TKO President Mark Shapiro says WWE needs to ‘take the torch and move past’ PLEs created by Vince McMahon:
“They never seem exhausted. They’re ready to take on a new shot, a new risk, a new opportunity. ‘Hey, Nick, let’s talk about launching a new event.’
Right now, a lot of our PLEs were created by Vince McMahon. We need to get in the business of taking that torch and moving past that, and Nick (Khan) and Triple H created Wrestlepalooza, which is the launch event for our new ESPN deal, which did incredibly well and may turn into a superfranchise.
Not to mention from a merch standpoint, I don’t need to tell you, securing the I.P. rights and then selling merch at Wrestlepalooza, let’s just say it was a real winner.”
(source: The Main Event with Andrew Marchand)
I tend to dislike Mark Shapiro more every time he has one of these interviews. He has zero respect for pro wrestling, and it’s history. TKO buying out the WWE will end up being a black mark in the industry’s history. At least we have a lot of footage from the past, and other smaller promotions operating, giving us options to not watch most of TKO’s current product.