Welcome to SummerSame!
Vince McMahon might be gone, but Bill Hanstock doesn't see big changes happening in WWE, at least not yet; Roger Cormier finds baseball's commissioner to be something slightly less than sincere
Project ShaqBox Trivia: Last night, the Mets acquired outfielder Tyler Naquin and reliever Phillip Diehl from Cincinnati in exchange for lower-level prospects. Can you name the five players who have appeared in at least 1,000 combined games between the Mets and Reds?
The Song Remains The Game
By Bill Hanstock
Well, the last time I was gracing the Willets Pen newsletter, I was busy outlining the many crimes of WWE CEO Vincent Kennedy McMahon, and explaining how his latest hush-money scandal, coming at the tail end of 40 years of nearly every alleged crime imaginable, was almost certainly not going to result in his ouster.
Whoops!
The other shoe (possibly in anticipation of future, larger, pointier shoes) finally dropped last Friday, when McMahon abruptly announced his “retirement” on Twitter, followed shortly by a WWE press release riiiiight at the standard “5 p.m. ET on a Friday” newsd ump slot. While the press release only mentioned that McMahon was retiring as CEO and Chairman of WWE (roles he had already relinquished during the Board’s investigation of the Wall Street Journal hush money findings), reportage soon followed that McMahon was also relinquishing his role as head of creative, which was the lion’s share of his actual work for the company, and (not just because of his decades-long irking of hardcore fans, but also because of the power imbalance at play regarding the allegations against him of sexual impropriety and coercion) the most concerning aspect of his involvement in the company.
Cue the rampant celebration and speculation and fantasy booking of millions of online wrestling fans everywhere. Vince is out, and anything other than Vince must, by default, be an improvement, right?
Well, maybe not. And certainly not right away.
McMahon, in the press release, stated that, as majority shareholder, he would continue to “help in any way he can,” and following the announcement of his daughter Stephanie McMahon as new co-CEO of WWE and his son-in-law Paul “Triple H” Levesque as new head of Creative (in addition to his role as head of Talent Relations), how different can things really be, and how quickly can they really change?
As we’ve already seen, not much, and not very, but there are excellent reasons for that. While Friday’s Smackdown began with Stephanie McMahon leading an abrupt announcement of Vince’s retirement and a tepid “Thank you, Vince” chant, both Smackdown and Monday’s Raw felt very much like the same thing we’ve seen for the past however many years of slow-churn tedium. It was later reported that both shows had already been largely written and approved by Vince prior to his retirement, but more importantly, McMahon “left” the company just eight days before SummerSlam, ostensibly still the second-biggest show of the year. It makes zero sense to try to completely rearrange the status quo and take huge swings when you’ve already locked in the card for that show and you’re going to do some semblance of resetting the following week, anyway.
Beyond creative, the second largest complaint about WWE in recent years has been the presentation. Zooms, shaky cam, and cutting between cameras at times nearly every second have rendered the weekly shows nearly unwatchable to large swaths of wrestling fans. The man usually blamed for these decisions is head of global television distribution Kevin Dunn1, one of WWE’s longest-tenured employees and a man who was well known as a “Vince guy.”
Apart from Vince, however, nearly no one has ever had a nice thing to say about Dunn. Jon “Dean Ambrose” Moxley lambasted him in his recent autobiography, as did AJ Lee in hers, and the tales of his misogyny and general ickiness are numerous. Most notably, however, he is very much NOT a Triple H and Stephanie guy, and expectations are that he will be out the door at some point in the coming months, with only his millions of dollars in sold stock and millions more in remaining stock to keep him company.
So the creative direction will likely change a bit, and long term, the presentation and look will likely change a bit. But probably not overwhelmingly so in any direction, at least not in the short term. I could be completely wrong about this, just like I was certain McMahon would not be leaving any time soon, but just as in that case, I’ll be happy to be incorrect.
Many believe that new co-CEO Nick Khan was brought into the company a couple years ago to get all the ducks in a row so that WWE could eventually be sold to a media giant like Disney or NBC or Endeavor (UFC’s parent company). McMahon no longer being in charge of his favorite child (I mean, it definitely isn’t Shane) has many believing that a potential sale will happen even sooner than expected, resulting in WWE stock spiking after McMahon’s retirement announcement. At the end of the day, even though he had to forfeit a small amount of stock due to WWE refiling tax reports as a result of the new hush money disclosures, he still made well over $100 million for being forced out of his company due to bad press.
So if the company is turning an eye toward a potential sale, does it make sense to make the product look substantially different than it has for the past 10 years, its most lucrative period in WWE history? That sort of thing can tend to make investors a little uneasy – unless it results in massive spikes in ratings and/or advertising revenue in fairly short order. Triple H’s most recent stint in a high-level creative capacity was when WWE’s tertiary brand NXT moved to USA Network on Wednesday nights to go head-to-head with then-fledgling AEW … and quickly lost that ratings war in short order, decisively and repeatedly.
