Wolverine Publicity / Professional Wrestling

• During the entire "Rock n' Wrestling era" of the WWF and well into the '90s, they promoted Hulk Hogan endlessly. This jumped the shark at Wrestlemania IX, where after Mr. Fuji's interference caused Bret Hart to lose the heavyweight title to Yokozuna, the Hulkster himself came out and demanded an immediate match with the big sumo, which was granted...and ended 20 seconds later with Hogan as the new champion. Hogan later refused to put over Bret and was shamed out of WWF, so he could repeated the process in WCW.
• A common complaint about the WWE's Attitude Era was that too much focus was put on Vince McMahon's own family. He even went so far as to have daughter Stephanie become a part-time wrestler and gave an on-air role to his wife Linda, even though neither had any significant experience with the "sport". Luckily, the McMahon family's Wolverine Publicity slowly declined once The Rock became champion at King of the Ring 2000, and daughter Stephanie was later given the much more appropriate role of general manager. This became a problem again in 2001 though with the Invasion storyline. Apparently, they didn't think WWF fans/wrestling fans would be interested in seeing guys from WCW and ECW wrestle against WWF guys, so they made the whole storyline about Shane McMahon and Stephanie trying to take out Vince and take over his company, and it eventually turned into a continuation of the Austin/Vince McMahon feud, which basically meant it was a rehash of everything the Attitude era had already done long after it had gotten stale in the hopes that it would work twice, which is why this era is generally looked upon as a massive waste of potential.
• The Rock was originally billed as Rocky Maivia. He was publicized so much, that everyone got sick of him. Even Rocky Maivia hated Rocky Maivia.
• Attempted in-universe by Chris Jericho. ("Raw is Jericho!")
• Triple H, circa 2002-2005 (give or take). Led to Pat Patterson quitting after his suggesting using "less Triple H" to stop ratings from falling fell on deaf ears, and led to the Bubba Ray Dudley line "This is not the Triple H Show!" This criticism actually dates as far back as 1999-2000, when the infamous "Rock vs. Triple H" feud was in full swing. It became so bad, in fact, that when Mick Foley became the new WWE commissioner after King of the Ring 2000, one of the first things he opted to do was reduce Triple H to a midcarder role. Even in the time when he wasn't on the show, Spring 2010 to July 2011 (with the exception of the lead-up and actual PPV of WrestleMania 27) he was still in the opening, toward the end, in one of the more prominent spots. When he was out with an injury in 2001, he was still mentioned pretty much constantly and they were running a sequence that showed his rehab pretty much every night. This, of course, is one of the benefits of being married to the boss's daughter who is also the head of "Creative".
• ARSION's head booker was guilty of it, or so it was thought, until 2001 when she left the promotion they still continued to advertise her on shows Aja Kong obviously would not be on, having left and all. She eventually took them to court to put a stop to it. Also, combining this trope with loophole abuse kicked off the career of Amazing Kong, previously known as Vixen, who was given to fans by promoters who had promised A Kong but couldn't get Aja.
• Since the foundation of TNA up until the acquisition of Kurt Angle, the promotion basically existed to put over Jeff Jarrett, who was greeted by chants of "drop the title" due to many extended title reigns as NWA World Heavyweight Champion, including the deletion of Ray Gonzales's title reign from the record books, a tactic WWE fans had seen used by Triple H, leading to the "Triple J" (Jackass Jeff Jarrett).
• John Cena was in either a main title bout or the main event at every WrestleMania from 2005 to 2016, going 9–3. By the end of that run, if you never watched wrestling, you would have thought John Cena was the only wrestler because he was the only one in every promo commercial.
• John Morrison and The Miz most definitely. Not just because they appeared on all three WWE brands regularly, featured on most pay-per-views if only for a short segment and had their own Internet talk show but also because the World Tag Team Championships they wore were supposed to be exclusive to one show, Raw. As ECW superstars they never should have gotten a title shot in the first place. Even worse, SmackDown!'s equivalent WWE Tag Team Champions, Carlito and Primo, weren't even guaranteed to appear on their own show, then Miz and Morrison stole their girlfriends. It was justified by ECW having kayfabe "talent sharing agreements" with both Smackdown and Raw, but it seemed that they were the only two wrestlers smart enough to take advantage of the agreement. (Interestingly, therefore, Morrison and Miz may have been the ones responsible for ECW being discontinued two years later and Raw and SmackDown being reintegrated a year after that!) And fans really wanted to see them take a beating.
