Date: 19/05/2019 | Written By: Mark Connor
WWE without question is the most known and biggest wrestling company of all time, and it's hard to dispute their success, but ever since Vince McMahon Jr took over, The entirety of pro-wrestling has changed. From the bottom all the way upto the top, and most not for the better. But can WWE's success and building a monopoly in the wrestling industry be truly responsible for the change and the fall of the business that once was respected and admired?
Following the departure of Vince McMahon Sr, the WWE, then WWWF was in for a roller-coaster of a ride that would transcend the entire sport/business into a huge downward spiral of change, and not for the good. It wouldn't be a quick change, but it was clear to see in hindsight how WWE made their moves to dominate and clear out the competition.
The wrestling business prior to the mass knowledge of of it being "fake" or scripted, was mostly respected and admired, much like boxing was and is. However, following the Vince Jr takeover, not at least until the mid to late 90's, WWE would bring in a new type of fan that was only in it for the boring, talentless brawling, the smutty segments that degraded women and the outrageous storylines. All the Attitude Era was in retrospect was fights, unfollowable storylines with so many twists and swerves, that even the writer's didn't know who was on who's side. Then the matches themselves. Take the main event scene throughout the late 90's, How many Steve Austin or Rock matches are actually remembered for being technical masterpieces? none, because brawling isn't wrestling and anyone that says it is, don't know what the real word WRESTLING actually is.
As of the Oxford English Dictionary; Wrestling definition "The sport or activity of grappling with an opponent and trying to throw or hold them down on the ground, typically according to a code of rules." Punching, kicking, scrapping and brawling isn't mentioned... For a good reason! Because it isn't WRESTLING!
In the wrestling fan world, the attitude era has been branded by many as the best time in the history of the business bar the golden days, But as I will cover in a future article, The attitude era wasn't wrestling, or at least GOOD wrestling.
Back on topic, WWE has always been a greedy company in regards to what it wants since Vince Jr took the helm, and even 30 years on from his early successes, they still aren't satisfied with it's global billion dollar empire. Paul Levesque, The heir to the WWE throne is just the same as Vince Jr, always wanting more. Needing to sign every wrestler that is labelled "hot" or "amazing", not allowing the Indies to have any top talents. The WWE as a company don't like to see healthy competition in the wrestling business, as recent attempts to halt ROH wrestling [which were believed to be on good terms with WWE] from running events at New York City's Madison Square Garden arena show. They are happy to suck up every last drop of talent from the indie circuits, but they have zero respect for them at all. If WWE want big names and top talents to come to them, they need to allow Indies to thrive and not just barely survive.
The only way that young unheard of talents are going to get exposure is by Indies, as probably not even 95% of the world's wrestlers get the chance to go to attend a WWE developmental system until they are at least scouted or heard of, which means that almost the entire wrestling business would be NOTHING without the Independent's. Indies can only produce the talent when it is at its best, with good shows filled with top drawing stars to draw in crowds and in turn make them money, which in turn allows them to be able to plough more money into giving more up and comers a chance to get to places like WWE. All of this means that WWE should be leaving these companies with at least a handful of top names and talents to allow them to work with rookies and newcomers to help them grow into the next John Cena's and the next AJ Styles', But WWE won't and aren't doing that. They will take an entire roster of a company that is viewed as an exciting product if they feel it is worth it just to prevent the stars from working their shows [IE Lucha Underground and ROH come to mind]. Most times, they end up firing them after their trial deals are up anyway.
You look at WWE's roster including all of the talent yet to debut, and talents that are being repackaged and those that are on the injury rosters, They have more talent than the shows to put them on, yet they still keep on draining the Indie talent pools for more. Look at several stars on the main rosters and even NXT rosters, Many are waiting to debut because the company and writers have nothing for them, But they still signing dozens of stars at a time. Current star Samoa Joe, who was practically a prodigy of the Indie's until his big WWE break, has recently defended WWE's approach to raiding talents from the Indies. If they're no Indies, then people like Joe wouldn't have had anywhere to showcase his talents for WWE to see him. Because along time ago the likes of Bobby Roode, Samoa Joe, AJ Styles, Daniel Bryan, were all brought in for tryouts, but they were all let go. It was the Indies like ROH, and other smaller companies like Impact Wrestling [fka TNA] that allowed them to be showcased while WWE ignored them.
Toby Battle of Through The Ropes will agree with me on this, that WWE are killing the business purely for the sake of not just being the number one, But the ONLY one."
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