WWE Zone. 'Drop the SVR title. WWE 2012 New Title'

WWE, Inc.^[6] (NYSE: WWE) is an American publicly traded, privately controlled entertainment company dealing primarily in professional wrestling, with major revenue sources also coming from film, music, product licensing, and direct product sales. It is currently the largest professional wrestling companyin the world, reaching 13 million viewers in the U.S. and broadcasting its shows in 30 languages to more than 145 countries.^[7] It promotes under two brands, known as Raw and SmackDown.

Vince McMahon is the majority owner, chairman and chief executive officer (CEO) of the company. Together with his wife Linda McMahon, and their childrenShane McMahon and Stephanie McMahon-Levesque (WWE Executive Vice President of Talent and Creative Writing), the McMahons hold approximately 70% of WWE's economic interest and 96% of the voting power in the company. The company's headquarters are located in Stamford, Connecticut with offices in Los Angeles, New York City, London, Tokyo and Toronto.^[8]

WWE holds an extensive library of videos, representing a significant portion of the visual history of professional wrestling. The company began as the Capitol Wrestling Corporation in 1952, which promoted under the banner of the World Wide Wrestling Federation (WWWF) and later the World Wrestling Federation (WWF). In 1982, it was sold to the same family's Titan Sports company, which later changed its name to World Wrestling Federation Entertainment, before finally becoming World Wrestling Entertainment in 2002, and simplified to "WWE" in 2011.

apitol Wrestling Corporation

Roderick James "Jess" McMahon was a boxing promoter whose achievements included co-promoting a bout in 1915 between Jess Willard and Jack Johnson. In 1926, while working with Tex Rickard(who actually despised wrestling to such a degree he prevented wrestling events from being held at the third Madison Square Garden in New York City between 1939 and 1948), he started promoting boxing at the Garden. The first match during their partnership was a light-heavyweight championship match between Jack Delaney and Paul Berlenbach.

A few years earlier, around 1920, professional wrestler Joseph Raymond "Toots" Mondt had created a new challenge of professional wrestling that he called Slam Bang Western Style Wrestling to make the entertainment more appealing to spectators. At the time, pro wrestling consisted primarily of mat grappling; and while the sport had flourished a decade earlier under Frank Gotch, the fans had since grown tired of the painfully deliberate pace of the bouts. However, Mondt discovered a solution that would completely transform the industry, as he convinced Lewis and Sandow to implement a new form of wrestling that combined features of boxing, Greco-Roman, freestyle, lumber-camp fighting, and theater into what he deemed "Slam Bang Western-Style Wrestling." He then formed a promotion with wrestler Ed Lewis and his manager Billy Sandow. They persuaded many wrestlers to sign contracts with their Gold Dust Trio. After much success, a disagreement over power caused the trio to dissolve and, with it, their promotion. Mondt formed partnerships with several other promoters, including Jack Curley in New York City. When Curley was dying, Mondt moved to take over New York wrestling with the aid of several bookers, one of whom was Jess McMahon.

Together, Roderick McMahon and Raymond Mondt created the Capitol Wrestling Corporation Ltd (CWC). The CWC joined the National Wrestling Alliance in 1953. In 1954, Ray Fabiani, one of Mondt's associates, brought in Vincent J. McMahon to replace his late father Jess in the promotion.^[10] McMahon and Mondt were a successful combination, and within a short time, they controlled approximately 70% of the NWA's booking, largely due to their dominance in the heavily populated Northeast region. Mondt taught McMahon about booking and how to work in the wrestling business. Due to the dominance in the northeast, the CWC was referred to by AWA legend Nick Bockwinkel as the "Northeast Triangle", with its territory being defined by Pittsburgh, Washington, D.C., andMaine as points of the triangle.^[11]

World Wide Wrestling Federation

The NWA recognized an undisputed NWA World Heavyweight Champion that went to several different wrestling companies in the alliance and defended the belt around the world. In 1963, the champion was "Nature Boy" Buddy Rogers. The rest of the NWA was unhappy with Mondt because he rarely allowed Rogers to wrestle outside of the Northeast. Mondt and McMahon wanted Rogers to keep the NWA World Championship, but Rogers was unwilling to sacrifice his $25,000 deposit on the belt (title holders at the time had to pay a deposit to insure they honored their commitments as champion). Rogers lost the NWA World Championship to Lou Thesz in a one-fall match in Toronto, Ontario on January 24, 1963, which led to Mondt, McMahon, and the CWC leaving the NWA in protest, creating the World Wide Wrestling Federation (WWWF) in the process.