  • Carlito and Primo later defeated Miz and Morrison for the Unified Tag Team titles, belts that were supposed to crossover between different shows, and still weren't as overexposed as Miz and John Morrison were.
• After Brock Lesnar walked out on New Japan Pro-Wrestling, the IWGP Heavyweight Title picture could be described as Hiroshi Tanahashi and the challenger of the month, as no one else really stuck around until the unexpected rise of Kazuchika Okada and the acquisition of AJ Styles. To a lesser extent, Shinsuke Nakamura got heavy press for his decent showings in MMA and a victory over Kurt Angle that resulted in the return of the belt Lesnar took, or to a greater extent considering he was the actual champion for a much shorter time relative to his press, more so than Tanahashi.
• Even though WWE was divided into the Raw and Smackdown brands, pretty much the entire main event crew, including John Cena, Triple H, CM Punk, Randy Orton, Mark Henry, and others appear on both shows with alarming regularity.
• Kelly Kelly is one of the most overexposed Divas (and no, not because she used to be an exhibitionist). Except for The Fabulous Moolah, she was the only Diva featured in the 2011 opening montage for all WWE programming till the day of her release. WWE's writers dredged up one excuse after another to have her appear in segments, most infamously her fake pregnancy prank when Jerry Springer was the special guest host. (And this was before she was booked to win the Divas' Championship!) Not-so-subtly lampshaded in a TV commercial for 7-Eleven, one of the sponsors of the 2009 SummerSlam show (in which Kelly barely even appeared), in which she knocks away a row of commemorative Edge, John Cena, Triple H, and The Undertaker drinking cups with a Kelly Kelly cup.
• A.J. Lee is another Diva who started hogging the spotlight in later years. Despite rarely competing in the ring, she was made the focal point of almost every main-event feud on Raw for seven months, culminating in her becoming the psychotic lover of CM Punk^note This one actually stuck in a way, Phil "CM Punk" Brooks and April "AJ" Mendez were married in 2014 and are still together as of 2022, Daniel Bryan and Kane. Then it was taken to extremes when she was named the new Raw General Manager. Vince has surprisingly been listening to viewers who frequently request he build back up the Divas division to where it was during its peak in the early-to-mid-2000s. However, at this time, the Divas division was pretty heavily based around Trish Stratus, and to a lesser extent, Lita, then Mickie James. Vince feels that, much like Cena, the Divas division needs a "central character" to work as a keystone, saying he "needs a Trish" to build from. He's tried with Kelly Kelly, Eve Torres, and AJ, and to a lesser extent, Maryse and the Bella Twins, but these have all fallen apart for one reason or another.
• To tie in with A.J.'s increased screentime, the ever popular Daniel Bryan saw his increase significantly post-WrestleMania 28. As of late 2012 he and his tag team partner Kane are a major part of shows as dysfunctional WWE Tag Team Champions, appearing in multiple segments on any given night. Consequently, this has brought more focus to the tag team division than it's seen in years.^note As of 2022, Kane is (mostly) retired and the mayor of Knoxville County, TN; while Danielson left for AEW in 2021 when his WWE contract expired.
• Also attempted in-universe by John Laurinaitis, who while General Manager of both Raw and SmackDown booked himself into the ring (sometimes to compete, sometimes not) at every opportunity, and even tried to have his face put on the cover of WWE's latest video game instead of CM Punk's.
• Yet another in-universe attempt involves Brock Lesnar making this part of his demands on signing a contract with WWE, specifically asking for Raw to be re-christened as WWE Monday Night Raw: Starring Brock Lesnar. (What makes this really strange is that, in Real Life, Lesnar is a notoriously private person -- almost to the point of being a recluse -- so he'd be one of the last people in the world to ever demand such a thing.)
• Invoked in Ring of Honor by Jay Briscoe. After he was forced to vacate the World Title due to an injury, he showed his defiance by creating his own world title and doing everything he could overshadow the official champion Adam Cole, including taping his image over Cole's on promotional posters. Matt Hardy and Jay Lethal in turn would use Bricoe's own tactic against him, though neither went to quite the same extremes.
• The book Capitol Revolution by Tim Hornbaker features Hulk Hogan on the cover. Being a comprehensive history of the New York & Washington territories from the 1930s to 1983, Hogan first appears on page 241 of 245.

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