McMahon’s Missteps Part 1: Refusal To Accept That He’s Out Of Touch

Daniel Bryan was back just in time for the Royal Rumble match. The storyline wrote itself: an underdog babyface who never lost his title was coming back for it against a monster heel champion. The fans would’ve definitely booed Lesnar against Bryan. He even had backup options! Fresh off being the lone survivor in the main event of Survivor Series, Dolph Ziggler was a popular pick to finally become the WWE Champion. There was also Dean Ambrose, who the fans were hoping would get the same push as Rollins and Reigns. Ambrose was arguably the hottest babyface in the company during the latter half of 2014.

So what did Vince do? Bryan was eliminated before the halfway point of the Royal Rumble match killing the crowd. Ziggler and Ambrose were eliminated by Big Show and Kane with not even a hint of drama in their eliminations, they were just knocked out and tossed out. Reigns wound up being the “hero” and winning the match. Vince actually believed that this type of booking would get Reigns cheered… how out of touch is that?! Things got worse when he made Reigns defend his WrestleMania title shot against Bryan the next month at Fast Lane. I’m guessing he was expecting Reigns to get cheered for Bryan “passing him the torch”? It’s hard for me to even write this, it’s that bad.

Why would the fans cheer Reigns for beating Bryan when they wanted Bryan to be the one to beat Lesnar?! Worse, they were given hope (Bryan might actually end up winning the title like he did in 2014) and then it was taken away. The only logical result would’ve been anger and the fans either booing both Lesnar and Reigns, or just Reigns (the latter was the result). Vince did, thankfully, have a moment of clarity by making Rollins walk out of WrestleMania with the title.

Vince’s continued inability of staying in-touch with the fans is represented in the current booking of Reigns. Why is he challenging Lesnar for the Universal Title at SummerSlam? Their match at WrestleMania was not well regarded by many fans or main stream media outlets. The mark of real genius is not only achieving great success but also admitting your mistakes. Thomas Edison failed THOUSANDS of times before he created the light bulb and he proudly admitted it. When is Vince going to admit that he no longer understands his audience?

Related: “How To Fix Bray Wyatt” by Neil Raymond