The Downfall of WWE

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
-George Santayana, 20th Century Spanish Philosopher
Today I’ll be addressing the startling, yet seldom-discussed similarities between the WWE and the Fall of the Roman Empire. Admittedly, these are two niche topics, so it’s awfully ambitious to believe that there’s a large crowd interested in reading a 3,200 word piece about the convergence of these two drastically different events. WWE is a “sport” that has only been on the fringe of true cultural relevance for the last decade and a half. The fall of the Roman Empire happened over 1,500 years ago. It is literally old news. Yes, these are the two pressing topics that are on tap today.
But here’s what you need to know: this is a passion project of sorts. About three years ago when I knew I wanted to create some sort of website where I could write about various events from the last ten or twenty years, this was one of the initial concepts that I planned to explore. I felt like there were numerous similarities, and I felt like I was equipped to write about it. Now before you inevitably end up asking yourself, “Gosh, how does Sonny know so much about the fall of the Roman empire?” I’ll just let you in on a little secret … I did very well in an Ancient Roman History course while enrolled at Florida Gulf Coast University. Professor Vivyan would be so proud.
And also, there was Google. Google helped quite a bit. Sorry, Professor Vivyan.
Anyway, I’ve identified five specific similarities between the Fall of the Roman Empire and what I deem to be the beginning of the Fall of the WWE. Hopefully it goes without saying, but these comparisons will obviously not be perfectly aligned. I would expect that you would cut me a little slack here. We’re talking about a vast world empire that dominated for over 500 years and a professional wrestling/sports entertainment company that was founded in 1952. The important thing is that they are aligned enough that I didn’t feel like it was a stretch to write this opus. Another thing to remember: I’m writing this with a WWE timeline in mind. The events that led to the Fall of Rome are just meant to provide a framework.
I. Overexpansion
Before Vincent Kennedy McMahon was the principle owner of WWE — previously the WWF, the WWWF before that, and the CWC before that — the company belonged first to his Grandfather Jess McMahon, and then following his death, his father Vincent James McMahon. Under Jess McMahon, this professional wrestling organization (then known as Capitol Wrestling Corporation) joined the National Wrestling Alliance (NWA), a governing body for a universally agreed upon and previously existing professional wrestling territory system. At it’s peak, there were over twenty different North American wrestling territories that belonged to the NWA.
Vince K. McMahon seized control of the WWF from his father in 1982, and his master plan was to upset the balance of the traditional professional wrestling structure. In other words, Vince intended to fuck over every single wrestling promoter who could be considered competition. In 1983, McMahon withdrew WWF from the National Wrestling Alliance. He became the first wrestling promoter to negotiate a deal for syndicated television all across the United States. In that time period, McMahon also began poaching the top talent from wrestling promotions all over the continent and signing them to deals as permanent employees of WWF, a departure from the existing model where talent could float between promotions within the NWA.
McMahon signed Hulk Hogan, Gene Okerlund, Bobby Heenan and Jesse Ventura from the American Wrestling Alliance. Mid-Atlantic Championship Wrestling mainstays Roddy Piper, Greg Valentine and Ricky Steamboat made their way to WWF. Bret Hart, Davey Boy Smith and the Dynamite Kid came from Stu Hart’s Stampede Wrestling. Stars like Randy Savage, Junkyard Dog, Ted Dibiase, Tito Santana, Paul Orndorff, King Kong Bundy and many others who made the NWA rounds ended up rounding out WWF’s mid-80’s roster. This wasn’t personal to McMahon. It was strictly business, as he explained in a 1991 Sports Illustrated interview:
“In the old days, there were wrestling fiefdoms all over the country, each with its own little lord in charge. Each little lord respected the rights of his neighboring little lord. No takeovers or raids were allowed. There were maybe 30 of these tiny kingdoms in the U.S. and if I hadn’t bought out my dad, there would still be 30 of them, fragmented and struggling. I, of course, had no allegiance to those little lords.”
