MR. TITO: Laughing at the Heel Turn of an Overexposed Pat McAfee by a Creatively Inept WWE and TKO
It must be Wrestlemania season, especially one that has struggled to sell tickets versus the prior year or seems to have a more negative tone towards its build, with Stephanie McMahon and Pat McAfee suddenly returning and being thorns in Cody Rhodes’s side. On consecutive shows, no less, to create a HARD SELL for the WWE Title match.
To me, it feels desperate as good creative booking could easily sell the past Cody Rhodes and Randy Orton Legacy alliance as an “apprentice vs. leader” to hype Wrestlemania 42. However, 2026 presents an Randy Orton who has flip flopped between heel and babyfaces so many times that he’s not credible as a heel and Cody peaked with his Wrestlemania 40 win. It just wasn’t drawing any traction, so hence the “Hail Mary”.
Stephanie is gonna be Stephanie, and while she’s a very effective communicator, we’ve seen her perform this heel character for over 2 decades now with only Ronda Rousey dealing Stephanie any punishment for his evil ways. The reason why the McMahon-Helmsley era didn’t draw bigger than Austin vs. Vince is because Stephanie & Triple H booked themselves too strong and never let the babyfaces get anything over on them. That was the same issue during 2012-2014 with the Authority, who marginalized Daniel Bryan and CM Punk despite the fans actively rooting for both.
But Pat McAfee turning heel?
Talk about completely random… He has zero reason to turn heel, nor does he have any ties to Cody Rhodes or Randy Orton. He just randomly appeared on WWE Smackdown on 4/3/26, which is becoming one of the LOWEST rated Smackdowns ever by WWE fans, to turn heel and help Randy attack Cody Rhodes before Wrestlemania 42.
THIS is what happens to a WWE since 2023 that (a) lacks developmental stars to replace veterans and thus makes WWE veteran-heavy and (b) analytics telling you that “surprises” create Social Media and YouTube metrics to pop.
But I’ll tell you what this business model doesn’t provide, and that’s with higher ticket prices: tickets sold for Wrestlemania 42. We’re still barely above 40,000 with a few weeks away and compared to Wrestlemania 41’s attendance of just over 60,000.
I think that Stephanie McMahon and Pat McAfee being brought back, with just weeks to go before Wrestlemania 42, tells me a LACK of confidence in the Cody Rhodes vs. Randy Orton match.
If you look back at Wrestlemania 41, it drew reasonably well in Las Vegas because it had Roman Reigns, CM Punk, and Seth Rollins headlining one night and then riding on the momentum of the John Cena heel turn for the second night (with all expectations that the Rock could appear). This year, HOWEVER, we have Roman vs. CM Punk with some anticipation, though we saw them wrestle last year, and Cody having Randy Orton as his dance partner.
With due respect to Cody, as I personally like him as a performer, but his Wrestlemania opponents have been Seth Rollins in 2022, Roman Reigns for both 2023 and 2024 (plus the Rock in a tag match), and John Cena for 2025. While Randy Orton is a longtime respected veteran whom longtime WWE fans appreciate, he was NEVER a #1 top draw for the WWE since 2022. Lord knows that the WWE tried hard to push Orton to the moon, but he’s always lacked that something to put over the top whether it’s being clearly in a foul mood when he loses matches on PPV/PLEs or flipping and flopping between turning heel or babyface. But this isn’t prime Randy that Cody is wrestling, it’s Randy as a 24 year-old veteran with a lot of mileage.
Stephanie McMahon and Pat McAfee were brought in as a sign of desperation. WWE knows that CM Punk vs. Roman Reigns will draw, but Orton vs. Cody needs a little more seasoning or flavoring added. However, just throwing random appearances at the wall and hoping they’ll stick will prove to be a failure for the Triple H-led Creative Team.
Pat McAfee is such the WRONG person for this job. As a heel, he’ll have to go on a television show for 2 hours per day with possibly 1-2 more hours exclusively on YouTube. That’s at least 15 hours, per week, that he’ll over-expose himself as a totally nice and positive guy with ESPN and YouTube but be a dastardly heel on WWE television. Thanks to shows like WWE Unreal on Netflix, we’ll expose this truth even further when Triple H is in a meeting room when the thought of “let’s turn Pat McAfee heel” comes up which will come after Pat’s “nice guy” image on ESPN and YouTube will contradict this turn.
Look, I used to really enjoy the Pat McAfee Show on YouTube. In the same world where ESPN made their sports coverage sanitized and political, Pat McAfee and his crew provided an unfiltered balance to ESPN’s corporate garbage. Every day, you’d tune into the live show and have a few laughs with the Toxic Table and A.J. Hawk aka the two-foot driver. For the NFL Draft, I’d tune into Pat’s show because their coverage was not only informative, but entertaining with Ty Schmit providing hilarious impressions (RIP Lou Holtz). They helped get me through many long afternoons… Then, they took ESPN money and put their show on their platform. While it appears that they haven’t “sold out” with the show appearing the same, the antics and the language have been toned down with the Disney owned broadcast.
For Pat, though, he was spreading himself too thin by having his weekly show (which he must be on, as substitute hosts aren’t as good in that ecosystem), doing College Gameday, and being a WWE color commentator, with the latter 2 happening briefly together to really burn him out. He became a father recently and with many of us speaking from experience, that cuts into your daily energy and time too. Then, he’d try to wrestle… Sorry, but you need more training, champ, because your opponents did more for you than you did for them and then you’d make things look odd when you’d magically leap to the top rope when an opponent was up there as if the wear and tear of the rest of the match didn’t matter.