And of course, the elephant no longer in the room is Vince. After 40 years of controlling every aspect of his company, is it so hard to believe that he’ll still have input behind the scenes, especially with his daughter and son-in-law running the shows? At the very least, wouldn’t they feel some semblance of loyalty to make sure the patriarch of the family is still largely approving of the product?
Still, Triple H is reportedly keen to shake things up, but time will tell. I expect lip service following SummerSlam (the return of Vince-banned words like “belt,” “fans,” and yes, even “professional wrestling”), but for no seismic shifts, just a slow creep back towards watchability until perhaps a sale happens.
Maybe things get completely buck wild after SummerSlam, though. Maybe Triple H’s favorite son Johnny Gargano, or his other favorite son Tommaso Ciampa, will beat Roman Reigns bloody and take the WWE Championship. Maybe Brock Lesnar gets beaten clean as a sheet by Finn Balor or Shinsuke Nakamura. Maybe Theory and Riddle and Ciampa get their first names back. Maybe Otis and Humberto get their LAST names back! But don’t get your hopes up until there’s a reason to.
Make no mistake: it is a very, very good thing that McMahon is removed from any level of power, for many reasons. But Triple H and Stephanie both have their own share of skeletons in their closets, and in Triple H’s case, he’s been very slow to respond to allegations of abuse and impropriety under his watch.
Meet the new boss, same (family) as the old boss.
Other Things Rob Manfred Rejects The Premise Of
By Roger Cormier
Mike Trout being a problematic fantasy football commissioner
Tommy Pham having anger issues
Cody Bellinger always looking like he is stoned and thinking of a particularly difficult calculus problem
Freddie Freeman wishing he was still in Atlanta
Max Scherzer being someone who gets fired up
Aaron Judge being tall
Albert Pujols being old
The Pittsburgh Pirates and Oakland Athletics are tanking
Starling Marte pulling off going shirtless
Buck Showalter not liking when one of his batters gets hit by a pitch
All of the Law & Orders
Tacos
Holding hands
First kisses
Requited love
Puppies
Kittens
Videos of puppies and kittens getting along
Bluey being a good show
The Supreme Court sucking
Nirvana still rules
Rainbows
It's too fucking hot out
There are too many TV shows
There are too many streaming sites
There are too many podcasts
Drew Barrymore being an absolute delight
Nobody can truly replace Alex Trebek on Jeopardy!
Elon Musk has enough kids to form a 26-man roster
Pizza
Sunrises
Sunsets
The use of wheels
Robert Caro books being long
Fun
Hope
Peter Jackson's Beatles documentary being any good
Coffee
Friendship
Drinking water
Birthdays
Children
Shoes
Breathing air
Game of Thrones blowing the ending
Bridgerton being less steamy in season 2
Saturn
Smiling at a reporter right before you announce canceling games being weird
Baseball
Trivia answer: The all-time leader in games played as a member of the Mets and Reds is George Foster at 1,908 — 1,253 with Cincinnati from 1971-81, and 655 in New York from 1982-86. The first player to join this club was Gus Bell, who played only 30 games for the 1962 Mets, but already had logged 1,235 with the Reds from 1953-61. Bell’s Cincy teammate, Roy McMillan, appeared in 1,348 games for Cincinnati from 1951-60, then 346 as a Met from 1964-66. More recently, Jay Bruce was a Met for 247 games from 2016-18, following a 1,220-game run in Cincinnati over the previous eight years. And last but certainly not least, especially given how many fewer appearances pitchers make than position players… John Franco was in 393 games for the Reds from 1984-89, then became a Flushing legend with 677 trips to the mound in orange and blue. And because he always bears mentioning, Tom Seaver’s total here is 580 — 420 of those games with the Mets. Between Franco and Seaver on the list, you’ll find Todd Frazier (895), Doug Flynn (855), Ray Knight (849), Lenny Harris (807), Joel Youngblood (741), Billy Hamilton (707), and Art Shamksy (642). Naquin leaves Cincinnati having played 183 games for the Reds, so his Mets debut will tie the former Cleveland outfielder in this odd department with Tom Hall, a reliever for the Reds from 1972-75 who was traded to the Mets in ‘75 for Mac Scarce. Hall is better known in Mets history for serving up a three-run homer to Rusty Staub in Game 3 of the 1973 National League Championship Series.
While Dunn probably had some say with regard to current television presentation, he’s a producer, not a director, so the cuts and zooms and shaky cam are absolutely not a result of anything he’s doing. Every wrestling fan needs a scapegoat, though, and he’s a big enough villain to serve nicely.