Vince McMahon appeared on the WWE’s earnings conference call for the 2019 financial second quarter on Thursday, and was asked about the possibility of WWE moving away from the PG-rated product that has fined the promotion for more than a decade.
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McMahon admitted that the television product was going to get “edgier” when asked a question during the call, but not to the degree of the Attitude Era from 1997-2001.
“We just haven’t come anywhere close, actually, to going to another level,” McMahon said (h/t The Wrap for transcription). “There will be something we do in terms of a direction of content — more controversy, better storylines, etc. But at the same time, we’re not gonna go back to the quote ‘Attitude Era,’ and we’re not gonna do blood and guts and things of that nature, such as being done on perhaps a new potential competitor.”
“We’re not gonna go back to that gory crap that we graduated from,” McMahon added, describing the shows as a “more sophisticated product.”
By “a potential new competitor,” McMahon was referring to AEW, which announced on Wednesday that its weekly live TNT show would premier on Oct. 2 (the same week SmackDown Live moves to Fridays on Fox).
McMahon later added “I can’t imagine TNT will put up with that,” in reference to AEW.
While All Elite Wrestling’s product has been noticeably more violent than WWE’s with its first three live events (most notably an unsanctioned match between Jon Moxley and Joey Janela at the end of Fyter Fest in June), Cody Rhodes told reporters at the Television Critics Association press tour on Wednesday that the more “graphic content” would be kept for the pay-per-view events.
“I think the violence that just goes hand in hand with professional wrestling is — that’s there it’s on the surface, you know what you’re getting,” Rhodes said. “However, these blood feuds and some of the more graphic content that’s perhaps you’re talking about — you know, I’m sitting up here with a black eye and my brother, beating him up in this wonderful trailer — that content is more in line with B/R Live and our streaming services and the pay-per-views.”
“Traditionally in pro-wrestling, you would build to those big blood feuds or rivalries or hyper-violent type matches,” he added. “You won’t see that necessarily on a weekly broadcast on TNT.”
WWE released its quarterly earnings report hours before McMahon’s call, revealed that revenue was down from the same quarter of the previous year and that the number of paid WWE Network subscribers sat at 1.69 million.
