WWE Stone Cold Podcast: Everything Wrong About Vince McMahon's View of WWE Today

It has been a bizarre, kayfabe-shattering week of podcasts. This might probably be another insignificant drop in the raging ocean of opinions about Vince McMahon's comments and CM Punk's complaints in podcast world, but it is my drop—bound that I am by the unrelenting urges of a helpless writer wishing to express his thoughts on a matter deeply concerning a thing he loves.

For anyone fed up with this topic, kindly do not continue with your perusal of this piece.

So Mr. McMahon's appearance on the highly touted controversial podcast hosted by "Stone Cold" Steve Austin on the WWE Network has left some heads shaking in sadness and some resigned shrugging. I'm not ungrateful enough to ignore McMahon's influence on the growth of professional wrestling—by and large, the man is responsible for WWE. 

This means he is equally responsible for the WWE we once loved, as well as the parts of WWE we now hate. It's important I preface whatever I type with the respect I have for him before selfishly dishing out some disparaging comments about the man who built WWE's vision of WWE itself.

Wrestling for Wrestling's Sake

This annoyed me. 

Why on earth can there not be some wrestling for wrestling's sake on a show promoting wrestling? Yes, wrestlers with character motivations and matches with stories add a colossal depth to the show, but that doesn't mean we can do without letting the audience create their own stories once in a while. 

The current commitment to not wrestling for wrestling's sake involves exhaustingly long opening promos that end up establishing a main event tag team match at best, with the same wrestlers stuck in a loop in order to shove stories.

"Adam Rose has a problem with his bunny" has been pushed through for more than a month now with no visible progression. Don't you think it would actually be better for business—and for Adam Rose's flailing character—if he just had a random 15-minute match with, say, Fandango? 

Let the crowd create their own comparisons of their in-ring styles, anticipate their strategies and most importantly give them something fresh. It's wrestling happening for wrestling's sake, but I'll take that over stale, forcibly repeated wrestling with a purpose. 

The biggest irony is that most of their major storylines are altered right before most Raws and pay-per-views. They're practically wrestling for the sake of wrestling because nothing about "John Cena teams up with Babyface X against Heels Y and Z in the main event of Raw" means anything substantial. What did the main event of this week's Raw accomplish anyway? It seemed more of a build-up to Survivor Series, right after Survivor Series.

The Woeful World of Antonio Cesaro

Did anyone see the major, gaping hole in the logic behind Cesaro's current placement in the hierarchy? Let's rewind back to when Antonio Cesaro had a decent entrance theme—the man was winning crowds over with tremendous matches and incredible feats of strength.

He was then put with Real Americans, even though he wasn't a Real American. Despite that, he grew above it and got even more popular once he debuted his Cesaro swing. At WrestleMania 30, he won the Andre the Giant Battle Royal, and by Raw the next day, he was receiving the loudest cheers beyond Daniel Bryan.

He gets put with Paul Heyman, who just goes, "Oops, sorry, Brock's coming back" and leaves, meaning Cesaro is left nowhere. The cheers he was getting were deafened, his fiery swinging move was abolished and Cesaro Section was banned. 

If we're listening to the audience, Vince, are we listening to the audience in your mind or the actual one? How can you claim to listen to the audience when the original plans for WrestleMania 30 involved Batista (as a face) against Randy Orton before the fans' downright rejection of your vision got Daniel Bryan involved.

What brass ring is Cesaro supposed to grasp, since the ones he did weren't good enough for you? CM Punk once mentioned that "Vincent K. McMahon's imaginary brass rings are just that—they're completely imaginary," and anytime you mention "brass rings," that's all I'm going to be thinking. 

Not so Important WWE World Heavyweight Championship

This is a show built around wrestlers trying to be champions. I'm not against the concept of special champion occurrences by Brock Lesnar (and I even wrote an article about it here), but it seemed to me that Vince was suggesting the title was a prop. 

In reality, yes it is. Fans come and stay for the superstars. But you have us loyal fans, desperately suspending our belief, investing in a fake show featuring fake characters with fake motives. We want to believe that the WWE title is a big deal—why else would things matter? It isn't just the main title either; the lack of deference for the Intercontinental and U.S. titles is quite evident at present. 

With no wrestling for wrestling's sake and stories being more important than titles, I think we're seeing WWE gradually evolve into a daily soap and not anything concerning professional wrestling. Why is it so hard to actually market the highest achievement in your kayfabe universe as a big deal, so much so that it actually matters when things happen with it?

It should be a big deal that Brock Lesnar has become the WWE Champion.

There's more, but it's important to stop rants when they start getting too bitter. Maybe it's too late—I don't know.

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