TKO’s WWE Feels Bigger Than Ever – And That’s The Problem
The road to WrestleMania should be unpredictable. Rivalries and feuds should snap into place. Storylines should peak at the perfect moment. Instead, the product feels dull and carefully arranged.
Since TKO Holdings Group took control of WWE, the company has grown tenfold fiscally. While this is a huge accomplishment for WWE, its absurd growth has come with a tradeoff:
These corporate priorities that drive record-setting business expenditures are destroying the creative edge that has defined WWE since before I could walk or talk.
And less than two weeks from WrestleMania 42, it’s more clear than ever before.
Rhodes (c) vs. Orton
Take Cody Rhodes vs. Randy Orton, which is set to main event one of the nights of WrestleMania. I was particularly enjoying this feud, as we got to see a darker side of Randy Orton that hasn’t been around since back in ’09. This rivalry had all the buildup to shock fans, but instead, Pat McAfee was inserted into the storyline?
Pat McAfee, who has very little in-ring experience and no reason to be a part of this feud, showed up on SmackDown this past Friday and took out Cody Rhodes. The move felt less like escalation and more like a failed attempt to reach a larger audience—a recognizable media personality plugged into a main event angle.
The issue is not McAfee himself. It is the timing and intent. Instead of intensifying a feud between two full-time performers, the story detours to accommodate a broader marketing strategy.
The Sami Zayn Situation
This one really grinds my gears. The United States Championship, especially as of late, has been one of the hottest and most sought-after belts within the industry. The “U.S. Title Open Challenge” was started by Sami Zayn to honor John Cena during his retirement tour.
Zayn quickly lost the belt after a few weeks back in August to Ilja Dragunov, who was returning from an injury that sidelined him from wrestling for well over a year. Dragunov continued the open challenge, putting on some of the best matches week in and week out, before dropping the title to Carmelo Hayes, a young star who took the opportunity and ran with it.
Hayes defended the title every week on SmackDown, putting on a show with a variety of different ring partners and building up excitement up until last week, when “creative” decided it would be a great idea to have one of the best up-and-coming stars drop his title to a 42-year-old with no standing to be included in a WrestleMania card against Trick Williams (who has long standing history with Carmelo Hayes).
Zayn is loved among Saudi crowds, and TKO is an organization that includes a plethora of Saudi owners. You do the math here. Something’s not adding up.
Ladder Match!!
This one is slightly less frustrating than the first two, but still an important one to note.
Penta announced last week on Monday Night Raw that he will defend his Intercontinental title in a ladder match at WrestleMania 42. Ladder matches are sure to draw attention, but my grievance with this one is how contenders for this match were decided.
Rather than air qualifying matches on flagship shows like Monday Night Raw or Friday Night SmackDown, WWE decided that the best way to determine the qualifiers was on WWE Main Event.
I’m an avid wrestling fan, and I’ve never even heard of WWE Main Event. So who in their right mind over at WWE thought that deciding who would wrestle at the biggest PLE of the year would be determined on a program that doesn’t even exist. THESE MATCHES NEVER EVEN HAPPENED!!
Isn’t It Ironic
The irony is that WWE has never been bigger. The merger with organizations like UFC positions TKO as a global combat sports powerhouse. The business model is working exactly as intended.
But wrestling is not just business.
It’s emotion. It’s timing. It’s risk.
Right now, those elements feel secondary to presentation and precision.
The product runs smoothly. It hits its marks. It looks polished. It just doesn’t feel alive.
There is still time to fix that before WrestleMania 42. The solution is not abandoning structure, but rather loosening it. Let rivalries escalate without interruption. Let title changes carry long-term consequences. Let the product breathe.
Because WWE does not need to feel bigger.
It needs to feel unpredictable again.