TOP FIVE LIST: What is actually worse in WWE under Paul Levesque’s booking approach than the prior decades?

The public has a short memory. The human brain can put rose-colored nostalgia goggles on and find a way to remember the good times and minimize the bad ones. We see it in abusive relationships, justification of voting for a politician again, and in the “good old days” of professional wrestling. There have been some missteps in Triple H’s booking in 2025, where much of the criticism came from John Cena’s final run.

In the moment, people have a tendency to be critical, because the smartest man in the room is never thought as the guy who likes the current status quo. We like to think how much better we could be than what we are watching. Critics get the attention, not the promoter of the product. On the flip side of that coin, we glamorize the past. How great things once were becomes our sole memory, erasing the failures along the way.

The WWF Attitude era everyone longs for had:

• An incest angle with a character named Beaver Cleavage
• A backstage vignette where the “choppy choppy a pee-pee” that pushed boundaries of good taste so hard that it could get a “Top Five Ways One Angle Offended The Audience” article written about it.
• Women treated purely as objects
• An elderly woman giving birth to a hand who was the supposed love child between her and an Olympic athlete.

The list could continue on that era, but a couple of highlights lowlights of other eras were pulling a man’s head out of his own ass after life-threatening surgery, dead fathers who were oversexed by their daughter’s rival, simulated sex with a corpse, and making employees of the company you own kiss your naked ass on television.

Vince McMahon was not always good for professional wrestling. So far, all I have mentioned in criticism about the man was his booking. I could also add the man behind the scenes and his sexual escapades and various mistreatments of individuals. While that is true, he built WWE into a powerhouse in entertainment. Show me another property that isn’t news that has more new content each week. The characters he promoted, the fans he attracted, and even more dollars made from those fans was Vince McMahon fulfilling his vision. He was the promoter who won out over all the other ones in his era, and some of the tools from those decades have been cast aside.

The Hero vs Villain Build

Some of the best strategies are the most simple. Stealing from comic books and what would later go into video game storytelling is the hero’s journey. Like Vince saw when breaking into the business, Hulk Hogan followed the likes of Bruno Sammartino and Bob Backlund in having large, scary heels given credibility to become legitimate threats to the hero’s championship reign, only to be knocked down in a close battle.

Most top guys got that treatment under Vince McMahon. Hogan had an array of villains from Andre the Giant to Earthquake, and Bret Hart defeated larger foes like Bam Bam Bigalow and Yokozuna. With Steve Austin, they went with corporate power versus size for the main feud, but Austin also took down giants like Kane, Big Show, and The Undertaker. Cena established himself against JBL, Umaga, and Great Khali.

For Cody, he came up short against Roman Reigns and The Bloodline, and faced a giant on his journey of Brock Lesnar. The only other moment of digging deep to show that Cody is the lead babyface was competing with a pectoral muscle tear. Once a hero has completed his journey, the audience becomes bored.

Why Jacob Fatu was turned babyface and put into the mid card was a head-scratcher to me. Seemed like the perfect heel to Cody. Bronson Reed is someone in a great spot right now, but another one that could be making Cody look like he has to work to retain his title, instead of being chosen to hold it.

Just A Little Ha Ha

This is going to be hard to understand fully, because it’s often something I point to having improved WWE television. Sometimes, it’s downright embarrassing to be a wrestling fan. There are 19-22 hours of first run weekly promotions you can easily follow. One bad segment when watching with your in-laws in the room and it’s what they think all of wrestling to be. Farting divas and Booker T throwing up on television after being stink-faced in a match can derail an art that will always struggle for legitimacy.

That said, when the comedy was done right, it hit better. Mick Foley bringing a clown and a sock puppet to visit Vince in the hospital? Gold. Vince with his “gulp of doom” foreshadowing that someone was right behind him, and Vince would show ass as a character. Over-the-top camp that worked. Steve Austin with a small cowboy hat and a guitar, while not great for business, was very memorable. There were more comedy acts than R-Truth that worked in the Vince Era.

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Ticket Prices

Mark Shapiro said the quiet part out loud when on an investor call, he talked about continuing to raise ticket prices, noting that Vince would price for families and left a lot of money on the table. He believed in house shows to develop talent, giving said talent valuable experience in front of crowds of various sizes and makeup. He knew the value of getting to know what works globally instead of what got over in the Florida studio where similar fans attend every week. Those were shows that built a child audience who remembered seeing a larger-than-life show in their small town, at a price min and dad could afford.

In some of the toughest economic times in nearly 100 years, they know that personal experience is one thing people will pay for. As a corporation, they bleed all they can. And if you own the company or part of it with investing, you’ll see that as a plus, for now. More on that later, though.

Care For the Talent

Another statement that can look contradictory from me, especially after mentioning his treatment of people, specifically in how he apparently sexually exploited people. While valid, it’s not the entirety of Vince’s story. One of his strengths was that there was a side to Vince McMahon that made people want to perform at their best for him.

There are stories of Vince using money from his own pocket to help a struggling wrestler, helping with finances for many people who has really screwed Vince and his company over. When he did have a falling out with someone, he could get past enough of his ego and do business if it was right for the company and fans wanted to see it.

Building the Next Generation

In a bit of a flashback to the ticket prices portion of this article, high live event ticket prices and high streaming prices, eventually lead to fewer people viewing your product. When you lose those eyeballs, they can be extremely difficult to get back. My personal take is that the boom period of WWE this time was in part done to the ease of access.

Peacock was $4.99 a month and had way more than wrestling. If you were a fan, that was a no-brainer. I was happy with the $9.99 of the WWE Network, and while I knew I’d get less content when not building an entire network any longer, I was more than happy saving $5 to watch WWE. Now it’s $30 for the premium shows and I have to watch sports where if my team doesn’t win, it had nothing to do with the guy in a suit and tie in the back?

I do think that those who run WWE do think about the next crop of talent and are setting them up as best they can. The problem isn’t in those who create the show, but rather those who fund it. What happens when the audience doesn’t connect to the new stars in the same way that breaks records? Will they give up and sell it? It’s happened with many other companies in retail, restaurants, and software, just to name a few. These are people who invest because they love money, not because they love wrestling. When the fad is over, will TKO care enough to hang on for the next wave?

(Griffin is a lifelong fan of wrestling, superheroes, and rebellious music of all forms. He is the owner of Nerdstalgia, and you can shop online, learn about visiting the store in Colorado Springs, or catch him at a comic con in the Rocky Mountain area by going to http://nerdstalgia.shop.)