Jeff being sent home along with eventually Dutch Mantell and Jim Cornette.

Well, obviously Vince Russo. The thing that this documentary confirmed more than anything was how political Vince Russo was behind closed doors or possibly privately on the telephone. He’s one of those employees who are constantly badmouthing other employees to management, and then seduces management with whatever “better way” scheme that he could sell them to use instead. Then, Vince acts all innocent to the people he cuts behind the scenes which is why several co-workers distrust Russo to this day. In WWE, he used their ratings situation to point towards other members of the creative team at causing the issue. No, WWE had a TALENT problem and that would quickly improve with Jim Ross taking over Talent Relations duties. For WCW, he seduced Time Warner executives that he was the magic solution to repair WCW’s ratings woes. However in WCW, he didn’t have amazing talents like Austin, Rock, Undertaker, Triple H, and Mick Foley along with a deep midcard with younger talents to book unlike what had in WWE. For TNA, he was repeatedly going behind Jeff Jarrett’s back to speak with Dixie Carter directly about company ideas and how his assistants, Dutch Mantell and Jim Cornette, were not good for TNA. Jeff, Jim, and Dutch were each dropped by TNA during 2009 while Russo remained.

Then later, Hulk Hogan seduced Dixie Carter. Yeah, Hogan was the “Babe Ruth of wrestling”, but by 2009, he was Babe Ruth but 10 years beyond his prime (minus the hot dogs, as Hogan always has the 24-inch pythons ready, dude!). However, in a creative role, Hogan could only get himself over and wasn’t good at getting other talent over if and when he managed their creative. TNA became a total disaster under himself and Eric Bischoff, as Eric is another person who seduces people into thinking he’s great. It’s AMAZING to me how effective Hulk Hogan was in getting both Dixie and Eric wrapped around his finger, as both forgot how to manage companies when Hogan was around. The lust of re-creating Hulkamania was just too much for them, I suppose?

The veterans reportedly swarmed Dixie, often after events during meals or at the hotel bar. Like most with money, she loves the flattery and will later cater towards anyone being overly nice to her or kissing her arse. She was just repeatedly manipulated by the wrong people and hence by 2010, TNA started losing money after profits were reportedly earned between 2007-2009. Creative went to hell without Jarrett, Dutch, and Cornette filtering out bad ideas and roster costs went up from Dixie’s signings and re-signings. From 2010 and beyond, TNA became WCW and were ironically led by Eric Bischoff, Hulk Hogan, and Vince Russo, the same Three Stooges we witnessed at WCW Bash at the Beach 2000 that embarrassed the entire company (but thank you for the Booker T victory, Vince).

Now, Anthem owns them and they’ve been shuffling up the backstage staff and talent deck for years. Anytime the TKO-owned WWE wants something, they now ask “when?”. And I’m sure AMC would never let anything close to the TNA of the 2000s appear within the TNA of the 2020s.

Even All Elite Wrestling (AEW) has their own corporate interests. Remember, Warner Bros. Discovery owned up to 10% of AEW. You don’t think that has any trade-offs? AEW Collision and CM Punk returning during 2023 don’t happen without WBD demanding it. Right now, the Khans are probably sweating bullets as this Skydance Paramount acquisition of Warner Bros. is ongoing and might be for a while as its size and scope will see multiple legal fights in court. The Ellisons, who owned Skydance and purchased Paramount, have completely upended CBS’s news division and not for the better as they used to be a reasonably fair news organization. Now, they are under chaotic management and have been caught, repeatedly, withholding breaking stories out of fear of political retribution or upsetting the Ellisons.

Once the Ellisons complete their acquisition of Warner Bros., they could very well take the almost 10% stake in AEW and sell it back to AEW. They could also trash the television deal if completed before the year-end 2027 expiration date (though an option to extend 1 more year through 2028 exists). Both the almost 10% stake and the AEW television contract could be destroyed and then placed as “merger and acquisition costs” expense line items of an income statement. In other words, the stake in AEW and the television contract might end up as tax write-offs for the Ellisons and they’ll gladly do it.

Oh, and there’s this problem with HBO Max and Paramount+ co-existing… One has to go… While HBO Max has more subscribers, the content it hosts (especially producing original content) is far more expensive than Paramount Plus. Their streaming days on HBO Max could be over, especially as I predict that WWE is hopping to Paramount Plus after opting out early of their Netflix deal by 2029.

The corporate destruction blueprint for all of this was there with World Championship Wrestling (WCW), and repeatedly throughout the years.