By the early nineties, McMahon had bought out nearly all of the “little lords” who were struggling to keep their promotions afloat. WWF’s only legitimate competition was Ted Turner’s World Championship Wrestling (WCW), formerly Jim Crockett’s Championship Wrestling. These two companies would enter into the Monday Night Wars, a period where both the WWF and WCW were fighting for the eyes of viewers, and more importantly, their survival.
WWF would go on to win the Monday Night Wars in 2001 because of Vince McMahon’s deep pockets and WWF’s deeper talent pool. When Turner agreed to sell WCW, the world of professional wrestling officially became Vince McMahon’s. And while it would be natural assume that the best times would be ahead for McMahon and WWF — which would soon become WWE after a legal snafu with the World Wildlife Fund — but that wasn’t the case. McMahon’s empire was now essentially worldwide, and without a rival continuously to continuously push WWE to be better, as WCW had in the nineties, they got complacent as the first decade of the 2000’s closed.
WWE attempted to manufacture opposition from within. A battle between their two weekly TV programs, Monday Night Raw and Whatever the Fuck Night it’s on Smackdown, was supposed to be the way to keep things fresh and competitive. It never worked for more than a couple of months at a time before the monotony of a rivalless existence set back in. Eventually WWE’s developmental promotion NXT was introduced as a third brand, and perhaps by accident it became the closest thing WWE had to a rival in years. Even though NXT exists under the WWE umbrella, fans immediately saw it as an alternative type of sports entertainment that focuses more on the “sports” than the “entertainment.”
Rome had no need to introduce rivals as a way to keep the empire healthy and strong, but overexpansion turned out to be problematic in other ways. Without quick and effective means of communication or travel, it was understandably difficult to govern an expanding territory in the first few centuries of the first millennium. It was Diocletian who made the call to divide the Roman Empire into an Eastern half and Western half, a smart short-term decision that fell apart in the long run because the two sides gradually stopped working together. As the Eastern Empire grew in wealth and power, the Western Empire slipped into economic crisis and eventually fell.
II. Overreliance on the Wrong Kind of Labor
For hundreds of years Roman territory continuously expanded thanks to the strength of the most powerful military in the world. One of the perks of endless victory in war was a virtually never-ending supply of cheap labor (i.e. slave labor) that came as a result of their conquests. But as soon as expansion slowed in second century A.D., Rome’s supply of slaves began to dwindle. As a result, farmers who had to pay their workmen eventually had to sell their farms to wealthier men. The gap between the rich and the poor grew larger and larger and the economy of the empire began to crumble.
Professional wrestlers are not in servitude, though there is a case to be made that it’s problematic that WWE superstars aren’t offered health insurance or worker’s compensation. The “wrong kind of labor” that I’m talking about here as applied to the WWE are the former wrestlers that return to the company to work on a part-time or one-time basis. Not nearly as troublesome as enslaving a human being is, but still an example of overreliance on the wrong kind of labor.
What’s so interesting — and perhaps sad too — is that once upon a time, WWF won the Monday Night Wars versus Ted Turner’s WCW because they were constantly pushing new stars. Part of this was out of necessity. WCW stole Hulk Hogan, Kevin Nash (Diesel), Scott Hall (Razor Ramon), Randy Savage, Lex Luger, and Bret Hart among many others from WWF. McMahon and his creative team were forced to push new stars and implement new, bold ideas. The guys who came to define that era of WWF wrestling were legends like Steve Austin, The Rock, Triple H, Mick Foley, Kurt Angle and a handful of recent WCW cast-offs like Chris Jericho, Big Show, and Eddie Guerrero. But based on what we know about Vince McMahon now, it seems like he would’ve still been willingly trotting out part-timers in Main Event spots if he had the chance to.
The perception used to be that Vince McMahon had a thing for muscle-bound juiceheads who could wrestle, but now it’s clear that he saves the brightest spotlight \for old-timers who not only can’t wrestle anymore, but can’t even cut decent promos. I apologize, but I don’t need to see Ric Flair and Hulk Hogan, at a combined age of 136 years old, fumbling through their lines in 2019. McMahon’s insistence that WWE routinely turns itself into a nostalgia act has been maddening for a large sector of professional wrestling fans who don’t appreciate that the work of the day-in and day-out guys on the roster goes unnoticed far too often.
