WWE is being accused of pulling a page straight out of Vince McMahon’s old playbook as the company loads up Mexico with major events around one of CMLL’s biggest stretches of the year. The claim is that WWE’s timing is no accident, with the company using its size and star power to squeeze the competition — only this time, the strategy may not be working.
The subject came up during Friday’s Wrestling Observer Radio while Garrett Gonzales and Dave Meltzer discussed the packed wrestling schedule in Mexico. WWE has SmackDown and RAW in the market while CMLL is running multiple shows leading into its Anniversary event, creating an unusually crowded and expensive stretch for wrestling fans. Meltzer argued that CMLL itself isn’t necessarily WWE’s main target. Instead, he believes WWE’s concern with AEW and its relationship with CMLL is helping drive the aggressive scheduling.
“I don’t even think they care about CMLL, but they do care ridiculously about AEW. And CMLL is like, you know, it’s funny because CMLL is like — they’re not warring with WWE. They’re not looking for an international war. They just want to do their arenas, and they’re doing really good now, and they love the deal with AEW because they get great talent to come down and great, you know, unique matchups and things like that that would be held nowhere else in the world and great live events because of it.”
Meltzer then claimed WWE’s current Mexico strategy would look very different if CMLL didn’t have that AEW connection. In his view, WWE wouldn’t be putting RAW and SmackDown into the market at this particular time without the larger competitive battle surrounding AEW.
“If it wasn’t for that, I mean, you know, WWE still be doing — they’ll still be doing TripleMania there, but it’d be in August. It wouldn’t be the week before the Anniversary show, and they wouldn’t be doing RAW and SmackDown there at all. You know, that’s all because of, you know, the week before the Anniversary show. That’s an attempt to — you got, you know, it is what it is.”
That’s where Meltzer directly connected WWE’s strategy to what Vince McMahon did while expanding WWE decades ago. McMahon became infamous for invading markets, competing directly with rival promoters and using WWE’s size to put pressure on smaller companies. Meltzer believes WWE is still running that same playbook even though Vince is no longer running the company.
“It’s funny because 40 years ago when Vince McMahon did this, the exact same strategy, it worked. It hurt the opposition in a significant manner. It’s like this is the playbook. Vince isn’t even there, but they’re executing Vince’s playbook.”
He then took the accusation one step further, saying WWE is behaving like a bully because it knows it has substantially more resources than the promotions it is competing against.
“And as we saw with AEW at Wembley, and we’ll see it in Chicago — it’s different, but we’ll evaluate Chicago after Chicago — but, you know, we can see it here as well. It’s like you’re doing this to be bullies because you’re the 800-pound gorilla. But it’s not even working.”
According to Meltzer, one of WWE’s moves was putting tickets on sale around the same time as CMLL’s Anniversary show tickets, while also positioning WWE events close enough to force fans to make some expensive decisions. The problem for WWE, at least according to Meltzer, is that CMLL is far hotter in Mexico right now than WWE may realize.
“CMLL Anniversary show, they put their tickets on sale like the same day as the CMLL Anniversary show. Okay? So it’s not even just, you know, running the week before. They put their tickets on sale, you know, with the idea that, you know, we only come once a year. They run, you know, 156 shows a year, or actually more like 200, you know, probably 175 shows this year at Arena Mexico. So people can see that stuff anytime they want. We’re going to come with RAW once a year and SmackDown once a year. And they’re loading the shows up too.”
Meltzer said the apparent idea is to take money out of the market before fans can spend it elsewhere, but he pointed to strong demand for CMLL and TripleMania as evidence that WWE hasn’t simply steamrolled the local scene.
“And, you know, so the idea is, it’s like, you know, we’re gonna cost them, and it’s like TripleMania sold out like instantly. I mean, they don’t get how hot CMLL is in the community right now. And they think that because we’re WWE, you know, they can’t hurt them at all.”
There could still be a price to pay later. Meltzer noted that wrestling history has shown repeatedly that flooding one market with expensive major shows can eventually hurt everybody involved, even when business looks strong in the moment.
“Historically, you know, history of wrestling will tell you that after this weekend there will be long-term damage to the market. Well, you know, that doesn’t mean there will be long-term damage to the market this time. It may be a unique situation that’s different from before and different from the past. They may be so hot it doesn’t matter. But from a historical standpoint, yes, this almost always — this kind of hot-shotting, so many big shows, so many big expensive shows on the same market on the same week — traditionally it kills future business. Yes.”
WWE may have changed dramatically since Vince McMahon left the picture, but the accusation here is that one part of his philosophy is still alive and well: use WWE’s size, money and reach to make life as difficult as possible for the competition. The difference is CMLL appears to be standing its ground, and that could make WWE’s Mexico battle far more interesting than anyone expected.
Do you think WWE is deliberately using its Mexico schedule to put pressure on AEW and CMLL, or is this simply smart business from the biggest wrestling company in the world? Let us know what you think in the comments.
This transcript was produced exclusively for Ringside News from the original recording. Republishing the transcription in full is prohibited. When using excerpts, provide prominent credit and a link to this article.
