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| Is Adam Cole a victim of McMahon's size fetish? Photo Credit: WWE.com |
Hulk Hogan beget the Ultimate Warrior, who beget no one because his ego was incompatible with anyone's, let alone McMahon's. When Hogan left for World Championship Wrestling, McMahon kept trying to fill the void with Undertaker and Sid Vicious and Lex Luger and Mabel and Diesel, but in his lean years, he had to lean back on the people the fans reacted to, Bret Hart and Shawn Michaels. Granted, Taker was a rock for them, but he was always the heavy in the ensemble cast. He would find various degrees of success with supermen with wrestlers like The Rock, Triple H, John Cena, Batista, Brock Lesnar, Roman Reigns, and Braun Strowman. It should be noted that most of them were, like Taker, complements to a greater cast. Cena may have been the last iconoclastic singular star in the vein of Hogan or Steve Austin, but his rise coincided with Batista's, and they had guys like Taker, Edge, Triple H, and CM Punk to keep the main events fresh. Still, regardless of the card dynamics going on at any given time in post-1998 WWE, you always got the sense that McMahon loved him his big guys.
The funny thing is that over the years, McMahon has gotten water from the smaller wrestler stone on many different occasions. Even though they presided over lean years, Bret Hart and Shawn Michaels both were rocks for the company between Hogan and Austin, and they were only two less-than-statuesque wrestlers who cast titanic shadows from the main event. For crying out loud, Daniel Bryan closed the most emotionally charged WrestleMania of all-time triumphant. Many times over the years, smaller wrestlers have proven worthy by measurable metrics, whether financial or aural. The point isn't that bigger or smaller wrestlers are better than one another, and it's certainly not that there's a happy medium, although wrestlers between the extremes have flourished too in the company. I mean, Austin was their biggest star ever. Wrestlers connect with crowds for various reasons. It's more art than science.
I've long held the belief that McMahon is not a genius, and the people with whom he surrounds himself often fall short of that mark like he does. McMahon surrounds himself with like-minded people to a certain degree, and it perpetuates a culture in the company whether or not the people participating in it are aware. He's a bully, so all the woke-appropriation by daughter Stephanie won't change the fact that the company has an air of hostility. He's a weirdo, so no matter how many fresh voices he hires to the writers' room, the show is always going to look like wrestling that doesn't like to call itself wrestling through some twisted lens of a boy who grew up fatherless in North Carolina and then became the ultimate huckster. So that brings the conversation to Paul Levesque, the aforementioned Triple H and a guy who at times is his father-in-law's right hand.
There is absolutely no question his taste in wrestlers is further reaching than McMahon's. He, unlike Pops, appears to love wrestling. He loved it enough that he thought looking like the coolest and toughest and smartest character at all times was important enough at least when he was active. One could argue that the signing patterns, well, have no real pattern, that WWE, before the great COVID-19 purges, just signed anyone for the sake of signing them. Levesque never discriminated when it came to his guys in NXT, no matter what size. From Adrian Neville (PAC before and after) to Johnny Gargano to Adam Cole, he's stood by the wrestling product rather than a monolithic image. That being said, no matter how many mark pictures Levesque takes with his talent, no matter how much he insists his passion play is a legitimate third brand, the culture of WWE will always revolve around the flagship shows that generate the most revenue that are monoliths built by McMahon. Little guys can break through, but they always have to overcome some amount of inertia before they're given a shot to run with the ball.
With Cole, that inherent bias reared its ugly head when Brian James, cohort of Levesque in the ring as Road Dogg and out, mentioned that the current NXT Champion might be on the main roster as Universal Champion if he were the size of recent signee Karrion Kross, who bowled through Tommaso Ciampa at IYH like a rodeo bull let loose in a china shop. Kross is 6'4" and 264 lbs. Cole is generously billed at 6' even and 210 lbs. But Cole also has a following he's built through years of standout wrestling outside of the mainstream in Combat Zone Wrestling and EVOLVE and inside with Ring of Honor, New Japan Pro Wrestling, and NXT that has allowed him to be considered among the best in the game right now. To wit, Michaels, another Levesque consigliere in NXT, was billed one inch taller and only 15 pounds heavier than Cole, and he headlined multiple WrestleManias. What is the play here?
The obvious answer could be that Cole's contract is up soon, and All Elite Wrestling would love to have him. They have his Bullet Club running buddies in the Young Bucks and his wife in Britt Baker. Again, WWE is a company run by a weirdo bully, so it's not above the culture of the company to have its underlings engage in negging tactics as a psychological negotiation ploy, as subtle as it is. If you note to the article, James glowingly puts Cole over, but the human psyche will forego pages and pages of effusive praise to seek out the slight. You don't have to be Michael Jordan to have a chip on your shoulder. The gambit is that Cole can either get pissed off and play ball with his friends in the show that struggles to beat the C-brand, or he can take it as fire to re-sign with WWE and prove everyone wrong.
Then again, you shouldn't attribute to malice what can be chalked up to stupidity, and Occam's Razor suggests that the simplest explanation is often the correct one. James was more than likely going to bat for Cole, someone he sees as a franchise player who deserves to get the money commensurate with his talent. It's no secret that main roster money is much better than developmental or cruiserweight money, and a few little birdies intimated to me that a lot of wrestlers who make the jump to NXT from indies-plus-non-wrestling career jobs end up taking paycuts. With Cole, the value of his contract may be a bit richer since he was plucked from two companies, ROH and New Japan, that can and do pay well. James still may see Cole as someone slumming it on his show because of the implicit bias his big boss sees against wrestlers his size. And that's the real issue with WWE. You can rule Wednesday nights within the company, but the path you get as a smaller wrestler is infinitely harder than what you'd have if you were four inches taller and wide enough to support 40 or more pounds of muscle.
I doubt WWE will ever change, even after McMahon dies to be honest. I think the slow fracture of its monopoly will be a bigger opportunity for wrestlers of all sizes going forward than anything that company will ever do. AEW has shown it really doesn't have qualms about playing small-ball with its roster. When Brian Cage is one of the bigger wrestlers, it's a lot easier to nullify biases towards the the tall and statuesque. The success of barnstorming indie promotions like Game Changer Wrestling, which has effectively replaced Chikara as the marquee touring indie, or other growth-stunted national promotions like ROH, Impact, and Major League Wrestling, will have a lot to do with how people can build money and accrue fame in an industry that for too long has followed McMahon's lead. An ideal wrestling world is one where one guy's vision isn't the only one anyway.