The worst examples of this have come at the expense of fast rising stars who WWE begrudgingly pushed in large part due to overwhelmingly positive fan reactions (more on this in a moment). Title reigns for CM Punk, Kevin Owens and Kofi Kingston ended in order to put those championship belts on the waists of The Rock (setting up a WrestleMania showdown with John Cena for the Title), Bill Goldberg (setting up a WrestleMania showdown with Brock Lesnar for the Title), and Brock Lesnar (likely at the insistence of new television partner Fox, who reportedly wanted a “legitimate champion” to carry the Smackdown brand). Before being forced out of action and then into eventual retirement after a series of head and neck injuries, Daniel Bryan’s prize for lighting the world of professional wrestling on fire in late 2013 and into 2014 was going to be to job to Brock Lesnar at SummerSlam.
I would ask what Vince McMahon’s plans for the future are if WWE doesn’t prioritize building young stars now, but it seems pretty clear that Vince would be content with rolling out Hall of Famers in their wheelchairs if need be and making their incoherent babbling the main event segment on Raw and Smackdown. That will be his idea of professional wrestling by 2030. And of course, Brock Lesnar will still be Heavyweight Champion, likely getting ready to defend his title against Randy Couture.
III. Administrative Instability
Again, this is a case where “Administrative Instability” means something totally different in Rome than it does WWE. In Rome, the term “Administrative Instability” is short for there were 37 emperors in a 100-year span starting in 186 A.D., and 25 of them were removed from office in whatever the 2nd-century equivalent of a body-bag is. In WWE, it means that the company’s creative decisions have sucked an incomprehensible amount of ass far too often over the last fifteen years, in large part because Vince McMahon has the final say over everything.
While Vince McMahon hasn’t been responsible for the death of anyone on his creative staff, he’s likely murdered far more than 25 big picture ideas each year that would’ve been better than what he had his sights set on. And honestly, if he hasn’t, then it’s an even bigger problem that WWE has moving forward because it means they’ve been hiring the wrong people for years now.
Now look, this could very easily turn into a typical WWE hit piece where I just list all of the fuck-ups WWE has had over the last X-number of years. The thing is, there have been far too many of those fuck-ups to put them all in one place. Plus, we’re already 2,000 words deep in this thing, and there are still two more issues I haven’t even introduced yet. But it’s worth mentioning that from the big picture company-wide decisions to the tiniest choices that only matter for one night, all of which Vince McMahon has final say it, so many of them have actively harmed WWE’s standing among wrestling fans.
From the small details like changing the lighting in the arena during matches for certain wrestlers, or putting stars in ridiculous Raw or Smackdown t-shirts at Survivor Series to signify which brand they are competing for, or bastardizing the rules of the Royal Rumble where now entrants can be tossed out of the ring and laying flat on their backs with their feet sticking up in the air and that supposedly means they aren’t eliminated, or completely ruining the purpose of the announcers — which is such an underrated part of good wrestling; once upon a time announcers called the action in the ring and told compelling stories, and today they talk only about Twitter trends and deliver God-awful superstar specific catch-phrases like “It’s THE BIG DOG!” …
To the more noticeable decisions, like actively hurting their own product by not committing to pushes for their brightest young stars, or highlighting downright embarrassing one-on-one matches between fifty-year-old’s like Bill Goldberg vs. The Undertaker, or re-introducing a once meaningful event like the King of the Ring tournament only to make it an afterthought on a Monday Night Raw that wasn’t remarkable in any way, or continuously pushing ridiculous and non-sensical storylines that are retreads of stories that may have had shock value twenty years ago — seriously, how many more infidelity storylines can WWE expect us to invest in …
To the major cultural issues, like deciding to do business with Saudi Arabia multiple times a year for a huge payout, despite the fact that the women on the roster — the women who WWE will proudly flaunt as part of the Women’s Revolution — can’t even compete there.
It’s all bullshit.
