WWE: Vince McMahon admits creative system is broken

WWE’s creative has been a mess for years, and even Vince McMahon is aware of it.

Listen to any interview conducted by a wrestler who has left WWE, especially those who have joined AEW, and they will tell you about how micromanaged and chaotic the environment is in WWE. It doesn’t sound like the most fulfilling place to work at if you aren’t seen as a major player or if you don’t have the kind of pull to craft the storyline you want.

But it goes beyond that. There are so many people wrestlers have to go through just to get their ideas heard, and they can be shot down at any point in the process with little transparency. And then there’s Vince McMahon at the top. He presides over this mess and often contributes to it by re-writing shows at the last second or undermining creatives whom the talent start to respect.

Vince himself is aware of how broken the system is. In fact,  McMahon used those exact words when apologizing to  FTR.  Known as The Revival in WWE before leaving for AEW, FTR were criminally misused by Vince and his team on the “main roster” after establishing themselves as one of the world’s best tag teams in NXT.

In an interview with Inside The Ropes, FTR recalled Vince apologizing to them in their last meeting with WWE’s big boss. Here’s the quote, via WrestleTalk’s Louis Dangoor:

"“We talked with Vince. Our last meeting with Vince he apologized because we had been sending all these pitches in and he had never seen them because the writers were too afraid to approach him with different ideas and he apologized for the system being broken.”"

That sounds like failure at several levels, but ultimately the culpability rests on Vince McMahon for knowing about the existing problem and doing little to curb it. Furthermore, he’s created an environment where people are afraid to speak with him, for fear of either being reprimanded or having their ideas torn to shreds anyway.

Vince has to step up to the plate. WWE’s ratings are falling, and while some of that is due to the pandemic, the NFL Draft and other events haven’t plummeted this much. FTR’s experience isn’t unique in WWE, and it’s simply not enough for Vince to apologize for the problem. He’s got to be the leader he touts himself as being and change the entire structure. Then again, that’s all assuming he actually cares in the first place.