WWE Monopoly

I was excited just a few months back—so much so that I started writing a piece about it. I thought it would be fun to cover how both AEW and WWE were working in tandem with AAA and CMLL: how, at one point, AEW was friendly with AAA, WWE had history with CMLL, and how these roles flipped into a rivalry heading into this year.

It’s no longer fun.

My excitement blinded me to real life. Business is business—and in wrestling, that means cutthroat situations. As much as I feel wrestling belongs to us, the fans, it doesn’t. To some, we’re just marks. Not in the Cornette sense either—worse.

The truth: wrestling isn’t owned by one person—it’s controlled by multiple billionaires and billion-dollar entities. We’re no longer just dealing with Vince.

Luckily, we’ve got a thing called history to look back on—though it’s all too brief, depending on who you ask. Think back to the glory of ’90s Monday nights—what most casuals know as the Attitude Era. WWE could afford to control the narrative, and still does.

That’s why my piece may never come out. Because, without realizing it, WWE and TKO want the monopoly Vince literally dreamed of.

Seriously, go play—or watch gameplay of—WWE Crush Hour. It’s not a stretch to say it looks like Vince’s fantasy come to life. What’s worrying? We might be living in the moment right before that fictional universe takes shape.

Only now, Paul Levesque runs WWE alongside Nick Khan (President), who’s part of a larger collective overseeing everything under the TKO umbrella. Another member? Dwayne Johnson.

Notice how I’m using Paul and Dwayne’s real names. That’s who they are. This is a shoot—because Dwayne still thinks everything’s a work. Which, frankly, is bad for both business and real life.

Life definitely isn’t a work. Billionaires and wrestling gimmicks both need reality checks. So do politicians. Washington, D.C., is part of the reason why the wrestling world feels so toxic—yet euphoric—on the surface.

We need to keep in mind that both Paul and Dwayne are products of Vince McMahon—the same known pervert who once pitched a storyline involving an incestuous affair with his own daughter. Just like WWE Hall of Famer Donald Trump, who once implied on The View that he’d sleep with his own daughter.

If you're a casual, it’s not hard to dig up some sexually charged promos from both Paul and Dwayne during that era. Not that you should assume anything—just ignore the fact that they stay in character (method acting) even off-camera.

I’m trying to speak to both wrestling fans and the people who still call it fake—because it just got real. So real, it’s putting the sport we all love (or love making fun of) in danger.

See, WWE isn’t gradually morphing into a monopoly—it’s speeding full-force toward a sports dystopia. Make no mistake: I don’t think AEW’s innocent either. Hindsight being 20/20, Tony thinking he was Shane buying WCW when he bought out ROH is now a what the fuck moment. Especially since Shane later approached Tony at an airport to pitch the idea of Shane owning a piece of Tony’s conglomeration… Mark Briscoe included.

It’s taken me a while to get to the actual topic of this article—but all of that needed to be said to give a sense of how chaotic pro wrestling has become.

That chaos has now spilled over the border into Mexico. AAA and CMLL each had their own identity: CMLL leaned more traditional, while AAA leaned more Americanized. AAA had a strong relationship with AEW—until they went mask off (not in the lucha libre sense, mind you)—and announced a full-fledged partnership with WWE. Now, CMLL is still itself, but AAA? AAA’s just American now.

Since seemingly overnight, that partnership evolved into a full-fledged WWE purchase of AAA. AAA is no longer independent, and word on the street is that a rebrand could happen—into NXT: Mexico.

Which means TKO (WWE’s parent company) might be on the verge of removing three letters synonymous with Mexican lucha libre since the '90s—nearly 40 years of history—and erasing them to replace it with their branding. That might not seem like a big deal, until you remember when Vince single-handedly took over the States and Canada in the '80s and '90s using similar tactics. And how UFC, also under the TKO umbrella, has done the same thing in the MMA space.

Now business is business. A lot of people will see this and stop there. It just feels like a normal part of modern life. They’re wrong.

