by Jeb Tennyson Lund
OnlineOnslaught.com/CitizenScholar.net

I don't like taking potshots at Vince McMahon. For the most part, taking aim at the big guy involves about as much skill as making contact in an at-bat in Tee Ball. Now and again, though, he says or does something that makes me wonder how he can proceed from one problem to one conclusion. His thinking troubles me.
 
Last Tuesday night, Vince sat down with Michael Landsberg on TSN's Off the Record to discuss wrestling and its future. When asked what would become of WWE upon his death, Vince said that it would be ably handled by his son Shane, his daughter Stephanie and his son-in-law Triple H. He seemed totally satisfied with this arrangement. To me, that sounded like the final act in the unmaking of an empire.
 
Call it what you will, but WWE does resemble an empire. It singularly straddles a genre. It is a product and company elevated by one man's will, identifiable in relation to one man, answerable to one man and ultimately more an extension of that one man than anything else. Its power and administration is controlled by blood, whether the blood of the founder himself, or those of his children. Without that one man, all crumbles. It has no voice as clear, authoritative or penetrating as his own. Like all such entities, it is easily undone by the inertia of its own errors, its structure and the quality of its blood successors — and by the fact that it must ultimately have successors at all.
 
Perhaps it's the historian in me, but WWE strikes me as similar to the Roman Empire at its apex, after the death of Augustus, for example. Standing in the wake of the great man are:
• Essentially undeserving or unproven children and in-laws, none really more qualified than another.
• A wife heretofore disregarded, but potent in intelligence and purpose.
• Manipulative Senators and Generals, possessing great talent and stunted ambition — like Pat Patterson, J.R., Heyman, Bischoff and Lawler.
• A kind of Praetorian Guard of road agents, technicians, writers and engineers — people who are beholden (and owe their livelihood) to the system instead of The Man; people whose influence and weight can be thrown behind any potentially legitimate successor, so long as the system lives on.
• A multitude of citizens with varying interests, wealth, ambition and potential — a diverse polity of Hosses, Technicals, Old Schoolers, Divas, Women Wrestlers and Cruisers.   
 
All of this sounds overly dramatic, of course. But two things occur to me: WWE is a media empire with an impetus and vitality that is very much top-down oriented. Two, the Roman Empire had hundreds of years of history and administrators of considerably greater intelligence than the WWE flacks, yet look what happened to it. Upon the death of Vince McMahon, much the same might happen to WWE.
 
 
Bad Structure
Any empire or cult of personality runs primarily on the character of he who brought it to greatness first. Once that personality is gone, there's often little to fall back on unless you're willing to wait for many years, wars or generations to find someone who can restore the glory. China's one-party system is economically and socially breaking down in a way impossible to conceive of under Mao. In the absence of Hitler, who could have run Germany? That fat morphine addict Goering? The wispy self-loathing homosexual propagandist Goebbels? Admiral Donitz, a career navy man?
 
I am by no means calling Vince "Hitler" or "Mao," but he occupies the kind of iconic leadership status in a largely self-made empire that these men enjoyed. They didn't serve the state: they were the state, and they were the excuse for the state. Try separating one aspect of WWE from Vince; try taking "Vince" from WWE. It's an impossibility, so long as he lives. The moment he expires, however, the separation — the rending, if you will — will be so fast, so total and so sudden as to perhaps precipitate a collapse of the whole system.
 
The reason why these systems break down is because legitimacy flows from the man, not the machinery supporting him. (Even though the machinery helps maintain the structure from day to day, it cannot justify itself. The man above justifies the machine.) Who else but Vince could have produced the WBF and XFL and had the machinery support the decision? Who else but Vince could have gotten away with the Montreal Screwjob and the relatively calm locker-room reaction just days later? It was done because Vince is Vince; it was accepted because Vince is Vince.
 
(Imagine the Montreal Screwjob if it were created by committee instead of an emperor. Well, then, who voted for what? Was it Financial that vetoed Bret's contract? Was it Talent that saw him as outmoded? Was it Creative that saw a "dynamite" angle and moment and sold the possible excitement so well that Financial turned its back on an investment and Talent forsook one of its own? With Vince, there is one impetus and one final appeal. In this hypothetical committee or power-sharing environment, Bret appeals to the heads of Financial, Talent and Creative, visits wrestlers and road agents, maybe even looks to the real board of directors. There are so many "final answers" and "final appeals" that debate on it could have raged to the next WrestleMania.)
 