In April, Rogers was awarded the new WWWF World Championship following an apocryphal tournament in Rio de Janeiro. He lost the title to Bruno Sammartino a month later on May 17, 1963, after suffering a heart attack shortly before the match. To accommodate Rogers' condition, the match was booked to last under a minute.

Mondt left the company in the late sixties. Although the WWWF had withdrawn from the NWA, Vince McMahon Sr. still sat on the NWA Board of Directors, no other territory was recognized in the Northeast, and several "champion vs. champion" matches occurred (usually ending in a double disqualification or some other non-decisive ending).

In March 1979, for marketing purposes, the World Wide Wrestling Federation was renamed the "World Wrestling Federation" (WWF).^[12]

World Wrestling Federation

Vince McMahon, founder of Titan Sports, Inc. and current majority owner of WWE.

On February 21, 1980, the son of Vincent J. McMahon, Vincent K. McMahon, founded Titan Sports, Inc.^[13] and on June 6, 1982, purchased Capitol Wrestling Corporation Ltd. from his father and other stock holders (Arnold Skaaland, Gorilla Monsoon, and Phil Zacko).^[12] The elder McMahon had long since established the northeastern territory as one of the most vibrant members of the NWA. He had long since recognized that professional wrestling was more about entertainment than actual sport. Against his father's wishes, McMahon began an expansion process that fundamentally changed the industry.

The WWF was not the only promotion to have broken ranks with the NWA; the American Wrestling Association (AWA) had long ago ceased being an official NWA member (although like the WWF, they seldom left their own territory). However, neither of the defecting members attempted to undermine the territory system that had been the foundation of the industry for more than half a century.

Other promoters were furious when McMahon began syndicating WWF television shows to television stations across the United States, in areas outside of the WWF's traditional northeastern stronghold. McMahon also began selling videotapes of WWF events outside the Northeast through his Coliseum Video distribution company. He effectively broke the unwritten law of regionalism around which the entire industry had been based. To make matters worse, McMahon used the income generated by advertising, television deals, and tape sales to poach talent from rival promoters. Wrestling promoters nationwide were now in direct competition with the WWF.

Hulk Hogan, due to his appearance in Rocky III, had a national recognition that few other wrestlers could offer, which is what led McMahon to sign him. Roddy Piper was brought in, as well as Jesse Ventura (although Ventura rarely wrestled in the WWF at that point due to the lung disorder that caused his retirement, moving to the commentator booth alongside Gorilla Monsoon). Andr the Giant, Jimmy Snuka, Don Muraco, Paul Orndorff, Greg Valentine, Ricky Steamboat, and the Iron Sheik(Hossein Khosrow Ali Vaziri) rounded out the roster. Hogan was clearly McMahon's biggest star, causing some people to debate whether the WWF could have achieved national success without him.

The WWF would tour nationally in a venture that required huge capital investment; one that placed the WWF on the verge of financial collapse. The future of not just McMahon's experiment, but also the WWF, the NWA, and the whole industry came down to the success or failure of McMahon's groundbreaking concept, WrestleMania. WrestleMania was a pay-per-view extravaganza (in some areas; most areas of the country saw WrestleMania available on closed-circuit television) that McMahon marketed as being the Super Bowl of professional wrestling. The concept of a wrestling supercard was nothing new in North America; the NWA had been running Starrcade a few years prior to WrestleMania, and even the elder McMahon had marketed large Shea Stadium cards viewable in closed-circuit locations. However, McMahon's vision was to make the WWF and the industry itself mainstream, targeting more of the general television audience by exploiting the entertainment side of the industry. With the inaugural WrestleMania the WWF initiated a joint-promotional campaign with MTV, which featured a great deal of WWF coverage and programming, in what was termed the Rock 'n' Wrestling Connection. The mainstream media attention brought on by celebrities including Muhammad Ali, Mr. T, and Cyndi Lauper at the event helped propel WrestleMania to become a staple in popular culture.

Golden Age

The original WrestleMania, held in 1985, was a resounding success. This event is sometimes credited as the debut of what McMahon called "sports entertainment", in contrast to his father's preference of pure wrestling. The WWF did incredible business on the shoulders of McMahon and his all-American babyface hero, Hulk Hogan, for the next several years, creating what some observers dubbed a second golden age for professional wrestling. The introduction of Saturday Night's Main Event on NBC in mid-1985 marked the first time that professional wrestling had been broadcast on network television since the 1950s. In 1987, the WWF produced what was considered to be the pinnacle of the 1980s wrestling boom, WrestleMania III. A rematch of the Wrestlemania III feature bout, once again pitting Champion Hulk Hogan against Andre the Giant on Main Event, was seen by 33 million people, which is still the record for the most watched wrestling match in North America.^[14]

