Can WWE Find a New Edge In An Edgier World?

Once upon a time the WWE grabbed cultural zeitgeist with this thing called the Attitude Era. WWE stars said and did outrageous things. They swilled beer, traded disses like they were on Showtime at the Apollo and ripped off their clothes at every available opportunity. It was a blast. Monday Night Raw became must-see TV because you didn’t dare miss the next bucket of crazy they unleashed. Yet that was a long time ago.

In the 2010s we’ve been through this thing called the Reality Era. Problem is the Reality Era has always felt artificial, pushing characters and stories that aren’t connecting with fans. The product has been obsessed with itself rather than aware of what’s going on out there in the wide, wide world. You see, pro wrestling is supposed to be like a funhouse mirror held up to our society, where everything’s oversized and distorted. Wrestling can be more outlandish. It can push envelopes and flout cultural norms. Come for the bombast, revel in the spectacle. At least that’s how it worked during the heyday of the Attitude Era, and the WWE has been striving for a toned-down version of that formula ever since.

Yet that hardly matters anymore. Why? Because reality has gone so over the top, gotten so contentious, that the idea of men in Speedos acting out their fake beefs seems quaint and tame by comparison. I don’t care what your politics are. Doesn’t matter. We’re having a national barfight. We live in a post-”grab ‘em by the pussy” universe. We’ve heard the President of the United States say those words. Little kids have heard it. What can Bray Wyatt or Kevin Owens say that’s going to top that?

When Trump puts out a tweet these days, people of every political persuasion lose their shit. People are having a constant battle with each other. We don’t even know the people in many cases. We just know we hate them. And in cases when we do know the people, it’s getting ugly. Marriages are splitting up. We just went through a holiday season riddled with tension. Thanksgiving became the kickoff of a new cultural Cold War. How many of your family members can you get around your dining room table before it turns into a melee? I mean, you’ve got to figure out whether it’s safe to put out steak knives these days.

Politics gave us a matchup this past year that makes WrestleMania look puny. It was a heel vs. heel clash unlike anything we’ve ever seen before. Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are out-sized characters beyond even the wildest wrestling promoter’s imagination. Trump is an amped-up, Bobby “the Brain” Heenan-style blowhard who might be in league with world’s biggest heel, Vladimir Putin, while Hillary is like the living embodiment of Sister Abigail, the true mistress of the dark arts. They were battling for control of the nuclear codes. It had the culture clash, frenzied followers and pent up animosity of the absolute best WrestleMania events, only with most of the nation sucked into the drama.

When they debated this past fall on a Monday night, they CRUSHED Raw in the ratings. It was one of the most-watched events in history. This week Americans are on fire over a press conference. The E is suffering from an excitement gap. Back in the 1990s it was the nWo that generated a ton of excitement and it forced the WWE to respond, which it did in fairly legendary fashion. It responded so well, it won pro wrestling. This new war is about entertainment, and Vince McMahon proudly boasts he’s in the sports entertainment business. Well, we are not entertained. Constant political infighting has captured the nation. I’m not saying the WWE needs to pull anything like 84 million viewers, but the world is changing and the WWE’s place in it is shrinking. Where do its contrived fights fit in with our real fights?

We’ve all got our ideas on how the WWE can fix that, but the larger point is the WWE quickly needs to figure out how to be relevant in our 2017 landscape. The war is on even if it’s not with another wrestling company, particularly if it wants to retain Raw and Smackdown Live viewers. I understand there’s plenty of ways to watch WWE content outside of regular broadcast television, but television accounted for $231.1M of the WWE’s $658.8M of total revenues in 2015. That’s 35% of its total income. It’s a big deal in terms of operating the company and the WWE needs to succeed at it. At some point the downward spiral of its ratings means the money starts to dry up. The company is not prepared to live on WWE Network revenue as its primary income.

This poses a creative challenge to Vince McMahon like nothing he’s ever faced. The world’s morphing rapidly and he’s still trying to play his greatest hits, and even some of the not-so-greats like Brock Lesnar vs. Bill Goldberg. Like, dude, step up or I’m turning to C-Span to watch some shit go down.