This is how empires and family businesses fail, whereas democracies and corporations endure. The latter rely on diverse talents and voices to provide an ever-renewing source of power, action, information and reflection. The latter relies on the genius or idiocy of one, then the genius or idiocy of whomever they've spawned to replace them.
 
I can see the objections now: WWE is a publicly traded company, so it will not implode, leadership-wise. To that, I offer several responses. One, publicly traded companies fail all the time. Two, it would be hardly surprising to see the remaining McMahons and upper management pool resources to buy out all remaining shares. (It wouldn't surprise me to see that happen in Vince's lifetime.) Three: stock in this company was divided into "A" stock and "B" stock, wherein B has ten times the vote power that A does. The McMahons own most (if not all) of the B stock, meaning that even a united coalition of A-stock voters could not out-maneuver any McMahon coalition vote on any proposal.
 
What has that wrought? A publicly traded company that functions like no other. The minds behind WWE have presided over a failed XFL, a failed high-profile high-cost restaurant, a failed music label, significantly decreased attendance, and a drop in ratings by almost one-third. Financial losses have been offset by reduced expenditures, elevated ticket prices, an increase in the number of events and (soon) the practical doubling of pay-per-views. Yet overall earnings struggle to stay above profitability's Mendoza line, in spite of all efforts to increase avenues to profit. Yet the same people remain in charge. Would General Electric work like this for three years? No.
 
This publicly traded company acts with virtually no accountability for those who are doubling efforts to raise money, while seeing revenues sink and then stabilize, despite increased efforts. WWE was a sinking ship, and it stays afloat not because it's stopped revenue leakage, but because everyone is manning the pumps and bailing water at a constant daily rate. Again, those who presided over this are still in charge. Why? Because Vince is Vince, and the power and legitimacy of that B stock begin and end with him. Moreover, reputation begins and ends with him.
 
It was he who created WrestleMania; he who pioneered the pay-per-view market, and he who still possesses a personal cachet that bespeaks "wrestling." Who can replace him in terms of experience and influence? Who has the charisma or credibility to allay investors' fears while steering the lagging ship? Is it the dutiful accountant wife? The puling daughter? The sometime-wrestler son? The son-in-law of questionable economic and real-world intelligence, whose greatest devotion has heretofore been to himself and his wife? The hangers-on, the party apparatchiks who have followed the lead without ever taking it themselves? In Vince's absence, can these people be counted on to vote as a bloc? Or will they be tempted to marshal common-stock voters into opposition-voting parties to effect changes in upper management that serve their own ends?
 
This brings us, naturally, to the biggest step in the unmaking of empire.
 

Bad Successors
Augustus had his stepson Tiberius — a capable general and easily manipulated momma's boy who lived out his days as Emperor on the Isle of Capri, forcing boys to sodomize and kill each other for his own amusement. Tiberius' only qualifications to rule were that he was moderately capable, related by law, and the only candidate not murdered or dishonored. Vince has children and their spouses. Vince isn't faring much better, apart from not having any of his children murdered and the whole "sodomy as entertainment" thing.
 
But I can see the complaint now: "They're the only people who are qualified!"
 
The trouble here is that these people are qualified only by blood, constant exposure and experience. Worse, their experience is predicated on the fact that they are the only ones given experience. How qualified can a candidate be when he or she is the only person exposed to the phenomenon? Can anyone honestly say that Shane or Stephanie McMahon (or Triple H) would be the ablest handlers of a multi-million dollar corporation if they had to compete with MBAs, managers and CEOs who had had one-tenth of their exposure to the business?
 
This is where the unraveling begins, where the imperial and dynastic parallels rush in with full fury and repugnance. WWE and other wrestling companies have long held onto the practice that no one outside wrestling can understand wrestling itself. This assumption is correct only because no one outside wrestling has ever been allowed time to learn about or experience it for long enough to make a credible counter-demonstration of aptitude. Those outside wrestling are terrible at managing wrestling because they are never inside it.
 
(The only exception to this rule might be Eric Bischoff. But we should take care to remember that Bischoff was as insanely successful as he was insanely mistaken. His greatest error was in expenditure, on which he was given no check. Had he been given a more reasonable budget in the later years of WCW, he might have made more practical decisions. Even so, look at what Vince did in poverty: push people like Diesel and Sid Vicious. And look what he did in wealth: create the XFL, WWE New York, WWE Music, etc., and essentially encumber his wrestling budget for years to come. Given this, the outsider and the "insider" have comparable records.
 