Every time a big company buys up the smaller ones, it usually ends up bad. That’s why nobody actually likes playing Monopoly, despite what the commercials try to sell you.

We already know how this plays out in wrestling. When Vince bought up every other show in town in the '80s? It was fun at first. WWE had all the stars and business was booming—until Vince’s first sex scandal hit, the steroid stuff came out, and ex-wrestlers started realizing they were treated like absolute shit.

As we headed into the mid-90s, things started to look bleak. Wrestling wasn’t cool. Attitude Era kids grew up defending the sport on the playground. The real ones know.

Wrestling began to rebound as we barreled toward the new millennium. Not because Vince stepped down like this last time—but because there was competition. Anyone—promoters, fans, wrestlers—knows this to be true.

WWE wasn’t the only player in town. Town had another company where the big boys played: WCW. Ted Turner used his wallet to go toe-to-toe with Vince. Meanwhile, a small promotion called ECW was influencing both through its stories and rising talent. Wrestling had an ecosystem to flourish in. A violent one, where practically everyone was a predator—but still, an ecosystem.

“Oh, but Vince got his way and everything was fine anyway.”Was it, though, you MARK?!(For the regular folks: a mark is just a term for a wrestling fan. Go do your research.)

It seemed fine when Vince and WWE came out the victors. Albeit with a crossover storyline that should’ve slapped—but was just… eh.

Regardless, the class of John Cena, Randy Orton, Batista, Brock Lesnar, and a whole bunch of others were waiting in the wings. It was great.

Until 2010 rolled around—and we hit, yet again, a downturn. You see the pattern yet? This tends to happen when there’s little to no real competition in wrestling. Around this time, people like me turned to the internet.

The PG Era of WWE is so controversial it honestly deserves its own piece. I’d argue—especially in simpler times—that some of what WWE was putting out was solid. It just wasn’t for everyone. That said, it wasn’t the best product out there either—we still had options.

A lot of fans got lost in viral backyard wrestling clips—the kind that somehow dodged national news—or started looking overseas to Japan and Mexico. Wrestlers began marketing themselves just to get noticed by WWE. Hiya, Phil Brooks. How ya doing?

Matches on the indie scene and abroad started to shine. Whether it was McGuinness vs. Danielson, or later Okada vs. Omega, fans began demanding an alternative. And we got one.

AEW was born out of that demand—fueled by wrestlers who thrived online and internationally. Including Cody Rhodes, who’s kind of a big deal in WWE now. Since then, the industry has had its ups and downs—up until now.

WWE kicked off 2024 with its independent development program. Fine. As sketchy as it is when entertainment companies own performers’ identities, that’s not going away. That’s how we end up with stage names like HHH and The Rock becoming brand names.

Remember how I said they were Vince products? The whole “everything is a work” thing?

Well, Paul once called AEW a pissant company and throws sneak disses any chance he gets—like his name is Aubrey Graham. And even as water-bottle-peeing and a-hole rumors swirl, Dwayne still manages to post a pic looking jacked in a New Japan tee.

Does that mean they’re next? Not in the Goldberg way. Well—kind of, yeah. But I digress.

We should be worried. I mentioned Tony Khan buying ROH earlier—has that really paid off? Sure, Athena and Billie Starkz, and that’s about it. Imagine WWE doing that to Antonio Inoki’s legacy.

They’d probably make it seem inevitable. Like, “Inoki’s in the Hall of Fame, so obviously he’s part of our lineage.”That’s not okay. If the world ends up run by a single entity—AI by 2030, anyone?—it’d all feel off.

Definitely not as exciting news-wise. So let’s keep that in mind. Businesses fail. They might get two or three chances, but eventually, they go down.

If WWE were to go down hard this time, maybe AEW rises as the new top dog.But if WWE ends up swallowing AEW too—and already owns everything else?

Oh, my. What if there are no other billionaires left who even want wrestling in their portfolio?

What if it turns into Crush Hour again—and wrestling just becomes another forgotten thing?