Hello and welcome to another top 10 debate. I'm Adam Wilborn from What Cool To Join by

one of the deadly boys, Michael Hanflut from What Cool To Talk About, things we didn't

know about WWE in 2018. But before we get into it, if you're a fan of this sort of thing,

make sure you subscribe to What Cool To Wrestling on either iTunes Spotify or wherever you

get your podcasts from for daily wrestling podcasts, where we will be Rawls, SmackDown, NXT,

AW Dynamite, Paper Views, we have interviews, Roundtable discussions and a roundup of the week

complete. With Amariga, of course, on WrestleCulture. As I said, join by Michael Hanflut,

discuss his list. Ten things you didn't know about WWE in 2018. And I have to admit,

am, but reading through this 2018 feels a lot more than three years ago.

Oh, absolutely. We've said on a multitude of podcasts just how fast wrestling moves now,

faster than ever, it's only ever getting faster. And yeah, when I was writing this list, I felt

the exact same way. There have been changes to the landscape of the scene in North America alone,

let alone elsewhere, in New Japan, in the UK everywhere. The just dates so much of this

content, or if not date it, time stamps it, I think, from a very particular period,

shortly before and during WWE became the version of itself today. 2018, if I'm not mistaken,

if it was not, it was definitely 2019, was the year that we first heard that a damning statistic

that as the TV rights fees kicked in, consumer spending would account for less than 50% of WWE's

overall income. And that was quite a turning point when the tickets and the t-shirts and all

that sort of stuff no longer accounts for half of your earnings, then you'd no longer need to

account for all of your audience in the way that you stay. And I feel like in the last two and a

half years we've seen the ultimate upshot of that in WWE, in most of WWE's output, not all,

most of its output. And I think that's why 2018 stands up quite well as a pretty good year

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