They sought mainstream coverage and acceptance. Mainstream outlets are burying the show. They do things believing it’ll attract extra casual eyeballs. Casuals on IG, TikTok, Twitter thought the show sucked. The truth is it’s entertainment for nobody except soulless content creators that attend the event as a show of status. And media partners. Stephen A has to sit there and pretend to know and care about pro wrestling while his alleged favorite team was playing a playoff game. Remember this when he makes severe, declarative takes on First Take about the NBA playoffs. It’s a 4 hour ad grab. They’ve even forgone video packages in the name of more ads. They know the audience is a bunch of suckers. You have WWE fans paying $40 to watch this event and defending commercials, you can’t help these people. WWE has always been about the pomp and circumstance, the pageantry, the theatrics, but it always did its brand of entertainment within the confines of a wrestling promotion. At present, it has never ever felt like less of a wrestling promotion. I don’t say this because it brings me joy to say, I’m a big fan of numerous talents on the roster. I say it, because it is so blatantly the truth now, and there’s no revoking of access that any company can dangle over me that’ll discourage me from being honest. Not only is it not actually for the casuals or the hardcores, it’s not even for the wrestlers themselves. I actually feel bad for the talent who still dream of getting their big wrestlemania stage appearance and match. The people on that undercard were background actors. Outside of your top guys, the stars of the show were Hulk Hogan, Wheatley’s American Vodka, RAM Trucks, Minute Maid, and Fanatics. It’s not going to get better. The people that run this operation are all focused on preserving their backs and making sure the money continues to roll in at the same rate and they’ll do whatever they need to get there, even if it means an extra ad where video packages used to be. Ads where a charming backstage segment used to be. It’s not for you or me, it’s a ruse. The undercard talent only get to have actual matches on the TVs and the big show hits you over the head that the TV doesn’t actually matter. You’re insulted for caring and paying attention because the TV stories are incongruous with the things that happen on the big show. In past bad eras of WWE, it was bad wrestling produced by wrestling minds. This is something entirely different. To describe it as a facsimile of wrestling would be too charitable to its proximity to pro wrestling. It is a dystopian, synthetic, cynical, corporatized, vaguely similar recreation of a sports entertainment product and it’s produced by businessmen that’ll free their hands of it and dump it off to the next sucker that’ll buy it the first chance they get.