TKO Boss Admits Company Has 'Complete Control' Over WWE Creative

The revelation came from Mark Shapiro, the aforementioned TKO president, during a talk at the University of Alabama. "First of all, [TKO] has complete control. So we’re responsible, good and bad, fact or fiction," Shapiro told students. He also defended an increased level of celebrity involvement, suggesting the inclusion of McAfee at WrestleMania and stars like Logan Paul continually getting pushed are a result of an edict from TKO.

Shapiro's admission that TKO weighs in and makes creative demands, particularly around WrestleMania, comes in the wake of reports claiming McAfee was not the man Triple H had in mind for that spot at WrestleMania. It seems that had WWE bosses been left to their own devices, Aleister Black would have been in that spot. Instead, he wasn't on the card at all.

This Doesn't Mean TKO Calls All Of The Creative Shots

It is important to note that Shapiro isn't claiming he and others at TKO call all of the creative shots and Triple H is merely a puppet who does nothing. My assumption, even after these comments, is that 95 percent of the time, Shapiro and TKO leave WWE creative to run itself. However, when they feel there's something big that they want to have a hand in, like the McAfee stuff, that's when they can throw their weight around and overrule anything that's already planned.

That's why Shapiro says TKO has complete control. That doesn't mean he and TKO CEO Ari Emmanuel are running WWE like Vince McMahon used to, tearing up scripts minutes before the show is about to begin. It means they take responsibility for everything shown on WWE TV, which is why if they think something can be improved, they'll attempt to improve it.

The trouble is, it seems TKO's answer when it comes to "improving" something in WWE is to throw a celebrity in there, and most of the time, that's not what WWE fans want. Particularly when that celebrity participation doesn't make sense, like McAfee this year or Travis Scott at WrestleMania last year. There's a reason Scott's involvement led to nothing, and it's the same reason why night one of WrestleMania 42 has the lowest Cagematch rating for the event since 1986.