How the WWE Stopped Being Great Again

WWE has mastered a nifty magic trick. The company simultaneously announces record revenues while its flagship event, WrestleMania 41, struggles to sell tickets for the upcoming Easter weekend. This isn't merely growing pains from a corporate transition. We're witnessing the ossification of mediocrity into parent company TKO Holdings’ shareholder value-delivering company policy.

The numbers tell a stark story. The biggest wrestling show of the year has sold 50,000 tickets for Night One and 52,000 for Night Two. Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas holds 71,250. Last year  in Philadelphia, they packed in 67,000 each night. The math isn't complicated. 40,000 people who might have been there won't be.

Why the malaise? The culprit sits in plain view: pricing that treats wrestling fans like ATMs rather than the lifeblood of the business. The cheapest two-night combo starts at $650, with premium seats soaring to $15,000. Factor in travel and lodging to Las Vegas, and attending wrestling's "Super Bowl" requires a second mortgage. Given the revenue they’re raking in, WWE seems content with higher-priced partial sellouts.

This ticket crisis coincides with WWE's landmark $5 billion Netflix deal, which effectively cements the company's current creative approach for a decade to come. The streaming numbers already reveal troubling erosion: Raw's action-packed January 6th premiere drew 5.9 million global views. By January 13th, that dropped to 3.7 million – a 37% decline. Late February viewership settled around 2.8 million, a 53% plunge from the premiere.

Triple H (Paul Levesque), the company's Chief Content Officer, appears unconcerned. Rather than using Netflix as a platform for evolution — also the name of the bad-guy stable he headed throughout the 2000s — Levesque presents its current iteration as professional wrestling's pinnacle. Raw commentary has devolved into a parade of self-congratulation from the likes of Pat McAfee and Michael Cole, an endless stream of "ain't we great" back-patting that even Jeff Jarrett, the man who wore out that phrase during his peripatetic career, would find excessive. Vince McMahon, for all his flaws, rarely wasted time celebrating himself on broadcasts: he was on to the next angle, the next big thing.

WWE has replaced genuine excitement with the hollow celebration of longevity. Roman Reigns' interminable championship reign was presented as historic primarily because it was long, not because it was consistently compelling. Gunther's Intercontinental and World Heavyweight Championship runs have earned "greatest of all time" talk based on match quality rather than compelling storylines. The Bloodline saga continues long after its natural conclusion, like a TV series renewed six seasons past its creative peak that has added so many relatives of the Rock that the latest roster addition, 6’8” Hikuleo (Haku’s adopted son), may never even see the light of day.

Cody Rhodes, who enjoyed a fun run to the title after defecting from All Elite Wrestling, is now positioned as the most deserving champion of all time — the sort of directionless creative direction that reminds us his story was finished when he ended Reigns’ record title run. If nothing else, this stability-focused iteration of the WWE under Levesque excels at stretching five-episode stories into 104-week programs, transforming hot storylines into bad reruns and reboots through sheer repetition.

The current creative approach offers a parade of tired matchups and predictable outcomes. CM Punk vs. Roman Reigns vs. Seth Rollins feels like a safe, unchallenging match rather than a fresh rivalry — all of the company’s best older promo guys who aren’t Cody Rhodes stuck in a match together. Jey Uso vs. Gunther lacks genuine heat despite Gunther's considerable in-ring talent and Jey’s ability to keep fans uttering his “yeet” catchphrase for years on end. Despite his considerable talent, John Cena's heel turn has landed with all the impact of a foam pillow — as David Shoemaker astutely noted, the fans turned him ages ago. The Rock's will-he-won't-he booking creates artificial intrigue rather than compelling storytelling, even if the fatless fiftysomething manages to chew steroidal scenery when he’s on camera.

Most concerning, there's a near-total absence of rising stars. Look at WWE's main event picture and you'll struggle to find anyone under 30, male or female (Liv Morgan looks like a teenybopper, but the ex-Hooters girl is 30). This reliance on aging superstars limits storyline evolution and alienates younger viewers hungry for fresh faces — outside of the similarly top-heavy UFC, the other gem in TKO’s $25 billion portfolio, how many other sports have so few young stars fronting the operation?

The character problem extends beyond age. Outside a handful of established names, WWE has failed to develop distinctive personalities with motivations that resonate. This vacuum is particularly evident in the women's division, which feels booked out of obligation rather than passion, and deeply troubled when a money performer like Rhea Ripley is injured, as she has increasingly been over the past few years — the same performers have been feuding seemingly since the pandemic began.

One insider friend described the women's division as "absolutely mundane" with predictable weekly outcomes. Another noted that the female performers are "all intolerably small and mediocre, physically speaking, or great gymnasts from NXT like Sol Ruca and current main-roster rising star Tiffany Stratton who get hurt way too much." The division feels like an afterthought rather than an integral part of the show.

