Jonathan Coachman thinks WWE has been cutting the wrong people.
Speaking to Hard Rock Bet, the former WWE announcer argued that the recent wave of talent releases has left the people writing the shows untouched.
If you’re not actively trying to be better, if you’re not actively trying to do your job, why is it the talent that is taking it on the head instead of the creative that’s giving the talent the storylines to go out there and try to execute?
Right now, they need to do a complete overhaul, and if they do that, I think that it could be a much better atmosphere.
His theory starts with the money. Coachman pointed to the scale of TKO’s television deals, the Netflix agreement for RAW, the ESPN deal for premium live events, and UFC’s arrangement with Paramount+, and suggested a company paid that far in advance has less reason to chase anything.
When you get a deal that’s $5 billion from Netflix, $1.6 billion from ESPN, UFC gets $7.7 billion from Paramount. So now you’ve got all these billions of dollars coming into one company. What is their incentive to put the best product out there or bring in the biggest stars?
He was more critical about the creative room itself, describing a scene from WWE: Unreal in which a meeting settled on one name for a big match.
It was like puppets. It was like Punk, Punk, Punk, Punk. And I was like, does nobody have a mind of their own?
Coachman then claimed the one person who did speak up in that room was Road Dogg, and that he was fired for it. That does not match the reporting. Mike Johnson of PWInsider reported in March that Brian James chose to leave his SmackDown creative position, and James himself has since discussed his exit publicly without describing a firing.
Coachman also credited his own show for the current Chelsea Green direction, saying he and Vince Russo suggested keeping her on television in a mask rather than writing her off, and stopping short of claiming WWE acted on it.
