You might not want to believe this, but I actually got the new McMahon DVD yesterday. It must be really nice to have a billion dollars and the ability to produce just about any sort of DVD or documentary you want. I sure wish I had that kind of money and those resources working for me! I'd be doing something a hell of a lot more interesting than writing this stupid column, let me tell you!
Vince McMahon is a target. Always has been. Part of Vince even enjoys being a target. Being a target lends itself to fights, and, as McMahon himself has admitted, he likes to fight. Fighting is his nature. Without the fight, there would be no McMahon. There would be no WWE, no ECW, no WCW. Chances are, wrestling would have stayed small, territorial, and most of you reading this column right now might not even be fans of the genre we have begrudgingly come to know as "sports entertainment".
The last phrase of the previous sentence ought to be telling: The genre we have begrudgingly come to know as "sports entertainment". There is no doubt that, among the Internet Wrestling fan base, there is a resentment towards the whole concept of "sports entertainment". Yet, sports entertainment, as it is defined and portrayed within the confines of today's WWE, is Vince McMahon's legacy. So, in that sense, Vince McMahon is a target of the IWC, supposedly, of guys like me. The problem with that logic is that without McMahon and the concept of sports entertainment, I wouldn't be here. Chances are, neither would most of you. Go ahead and deny it, while waving your Indy Pride banner and carrying your ROH DVD's around like badges of honor. You know I'm right.
There is a great resentment towards Vince McMahon on many levels, from different angles, and several sources. McMahon destroyed the old territorial system. He raided locker rooms, ran promotions out of business, screwed both talent and office several times over, pissed off more people than God, all to eventually become the undisputed King of American Professional Wrestling. He even admitted to the world that wrestling was fake. There are several unpardonable sins here, and with each sin, there's someone waiting to pay McMahon back.
Meanwhile, McMahon is a self-made billionaire who, to this day, portrays himself as the underdog who likes to fight. He considers himself the epitome of the American Dream - the ability to come from nothing to something through hard work, determination, and opportunity. There's no disputing what McMahon has been able to accomplish, going so far as to make a double DVD collection chronicling his rise to glory. After all, what's the point of living the American Dream if you can't gloat about it? This, folks, is the reason why McMahon is so hated by his enemies and critics. It doesn't matter if he's right. It's that he talks about it, and believe me, there is nothing people hate more than someone who's right and talks about it.
It's said that McMahon is competitive. I don't believe that's the case, though. Vince doesn't like to compete so much as he likes to win. Vince is and has always been the epitome of the sore winner, the guy who delights in rubbing his victory in your face. To McMahon, it's not so much about the fight as it is about beating the other guy, and while this nature has worked to his advantage many times in the growth of World Wrestling Entertainment, it also remains McMahon's chief weakness. It's this drive to win that has created the dilemma that the business is currently in. With WWE as the industry's top dog, and no one on the same level of competition to drive McMahon to produce a quality product, WWE has grown stagnant. The people who were watching wrestling during its hot period in 1997, 1998, and 1999, are gone. The days of RAW drawing ratings in the 6.0 range are long gone. The ten million or so people who used to watch wrestling every week have now dwindled to about two or three million. Any other show, sport, or form of entertainment who sees that much of a drop in viewers would be in a panic, and rightfully so. WWE, though, isn't. Strange isn't it?
Say, for instance, if CBS's Big Brother suddenly lost four fifths of their audience, and they never came back. Chances are, Big Brother would get cancelled. Well, this is exactly what has happened to the WWE. They lost about four fifths of the wrestling audience, and years later, the audience has yet to come back. Meanwhile, WWE expands to three brands, with shows on in prime time three days a week. They produce multiple pay per views a month. They flood the market with new DVDs. They start their own On Demand cable service. At a time when the audience is a mere fifth of what it once was, WWE continues to find ways to produce more and more product. How? Or, better yet, why? Because Vince McMahon can, that's why.
That's what it all comes down to. Vince now does things because he can. He made WWE into a publicly traded company, not because he needed to, but because he could. He's on TV not because it benefits WWE in any way to have him in current storylines, but, once again, because he can. He hired Goldberg and Eric Bischoff, then humiliated them over and over and over again, not because it was good for business, but because he could. And that's why there's a McMahon DVD. It wasn't produced because of a customer demand for the product. It was made because Vince McMahon could. Then again, if I were a billionaire, who's to say I wouldn’t do the same damn thing. Vince McMahon earned his way to the top of the world, and now, he's going to gloat about it. It'll only stop when the next fight comes.
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