IV. Loss of Traditional Values
And maybe I’m skeptical because my “values” have changed. I’m not talking about the change of values that occurred in Rome. Thank God we don’t live in a society where people believe the Emperor or President has divine status (well, actually). No, I’m talking about the death of kayfabe. For those of you who don’t know, “kayfabe” is the portrayal of staged events within the wrestling industry as true or real. It’s seen as the suspension of disbelief in creating feuds, angles and gimmicks. Well, that shit went out the window right around the time one-time WWE Superstar CM Punk did this on Monday Night Raw in 2011 …
Now of course, this “pipe bomb” promo was scripted to some degree. At the very least, there were certain approved talking points that Punk was allowed to hit. But at that moment, kayfabe died for a lot of professional wrestling fans, and if it wasn’t dead and gone in the minds of fans yet, then the final nail in the coffin came when fans realized that they can (and should) have a direct impact on how WWE books their shows, because holy shit, can you imagine if WWE went forward with a Batista vs. Randy Orton main event at WrestleMania XXX?
The WWE fans saved WWE by making their voices heard on the subject of Daniel Bryan. Have they taken that a little too far since then? Perhaps. It probably depends on who you ask, because those who are employed by WWE were likely not thrilled about the way fans responded to the WrestleMania 34 main event between Roman Reigns and Brock Lesnar. However, and this would be my argument, the fans are usually right, and in the weeks leading up to that WrestleMania main event the fans were telling WWE two things: 1. This will be a shitty match, 2. We aren’t into it, and 3. We will shit on it.
As a quick yet related aside, I have a theory on the Roman Reigns shadow that has been hanging over WWE for about five years now: WWE fans don’t really hate Roman Reigns. That was clear when they gave him a very warm and heartfelt response when he broke kayfabe and announced his cancer diagnosis. They don’t even necessarily hate him being at the top of the company. What they hate is that WWE almost never gives fans what they want. And because WWE wants Reigns to be the face of the company, pushback on that idea is the most logical way to show their displeasure with a clearly diminishing product from top to bottom.
The biggest issue I had, as a lifelong wrestling fan who proudly believes I could do a better job putting together a wrestling program than what WWE has managed for most of the last decade, was that WWE never seemed to entertain the idea of creating a mega star not named Roman Reigns out of the Reigns situation. Fans didn’t want Reigns to be “the guy,” but WWE was always going to position him in that slot anyway. The plan could’ve very easily been to put the belt on Reigns, and to a chorus of boo’s have all of the McMahon’s celebrate with him in the middle of the ring. Steer into the goddamn skid, ya know? Then you can build someone up, someone like a Daniel Bryan or Dolph Ziggler (who WWE has jerked around more than anyone), or whoever to be the guy who knocked Roman Reigns off. Easy money.
Hey Vince, I know I’m attacking you in this thing, but I’ll gladly take a job on the creative staff if you want to make an offer.
But it shouldn’t be a surprise that WWE had their blinders on. They screwed up the CM Punk push by turning him heel. They were planning to screw up the Daniel Bryan push by taking the belt off of him at SummerSlam that year to put it on Lesnar, who would eventually be beat by Roman Reigns at WrestleMania. And it’s all because they don’t realize that this isn’t the 1980’s anymore.
Not only do fans realize that their voice carries weight and that their opinions matter, but the black and white, good versus evil nature of the business is a thing of the past. It’s just a product of the time we live in. Fans know that faces and heels can be buddy-buddy with each other outside of the ring. We know which guys are tight. We know which baby faces are assholes in real life. We see The Undertaker on Instagram. The act is over. Now more than ever, wrestling fans want to decide who we’re rooting for. It shouldn’t be up to WWE to decide for us, but if they insist that that’s the relationship they want to have with their fanbase, then they need to be prepared for pushback when their ideas are shit.
V. Invasion
After hundreds of years of political fuckery, economic collapse, loss of values, pointless growth of territory and countless other issues like public health crises, urban decay, and a de-emphasis on making technological advancements, Rome was susceptible to attacks from Germanic tribes like the Goths and Vandals. By 476 A.D., Western Rome had fallen.
My advice: If you’re a wrestling fan that is displeased with WWE, make the switch over to All Elite Wrestling immediately. Do you part in ensuring that the World Wrestling Empire falls, just like Rome did, and watch as a new empire begins to rise.

