Vince McMahon ruins everything

It’s amazing how quickly one can go from the highest of highs to the lowest of lows, huh?

This past weekend’s WrestleMania 39 event was in many ways a big celebration of what makes pro wrestling so much fun. Some of the highlights include the cathartic triumph of Sami Zayn and Kevin Owens, Charlotte Flair and Rhea Ripley having perhaps the best women’s match in company history, Dominik Mysterio’s ridiculous entrance, Snoop Dogg pulling out a People’s Elbow after Shane McMahon accidentally injured himself, Cody Rhodes finishing his...well, hey, it wasn’t perfect, but WrestleMania was still pretty darn good! It felt like almost everything was right in the pro wrestling world.

Then 24 hours went by, and Vince McMahon found a way to ruin it all.

With the news of Endeavor acquiring WWE on Monday morning, it didn’t take long for Vince to fully take back control of WWE’s creative direction for the Raw after WrestleMania. The episode was a major letdown, with WWE hyping up the biggest main event in Raw history but failing to actually deliver the match. And don’t get me started on what a waste of time it was for Seth Rollins to come out to the ring to do nothing other than listen to the audience sing his song.

Not surprisingly, the rumor mill is now buzzing with word of last minute script changes to Raw, low morale quickly spreading through the locker room, wrestlers wanting their release from WWE, and all the rest of the expected shitshow that comes with McMahon taking control. Given the reason McMahon stepped down from WWE in the first place, combined with the way he laughed away his sex scandals in a recent interview, it’s not hard at all to understand why multiple stars on the roster might be looking for an exit plan now that Vince is back in charge.

Triple H ran the show from late July 2022 through WrestleMania 39, and for the most part, fans and critics agree that the quality of WWE’s programming was significantly improved during that time compared to what came before it under Vince’s direction. This coincided with a period of growth for WWE in terms of popularity and ratings, because the company was able to quickly restore a lot of the goodwill with fans that Vince spent years pissing away.

But most of those positives are seemingly erased now, because the out-of-touch old man and his super creepy mustache is back to ruin everything and make WWE programming worse from here on out. All it took was one below average episode of Raw to bring back all the bad memories of what WWE was too often like prior to Vince’s resignation last year.

Are you fully on board with the gloom and doom expectations now that Vince is back running the show, or do you think that kind of reaction isn’t warranted at this early point? Let us know how you think Vince’s return will affect the quality of Raw and SmackDown going forward, Cagesiders.