10 Major Challenges Facing WWE In 2021
New Year, New Normal, Same Old WWE? What (or who) will force much-needed change?
Imagine if the title of this list was "10 Things WWE Will Have To Worry About In 2021", and how difficult it would be to even get to 1 rather than 10. In a year for the history books, WWE ploughed forward into the future with reckless and almost giddy abandon.
Wrestlers were let go to protect budgets that were already hyper-inflated, heads rolled following the Vince McMahon's decision to wade into third party profits being made by his "independent contractors", and nobody even acknowledged how f*cking rotten 2020 was until there were gaudy t-shirts to be sold. Point is, they worry about nothing. The things below are challenges, but similar ones existed last year, and the one before that, and the one before that. Did they fix them? Did they even appear mindful of them?
WWE's internal challenges won't remotely reflect what we as fans see, because corporate giants stop thinking about the needs of their consumers when they become corporate giants. We buy those sh*tty shirts, or subscribe to the Network or - when allowed again - attend shows, but it's crucial to remember that we're no longer the masters they serve.
But if we were...
10. What Next For The Fiend?
Because there's always a "next".
Not the kind of next WWE alluded to on Raw, involving Alexa Bliss's new talk show and The Fiend being "home" after being burned to death on a pay-per-view one night prior. But what next for this character? This gimmick that's less than two years old that has already proven itself immortal apart from when it's getting RKO'd or Speared or whatever other finisher the bigger star wants to hit.
John Cena surrendered himself to the task of getting this unfinished spooky horseh*t going again after Goldberg ripped through the veneer a month earlier, but who will do it whenever Pennydumb returns from being set ablaze?
Undertaker's said his final farewell, your Mankinds and Kanes were gotten to by Bray himself before The Fiend's in-ring debut, and Roman Reigns surely won't fancy having to endure the bullsh*t that Seth Rollins was forced to wade through during that horrific series.
They'll find a way, but the return will be as diminished as ever. The Fiend doesn't change people. If this were true, he'd have at least convinced somebody backstage to do better by him before now.