New Generation

The WWF hit a low point in the wake of allegations of steroid abuse and distribution made against it in 1994; there were also allegations of sexual harassment made by WWF employees. McMahon was eventually exonerated, but it was a public relations nightmare for the WWF. The steroid trial cost the WWF an estimated $5 million at a time when revenues were at an all-time low. To compensate, McMahon cut the pay of both wrestlers and front office personnel ' close to 40% in the latter case (and about 50% for top level managers such as Bobby Heenan and Jimmy Hart, who both left). This helped drive many WWF wrestlers to its only major competition, World Championship Wrestling (WCW), between 1994 and 1997. During this period, the WWF promoted itself under the banner of "The New WWF Generation," featuring Shawn Michaels, Diesel, Razor Ramon, Bret Hart, and The Undertaker. In an effort to promote them and other young talent as the new superstars of the ring, the WWF began to play on the age restrictions which former WWF wrestlers such as Hulk Hogan and Randy Savage (who by now were working for WCW) now faced. This is best seen in the "Billionaire Ted" parodies of early 1996 (a reference to WCW's owner and patron, media mogul Ted Turner) which culminated in a "rasslin'" match during the warm-up to WrestleMania XII.

Monday Night Wars

In 1993, the WWF broke new ground in televised professional wrestling with the debut of its cable program WWF Monday Night Raw. After becoming a runaway success, WCW in 1995 countered with its own Monday night cable program, WCW Monday Nitro, in the same time slot as Raw.^[15] The two programs would trade wins in the ensuing ratings competition until mid-1996, when WCW began a nearly 2-year domination that was largely fueled by the introduction of the New World Order, a stable led by former WWF superstars Hulk Hogan, Scott Hall, and Kevin Nash.

The Attitude Era

The feuds and match types developed by the end of the mid 1990s began a new era in wrestling. The fans of the WWF seemed to favor what was posed to them as thebad guy instead of the good guy. The creative changes made by the WWF creative board saw wrestling take on a "street fighting," "bad attitude" approach, however despite the revolutionary changes in sports-entertainment that the WWF founded, 1997 remains the lowest of the WWF's financial income and a heavy loss in fandom to rival WCW. Through to present day many wrestlers acknowledge that at the time, they were not aware of how close the company came to liquidation. Throughout 1996 and 1997, the WWF lost much of its leading talent to WCW, including Razor Ramon (Scott Hall), Diesel (Kevin Nash), Psycho Sid (Sid Eudy), Alundra Blayze (Debra Miceli), and Rick Rude (Richard Rood). The WWF replaced them with former WCW talent such as Vader (Leon White), Stone Cold Steve Austin, Brian Pillman, Mankind (Mick Foley), and Farooq (Ron Simmons). Eric Bischoff's public humiliation of the WWF, criticising them for signing WCW's sacked wrestlers and bragging that WWF wrestlers were signing for WCW due to higher pay, intensified the Monday Night Wars only for Nitro as the WWF struggled to regain its popularity.

McMahon managed to keep Bret Hart from reverting to WCW, and began a feud with Hart and Steve Austin. In Hart's absence after WrestleMania XII, Steve Austin became the new face of the company, starting with his Austin 3:16 speech, shortly after defeating Jake Roberts in the tournament finals at the 1996 King of the Ring pay-per-view.^[16] WrestleMania 13 saw Hart beat Austin in a critically acclaimed submission match, and shortly after saw Hart reform The Hart Foundation. McMahon revolved the company around Hart, Austin and Shawn Michaels, feuding with each other for the majority of the year, leaving many to admire their impact carrying the business through a difficult time. Despite his strong long running image as a face, the Canadian Hart was turned heel in an anti-USA gimmick, while Steve Austin became cheered by fans despite efforts to design him as the ultimate heel, making him a tweener. Rocky Maivia joined the Nation of Domination stable after fans rejected his good guy image, and Shawn Michaels formed the street gang factionD-Generation X with Triple H and Chyna; similar to the Stone Cold Steve Austin character, DX was designed not to care for what the fans or other wrestlers thought of them. Michaels later stated that the concept of DX was brought about after he persuaded McMahon to take a cruder approach to the companies marketing approach following him fining Michael's $10,000 for putting large ornaments in his shorts and exploiting his crotch around the ring during an on-air interview. The Hell in a Cell match between Shawn Michaels and The Undertaker produced a fresh strong foundation for the WWF's creative board.

1997 ended with McMahon facing real life controversy resulting in major ratings and financial losses after becoming widely despised by his employees, wrestling critics, and wrestling fans following Bret Hart's controversial departure from the WWF, later known as the Montreal Screwjob. This proved to be a founding factor in what was to officially kick start The Attitude Era.

