Creative concept and visual design by Megan Ambers
The following content reflects my personal opinion and should be interpreted as such. Any views expressed here are solely mine and do not represent any official stance. This opinion piece is intended for entertainment and discussion purposes only, and should not be construed as factual information or professional advice. Reader discretion is advised.
Fan favorites get fired in one of the biggest release sweeps of the year.
WWE lifers decide to walk away from seven-figure contracts.
One of the faces of WWE is pulled from television for an entire calendar month.
There is a lot happening within the concrete walls of TKO.
A company that was originally created to protect one man’s position in the empire he helped build. And in the end, the same man not only loses his footing but gets exiled from anything connected to it. Now TKO is run by people who weren’t there from the beginning. People who don’t know much about running a successful wrestling promotion, but know exactly how to milk an audience dry.
This is what WWE has become. An artifact of what it used to be. And every week, we sit on our hands and hope the next episode is better than the last.
We hear stories of alleged AI-assisted storytelling. We watch champions speak out against TKO on camera, in arenas full of loyalists, not knowing if the lines are being blurred or if it’s just another script. We are told that new eras always have their ebbs and flows. That the climb up the hill is never easy. But once you reach the top and look back at every obstacle you cleared, you start to realize that coming down the other side might not be so smooth either.
Some people believe we are watching the downfall of WWE.
Some believe we are no longer watching WWE, but TKO wearing its skin.
Both thoughts are valid.
And in the sense, both might be true.
But we keep tuning in every week. We keep spending our hard-earned money on tickets, merch, PLEs, and now a streaming service at $30 a month on ESPN.
This is Monopoly. And if you’ve ever played the game, you know how it works. You start with a handful of money. You buy property. And God forbid anyone lands on what you own, because now they owe you every single time. You might collect free money. You might go to jail. But the whole premise of Monopoly is simple: learn how business works and get as rich as you possibly can.
Then there’s chess.
Chess is different. Chess requires strategy, patience, and the willingness to sacrifice pieces to protect what matters most. Your entire goal is to capture the opponent’s queen. And to get there, you move through pawns, rooks, bishops, even the king.
But the pawns? They’re always the first ones snatched off the board.
First on the front lines.
First to go.
Somehow, we as fans have become the pawns.
We are told the product is better. That the money we spend is worth spending. That ticket prices going up astronomically equals a better experience, because now you can make pasta with your favorite wrestler or get ten whole seconds at a $300 meet-and-greet instead of five.
We are taught firsthand about supply and demand.
We are told we don’t know wrestling by people who don’t know the business of wrestling.
We don’t know the game.
We don’t know ball.
So sit down, stay in your lane, and let the pros handle it.
In other words: be the pawn we’ve already set you up to be.
Since WrestleMania 42, we have lost more than a dozen wrestlers, some in the middle of active storylines. No explanation. No send-off. Just gone. It has become almost like the annual NFL draft pick day. Except instead of being chosen for a team that could change your life, you sit and wait for the call from headquarters telling you not come in next week.
Your services are no longer required.
But the most shocking losses aren’t the ones who got released—although disheartening.
They’re the ones who chose to leave.
That is the most telling thing about what TKO has become. Because what does it mean when a wrestler (or wrestlers), decide that freedom is worth more than the money? What does it mean when they are so unhappy that they walk away from everything?
Kofi Kingston and Xavier Woods choosing to leave WWE after a collective 30-plus years between them has to be the most disappointing thing we’ve heard in the recent memory. We have watched how loved, how cherished, and how respected The New Day has always been inside those walls. We have seen members of the roster share memories of these two men and wish them well.
You do not see that kind of outpouring unless someone is genuinely valued in that company.
For both of them to mutually decide to walk away should tell us something.
Maybe they didn’t feel that value anymore.
So where does that leave us as fans? Do we continue to blindly support what is starting to look like a hostile takeover wrapped up in capitalism? Do we go cold turkey on WWE and redirect our energy toward smaller promotions and see if it makes a difference?
I don’t know. I’m on the fence.
I have to be honest. It will be hard for me to stop supporting WWE. Not because I give a damn about TKO, not in that sense of the word. But because of the people I have genuinely grown to admire in this business. The ones I respect. The ones who still show up every week and pour themselves into this thing regardless of what’s happening above them.
Wrestling, specifically WWE, has always been a business. But for a long time, there was a heavy cloak between us and and what actually happened behind the scenes. We were protected from it, whether intentionally or not.
Now that cloak is gone. We don’t just hear about backstage politics after the fact.
We are living inside them in real time, pulled into decisions and fallouts we were never supposed to be this close to.
When TKO went public and fans were able to buy stock in the company, I think we entered a business relationship without fully understanding what that relationship was going to cost us.
Because as fans, we are in a 360 deal with TKO.
We just never signed the contract.
You know what a 360 deal is. A musician gives a label their music, their creativity, their image and touring revenue. Everything. In exchange for the platform. We as fans have done the same thing. We invest our attention, our energy, and our money.
All of it is currency.
And all of it is being used for the enrichment of people who were never in this for the love of the game.
TKO did what companies like this always do. They identified a business with a loyal, emotionally invested audience. They moved in. They made us believe their involvement would make things better.
And for a moment, we believed it.
The product improved.
The storytelling got sharper.
We thought we were watching something evolve.
But then the walls started craving in from the inside.
The outside still looks the same. The production is bigger than ever. The arenas fill up. The numbers look good on paper.
But inside?
Something has shifted. And the people who have been in those rooms the longest are the ones quietly walking out the door.
And none of this would have happened if one man hadn’t believed he could outsmart everyone around him and come out on top. Instead, he fell on his own sword. And now he has to watch from a distance as the company he built gets steered by people who never had his vision and never will.
Maybe that’s the real cautionary tale here.
Not just for business. For life.
Do right by people. Treat others with the same level of respect you expect to receive.
Because the moment you stop doing that, you create the exact conditions for your own undoing.
And sometimes the thing you built becomes the clearest proof of everything you did wrong.
So we keep watching.
We keep showing up.
Not for TKO. Not for the stock prices or the ESPN deal or whoever is pulling the strings from a broadroom that has never smelled like a locker room.
We show up for the ones still in that ring bleeding for something they love. For the moments that remind us why we fell for this in the first place. And maybe that’s enough.
Maybe that’s always been enough.
But we owe it to ourselves to be honest about what we’re watching now, and what it’s costing us to watch it.
Because the moment we stop asking questions is the moment we fully become what they always needed us to be.
A pawn that stays on the board and never moves.
Leave a Reply