Further, I think a counter-argument regarding the failure of Brian Gewirtz is a non-starter. In his case, he represents the WWE outsider who is unsuccessful after exposure to the business because he was a third-rate talent to begin with. I sometimes suspect that WWE hires incompetents from outside wrestling just so they can say, "Look, outsiders are really terrible." What other reason can there be for Gewirtz's continued employment?)
 
The idea that Stephanie or Shane McMahon will be better bookers or executives of wrestling owes everything to their bloodline and nothing to their actual qualifications as managers or writers. Stephanie was (and presumably still is) Head Writer. Her tenure has seen the repugnance of Corpse Raping and nascent Linda Raping. Meanwhile, the stellar successes like the Smackdown Six have been so typical of Paul Heyman's style of booking that it's hard to apportion any credit for those successes to Stephanie at all. I could understand crediting her for having the wit to listen to good advisors and good ideas; but she so evidently also listens to bad advisors (or ignores good ones who criticize her bad ideas) that whatever wisdom she might have had is countered by abundant folly.
 
To return to the point, the McMahons know about wrestling because they grew up around it. It might, in fact, be all they know. Moreover, they might not even know much of it. Perhaps the direst insult is that, had a writer for a hit NBC show been hired to fill Stephanie's Head Writer role, he'd likely have been fired by now for poor ratings or miserable storylines, if he had written the same things we have seen. He'd be fired because he is an outsider. Yet, give that man two years to observe the business and begin contributing, and heaven knows what he could devise.
 
Therein lies the cruelly inept double standard. WWE fans (like me) can read online sites, watch faithfully and learn backstories, and go from not knowing wrestling to understanding its ins and outs in one year. In 1998, I didn't watch and barely understood modern wrestling. By late 1999, I was devouring shows, recaps, news, columns, etc. We can love wrestling and devote ourselves to it, yet we must watch for years upon years while someone like Stephanie McMahon learns how to tell any story (not featuring her) in a way that's moderately interesting. If it takes us so little to appreciate it, why should we appreciate someone who takes so long to appreciate us?
 
Again, the double standard comes into play. As we all know, WWE did hire some non-wrestling writers to plot storylines. Unfortunately, WWE has done too little with too little. First, they took a C-grade sitcom writer. Second, they almost immediately thrust him into writing stories, instead of taking the time to acclimate him to the vagaries of wrestling programming. Third, they made him a sub-factor in terms of crafting stories and characterization. The result is a man not steeped in wrestling, writing stories that are altered by committee and then forced to adapt others' adaptations of his own ideas. No wonder WWE has no faith in outsiders: they take outsiders, hear their ideas, alter them, then expect the outsiders to remold edited ideas into a wrestling landscape with which they are grossly unfamiliar.
 
Thus, without outsiders, we are left with blood. Blood is qualified to lead because it is blood. Blood has never forged a business; blood was born into business; and blood is awash in the tide of business, steeped in it, because it is merely there… not because it is capable. What is left in the absence of Vince?
 
First, there is Shane. I cannot bear too much ill will toward Shane because neither I — nor anyone else — has directly borne or suffered his actions in terms of management. What does Shane do? How has it affected us? At one point, he was to manage the WCW talent, but that is the last we've heard, and perhaps the last he's done in the public eye. Even so, I doubt he was the man who solely created the Alliance v. WWE debacle.
 
As for his future, it seems that he is being groomed to fulfill a role similar to his father's: that of the last pass of the buck, the final apologist, the decision-maker in crisis. But given the inclusion of Triple H and Stephanie in power, his authority will be hamstrung in a way his father's wasn't — especially if his position and powers are not detailed and enumerated in inescapable legal parameters and contracts.
 
The people left to worry about are Stephanie and Triple H. In Stephanie's case, we have a consistently fairly self-important woman whose contributions have been as reprehensible as they have been tolerable. Not once could I or anyone else point to a moment of excellence and attribute it solely to her.
 
Indeed, it would be easier to do the contrary. When Triple H returned as a face to confront a heel Jericho, Stephanie's character and concerns were so prominently inserted into the mix that it obscured the first ever Undisputed Champion. Issues of Triple H and Stephanie marrying, or being parents, or worrying about a dead dog totally ignored the reigning champ and any claim he might have had to primacy. All of this might seem like quibbling, but I ask you this: if a woman who became the Head Writer and her husband, who will help direct the company in the future, thought this was good for ratings and storylines, what does this say about their characters and ideas? If Stephanie has so much influence on writing, surely she could have vetoed the pregnancy-marriage-dog storyline if she thought it poor.
 