By January 1998, the WWF began broadcasting more violence, swearing, and more edgy angles in its attempt to compete with WCW. Following Bret Hart's departure,^[17] Vince McMahon used the resulting backlash in the creation of his "Mr. McMahon" character, a dictatorial and fierce ruler who favored heels who were "good for business" over "misfit" faces like Austin. This, in turn, led to the Austin vs. McMahon feud, which, along with D-Generation X who briefly hired Mike Tyson in the build up to WrestleMania XIV, officially began the Attitude Era. It also featured the established Monday Night Wars, where both WCW and the WWF had Monday night shows that competed against each other in the ratings, and saw the WWF finally beat WCW for the first time in 84 weeks when McMahon made his in-ring debut against Austin. The evolution of more brutal matches with different stipulations to increase viewership worked to a major extent, mainly through the furthering of Hell in a Cell (notably its second appearance featuring The Undertaker vs. Mankind) and the Inferno match (introduced by Kane against The Undertaker).^[18] Many wrestlers such as Chris Jericho and The Radicalz (Chris Benoit, Eddie Guerrero, Perry Saturn, Dean Malenko) were drafted from WCW, all publicly claiming on both companies' TV broadcasts that they were extremely unhappy at the storylines and backstage chaos at WCW, and were further intrigued and happier with the structural running of the WWF. The 1996 Olympic gold medalist, Kurt Angle, The Rock (renamed from Rocky Maivia), and Mick Foley (as Mankind, Cactus Jack and Dude Love) were successfully re-invented to compete at the main event level. Notably, Mick Foley's WWF Championship win over The Rock onMonday Night Raw saw WCW lose millions of viewers when Eric Bischoff instructed announcer Tony Schiavone to give away the result minutes before both main events started, which led to Rawdrawing eleven million viewers.

Raw brand

SmackDown brand MALE SUPERSTARS

Female superstars

On Monday morning, WWE Examiner learned that while talks between WWE and apparent free agent Mick Foley have not yet officially resumed, an "unspoken understanding" between WWE and Foley is palpable. Foley, who left WWE three years ago for the less-than-greener pastures of TNA is thought to have asked for his release from TNA over the weekend, according to reports surfacing Sunday. As a result, it now appears that a return to WWE is imminent for former WWE champion.

As we rapidly approach the one-year anniversary of the installment of an anonymous WWE Raw General Manager, WWE fans are seemingly growing restless with the idea of an unknown person in charge. Indeed, the concept has run its course and the time has come to reveal who is the man behind the curtain. The idea of revealing that Foley was in charge during his time in TNA is both hilarious and genius. It's also an apparent no-brainer, which is why sources close to WWE say the idea is already on the table awaiting discussion between Vince McMahon and Mick Foley.

On Monday morning, my colleague, Rick Rockwell (Fight Sports Examiner), similarly "confirmed with a WWE insider that the WWE definitely has interest in Foley and that a possible reunion with The Rock has been discussed." With The Rock signed with WWE at least through next year's WrestleMania, there's an excellent possibility - if not probability - that WWE executives will partner the Rock with Foley in some capacity, even if it's simply for promo purposes.

* WWE LEGEND HULK HOGAN REACTS TO THE DEATH OF MACHO MAN RANDY SAVAGE

Of course, while much of the above sounds like hype, Foley himself has commented on his beef with TNA, which confirms his displeasure with the company and all but verifies that new opportunities are on the horizon for him. Within the last 24-hours, Foley tweeted: "I pushed hard for changes I felt would benefit Impact Wrestling. I can understand how some would interpret that as difficult to work with."

Do you want to see Mick Foley back in the WWE? Please weigh in with a thought or comment below.

On Wednesday, WWE Champion John Cena responded to a pretty harsh insult levied by The Rock following this past Monday's installment of Raw. Two days ago, the Rock tweeted a photo from his farm with he and his horse named Scoob. Along with the image, the Rock inserted a caption referencing the horse's gargantuan teeth as "John Cena teeth." As it turns out, WWE Champion John Cena didn't take kindly to the comment.

As a result, Cena took to Twitter himself and posted the following: "Hey dwayne. Glad u had fun on the farm. Would loved to have joined u and scoob...but I was at RAW looking for the guy who brings it... Guess he decided he had better things to do...you know...like...hang out...on the farm...and stuff. :)"

Although WWE programming has remained Rock-free for about a month now with no subsequent mention of next year's WrestleMania showdown between John Cena and The Rock, Twitter has remained a verbal battle field for the two larger-than-life personalities - a saga that leaves many WWE fans wondering how this storyline will eventually play out. That is, it doesn't appear either man can afford to lose without sustaining an enormous loss of credibility.