WWE Has A Pat McAfee Problem… Or Do They?

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Pat McAfee is EVERYWHERE right now… and it’s splitting the WWE fanbase straight down the middle.

Is he actually helping the business grow, or is he taking over moments that should belong to full-time talent?

In this SmackDown Hot Takes episode, I break it down with 5 reasons Pat McAfee is GOOD for WWE… and 5 reasons he might be BAD for it.

Plus, we’ve got bigger problems:
Io Sky still doesn’t have a WrestleMania match
The build to WrestleMania feels off
Celebrities are taking over
And somehow… Jelly Roll is involved?!

This is one of the most confusing WWE builds in a long time… and fans are NOT on the same page.

#WWE #SmackDown #PatMcAfee #codyrhodes #jellyroll 

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Transcript

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Congratulations, WWE. You finally got everybody to cheer Cody Rhodes again. And all it took was Pat McAfee. Boy, howdy, does every single person on this earth pretty much hate Pat McAfee's inclusion in the Cody Rhodes Randy Orton storyline? And you can include me as one of them. However, I'm actually enjoying what Pat McAfee has to say. I don't think he should be in this exact program, but if they would have made Pat McAfee into a GM, like wow, put this Pat McAfee as a GM, unhinged, able to say whatever he wants and just have some power and stroke to do whatever he wants. I actually think that more people would be receptive. I think it's just the wrong person with the right message. But that said, it's still the right message. And I'm gonna give you five reasons why Pat McAfee is actually a good thing for WWE right now, and five reasons why it's a bad thing. This channel is not an echo chamber. We're allowed to have different opinions. But first, let's talk about this belt on my shoulder. If you want to win it, all you gotta do is comment below and subscribe to the channel, people. I am giving it away at 20,000 subscribers on my quest to quit my day job. Look how many subscribers I have right now. We're this close, people. So subscribe and comment. You can win this. Not a toy, but a replica title belt. But before we look at the five reasons on both sides, let's see what you boys and gals had to say. Hardmichael says, honestly, this crap with Pat sucks. Why are we supposed to forget that Pat has been the happiest wrestling fan for the past four years? Bulk Spade says, I don't like this Pat angle, but he cut a half decent promo today. I love AEW Pro Wrestling says, heck, I think Pat McAfee has go away heat now, and I don't think putting the WrestleMania tickets on sale for 25% off will change anything. Kid Wilkes says, I may have heard wrong, but I'm pretty sure Pat McAfee said he hates Cody because he was born into the business, yet he's advocating for Randy Orton, who was also born in the business. The Wrestle Don says people won't like it, but Pat McAfee is absolutely right to call out Punk's hypocrisy. He literally said that he had FU money twice in the same promo and then pretended to be the man of the people. And say what you want about Pat McAfee, but he has absolute nuclear heat, which is something that 99% of the heels today cannot have or do. Charles Yancey says, unpopular opinion, I loved what Pat McAfee said to Cody Rhodes. And then Tiz Mickey says, This feud honestly feels more like it's between Cody, Jelly Roll, and Pat McAfee, and Randy's just there. All right, so now let's get into the good and bad for the inclusion of Pat McAfee. First one is what Russell Down said. He actually has real heat. And at the risk of sounding like an old man yelling at a cloud back in my day, we actually booed and didn't like the heel. I know the term go away heat gets thrown out a lot, and I've done it myself, but at the end of the day, it's heat. I just remember how Seth Rollins' vision faction just had no heat whatsoever. In fact, Seth Rollins played to the crowd, and I thought to myself, is this the main antagonist of WWE? The fans are singing along with his music and saying his catchphrases, and it was just like they had no heat. The vision sucked. Alright, so the first reason is what Russell Don said. Randy Orton cheatshotted Cody Rhodes and made him a bloody mess, and the fans laughed it up. They loved it. The reason why it's bad though, it hijacks the main event. Like, seriously, this is no longer. The reason why it's bad though echoes what Tiz Mickey said. It hijacks the main event. This main event no longer feels like Cody versus Randy Orton. It literally feels like Randy Orton, like is a background player. He had like two minutes last night on TV. It was all about Pat McAfee. It was all about Jelly Roll and all about Cody Rhodes. Heck, they referred to CM Punk, who is on Raw feuding with Roman Reigns, more than they referred to Randy Orton last night. This main event has totally been hijacked by Pat McAfee. It gets people talking. Like straight up legit people are talking. And I'm not even just talking the mainstream media because WWE just wants to get on TMZ. I'm talking like us fans. How many thumbnails have you seen devoted to the women's tag team championship matchup? I'm no disrespect to any of the women involved in that, but like nobody's talking about it. Bailey, Bailey, and Alexa Bliss, nobody's talking about it. But but Pat McAfee, oh boy, he's trending right now. So like there is a buzz. There is a buzz, even if it's just to sign on and say, I hate