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SOULED OUT - WWE IS NOT THE COMPANY IT USED TO BE, SO STOP BEING SHOCKED AT RECENT MOVES

"I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. I fear something terrible has happened" - Obi-Wan Kenobi, Star Wars

“Any idea what the hell is happening?” - A top WWE talent to PWInsider.com via text on Saturday afternoon.

Over the weekend, word came out that The New Day, Kofi Kingston and Xavier Woods have departed WWE.  The stories that have made the rounds is that Kingston and Woods were asked to restructure their deal (kayfabe for take less money) and declined to do so, creating a situation where the two sides agreed to part ways, so in 90 days, Kingston’s 20 year association with WWE and Woods’ 16 year run will end.

There is zero doubt the duo were a Hall of Fame caliber act, especially when Big E was with them, so the fact their run ends so quietly and quickly is sad within itself, although it opens up the doors for the duo to go make tons of money doing signings and making appearances in AEW, Japan, wherever as they can face off with the likes of The Young Bucks, FTR, The System and lots of other potential foes.  Whatever Woods and Kingston were being paid, they earned every penny and more, in terms of goodwill and legacy.  Whether that matched a financial ledger, I can't tell you.

However, the reaction to the end of their WWE run was, in many circles, akin to a wake, not just for The New Day, but for the WWE some fans believed still exited, a company that in all actuality ceased to exist the second Vince McMahon decided to step in and return to power and force the sale to Endeavor, creating a situation where WWE went from an independently owned piece of Americana (publicly traded, yes, but still independently owned and operated) to just another corporate asset that could be bought, sold, traded, merged and diluted as its new overlords see fit.

There’s been complaints since Wrestlemania that the show was "soulless" given the amount of short matches, endless advertisements, sponsorship moments (Yo Grogu!) and endless space between matches.  Your mileage may vary, but had CM Punk and Roman Reigns not put on the best match of WWE’s week to close the Las Vegas events, I wager the complaints would have been even louder.  Most fans remember the last thing they saw the most, and that match over-delivered.

But, even a mat classic can’t change the facts - and it’s something WWE fans have to admit to themselves.  The old company is dead.  The new company is not going to be, ever, what they want it to be.  WWE is now part of a larger machine, one cog that is designed to print money, at any cost, for its owners and its shareholders.  It’s there to give Ari Emanuel his $67 million for being in charge far more than it is there to create and deliver wonderful moments for the audience now paying far more money to see less wrestling on major shows than ever before.

Which is why no one should be shocked New Day was asked to restructure deals, because my bet would be that they are not the only veterans being asked to do so.  This past Friday, the day before Kingston and Woods were moved to the Alumni section of the WWE website without even a “Hey, thanks for all you did for this company” publicly, PWInsider.com was told of a pretty majorly pushed talent who was asked to take a 50% pay cut, and allegedly did.  I’m not naming the talent because I have no way, yet, to confirm this was the case, but the timing of that claim and what happened the very next day was very, very interesting, to say the least.  As always, until fully confirmed, take that for what it is, but the timing, especially coming out of WrestleMania season, is notable.

If you’re looking for a through line, it’s this: WWE is operating very differently in the TKO era.  WWE, its library and its talents are just pieces on a chess board that will be moved, utilized and discarded at the whim of TKO.  For anyone to think otherwise is being silly.  I said the day Vince McMahon sold this company that it was the end of an era, and WWE would never be the same, which led to lots of “Mike is being dramatic” emails, but a few years later, how many lifers have been let go or “retired”, how many talents are exiting after the company just touted an insane level of executive pay most of its blue-collar audience could never dream of sniffing and how different is it from just a few years ago

I’m not even saying TKO is wrong for making these moves.  On paper, they have found new ways to monetize the company that Vince McMahon and friends could never have opened the doors to making happen.  Membership, indeed, has its privileges, but for the average fan who lives and loves WWE, they have probably never felt more disconnected from the company - because the WWE they grew up with no longer exists.  It’s been split up among many different places to view it, costing more to watch and attend and just live life as a WWE fan who wants to wear that logo on their heart and sleeve alike - and it’s never going to change.

