Let me make one thing clear from the start. I love the McMahons.
They’re the right blend of evil heel figures and hilarious foils when they’re needed to be. Vince McMahon is the greatest on-screen authority figure in wrestling history. Stephanie is fine when she wants to be. However, this article is about the black sheep of the McMahon family, Shane, and why it’s time he leave our television screens and never return.
On the first edition of Smackdown on Fox, Shane is due to face Kevin Owens in a Ladder Match. If Kevin Owens wins, he gets reinstated to the Smackdown roster and Shane gets fired. If Shane wins, Owens remains fired, and cannot appear in WWE ever again. Whilst there is a chance Shane wins due to heel shenanigans and Kevin turns up on RAW during the draft (Because WWE think we’re all idiots), it’s time for WWE to do the right thing, and permanently remove Shane McMahon from our screens.
When he unexpectedly returned in February 2016, it looked so promising. He received a deafening reaction when he returned to confront his father. He had a Hell in a Cell match against The Undertaker at Wrestlemania 32, during which he attempted to jump from the top of the Cell onto Undertaker, but Taker moved, and Shane crashed through an announce table. He may have lost the match, but he was allowed to run RAW for several weeks, which everyone loved at first.
But then the problems began.
It wasn’t the fact that he was running RAW, and then Smackdown after the draft. If that’s all he did, then it wouldn’t have been a problem. However, he then kept inserting himself into other people’s feuds and/or matches. He got into an altercation with Brock Lesnar after Lesnar’s match with Randy Orton at Summerslam, receiving an F5 from Brock. Thankfully, the heavily rumoured Shane/Brock match never happened. However, that wasn’t the end of Shane’s in ring escapades. He was in the RAW vs Smackdown match at Survivor Series, where he suffered a severe concussion, and even had a match with AJ Styles at Wrestlemania 33. Shane is fine in small doses, but he was becoming involved in several feuds/segments a week. People were starting to get tired of seeing him shuffling out every week and started to let him know.
Fast forward to November 2, 2018, and the Crown Jewel PPV in Saudi Arabia. WWE held a one-night only tournament to crown the Best in the World. The final was The Miz vs Dolph Ziggler. However, Miz got ‘injured’ early in the match. Instead of calling the match off, or rescheduling it, Shane decided to take The Miz’s place, beating Dolph Ziggler in just over three minutes. In a tournament containing Kurt Angle, Seth Rollins, Rey Mysterio and Randy Orton, it was a 48-year old part timer who won the whole thing. Following this, Miz and McMahon formed a tag team, even winning the Tag Team Championships, before McMahon turned heel on Miz after they lost at Fastlane.
At first, heel Shane was a hoot. He was hilariously pompous, and every entrance, he had Greg Hamilton or Mike Rome announce him as ‘The Best in the WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORLD’, which was both annoying and hilarious at the same time.
The problem with heel Shane though, is that he wrestled. Not only has he wrestled, he has beaten both The Miz and Roman Reigns, albeit through nefarious means. The fact remains that he has pinned two former WWE Champions and Wrestlemania main eventers. In an era where WWE should be phasing out their part-timers, not even WWE’s poster boy in Roman Reigns was allowed to pin Shane McMahon. Even worse, there were rumours that WWE were prepared to let Shane McMahon beat Kofi Kingston for the WWE Championship, which thankfully doesn’t look like it’s true – if that had happened, I genuinely think Twitter might have just exploded from the outrage.
As said above, the best way to have a McMahon is in short doses. Shane should only be on TV for three to four months at a time, maybe wrestling twice or thrice while there. The problem fans have with Shane is, bar a few weeks off when he got injured, he’s been on our screens pretty much non-stop for over three and a half years. People tired of him quite quickly into his latest return, and the fact he’s been allowed to pin former World Champions is frankly a criminal offence.
Shane McMahon has run his course on WWE TV. The best always know when it’s time to go and if Shane is smart, he should realise that what’s best for business is for Shane McMahon to be removed from WWE TV, and hopefully never return.
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You can find the author of this article on Twitter @Bannister007. Thanks for reading!