this. Why it's bad is that right this second, as we're two weeks away from WrestleMania, almost everybody that's actually wrestling is looking really bad right now. Pat McAfee is looking like a really, a really good heel. Jelly Roll even looked good because you know he's not backing down and he's sticking up for the boys, right? But Cody Rhodes, he looks weak because I I honestly think that Pat McAfee kind of owned Cody Rhodes yesterday, and and Cody could do nothing about it. Randy Orton looks weak because now he's like, he's like I said, two minutes of airtime yesterday? That's insane. He's the main guy. He just turned heel two weeks ago, and and the focus is on Pat McAfee. CM Punk looks like a total hypocrite right now, and kind of in a sort of roundabout way, even Roman Reigns looks a little weak compared to Pat McAfee. CM Punk said, I'm gonna bury you next to your dead dad. And then what was Roman's retort? You're old. Pat McAfee is saying, bringing up Saudi Arabia, calling him a sellout, everything like that. So it's like Pat McAfee is just like he's looking like he's just he's so brave, he'll say whatever he wants. But that is also on the plus side in that Pat McAfee can say whatever he wants and there's no real repercussions. He can literally call out lame and boring storylines because make no mistake about it, even though even though Pat McAfee was kind of shoehorned into this storyline, and I don't think he should be a part of this storyline. The fact is, Triple H had plenty of time to make Cody Rhodes and Randy Orton actually interesting. He had plenty of time to make this an interesting storyline, and it really wasn't that much to the point that fans were starting to turn completely on Cody. Heck, if he would have just turned Cody Rhodes heel, then that might have done the job. But but Triple H is just so safe. And Pat McAfee can call it out. He can call it out, he can he can say whatever he wants and not fear uh being pushed down the card or being fired or anything because, like, he's buddy with Big Daddy TKO himself. It feels like he has a blank check, and honestly, it's kind of refreshing in a way because WWE has felt very safe and sanitized, and and Pat McAfee, for all his faults, definitely not that. Another reason why it's bad is that the story's kind of all over the place. Pat McAfee's trying to save wrestling, right? Okay, but like you're literally saying WrestleMania Night 2 sucks. You're trying to save wrestling, but you are making fun of fans for being poor. You make fun of fans who love Cody Rhodes, but you can't make fun of them for being poor. That has nothing to do with saving wrestling. And why is Randy Orton suddenly aligned with Pat McAfee? Why is Randy Orton trying to save the business? His main motivation was, I just need to win the title. So, like Pat's inclusion, there's like a lot of things that just storyline-wise don't make sense. A good one is that it does bring eyes to the product. I mean, people, you know, they're talking about it. People who are not wrestling fans are trying to figure out what the heck is going on in the wacky world of wrestling. So maybe we get some new fans out of it. This one doesn't necessarily do as much for me as the other reasons because to me, if you write good stories, then the fans will come. I don't think that you need to just shoehorn celebrities in. The bad side of things, at this point, we have to get used to the idea that at any given moment, Big Daddy TKO can just step in and ruin all the plans and just say, This is what I want. This is their company. They bought it, like they own it, they can do whatever they want. If they wanted to have Merkel the Clown come in instead of Pat McGaffee, they could have done it. Because as somebody who hates their job, one of the reasons why I hate my job so much is because upper management always feels like they know what's better than the people who are actually on the front lines. And the final bad reason is the fact is Cody and Randy did not need this. They didn't need it. They could have just talked about their past. That's it. It could have been all about their past. We could have had Randy Orin RKO or Draping DDT Brandy Rhodes one time, handcuffed Cody Rhodes, and repeat what he did to Triple H Stephanie McMahon. And I'm telling you, this would have been, this would have been a banger feud. It was, this was like John Cena's retirement tour. It was a home run waiting to happen. And then I don't know, he he he walked. I don't know, is that a thing? You could walk in baseball? That's that's what it was. Or a bunt. They did a bunt. We should have had a home run, and this was a bunt. It's like, oh my gosh. Like, the story just didn't need it. It was all there. It was all laid out. And yet, and yet, we had to put Pat McAfee in it. Yeah, I don't know about that. Pat McAfee, they should have just made him a GM over there and had Cody and Randy over here. That would have solved it. But no, they had to, they had to get they had to try it all, have their cake and eat it too. Alright, let's look at some owner hot takes for SmackDown. Mr. Pete says, I hate that EO is playing a background character to Jade and Rhea's horrible story. I agree. I don't know why they just didn't make it a triple threat. Didn't wasn't that the story from last year, anyways, that Rhea Ripley inserted herself into Eo's and Bianca Belair's title match. So why not just have Eo do it this year? And like that would even help Jade Cargill out because I feel like a