A Final Note
--You might have noticed the laundry list of examples on this page pointing out all the ways WWE has ignored (and indeed is continuing to ignore) this advice. You might also think, "Well if Vince McMahon can do whatever he likes and still manage to own the biggest wrestling company in history, surely it can't be that important, can it?"
First of all, you are not Vince McMahon and never will be. WWE has managed to remain uncontested at the top of the wrestling world ever since the end of the Monday Night Wars because WCW and ECW closing down gave it a near-monopoly on the Western wrestling landscape, and monopolies are self-sustaining. Regardless of how bad its content gets, the majority of casual audience members will continue to watch WWE not because they like it, but because it's the only game left, and the only show that they know about. You do not, will not have that kind of luxury, as you almost certainly do not have the kind of established brand to tank glaring creative mistakes. During the 1980s when the NWA was still a visible presence and all throughout the Monday Night Wars in the 90s, Vince was just as beholden to the guidelines laid down here as anyone- if he had tried pulling the kinds of stunts he does today (ignoring or deliberately provoking the audience, burying crowd favorites to push his own personal picks, micromanaging every aspect of his guys' performances) back then, his company might have been the one that went out of business. It's also important to note that even back then, when Vince did put his thumb on the scales, it often cost him real money, or even caused tragedies like Owen Hart's death due to a stupid gimmick.
Secondly, even with their effective monopoly, WWE has been running into constant financial trouble over the last decade or so, with ratings and profits both falling as fans tire of his declining product quality (RAW ratings during the Monday Night Wars was usually above 4.0, but rarely cracked 3.0 in the 2010s). For every obligatory "okay, see you next week" line stating how "the angry smarks" will threaten to cancel the Network or quit watching WWE only to come back anyway out of habit and hope, millions upon millions over the past two decades have skipped right past complaints and threats and just plain tuned out of wrestling forever. The primary thing keeping the company solvent are a billion-dollar business deal with FOX that is already causing some problems as ratings slump and fail to deliver on the investment, and a particularly controversial and massively-criticized deal with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to run propaganda shows for the regime. These things are doing long-lasting damage to the company's image and brand, even as his stubborn insistence on ignoring criticism and pushing forward on a blinkered course drives ever-more-erratic attempts to gain short-term profits at the expense of long-term stability.
Thirdly, Vincent Kennedy McMahon's creative talent is more evident as a promoter than a booker. Before his megalomaniacal micromanaging urges became irrepressible, McMahon tended to hire other men to handle the booking for the same reason he hired people to hold the cameras, play the music and wrestle the matches. He never did stop hiring good bookers altogether, but did become increasingly resistant to the word "no". While The Gobbledy Gooker was hated by the fans, McMahon did manage to keep them interested before The Reveal and did listen when told not to give The Gimmick to anyone he actually wanted to get over (thus saving The Undertaker). Contrast that with Katie Vick, which McMahon was convinced would make Triple H and Kane as big as The Rock and Steve Austin, and his decline becomes obvious.
In fact, there are already two prominent examples of people who ignored most if not all of the guidelines listed above, which led to toxic locker room morale, the promotions' reputations run into the ground, and money hemorrhaging from every orifice due to bad business and booking decisions. The first was, at one time, the biggest promotion in the world and WWE's greatest threat, WCW, whose bosses did everything they could to provoke their audience, bury favorites, and mismanage performances. They were on top of the world for two years mostly due to one great idea, and with unlimited funding from their patron Ted Turner, they could afford to make all sorts of idiotic mistakes without worrying about the cost. But when Turner could no longer fund them, and they suddenly had to actually create a good product to compete with WWE and justify their pay, the bookers went with even stupider, even crasser, even more illogical ideas, and the company very quickly died an ignoble death. The second example, and Spiritual Successor to WCW but without the clout or brand recognition, was TNA under former boss Dixie Carter, which went on to repeat the same, if not commit even worse, acts of idiocy.
And even if, after all this, you still want to emulate Vince McMahon, you should be aware that the same fate that befell WCW and TNA is catching up to WWE as well. December 2018 was the month where, RAW ratings finally fell into the previous record lows achieved by the late-1996 offerings of December 3 (1.60) and December 31 (1.50), leading to worked shoots by Seth Rollins and the McMahon family flatly admitting the product has gone bad. Still, things only continued to get worse, to the point where every few months or so you would hear about RAW hitting its lowest rating of all time. One of those cases happened in 2020, where RAW ratings fell to an abysmal 1.527 on December 14, and, most importantly a 0.41 in the key demos of 18-49, a demo that was beaten by AEW with a rating of 0.45. While sycophants might give excuses that this was a result of that night's RAW being aired opposite a major football game and the COVID-19 Pandemic, it still does not explain how a 40-year old company, with a long-running staple of Monday night television, and what many consider to be the largest and most talented roster in the history of wrestling, could lose to a company that was barely over a year old at this point and operating at a budget 10 times smaller.
Not to be outdone in The Death of WWE pre-production material department, 2021 saw not one, not two, but three massive "Black Wednesday" roster and personnel cuts in the immediate months following a WrestleMania that had seen the first live gate in over a year. These releases included talents any company worth its salt would've pushed as top tier. The first round of cuts, which included the likes of Samoa Joe, Mickie James, and The IIconics, took place less than two weeks after WrestleMania and narrowly preceded the first teaser vignette for Eva Marie's return. This caused fans to bitterly assume WWE's "budget cuts" were made so they could rehire Eva, cratering any chance she had of getting over as an inspirational model-turned-wrestler babyface (despite the fact that news of her rehiring was reported as early as October 2020). The second round of cuts, headlined by Braun Strowman, Aleister Black, and Lana, took place less than 48 hours after the May 31 episode of RAW, which had hit a non-December record low rating of 1.41. In response to this, the speculation bubbling underground as to whether Vince was looking to sell WWE to the highest bidder suddenly burst to the surface as the primary point of conversation about the company, completely dwarfing even the career-defining championship heel runs of Bobby Lashley and Roman Reigns. The third round of cuts on the 4th of November saw them dropping another 18 wrestlers, including Keith Lee, Karrion Kross, Nia Jax, Ember Moon and, ironically, Eva Marie. The release of Jax in particular shocked fans, who had assumed that she had a permanent position because of her family ties to Dwayne Johnson, and proved that almost nobody on the roster was safe, driving locker room morale and faith in the company to an all-time low. (Scuttlebutt suggests that all three firings were intended to make their workforce feel unsafe, to display management's power over their workforce, but it's backfiring hard.)
This, this is the result of WWE (and Vince McMahon) screwing with the fans and being so out of touch that people simply do not want to tune in anymore, and are quitting in droves. It took Vince's retirement and HHH taking control to even begin to restore his promotion’s credibility! And if this is what happened to the all-powerful WWE with Vince McMahon in charge... what do you think will happen to you and your small company?
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