When you try to do a little bit of everything, each activity that you do suffers because you’re reducing your abilities to specialize in one area. Further, he mostly talks NFL on his ESPN/YouTube show, NCAA football on College Gameday, and then would have to talk wrestling on commentary for RAW, Smackdown, or PLEs. Sorry, but it’s hard to sound credibly when talking about all 3 things at once for hours at a time. Thus, the quality of his performance for his daily show, College Gameday, and WWE commentating was declining because he was wearing himself out and trying to be all things to each of his 3 activities.
Simply put, he’s over-exposed… And in the wrestling business, over-exposure is one of the absolute worst things to inject into it.
Fans were wore out from his last color commentary run through his feud with Gunther last year. Prior to that feud, fans noticed that Pat appeared to be going through the motions or not being current with the product. I disagree with that, as I think the real symptom is being overworked and spread too thin… But then he wrestles Gunther and that match shouldn’t have happened. Though I appreciate the idea of the storyline and Pat sticking up for his real-life pal Michael Cole, the fact is that Gunther deserves a full-time wrestler to sell to and whom he doesn’t have to carry inside the ring. Because I believe WWE fans were burned out on Pat McAfee last year, Gunther beating the pulp out of him didn’t have the impact that it could have.
And so we have all of that through 2025, and now Pat is randomly back to (a) join Randy Orton and (b) turn heel without any real reason on the April 3, 2026 edition of WWE Smackdown.
I’m sure that the WWE writing team will script a promo for Pat McAfee to say next week or give him talking points to explain on his ESPN/YouTube show. But the fact that you KNOW it is Pat clearly reading from a script and not being truly genuine will cause this heel turn to fail. SAME debate that we had last year with John Cena… You KNEW that he was reading scripted lines that were told to him to say… Compare that to Hulk Hogan’s post-Bash at the Beach 1996 heel-turn promo or CM Punk’s 2011 “pipe bomb”. While you know that wrestlers were working, the delivery, the unscripted nature, and the timing of those promos made them feel heavy and caused fans to react instantly.
Worse for Pat, he has 3-4 hours on ESPN/YouTube every day this week to display the OPPOSITE version of the character that he’s trying in WWE.
Because again, he’s over-exposed… And that’s why he shouldn’t be brought on randomly to a WWE storyline unless there is a meaningful reason to do so. Pat has nothing against Cody and zero reason to team with Randy Orton.
It wouldn’t surprise me if Vince McMahon or Shane McMahon are brought back as characters, with the former being obviously controversial. But their SURPRISE appearances will get people debating online and that will JERK OFF TKO’s analytical models. Triple H will receive that report from TKO’s strategic team and he’ll built in more random surprises while looking the other way at past transgressions (Brock and Vince, in particular).
This is the modern WWE. They lack a strong developmental system, so thus they’ve become too veteran-dependent and when that doesn’t draw, random outside people (Stephanie & Pat) are brought in. Then, we’ll have lots of mysterious phone calls and guys under masks to get people thinking “who could it be”?
Compare that to 1996. Scott Hall and Kevin Nash alluded to a Third Man and that was discussed for over a month before he was revealed to be a homerun hitter.
2026 has too many of these “mysterious men” storylines and their reveals are underwhelming. Seriously, Austin Theory was under a mask and that was hyped as the greatest thing ever. NO!
I’d absolutely laugh if this is how The Rock returns to the WWE. NOT to finally set-up Roman Reigns vs. The Rock to determine who the true “Tribal Chief” is, but to randomly join Randy Orton, Pat McAfee, and Stephanie McMahon just to mess with Cody. I realize there is history with Rock and Cody, but the hot iron to strike that was during 2024-2025. We’re too far away from it to matter, much how I feel about pushing Rock vs. Roman too far down the road as well.
This nonsense validates what I wrote about in my LAST COLUMN… I don’t want to see the same OLD NAMES playing musical chairs. I want a WWE that has a balance of veterans and up & comers, with the potential to make a new star. Wrestlemania 42 has ZERO chance of making new stars as Punk, Roman, Cody, Randy, Gunther, and Seth are well established and already saw their prime years happen.
Many will cite Oba Femi possibly going over Brock Lesnar… Maybe, but how many have benefitted from going over Brock Lesnar again? The only one that I can honestly think of was Bill Goldberg, who’s star was reignited when he caught everybody by surprise when defeating Lesnar. That’s it… I could suggest Cody Rhodes, but Cody has wrestled a stacked deck of opponents since his 2022 return. Roman has always struggled to look good against Lesnar, and ditto with Seth Rollins whom I disagreed should have defeated Lesnar in the first place. Drew McIntyre looks the part, but isn’t a MMA bulldozer like Lesnar to defeat.
Oba vs. Brock is NOT the main event of either night… Orton (46) vs. Cody (40 going on 41) and Roman (40 going on 41) vs. Punk (47 going on 48) hold those spots. The guys climbing the ladder either aren’t ready, won’t be big stars, or cannot stay healthy. TKO raising the prices is going to cause long-term damage when those veterans are done and nobody younger can replace them.
But maybe for future years, they can call on Pat McAfee to randomly appear on WWE Smackdown for a “surprise”.
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