National Wrestling Alliance (NWA) – Mid Atlantic was owned by the Crockett family and thanks to attempting to expand too quickly (purchasing Bill Watts’s declining promotion, expanding to Dallas, buying private jets, and possibly overpaying their talents to fulfill extravagant lifestyles), the Crocketts sold their promotion to Ted Turner and were absorbed into his corporation. While it saved the company and rebranded it to “World Championship Wrestling (WCW)”, Ted put the biggest corporate stooges in charge of it. Jim Herd had ZERO wrestling experience, let alone any live sporting event experience, yet he was placed in charge of WCW. YEARS of poor operations followed and made WCW a financial failure.

Then, to his credit, Ted Turner gave Eric Bischoff a chance after he presented himself well in interviews and within 3 years, Bischoff had WCW making a profit for the first time. Bischoff reduced the operating costs but then made key signings of Hulk Hogan, Randy Savage, Scott Hall, Lex Luger, Kevin Nash, and many unseen by United States audiences wrestlers from Mexico, Japan, and ECW. Bischoff stopped the goofy storylines seen throughout 1995 and early 1996 to the begin reality-based storylines through mid-1996. It worked… New World Order storyline began, Cruiserweight division was taken very seriously, and literally every WCW title belt mattered with wrestlers caring to fight for them. Total domination by WCW followed, as WCW Nitro defeated WWE Monday Night RAW for 83 straight weeks from mid-1996 through mid-1998.

However for WCW, some more corporate pain was coming. During the mid-1990s, Ted Turner and Time Warner were in talks to merge their corporations. The deal was finalized through October 1996, but it probably took a year of sorting things out and shuffling the organizational chart. By early 1998, WCW had new standards and practices policies for their company, meaning that they had to reduce the adult themes in tone such as violence, language, or anything alluding to sex or overly exploiting the many beautiful ladies on their roster. WCW suddenly became squeaky clean at a time when WWE had pure creative freedom to basically do anything during 1998.

With expensive merger costs, Time Warner executives began to look at WCW’s expenses more closely and they started to observe how intense labor costs were for the wrestling promotion. Then, as 1998 wore on, the revenues began to dry up and began to create problems for WCW during 1999. WCW operated on a loss during 1999 and was projected to have an even larger loss during 2000. On top of all of that, AOL was about to acquire this newly merged Time Warner/Turner company and would do so as the “dot com bubble” was about to burst (online firms expanded too quickly back then, causing false hope that it could keep expanding forever). By early 2001, it was apparent that this new AOL/Time Warner combined corporation needed resources especially as an economic recession happened that year and then prolonged consumer confidence pain after the tragic events of 9/11/2001. Thus, the new AOL/Time Warner executives decided to cancel WCW off their networks and then sold to the WWE for less than $4 million.

Ironically, WWE became a publicly-traded corporation through 1999 to expand their capital opportunities to fully defeat WCW as a promotion. To be honest, the WWE has declined in quality ever since. NOTHING will be as amazing as 1998-1999 for WWE, as they went from 6-8 million North American viewers to under 2 million in just 15 years. WWE is chalk full of corporate stooges from non-wrestling backgrounds holding Executive Vice President, Senior Vice President, and Vice President titles.

Even Extreme Championship Wrestling wasn’t immune to corporate pain. Taking WWE money meant special favors, such as taking on several of WWE’s wrestlers who struggled in WWE. Yes, Al Snow worked out well but he was a talented performer who just needed a better gimmick. But I can give you Brakus, whom the WWE hired based on his physique only. The company that signed them up for Pay Per Views kept delaying their revenues and were never held accountable for such delays. Then, ECW made a deal with Viacom during 1999. After getting hassled all year by Viacom for what should or shouldn’t air, Viacom ended up dumping ECW in favor of WWE RAW during 2000. All of those attempts by Paul Heyman to cater towards the WWE, the Pay Per View company, and Viacom meant nothing in the end. One of his deals with WWE during 2000 actually gave WWE deal matching rights on any potential buyers, hence why WWE owns ECW to this very day.

Of course, any company who doesn’t go corporate gets destroyed by the companies who do. Yeah, all of that money from the stock market, media conglomerates, and sponsors sort of matters financially these days.