This did not happen. Indeed, it has typically taken weeks for Stephanie to leave TV long after her character has reached the nadir of insipidity and repetition. Given that she's shown no reluctance to not feature herself in stories with her real-life husband, given that she's shown no reluctance to remove herself from stories in which she overshadows new talent or is so completely verbally outmatched by Paul Heyman — given that, it is probably sounder and wiser to assume that her removal did not come at her behest, and instead at the diktat of her father, the Imperial Voice. After all, she has enough power as head writer to veto her own involvement.
 
In fairness to Stephanie, we should not try to impute solely narcissistic reasons for the marriage-baby-dead-doggie storyline. Perhaps the reason why she didn't veto it is not because she enjoyed being the center of attention. Perhaps it's because she thought it was a good storyline. Which circumstance is worse?
 
Then we come to her husband. In actuality, we should think of them as a kind of symbiotic creature: StepHunter, or whatever you wish to call it. The one creature legitimizes itself. Whatever her experience or pretensions, Stephanie probably doesn't understand what it is to wrestle in a ring. And whatever his pretensions, Triple H probably doesn't understand basic administration. Together, they augment one another.
 
Thus we have a man who has benefited from self-interest paired with a child of special interest. Triple H has done three jobs in two years. One was to a friend, Shawn Michaels, a job he got back a month later. One was to Goldberg, a commercial and popular force that could not be denied. The job was taken back, as well. Lately, he's quasi-jobbed to Benoit twice. This was predicated by God knows what. It has also been couched in the language of illegitimacy and compromise. (I omit the jobs to Shelton Benjamin because they did not happen on pay-per-view and thus can be much more easily "disappeared" by the creative team, if they so choose.)
 
Triple H lost in a three-way match, then he lost in another three-way match. He has a claim stub, one he will likely punch after his movie is done filming. Moreover — as I have said in the past — he is booked with a kind of grace and tolerance that no one else possesses. He is a cheating weak heel, going into a match. Then he beats people with a clean finisher. He is a monster undefeatable heel going into another match, then he cheats to win. Such booking makes clowns of monsters and weaklings of cheaters. Such booking makes people like Kane easy prey, as dim-witted giants subject to a roll-up, and it makes men like Jericho or RVD effete woman-children, as they flip, fly and contrive to find a win, only to eat a definitive, inescapable and devastating finisher.
 
Triple H is booked like no other wrestler on the roster, and like very few heels in history. Already, he enjoys some sort of indulgence. What pitiable naïf would think that he would not enjoy this selfsame indulgence (if not greater) when he, Stephanie and Shane are running the company? After all, he and Stephanie constitute two-thirds of the prospective vote. As said above, he may not enjoy this indulgence out of a malicious self-centeredness. In fact, that indulgence may come from what he and Stephanie feel is in the best interests of the company. But, again, which is worse? The roads to Hell and WrestleMania are both paved with good intentions. Sincere failure — whether born of accident or incompetence — is more sympathetic, but it is still failure. Is sinking the ship any less deplorable because they "meant well"?
 
And even if well-intentioned, consider what anarchy or antipathy may result from a triumvirate of Shane, Stephanie and Hunter. Never in the history of a major wrestling company has a relative of the owner been a major wrestler. Look to the sins of Flair and Hogan and Nash in WCW. Then look to an aged Triple H, married to the head writer or co-owner or co-CEO or God knows what. How much implausible or narcissistic or "forgiven" bad booking will we see then? Triple H has already spent nearly two years as champion while spending nearly one of that in worse shape than an un-restored AMC Pacer off-roading down a cliff face. He's spent more time being propped up than FDR. And he did all of that when the person in charge of the company had no vested interest in having sex with him. What happens when his beloved wife, mother of his children, calls the shots for him? What happens when he does, too?
 
 
Intrigue and Collapse
The best test of any Cult of Personality or empire comes in its succession. Vince has named three (or four) people as his successors, all with potentially different motives. A triumvirate didn't work for Rome twice, and it didn't work for France, either. It likely won't work for WWE.
 
What happens to a wrestler's appeals to power, when he has three leaders? When something inconveniences Triple H or Stephanie, what recourse do they have? When something inconveniences Shane, what recourse does he have? Where is the wise voice or arbiter? Moreover, where do the road agents and writers turn? Where do wrestlers not in favor with Triple H or Stephanie turn? Where do those who go ignored by Shane turn?
 
