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WWE in 2026

Truthfully, I didn’t even know WrestleMania was happening this weekend until last night when I was scrolling through Facebook and saw ESPN posting videos on their page.

EDIT - For whatever reason, it’s still wild seeing Disney promote WWE.
 
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I watched last night’s main event and tonight’s full card. Nothing from either night makes me want to get back into following WWE regularly again, and there was a lot (A LOT) that made me remember why I stopped watching in the first place.

That said, in a vacuum, I enjoyed Punk-Roman a lot.
 
I think Punk/Roman and maybe the ladder match are the only matches from either show I might check out. I'm sure Gunther/Seth was a solid match, I'm just really tired of both guys at the moment.
 
According to PWI Aleister Black was WWE’s original choice to be Orton’s advisor before TKO stepped in and put McAfee in the spot.
 
It's weird to read how people talk about TKO. They own the company. Every booking decision that happens is a result of who TKO put in charge to make those decisions. There's no distinction between a decision HHH makes and a decision another executive makes.

There's another issue I'm seeing because the fans think the product sucks and that it's cold. Then I see the owner interfering for the exact same reason, he thinks that the product sucks and that it's cold. It's bad that he thinks that? Almost everything on these shows is unwatchable. I can't believe Danhausen got foisted onto a company that is actually using him to ruin shit.

There are a lot of other issues I saw in video clips this weekend, and it's one of those things I can't quantify because it doesn't make sense to me and I don't understand the way people are now. But I saw WWE promoting George Kittle chugging beer or something in the expensive tickets section. If you're the kind of person who's 40 years old and you still hang on some athlete nuts you really need to grow up. Who are these promotional clips for? They're promoting guys drinking beers that are 20 dollars because they know they can rape you for 20 dollar beer. The richer the people that go, the more expensive everything costs. The guys are sitting in seats that now cost $30,000 because those are the kinds of people who sit in those seats. Then I saw them promoting influencers who I've never even heard of.

It's not just WWE and it's not just wrestling, I think events like this and Coachella are completely ruining society. WWE would probably fucking love the fact that I'm equating these things. There's an ever growing tier of entertainment that regular people aren't able to participate in. I don't think WWE was all that bothered by lowered attendance this year. The tickets that matter got sold.

There's a process to how this kind of thing happens. You have kids who watch people who other people are following around with a camera for hours on end. You put so much money in their pockets for doing NOTHING, that they can afford to pay whatever these tickets cost and help companies price out their fans. People chase their chance to sit next to these people so they buy a ticket on Klarna and practically bankrupt themselves. There's already been some significant changes in human behavior we've seen because of this, and it's only going to get worse. It's just going to trickle over to everything else. At some point in the near future you'll never hear about a regular person going to watch their team in the Super Bowl. Because there literally won't be any there.
 

This is funny but they'll just stop having these. You don't truly have the right to protest at these things after you give them your ticket money.
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I wonder if the fanbase becoming more energized, more defensive of the WWE, and even more willing to part with their money for tickets/streaming/etc after Saudi killed Khashoggi may have been a mistake.
 
I feel like that's an interesting stance to make right after the biggest event of the year is panned and didn't sell out.

Gotta be up there on the "philanthropy is the future of marketing" scale.
 

I have a take about this. I think that there’s only so much you can really expect security to do. There’s a societal contract where you can have these events, but you can only actually have them if people don’t act like animals. It’s just unspoken because usually people aren’t so stupid. Like you know how at an NBA game the court isn’t blocked off from people. You can’t escalate the behavior at these things to where you can’t safely have them.

When I was at MGM last month there were fighters and basketball players there, but nobody would bother them.

I think ultimately you have to expect fans to stop acting like children.
 
While I was grocery shopping the other day, I saw who I am about 95% sure was Kilynn King (TNA talent who lives in my town and has been on the shelf for over a year with a knee injury). I felt guilty making eye contact with her for a second while my brain processed whether I recognized her as I walked by.

I cannot imagine having the audacity to do what some of these idiot fans do when they see wrestlers in public.
 
While I was grocery shopping the other day, I saw who I am about 95% sure was Kilynn King (TNA talent who lives in my town and has been on the shelf for over a year with a knee injury). I felt guilty making eye contact with her for a second while my brain processed whether I recognized her as I walked by.

I cannot imagine having the audacity to do what some of these idiot fans do when they see wrestlers in public.
I ran into Arn Anderson at Wendy's once. It's fuckin Arn Anderson! I didn't say anything.
 
I ran into Arn Anderson at Wendy's once. It's fuckin Arn Anderson! I didn't say anything.
Should have told him that the enforcer is no match for the baconator, and then reported back after he gave you a spine buster.

Also, it seems like every day there’s a popular post on the espn subreddit about how awful WWE coverage is lmao
 
Its funny how all the people online constantly dunk on Punk for abandoning his morals and being a hypocrite, but when Sami does the same shit regularly it gets ignored all the time.

Hes a great wrestler, but the way reddit and Twitter talk about him (and KO as well tbh) like hes this adorable puppy has always annoyed me.
 
Sami is always for sale. Once he caved to Saudi, he was never the same. I don't think he's probably a bad guy, just a super disingenuous and slimy one. He was supposed to be the next Foley, man.

That said, and I've only read the synopsis as I'm not able to listen, that sounds almost satirical. But like, Michael Richards satirical.
 
Apparently Brock’s retirement was spur of the moment and HHH had no idea.

There’s a rumour that HHH is furious because he really wanted him to job to Gunther at Summerslam in his hometown. But I don’t know how true that is, could be BS.
 
I was surprised to hear Lesnar retired. Assumed they'd want him to help 2/3 fill the Vikings stadium two nights in a row for Summerslam.
 
WWE has been forced to scrap their plans for Backlash after McAfee and Jelly each told the company they didn’t like the negative reaction they were getting and didn’t want to continue with the company.

we did it folks, we got back to a place where doing ‘rasslin sports entertainment is a negative for celebrities.
 
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