It’s time for everyone to admit that. 

This is no longer going to be the place that made sure Betty Skaaland always had a ringside seat at MSG because her husband was so beloved when he worked for the company, because that seat can be sold for a few thousand dollars   .   This is not going to be the company where lifers like Sue Aitchinson remain, no matter how good they were at their job and how much inherent knowledge they have, because it’s easier to hire someone out of college to fill the position.  This is not going to be the company where talents perform their entire career, because unless they reach the absolute upper echelon level of an Undertaker or John Cena, sooner or later, they will become financially expendable - either too old for the company to make a profit on or too expensive to keep giving raises to based on their position. 

This is the company where fans will be charged more for the same, and if TKO can follow the Disneyland mantra to now charge fans for what used to be free, they will indeed do so, because the ultimate goal here is to make the next dollar, so the company can be super-charged financially to pay off its debts or to leverage the success to bankroll the next acquisition or expansion.

Those who oversee the company will argue these were necessary changes, and they were, if you were Endeavor. 

For the wrestlers and the talents, however, some may beg to differ.

Understand I’m not even blaming TKO for any of this.  They acquired the company and they have every right to do with it, whatever they want.  If they want to fire Paul Levesque tomorrow and install Jordan Peele to oversee the creative, they can.  If they want to take the WCW tape library and burn it for fun, it’s theirs to do so.  If they want to decide they have too many masked wrestlers, they can release the highest-paid, Rey Mysterio, because, hey, that’s life.   If they want to license live events to The Feld Company to run the same live shows 3 times a day, it'll happen faster than you can say Ringling Bros.

It’s the new normal and it’s time for the audience to realize that just like all of their favorite pop culture franchises, from Harry Potter to Star Wars, WWE is really just another piece of intellectual property to be propped up to make money however its owners decree.  The idea that TKO will be the stewards who protect the sanctity of "the pro wrestling business" the way some believed the McMahon family were, well, stop that thought, because it’s not ever going to be TKO’s priority, unless they can license pro wrestling history to make more money for Ari Emanuel, Marc Shapiro and friends.

As much as it may be immoral to some to see all these talents being let go, the reality is that 99% of them all agreed to the terms, which are more or less a guaranteed 90 day deal that either rolls over or ends at TKO’s terms.  Until the day that every main eventer sits down the day before a major event and decides they are all not going to step on camera unless the company changes, that’s going to be the way.  For all the talk about AEW, good or bad, Tony Khan pretty much pays out every penny that he’s promised to his talents on their deals.  With WWE, unless you are Roman Reigns, you are at their behest, especially in the weeks after Wrestlemania and the weeks leading to quarterly earnings announcements.  Hell, even if you have an existing deal, you might be asked to restructure against your best interests.  

One question I’ve received from readers is why would the company do this when they are doing so well.  The easy answer is this - they can look even better on paper in the quarters to come by eliminating higher-costing talents and replacing them with newer names from WWE NXT, who will command a smaller dollar while filling the same slot on the roster.  The longer answer is that the company is not about placating and supporting talents forever.  While there always has to be talent churn to keep things fresh, the company is about what will garner them the best looking books in the shortest amount of time.  Whether that means taking more Las Vegas money to shift Wrestlemania away from New Orleans or replacing Aleister Black with Ethan Page, the ends justify the means, which is to make their executives money.

Since the sale to Endeavor and the formation of TKO, WWE is no longer a standalone entity with its own internal logic. It’s part of a larger corporate structure, and the priorities reflect that. Revenue growth, cost control, and maximizing value across the board are the driving forces.  Within that framework, veteran contracts become line items.   That’s why situations like The New Day aren’t surprising, even if they are disappointing to fans. Higher-paid talents who are not positioned at the very top of the card are going to face increased scrutiny. Some will be asked to take less. Some will move on. That’s the reality.