triple threat would just bring so much more story to this, and it would kind of hide some of Jade's weaknesses as a wrestler on the granddaddy of them all. And yeah, plus like Eo and Rhea finally fall apart on the on the main stage. But she's a damsel in distress here. She gets owned on Monday Night Raw as a plot device for Rhea Ripley to be mad. Why is Rhea Ripley the one protecting Eo when Eo is the one that has always beat Rhea Ripley's? Sean Storm says, why was Pat allowed to call Cody a backstage politician, but Jade wasn't to Rhea Ripley? It's OTW. At this point, just do McAfee versus Jelly Roll for the belt. Looks like at Backlash, the rumor has it, it's gonna be McAfee and Randy versus Jelly Roll and Cody. Yay! iMil Nil UV says the Danhausen versus Kit match should have been longer and had him use his signature stuff like the teeth. Yeah, you know what? Honestly, I felt this should have been a WrestleMania match. I think that if they would have used the teeth and stuff at WrestleMania, make it a five to eight minute match very quick, just a palette cleanser. I think, I think they had a missed opportunity here. Martins Detroit says, who keeps inviting these celebrities to wander around backstage? It's not that there are too many celebrities because WWE has always done it. It's that there's too many celebrities highly involved in the storylines. If they were just kind of there for appearances, that would be different. But like they are active participants. Now I will say I am enjoying iShow Speed and LA Night. Yeah. And I'm also even enjoying little Yachty, Little Yachty and and Trick Williams. Like, I think little Yachty's doing a great job. And Pat McFeed, like I said, if they had made him a uh GM, they would have made him a GM. That would have been great. Jelly roll, I could live without. But like it's just it's just that they're so integral to these storylines and it's crazy. Daniel Pabu says, I don't get why Pat was the one who left the ring with the belt on his shoulder. Randy feels like a henchman now. I agree. That was kind of what I said earlier. Just being overshadowed. Pat McAfee should have been like, here, Randy, you look great. Just glazed Randy the whole time. Alfonso Pagin says, No EO, Tiffany, Julia, Mello at WrestleMania, Chelsea Green, too. This sucks. Or what about Solo Sakoa? The guy still has not wrestled at Mania. Elite 5D God says, Why didn't Randy tie up Cody's wife or something? Who cares about Jelly Roll? Yeah, literally, I thought when they cut back to Randy Oregon, I thought it was gonna be Brandy Rhodes. Instead, it was Jelly Roll laid out. It's like, oh man. Like, why do these wrestlers like jelly roll so much? How did how did Jelly Roll get in so good with the wrestlers? And no one knew until suddenly he was performing at SummerSlam. Brian Souza says, I hate that we still haven't had a women's title on a proper PLE, a women's U.S. title match on a proper PLE. They aren't doing anything. Julia versus Tiffany. Yeah, Tiffany Stratton. She beats Charlotte Flair last year. Now where? She's not even on the card. She kind of has something going on with Julia, even, or making a triple threat with Chelsea Green. Chelsea Green deserves to be the card as well, former U.S. champion. And you just know that these entrances are gonna take so long to get to the match. We could easily, easily find a placement on the card for people like Julia, Tiffany, and Chelsea. The comic genius says a week from Mania, and this is what we get. Yeah, the build, the build, man, the build. They rested on their laurels, and they thought that WrestleMania itself would sell WrestleMania. The fact that it's just WrestleMania. But hey, you know what? When you jack up the ticket prices, well, then the fans want their money's worth, and the storylines just aren't there. He does say, shake my head, but at least Royce found his keys. Yeah, Royce Keys was there, but in reality, we should have waited for Royce Keys to come after WrestleMania. Everybody's focused on WrestleMania right now, so it's like don't debut somebody. Just wait two more weeks until after Mania because then it's then it's a splash at least. Jimbo Sly says Sammy's A might be the best heel right now. I genuinely dislike him as a character. And the pushy good guy persona makes my skin crawl. Yeah, I'm I'm uh for the rider divides out there. Everybody's booing him. I know there's a couple of you out there. This is who I'm doing it for. I really hope that this is leading to a Sammy heel turn because I hope Sammy keeps talking about the three rider dives that are somewhere out there. And Tiz Mickey says, I'm glad someone finally acknowledged that we still don't know who attacked Jacob Fatou. I thought WWE forgot and expected us to as well. Yeah, it's like it's insane that they brought it up. Like they bring it up, what, just to remind us that you guys didn't do nothing with it? It's like Triple H is probably gonna bring it up again in like SummerSlam time and be like long-term storytelling. No, that's just like drawn out storytelling. Yeah, keep it a thing and then actually have a payoff, solve it. Like at this point, Triple H is kind of just like laughing at us. Yeah, I I remember, I remember this wasn't solved. And Tracy Wood says this show didn't make me more interested in watching Mania, but it did make me wish that mania was already over. Whew, ouch. What about you boys and girls out there? Tell me, did this SmackDown make you more or less invested in WrestleMania? See ya bye.