Lane points out that Cody Rhodes was very critical of a fan on Twitter this past week after the fan claimed that Vince McMahon holds talents back. Rhodes says he didn’t once see McMahon hold a talent back, and Russo says he never saw Vince McMahon hold anyone back either.
The only time he saw McMahon pull back on a push was when some of the women started to get very popular during the attitude era. Some of the bigger male stars weren’t happy about that at the time and McMahon decided to pull back on pushing some of the women. He adds that it doesn’t make any sense from a business perspective for McMahon to hold talents back, because the more someone gets over, the more money he makes.
WWE released their latest WWE Network subscriber information recently, and Gilbertti points out that there seems to be a cap on subscribers in the United States right now. He says that WWE is writing RAW and Smackdown with fear, and they need to take risks in order to get new subscribers. WWE won’t lose current subscribers by taking risks, but they might gain new ones.
Gilbertti also thinks it’s unfortunate that WWE didn’t take advantage of their RAW 25 viewership. RAW’s rating was 3.3 the week before RAW 25, and it fell to 3.1 the week after. Russo says someone needs to be reprimanded for that. Gilbertti points out that those same people probably wrote the Ronda Rousey debut segment, which he also thought was terrible. He says WWE’s ratings should have seen a notable increase after her debut, but WWE creative blew that opportunity.
