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alt title(s): WWF "If [Vince McMahon and Kevin Dunn] could have figured out a way to put on Wrestlemania without the wrestling, they would have done it."
World Wrestling Entertainment (known as WWE) is the Professional Wrestling juggernaut formerly known as the World Wrestling Federation. Run by the somewhat crude iconoclast Vince McMahon Jr., the then-WWF revolutionized the pro wrestling world in the '80s, using a series of closed-circuit broadcast events, colorful characters, and clever cross-promotion with MTV to transform wrestling from a regionalized industry with a series of small players in a loose confederation into its own private Idaho, and transforming themselves from a small-time racket that ran out of New England bingo halls into a multi-billion-dollar global entertainment conglomerate that squashes anybody who dares to compete with them like a roach. Its success has also turned wrestlers like Hulk Hogan, "Rowdy" Roddy Piper, Bret "The Hitman" Hart, The Undertaker, "The Heartbreak Kid" Shawn Michaels, "Stone Cold" Steve Austin, Mick Foley, The Rock, Triple H, Batista, Randy Orton and John Cena into household names. In 2001, the organization absorbed its two major competitors, WCW and ECW; this eventually led to an explosion of independent promotions looking to capture fans jaded by the lack of competition in the national wrestling scene, with TNA (a former subsidiary of the National Wrestling Alliance, much like WCW) emerging to become a viable national competitor in the mid-to-late-2000s, although they're nowhere near the scale that WCW was (nor is that promotion as beloved by "smart marks" as the original ECW was).
Originally known as the WWF, an agreement with the World Wildlife Fund (who have also used WWF as their initials since their inception) in the 1990s allowed the wrestling promotion to use the initials in certain contexts, particularly merchandise, and the wildlife protection outfit to use the initials in others. In 2002, the World Wildlife Fund (now the World Wide Fund For Nature in every country except the United States) sued, claiming that the World Wrestling Federation had violated that agreement, and won; as a result, the wrestling promotion underwent a rebranding that turned the company into World Wrestling Entertainment. While the classic WWF logo is still permitted to be used in cases involving past wrestling footage and products, and the name "World Wrestling Federation" can still be used in past footage, the case forced WWE to stop using the "WWF" initials — this means that people saying the initials in past footage are censored (usually the "F" is silenced when someone says "WWF"), and the Attitude Era "scratch" logo is censored no matter what (this means that the on-screen WWF "bug" is covered by the current WWE logo with a extra-large black border, and all other viewable "scratch" logos are blurred out in every instance, down to the patches on the referee's shirts).
Perhaps the only thing as staggering as WWE's success in the wrestling world has been its spectacular series of failures outside of it. The World Bodybuilding Federation, McMahon's attempt to do for bodybuilding what the WWF did for wrestling, failed because, let's face it, nobody really cares about bodybuilding. The XFL, an attempt at post-season football with looser rules and a WWE-style presentation, drew spectacular ratings for its first game...then bombed completely as interest waned due to the bush-league players (an attempt at introducing a WWE-style feud didn't help matters); it lasted a whole season before it folded. SmackDown Records, WWE's foray in the music industry, managed to sign exactly one artist (Neurotica) before going belly-up and being merged into WWE Records, the label that releases albums featuring albums of entrance themes (which nowadays is about 98% heavy metal/hard rock) for the wrestlers on the roster. The company's latest venture is WWE Films, a movie studio that produces starring vehicles for their wrestlers; their output hasn't had a whole lot of critical acclaim, but it's experienced middling financial success, so it may be the first of WWE's outside-wrestling ventures to not be a complete fiasco.
WWE's roster is currently broken up into three "brands", each of which has a prime-time program: RAW (WWE's flagship brand) has Monday Night RAW, ECW (the newest brand, which is but a pale shadow of the defunct wrestling organization of the same name) has ECW on Sy-Fy, and SmackDown (the "B-show" brand, and, perhaps ironically, the most Smart Mark friendly) has Friday Night SmackDown! (yes, the exclamation point is mandatory). In addition, WWE produces A.M. RAW, a Sunday-morning one-hour recap show that focuses on the RAW brand; Saturday Night's Main Event, a now-twice-yearly special that features cross-brand matches; and most recently, Superstars, which is really just an excuse to throw the Brand Extension into the fireplace and have wrestlers from all three brands fight each other without having them show up on each others' shows. (McMahon has intimated that he'd love to add yet another prime-time program on Wednesday nights. Let's hope nobody takes him up on the offer; it's already difficult enough for all but the most dedicated fans to follow all the original programming produced.)
One of the most notable things about WWE is how fervently it tries to distance itself from the stigma of being professional wrestling. Announcers exclusively refer to their talent not as "wrestlers", but as "Superstars", and the major players in the company prefer to refer to their business as "sports entertainment". From the moment this phrase was first uttered, there has been a concentrated effort on WWE's part to present itself not as a bunch of guys pretending to fight each other (which would insult the audience's intelligence and doom any chance of mainstream acceptance), but rather as a unique type of Action/Adventure series, as "real" or "fake" as any other TV show. Whether this works or not is up for debate.
Recently, WWE seems to be undergoing significant changes in how it is marketed. Among other things, the fans are now referred to as the "WWE Universe", and all free programming is now rated TV-PG, in an attempt to appeal to the increasing number of younger viewers. The shift appears to be working; the WWE's sponsorship has since moved significantly more up-market - Pepsi, for instance, has been announced as a new sponsor (a move that no doubt pleased CM Punk).
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