If you thought 2020 was crazy for both the world and wrestling, then 2021 was like, hold my beer,
because HA HA THE MIZ IS WWE CHAMPION. Go home WWE, you’re drunk. Drunk on profit.
Somehow this company has made more money than anything in the Universe ever,
despite making some of the most baffling changes in its history - some onscreen,
others more in the behind-the-scenes business operations, the ones more silent
and deadly than your uncle’s post-turkey feast windy pops.
That’s right, 2021 is nearly over - which means it’s time to look back at the year that was.
So get ready to say “no, no way that only happened 8 months ago” because I’m Oli
Davis hailing from partsFUNknown and these are the 10 biggest changes to WWE in 2021.
We’ve got loads of end of year lists coming up, along with me vs Adam Blampied in our Twice in
a Lifetime Fantasy Booking Warfare match, so make sure to subscribe and enable notifications
to always on to know first when that goes live. And superkick that thumbs up button
and let me know what you think is the biggest change WWE have made this year
in the comments down below - because I’ll be replying to people FROM OUTTA NOWHERE!
10. Pay-Per-Views On Saturdays
For years, WWE’s pay-per-view schedule has been locked into Sunday nights,
making for many sleepy Mondays at work. Ha, ha,
I’ll just sit in the toilet and play Merge the Numbers for an hour. Take that,
boss! Ah dammit, I’m the boss. Curse me again. But in 2021, WWE announced it will be consistently
experimenting with Saturday night pay-per-views. August’s SummerSlam took place on a Saturday,
making it the first non-WrestleMania pay-per-view on that day in decades.
And it was a gamble that worked big, with ticket sales four times the gate of SummerSlam 2019.
And not only will WWE’s first big event of the year, Day One, also happen on Saturday
1st January, the 2022 Royal Rumble, at least one night of WrestleMania and SummerSlam 2022
are also all scheduled for Saturdays. WWE President Nick Khan has explained
this is actually their new “strategic approach to pay-per-views,” making it easier for a travelling
audience to fly in and out of the host city, with these big shows being held
in stadiums over arenas. And at least initially, it appears to be working.
9. NXT Women’s Tag Team Championship
You know what WWE’s biggest problem is? They need more belts. They don’t. Have.
Enough. Championship. Belts. [HAVE DIFFERENT TITLE APPEAR FOR EACH FULL STOP]
And 2021 saw its newest title added: unveiling the NXT Women’s Tag Team
Championship in February. The titles were awarded to Raquel Gonzalez and Dakota Kai
before immediately being lost to Ember Moon and Shotzi Blackheart - which rather predictably
set them as one of the lowest valued championships in the entire company.
It’s also seemingly stopped the main roster’s Women’s Tag Team Championships from appearing on
NXT, despite that being part of their concept when they were first introduced in 2019.
8. WWE Lets Talent Out Of Non-Compete Clauses
Be careful what you wish for, WWE superstars. For almost five years, wrestlers have often
requested they be let go from the company, either privately or publicly, so they can spread their
grappling wings elsewhere. In 2021, that wish (along with loads of other wrestlers who hadn’t
asked for their release) was granted. Amidst the mass roster cuts this year,
some released talent were let out of their contractual 30 to 90 day non-compete clauses
early. What a kind company WWE is, doing a favour for the talent they just fired.
WWE’s non-compete clauses mean released talent can’t appear for other promotions for 90 days
if you are a main roster performer or 30 days if you were coming from NXT.
This has been their standard practice for years but in 2021 there were a few times where talent
was granted an early out, like Fightful Select reporting Chelsea Green was allowed to do her
first appearance with Ring of Honor early after being released from the company on April 15.
7. The Future Endeavourers get Future Endeavoured
WWE releasing loads of wrestlers were a running theme throughout 2021, but
it wasn’t just onscreen talent who were let go: the corporate staff were also heavily impacted.
Along with entire divisions being scrapped or merged, like the combining of two different design
departments, and several high level executives getting dismissed, two of the longest running
key figures in WWE’s Talent Relations sector were also let go: Mark Carrano and Canyon Ceman. Huh.
Carrano was reportedly blamed for Mickie James being sent her belongings in a trash bag after she
was released, and was shortly after fired himself - with the backstage reaction being described as
unanimously positive. Sounds like a popular guy. Ceman, heh, meanwhile
was rumoured to have been released when Adam Cole’s contract ran out
and nobody noticed - prompting Cemen to get released, also heh.
But don’t worry, John Laurinaitis is now the Head of Talent Relations,
after sporadically holding that title between 2001 and 2012. And with all that
fresh-faced experience, he’s taking the company back to the dark ages! Because...
6. WWE Changes Its Hiring Process
As Vince McMahon is determined to confirm that you cannot, in fact, teach an old dog new tricks,
WWE has drastically changed what it looks for in signing new talent. Gone are the days of
seeing indie darlings suddenly appear in the crowd at TakeOver shows, because the current
hiring mission statement is to sign big, young guys who can one day main event WrestleMania.
While this is a mindset more fitting of the 80s, early 90s and mid to late 00s - one
that was thought changed by the success of CM Punk and Daniel Bryan in WWE - it makes
pragmatic sense. WWE’s NXT ultimately lost to AEW in the indie-style wars,
and Vince consistently botched NXT call-ups to the main roster. At least this way,
we can see Bronn Breakker get pushed right to the top. Because they can’t screw him up too, right?