TKO has ruined the WWE and have since early 2024 when they began micro-managing Triple H’s creative team and started raising prices on everything. Then when everything is so expensive, WWE has to rush bigger matches on each of the Premium Live Events just to sell those higher priced tickets. Here we are in 2026 and WWE lacks refreshing match-ups or wrestlers today are worn out from wrestling big matches and big schedules prior to this point. We’ve seen Roman, Seth, Cody, and CM Punk literally do everything possible in the WWE for the past 4 years. Meanwhile, TKO’s micro-managing has also made WWE thirsty for veterans. Oba Femi losing to Brock Lesnar after their Wrestlemania 42 match, Jacob Fatu being dispatched by Roman Reigns, and Bron Breakker getting swallowed in Seth Rollins’s wake has boosted the need to depend on veterans. Gunther has some bad losses that he’s still recovering from.

For WWE, there’s no going back. The Endeavor folks are corporate folks to the extreme, and love to buddy-buddy up with other corporates to make as much money as humanly possible… BUT NOT FOR THE PERFORMERS, but for themselves as executives and shareholders. To them, TKO is an ATM network with WWE and UFC as their ATM devices. They’re all getting rich while their hard-working fans who just want to be entertained are performing redistribution of their own income to this pathetic TKO corporation.

I don’t see a strong future for WWE. Once this crop of veteran talent get exhausted and begin to retire, WWE is totally screwed. The generation of talent behind them just aren’t as exceptional, yet, with star power to draw strongly at the top of any WWE card. I’m just not seeing any breakout stars in the women’s division, either, that could possibly one day make that division bigger. Many female wrestlers work and act exactly the same compared to the crop of female talent that came out of the 2010s.

If you want to see what corporate wrestling does to someone, look no further than Bayley. Go watch her stuff from 2015. Completely incredible stuff, as Bayley was literally “female John Cena” as a babyface. Her merchandise exceeded all of the female talents back then, and that included the Bella Twins who had a ton of merchandise offerings. She continued her great NXT work through the first half of 2016 but then debuted on the WWE roster during July (PLE) and August (RAW) that year. While it is true that getting over in NXT and WWE are different things, Bayley was a tremendous wrestler who was full of charisma and personality to get over anywhere. The Vince McMahon micro-managing creative team just did her no favors, making her look like a wimpy babyface despite the positivity that her character used to bring. By 2019, they turned her into a heel and that shell version of a character is what you see to this day. WWE ripped the enthusiasm out of her and now, she may very well leave and join her buddy Mercedes for AEW.

Corporations are too image conscious, too public relations savvy, and just lack balls to try anything risky. On top of that, they want everything to be all-inclusive because their end game is that if they can micro-manage the entire audience, they can then start setting higher prices.

I remember writing a controversial column during 2015 about how we might not see pro wrestling around in its current money-making form in 10 years based on the lack of strong competition back then PLUS the inability to develop the next big star. To WWE’s credit, they found their next big stars with Roman Reigns, Paul Heyman, and the Bloodline… BUT THEY MESSED THAT UP before and then after Wrestlemania 40. Thus, I’ll give WWE a few extra years between 2021 through early 2024…

TKO is gonna kill the longevity of the WWE. While UFC will always have people willing to physically fight someone, WWE is more about performance and their feeder systems aren’t going to effectively replace many aging veteran stars. Now, if WWE and UFC would share the revenues with their performers, then maybe we’d see booming motivations by the performers of both and things could greatly improve. However, executives at Endeavor only care about padding their bank accounts as much as possible until the ride officially ends. Trust me, they are scoffing at the idea of lowering ticket prices for WWE SummerSlam 2026 in Minneapolis because it reduces they money they could potentially earn themselves with higher ticket prices.

The TKO corporation has around $5 billion in debt, while Endeavor had over $6 billion in debt before Silver Lake acquired them. Despite both WWE and UFC bringing in bags of cash, Endeavor/TKO sure seems to have a lot of debt to pay off… Hmmm, that won’t be good if revenues have peaked for WWE.

How is that prediction to start off your weekend? Corporations weaken wrestling promotions!

Go ahead, WWE marks, and pray that Vince McMahon somehow returns. Bury your head in the same for how he turned WWE into an IPO, catered to Comcast repeatedly (hello PG Era) and corporate sponsors, began hosting events in Saudi Arabia, and or sold out to Endeavor. Remember, Vince McMahon was Vice Chairman for all of 2023 as many of these corporate plans to go deeper into Saudi Arabia, sell out to ESPN for PLEs, the Netflix deal, and price gouging were put into place. Keep wanting Vince “NDA” McMahon to return, ya clowns! Years after complaining about how terrible his creative was for most of the 2000s and 2010s, you somehow want him back in 2026. You make me sick, and it’s easy to see how corporations exploit YOU as wrestling fans.

Mr. Tito Column Archive @ NoDQ