Jonathan Coachman thinks WWE has become a company that’s chasing dollars before delivering great wrestling. Listening to TKO President Mark Shapiro’s latest earnings call pushed him over the edge.
Instead of hearing an executive obsessed with making WWE’s shows better, Coachman says he heard a businessman obsessed with squeezing every last dollar out of the company’s hottest product—and he believes SummerSlam was the perfect example of what that looks like.
Speaking on 2 Count Tuesday, Coachman pointed to Shapiro’s comments about balancing fan experience with profitability before questioning whether those priorities are actually in the right order.
“If TKO was not chasing every last dollar… Mark Shapiro did an earnings call for TKO and he said they got two focuses—the fan experience and also profitability, and not necessarily in that order. His words, not mine.”
Coachman then pointed to WWE’s decision to move September’s sold-out AAA event to the MGM Grand Garden Arena. To him, the move wasn’t about fans. It was about finding a few thousand extra seats to sell.
“You’ve already sold out in Vegas… now they’re moving it to the MGM Grand Garden Arena… All they’ve told people is, ‘You’ll get more information.’ What does that even mean?… Why are we going to a place that only has a couple thousand more tickets? Make this make sense.”
JD wasn’t interested in sugarcoating how he feels about WWE’s corporate leadership. He admitted he tunes Mark Shapiro out entirely because, in his mind, every decision comes back to money instead of wrestling.
“I don’t like hearing Mark Shapiro’s name… It’s just like, ‘I’m greedy. I want more money. I don’t care about pro wrestling.'”
That frustration spilled over into SummerSlam itself. JD questioned WWE’s constant use of the phrase “fan experience,” arguing the company never actually explains what that means anymore. Watching from home, he said, the experience felt less like WWE’s second-biggest event of the year and more like one long commercial break.
“What is the fan experience?… We at home are part of the fan experience too… We were bombarded with Wingstop ads… Cody Rhodes had to come out in Street Fighter gear… We got vignettes, we got promos… I got two half shows. If that’s the fan experience, I had a terrible time.”
Coachman believes the bigger issue is that nobody at the top seems willing to admit when something isn’t working. He questioned why TKO executives rarely appear at WWE’s biggest events despite the promotion becoming the company’s biggest revenue generator, before arguing the company always finds a way to defend questionable decisions instead of correcting them.
“The UFC is not your cash cow. WWE is your cash cow… At some point, when are we going to admit maybe we’ve made a mistake? They never admit it. Triple H won’t admit it. Shapiro won’t admit it.”
That frustration even extended to WWE’s biggest annual events. Coachman argued two-night Premium Live Events have become more about selling extra tickets than producing better wrestling shows, insisting not even WrestleMania benefits from being stretched across an entire weekend.
“Nothing—not even WrestleMania—should be two nights. If you sell 55,000 to one night, that’s a big freaking night.”
Whether fans agree or not, Coachman believes WWE has reached a point where business decisions are shaping the product more than creative ones—and unless that changes, he doesn’t see the “fan experience” improving anytime soon.
Do you agree with Jonathan Coachman’s criticism of WWE’s current direction, or do you think TKO has the right approach? Let us know in the comments below.
Please credit Ringside News if you use the above transcript in your publication.