Right?! Speaking of AEW beating WWE...
5. NXT Moves To Tuesdays
WAR! Huh! What is it good for? Forcing WWE’s third brand to
be moved to a different day. Say it again! After counter-scheduling AEW Dynamite on Wednesday
nights, for a year and a half, WWE and the USA Network finally threw in the towel in April 2021.
After NXT Takeover Stand & Deliver, NXT moved to Tuesday nights, where viewership has remained
pretty much consistent from before, but AEW’s has soared thanks to fans returning, big signees, and,
potentially, now running unopposed on Wednesdays. It was around this time that Vince McMahon,
Nick Khan and Bruce Prichard made a rare visit to the Performance Center, where everyone was
reportedly reassured about the future of the brand and thought nothing would happen to it…
4. NXT 2.0 PSYCHE!
While the move to Tuesdays signaled the end of the Wednesday Night War, Triple H still had plans
for his NXT-verse, reportedly keen to enhance the cruiserweights’ role in the show. But NXT Takeover
36 signaled the end of NXT as we knew it. Vince McMahon does not like losing and NXT
lost and lost hard to AEW. So, Vince took Hunter’s prized toy from him and gave it a midlife crisis:
fancy new colourful logo! A focus on young, sexualised women! And even a new name.
My Uncle Steve pulling up to Sunday dinner on a motorcycle with jet black hair and a
new 21 year old girlfriend was more subtle than this.
NXT 2.0 debuted on September 14 and featured a new venue, all the colour, and tons of new stars.
The show is NXT in name only at this point with NXT 2.0 very much maintaining a more main roster
feel - replacing long, modern matches with comedy skits and characters who feel more at home in 1995
WWF. They’ve even dropped the TakeOver name for pay-per-views, and the existing old guard
of Johnny Gargano and Kyle O’Reilly could join Adam Cole on the way out by the end of the year.
3. The Return of Fans
But WWE wasn’t all bad. Because after well over a year in lockdown, with the majority
in the Thunderdome, arguably the most positive change to the company and wrestling of 2021
was you. Yes, you. And me I guess. The fans. After WrestleMania 37 served as a brief reprieve
from no-fans WWE shows, July’s Money in the Bank served as the proper relaunch of WWE’s
touring schedule, injecting the shows with real, non-recorded life once again.
Not a lot of life once you reach the third hour of Raw each week, I grant you,
but it’s still better than a thousand Zoom windows staring at the ring.
2. WWE Network Is Peacock
In one of the biggest deals in the company’s history, masterminded by negotiator extraordinaire
Nick Khan, WWE announced early in 2021 that they would be moving the WWE Network to Peacock,
NBC’s streaming service, as of the 18th March. While this move didn’t go well from a user
perspective, with many early complaints about the usability of Peacock Premium being nowhere
near as good as the Network - lacking several of the standard functions you would expect to see
on a streaming service, like, you know, a pause button - this change was worth a huge $1 billion,
and marks the biggest strategic change for WWE and the Network since its launch
in 2014. Expect to see the rights to the Network come up every five years from now on,
just like how the first broadcast rights to Raw and SmackDown are contested over.
You can say many things about WWE, but in regards to streaming, Vince McMahon has been a visionary
- first forseeing the market shift way before other companies, and then also realising when
it’s time to make deals with the bigger networks. Expect many other smaller streaming platforms to
follow this same route in the next five years. And just like pay-per-view, Vince did it first.
1. All of the Releases
Bobby Fish, Mercedes Martinez, Leon Ruff, Bronson Reed, Jake Atlas, Bray Wyatt,
Killian Dain, Lars Sullivan, Andrade, Billie Kay, Peyton Royce, Braun Strowman, Lana, Buddy Murphy,
Aleister Black, Ruby Riott, Nia Jax, Mia Yim, Keith Lee, Karrion Kross, B-Fab, Ember Moon,
Franky Monet, Scarlett Bourdeaux, Top Dolla, Ashante Adonis, Isaiah ‘Swerve’ Scott, Tegan Nox.
Those are just some of the names released this year. And WWE really don’t think there’s
a young star in there that could main event WrestleMania? Braun and Bray already kinda did!
While the biggest corporate shift is licensing the Network to another platform, the decision to
ruthlessly fire over 80 wrestlers over the year marks the most harshly felt change - not just
for the fans who got behind every one of those names and more, but for the people who suddenly
lost their jobs before their contract was up. For the people who had moved across country, uprooted
families, so they could work for the biggest wrestling player in town, who were then fired
at a time when said biggest wrestling player in town was making more money than it had ever done
before, while the outside wrestling world still hadn’t recovered from the pandemic’s lockdown.
WWE firing so many wrestlers this year marks a significant change in strategy from 2018,
where they signed and horded talent to keep them away from competitors like New Japan,
and then AEW, flooding the market with free agents, severely reducing the amount they
can charge for dates. It’s a decision not just felt onscreen with thinning star power,
backstage for wrestlers worried they could lose their jobs at any moment, but also
for fans, many of whom have decided they no longer want to support a company that behaves like this.
That was a cheery end to the list! It’s been a rough year,
people. So please subscribe to partsFUNknown and share this video around. And let me know
what you think is the biggest change to WWE in 2021 in the comments. Check out
our other videos on PFK, like our other list videos 10 Times Fans Nearly Killed Wrestlers,
and the 10 fakest things in wrestling that people just accept. I’ve been Oli Davis, Jam that Jam.