I’m not going to waste your time. I’m going to lead with the rationale behind WWE inexplicably changing Walter’s name to Gunther on WWE NXT tonight.
WWE changes one the name of one of their brightest stars.
We all go on social media and vent about what a bad decision it was and why it doesn’t make any sense.
WWE mines all of that social media traffic and packages it to impress networks and advertisers.
WWE makes money.
That’s it. And that’s why the WWE keeps making bad decisions with talent. Why they’ve began announcing releases one by one instead of in groups. Why they’re seemingly tanking NXT and making terrible creative decisions with RAW and Smackdown.
They’ve discovered how to literally monetize your frustrations and are fueling their operation with it.
And like some kind of street drug, they’ve become addicted to this cheap way of making money and are going to use to take them as far it they can go. The product doesn’t really matter anymore.
We can look at other reasons, like an aging leadership, lack of efficient storytelling, or the intent to sell in the future, but it all comes back to this.
If you could go to work and make all of your bosses happy by doing a poor job or no work at all, you might probably do it. That is if you don’t have any personal pride in what you do.
But money does change your reality. WWE probably believes they’re doing just fine.
And they’re making money off of your anger and laughing all of the way to the bank.