5 Reasons why Vince McMahon seems to be losing control of WWE

Disclaimer: Please note that these are the views of the writer and not Sportskeeda as a whole.

While WWE will always have its loyal fans who defend the company and its creative choices to the end, the general consensus is that WWE has underperformed in recent months, if not years. That’s particularly true given how talent-rich the company is.

In the absence of companies that can compete with WWE’s resources and having mined so much of the top tier talent from smaller promotions, one would think that WWE could put on a golden age of programming.

Instead, longer shows, underutilizing popular stars, and questionable creative direction, on the whole, have risked alienating the audience and the locker room alike.

In his visit to Chris Jericho’s podcast, the former Dean Ambrose (now Jon Moxley) went into detail about how frustrated he was with WWE. He singled out Vince McMahon specifically, as well as the company’s structure of writers for miscasting him, blowing big moments, and not taking his ideas and preferences into consideration.

There are two sides to every story, but Moxley’s account does seem consistent with what we’ve seen on screen and complaints from other stars. This article looks at five reasons why Vince McMahon seems to have lost control of his company.

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#5 Falling out of touch with top talents

Vince McMahon being totally out of sync with a star as big as Dean Ambrose is a big problem.

When people tell the story of WWE’s national expansion period or the Attitude Era, one of the common threads is that Vince McMahon was totally in sync with his top talent. The two sides complemented each other perfectly in McMahon’s booking and marketing and the talents’ performance, whether it was Hulk Hogan running wild representing the United States, or Stone Cold Steve Austin and The Rock captivating the Monday night television audience.

While McMahon may still have good relationships with some talents today, the way that Jon Moxley described the creative process in WWE suggested that he’s not in tune with everyone. Moxley, in particular, is a former WWE Champion and a guy who was booked in the upper-mid-card to main event range for pretty much his entire six-year-plus run on the main roster.

For McMahon to so fundamentally disagree with Moxley on the nature of the Dean Ambrose persona and character suggests that McMahon is losing his grasp on what his Superstars want or how they see themselves. McMahon and the talent don’t necessarily have to agree about everything, but when they seem to disagree about everything from big picture philosophical issues to how individual promo segments are executed, it’s a big problem.

#4 Micromanaging

Vince McMahon's overbearing control over all aspects of WWE can be problematic.

Jon Moxley discussed at length that Vince McMahon wants to get his hands into everything, right down to particular word choices used in wrestlers’ promos. This wasn’t exactly a revelation, given that McMahon is a notorious workaholic and perfectionist who has spent a lot of time producing his talent on a granular level.

There’s an extent to which McMahon’s hands-on approach and attention to detail are assets that have made WWE the juggernaut it is today. However, when there are good, capable talents who have a handle on their characters and have creative visions, it can also be stifling to be micromanaged and talked down to.

Moxley was an experienced wrestler from other promotions and an unlikely success story in WWE who got over not because of, but rather in spite of WWE’s plans for him coming out of The Shield. That McMahon felt the need to take control of the character and bend it to his will after fans fell in love with it is emblematic of why talents get frustrated with the Chairman.

#3 His sense of humor

The Dean Ambrose character's oddball comedy segments demonstrated how out of touch Vince McMahon's sense of humor can be.

There is a place for humor in wrestling. Talents like Santino Marella and The IIconics indeed use their over the top antics as core facets of the characters they play and they’re a welcome diversion from all the gravitas that tends to surround main event level performers.

Not all humor in wrestling is created equally, though. Not every gag fits the character it’s attached to and not every wrestler sees himself or herself as a comedian. Jon Moxley called this dynamic into sharp relief during his visit to Talk is Jericho in explaining the numerous times Vince McMahon called upon him to do prop comedy or deliver outlandish promos because he saw that is central to the Dean Ambrose character, in contrast to the rougher edge that Moxley envisioned himself.

This isn’t the only time we’ve seen an upper-level star use forced humor. Fans may recall Sheamus stealing Alberto Del Rio’s car so he could drive around town and pass gas in it, or the number of goofy poop jokes John Cena has offered up in promos over the years.

McMahon’s brand of humor comes across as not particularly funny and out of touch with a large segment of both his roster and his audience.

#2 Too many writers

There are a lot of voices contributing to WWE's creative process these days--quite arguably too many.

Jon Moxley’s interview with Chris Jericho didn’t hide his disdain for the WWE creative process and in particular the volume of writers involved in it and how convoluted the process has become.

Indeed, all indications are that WWE’s creative is more complicated than ever with more cooks in the kitchen, and the company reportedly focusing on hiring writers with a TV writing background over people who are necessarily familiar with the wrestling product.

Wrestling has traditionally been more streamlined with a head booker and his or her small staff. To be fair, WWE is a larger corporation and one with more hours of television to cover than any single wrestling promotion ever has before.

Just the same, it seems clear the volume of voices in the creative conversation is diluting the product. Moxley also seemed to suggest that it’s a particularly confounding problem given that McMahon has the final say so anyway and arbitrarily overrules or adds onto the writers’ work.

#1 Legitimate alternatives to WWE

With the early success of AEW and other smaller promotions thriving, WWE doesn't have the captive audience it once did.

It is difficult to argue that WWE has ever been consistently great for more than a few years at a stretch. Some of that’s a matter of the talent at the company’s disposal, and some of that’s about creative.

Some of it’s a matter of ebbing and flowing, as it’s difficult to imagine any show going on continuously for decades without some weak spots. Particularly for the last eighteen years, however, WWE has had some room to rest on its laurels because it hasn’t faced any meaningful competition. Since WWE bought WCW, no other wrestling promotion has been able to compare with WWE’s brand exposure, financial resources, or history.

The last decade or so have seen smaller promotions carve out pieces of the pie, making it a legitimate choice for a talent like Cody Rhodes to walk away from WWE in the first place and pursue a perfectly respectable, lucrative career by stringing together bookings elsewhere.

AEW is the next step in that progression as there’s now not only a thriving scene of smaller promotions fans can watch online and wrestlers can earn livings from but also a genuine billionaire-backed product with a major TV deal. Now that wrestlers and fans alike have increasingly legitimate alternatives to WWE, Vince McMahon’s stranglehold on top talent and loyal fans is slipping.