Bianca Belair and Jade Cargill are jacked enough to be at the center of everything and Belair is better in the ring than Charlotte Flair or Ripley, but it feels like massively-muscled black performers had a bigger share of the spotlight under Vince McMahon — just ask former world champions Big E, now lost forever to a dumb neck injury, and Bobby Lashley, who is old but still looking like a star in AEW.

The few bright spots on the roster – L.A. Knight (in his early 40s but still uttering catchphrases and box jumping onto the ropes like a much younger man), Bron Breakker (one of the few genuine young stars at 27, and son of the great Rick Steiner), and ex-Olympian Chad Gable – seem perpetually kept from world championship consideration. Perhaps this, at least, fits with Vince’s previous direction — none of the three is especially tall, and Gable is listed at 5’8”. Even so, Triple H appears more interested in revisiting his NXT 2017 nostalgia projects that appeal primarily to hardcore fans  — Karrion Kross has everything but the it factor, and Bronson Reed was good at looking like a circa-2025 P.N. News until he fell off the top of the cage at last year’s Survivor Series. How many more DIY vs. Motor City Machine Guns matches can audiences endure? A best of 500 series? How many more midcard title runs does Shinsuke Nakamura, who was great in his twenties and thirties but is now 45 and doesn’t look a day over 60, have in him? His entrance music is more over than he is.

The political context adds another layer of irony. Donald Trump — whose cabinet now includes WWE executive Linda McMahon — has recently promised to crack down on third-party ticket price gouging. Yet WWE's strategy of deliberately charging exorbitant ticket prices challenges the very consumer fairness Trump publicly champions.

Under Vince McMahon's chaotic leadership, there was at least unpredictability. Vince was willing to admit a storyline was trash and then publicly humiliate the act he was promoting as the next big thing a week earlier. It wasn’t nice, and it upset many fans, but it was business. “It’s a work,” as Vince famously told the Ultimate Warrior when he struggled to film an apology to a small boy. By contrast, Triple H gradually downplays flailing talent on television and then quietly releases them 12 months later. Today's WWE lacks the willingness to experiment and pivot. Failed concepts quietly disappear rather than dramatically implode, while formulaic booking templates are applied across all storylines. Even the rumor mill, once at the center of the great promotional war of the 1990s, has become mundane and saturated with planted, meaningless stories.

Even the bodies have changed. Wrestling was once the domain of giants and gigantic steroid users. Men like Hulk Hogan, the Undertaker, the Ultimate Warrior, “Superstar” Billy Graham, the Road Warriors, and Andre the Giant were physical marvels. Now Kevin Owens, Sami Zayn, and CM Punk resemble maintenance men you'd see shopping at the Home Depot. They can wrestle and talk, but they don't look like superheroes.

WWE's selective approach to its own history creates a peculiar hero worship problem. Fans can freely criticize Hulk Hogan — one of the few genuine heels in the business today, one of the transcendently hated figures — as well as Vince McMahon himself, at least when CM Punk shoots on him. But they can't hate McMahon enabler and 2025 WWE Hall of Fame inductee Triple H (like I said, he should induct himself) — this despite “The Game’s” whole game being that he was the ultimate stooge-turned-Macbeth type. This sanitized version of wrestling history prevents honest assessment of the current product.

Meanwhile, AEW offers an imperfect alternative. Despite being too bloody, too inconsistent, too poorly produced and botch-filled and far from its 2019 peak, it consistently delivers better television match quality and showcases genuine rough-around-the-edges stars like Will Ospreay, Toni Storm, and Swerve Strickland, plus emerging talents like taciturn giantess Megan Bayne and singer-cum-ventriloquist Harley Cameron — even if way too many washed-up ex-WWE stars like Adam “Edge” Copeland, Chris Jericho, and Jon Moxley dominate the headlines.

The Khan family has billions to keep AEW running. Tony Khan may not be a wrestling genius on the order of Vince McMahon’s right-hand man Pat Patterson, but he loves wrestling. His enthusiasm comes through in their marathon-length pay-per-views. The matches are usually better, even when everything around them isn't. More often than not, AEW is what I’m watching when I sit down to seriously enjoy the sport.

The massive Netflix deal guarantees WWE will be what it is now for years to come. They have no reason to change. The product is sealed in “ain’t we great” amber, perfectly preserved mediocrity. But the empty seats in Las Vegas tell a different story. Something is missing when the prices are so high that old fans who dearly love wrestling and curious young fans who might learn to love it can't be there. Wrestling needs its people. Without them, it's just men in tights pretending to fight in an empty building.

Triple H should remember that. He was once one of them. Before the suits and the corporate meetings and the Netflix deal. Before he became what he is now. He was a wrestler in an arena full of fans who paid to see him wrestle 20-minute matches with lots of 2-counts, time spent outside the ring, and muscle tears he fought through. Without them, he would have been nothing. Without them, WWE is nothing.

The hollow ring in Las Vegas awaits the spots and bumps of WrestleMania. The question is whether any future fans will hear it.