I know some will want me to vilify TKO for this.  To be sure, it’s nowhere near as fun to watch the shows as it used to be, but hell, there were lots of periods over the decades where WWE wasn’t fun, either.  Everything runs in cycles and certainly for some fans, especially kids who love Cody Rhodes, WWE is something they love right now.  It’s all in the eyes of the beholder.  

The reality, however, is that if you want to blame someone for the way things have gone and currently are, it has to be Vince McMahon.  He’s the one who made the decisions that led to him running afoul of women who needed to sign those NDAs, he’s the one who decided to stop paying Janel Grant what he asked her to take and he’s the one who ended up investigated by the WWE Board and the SEC alike.   The company was expected to go to the next generation of the McMahon family, but instead, thanks to Vince’s actions, the best his grand-children can ever hope for is to be part of the chess board that TKO gets to play with.  Vince McMahon killed his own creation - and what exists today is not that company, no matter what anyone wants to claim.

The transition to TKO didn’t just mark the end of an ownership era.  It marked the end of WWE as a culturally distinct entity. What exists now operates under a different set of incentives, and those incentives will continue to shape every major decision. 

Again, TKO has the right to squeeze every drop of blood out of the stone, to produce and monetize their content as much as they want and to decide its time to drop the guillotine on talents by releasing them (or claiming deals ran out or that they mutually agreed to part ways or whatever semantics allows them to claim plausible deniability) all they want, but sooner or later, the boomerang will circle back and like Vince McMahon before them, they will see there were mistakes made if they don’t take care.

Vince McMahon started wiping out territories in 1985.  Within a decade, he was in a position where he had nowhere to find developed talents or groom them.   Moves had to be made, whether it was working with other companies, financing development and building the WWE Performance Center from scratch.  These were all reactionary decisions made because of the fact the territories were stomped out of existence

Today, TKO is in a great position right now, but where will they be after a decade of making the decisions they are currently in the midst of? 

What will WWE look like as veterans who were needed to get talents ready for stardom are moved out in the same time period house shows are almost certainly a thing of the past, at least in terms of consistently taking place, removing another factor that was important in the ascension of wrestlers finding themselves.   It’s going to be harder and harder to develop that next generation into the style of performers pro wrestling needs the most, especially when you realize most of the team Paul Levesque put together themselves are going to, sooner or later, age out.  If the focus remains on short-term financial optimization, what happens to long-term brand equity?  These are not immediate problems, but they are structural ones and ones that will sooner or later create situations that will need to be addressed.

One might wonder what good is mortgaging all the goodwill today with sponsorships, fans paying for entrances at Wrestlemania, $10,000 bus tours with Cody, Dude Wipes everywhere the eyes can see, if one day, it evolves the business away from what the actual fans love about it?  Are we looking at just grooming actors to act and perform spots?  Are we looking at evolving into avatars like Kiss and Abba concerts or AI or CGI?  I don’t know, but we’ll see how this all evolves, but if the main goal is just making fistfuls of cash, sooner or later, you will lose the heart and soul, for good, and you won’t be able to rekindle that fire if it goes out.

People can criticize AEW, GCW, the independents, Japan, whatever for not being WWE, but there’s no argument that they are trying to carry the spirit of professional wrestling forward and make wrestling fans happy as best they can.  Can we say the same about WWE?  The talents, sure, but in many ways, making the fans happy appears to be so far down the list that starts with making the execs happy, bowing to their whims, etc. that there are moments I wonder if I just woke up out of The Matrix and found out WCW ended up winning the Monday Night War after all.

So what’s the future?  Always cloudy, the future is, as a wise old Jedi Master once said.  

No one will know for sure, but I’ll tell you as sure as I am of anything else, the WWE that everyone thought existed is long gone.  So, stop pretending otherwise.  I understand the shock and anger over New Day leaving, but they are just another example of what should have been plainly obvious to everyone on the outside and the inside - WWE no longer exists as it once did, and it never, ever will again.

So, acknowledge that.  

Mike Johnson can be reached at MikeJohnsonPWInsider@gmail.com.

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