Here enters the potential for Roman (or Byzantine, or what have you) intrigue. The king is dead, and long live the three One-Third Kings. Who is the heir apparent and abundant? Who do the wise senators — Heyman, J.R., Patterson, Lawler, Bischoff — throw their weight behind? Who has the support of the Praetorian Guard — the writing and technical staff? Who has the acclaim of the masses — the hosses and cruisers and women and technical wrestlers?
 
Just because Vince sets down a wish for power sharing in the future does not mean that it will come to pass. In such cases as these, laws are broken all the time. Remember that when Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon with his army and entered Rome, he was a criminal. He had violated fundamental Roman law. But it was the acclaim from the crowd (three cheers and three bids for him) that forced the Senate to acknowledge him as Dictator of Rome. When the great force of the majority accepts or celebrates a crime, that crime is legitimized — be it betrayal, theft or insurrection.
 
Much the same can happen in WWE. As said, a disaffected Shane, Linda, Stephanie or Triple H can use their B stocks to motivate a bloc of A-stockholders to vote against whomever is in power. Or perhaps Shane has the faith of Pat Patterson and Heyman, while Bischoff allies with Linda, and J.R. and Lawler throw their weight behind Triple H and Stephanie. Imagine the sublime and ridiculous palace intrigue of people hiding behind those backstage piles of metal rods, making a cell-phone call to check-up on their latest attempted coup in a Creative meeting. Imagine agents and double agents, secret minutes, transcripts and video recordings from cell phones. Imagine brother v. sister v. mother v. all manner of advisors and hangers-on. Imagine one McMahon capturing the hearts of all the workers or technicians, threatening a walkout, thus staging a palace coup and ejecting those in charge of Creative.
 
It would make for the most entertaining wrestling in the world, if any of it happened in the ring, if we hadn't seen duller variations on it already, and if it didn't threaten to endanger the quality of the wrestling product.
 
And it can, all too easily: because varied powers have varied interests. As it is, wrestlers today use different road agents, writers and management personnel to put forward plotlines and character ideas. The difference is that the muddle of roiling contrary ambitions stops at the emperor's door. Intrigue, deceit or avarice might get you through the door: what gets you out, however, is Vince's blessing.
 
Yet in the absence of his sole blessing, ambition can get you many places, many of which exist at the expense of the overall product. A cunning writer who sees his ideas rejected by Stephanie could begin submitting total garbage to her in the hopes of cornering Shane and dropping three weeks of excellent storyline ideas on him. Announcers or managers could, while on the air, low-sell or no-sell storylines that they fought against. When the leader has three heads, the best way to make one voice be heard above all is to slit the throats of the other two.
 
It's very possible that this sort of politicking that has been slightly muted under Vince could violently push its way to the fore in his absence. If that happens, collapse becomes all the more possible. Because then the arguments and the efforts become geared toward how WWE is run, not what WWE is running weekly, on each show. Substantial power over the company and the story take primacy over having a substantial company and a substantive story. In WWE — as has all too often been the case in history — simply having the kingdom may prove more important than the quality of the kingdom.
 
It is true that Vince's imperial system has never served as an effective check on his lesser impulses. The expediency of being answerable only to himself allowed such unanswerable projects as the WBF, the XFL, WWE Music and the WWE World restaurant to go forward. Whatever his failings, he has been the prime mover and the place from which the buck cannot be passed.
 
Without him, WWE fans are left with three or perhaps more people with diverging interests, be they self-interests or bizarre projects. There can be no guarantee that these people will cooperate in the company's best interests, rather than their own. Add to that possibility the very real fact that these people may not possess any real competence, and the future of WWE is not so certain or so safe as Vince would have you believe.
 
His matter-of-fact remarks to Michael Landsberg do not obscure the reality that his children will inherit power more because of their bloodline and less because of any unimpeachable talent for business administration, human resource management or recognizing fundamental creative acumen. Nor can his comfort and his authority be assured after his death. For all intents and purposes, WWE is Vince McMahon: one will, one set of experiences, one mind, one delegating and restrictive force, one ego. Replace it with three egos, three unchecked and unproven minds and three wills, and the centralizing authoritative force on which WWE has been reliant is torn to bits.
 
Only time, goodwill and good fortune can put it together again. Though it remains to be seen if that is done through cooperation or avaricious politicking and one-upmanship. For the sake of the product, a swift and smooth restoration of empire, of sole authority, is probably the least of all future evils.
 

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Jeb Tennyson Lund is the Pope of Online Onslaught. If you want to read his sadly less wrestling-oriented columns, go to www.citizenscholar.net.

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