20 years since NWO debuted in WWE...

It sucked unless you watched both companies, and I don't think a lot of people did. WWF fans paid to see a WWF product, which is why the Invasion storyline was a bust. I think WWF got creatively inert, boring, and self-gratifying when WCW was purchased. I slowly tuned out and never came back. If I wanted to watch Kanyon, I would have watched WCW. I always thought WWF was a great product from top-down, from the Undertaker to Just Joe. I would rather have watched the Mean Street Posse over Booker T. I'm paying for the WWF package, not for WWF peppered with WCW, doing lazy "dream match" booking. Many stopped watching. Take a poll. I guarantee you would casuals, if asked, would say the same. There's a very specific type of aesthetic that WWF has that is totally at odds with anything else seen in wrestling.

To give examples, I can't think of a more boring wrestler in the '80s than Rugged Ronnie Garvin. He's got trunks, he's boring, his moves suck. He had no character work at all. The emphasis on character work is what differentiates WWF (Disney) from all other promotions. Even when Vader entered WWF in 1996, I was thinking "What's this WCW guy doing here?" Same with Ric Flair in 1991. I didn't feel that way about Dusty Rhodes since he was given color.

When the nWo entered in 2002, I wasn't impressed. For starters, the whole act was dead in water. WCW couldn't even keep it going for 3 years. Wolf Pac was a senile tribute act of WCW hoping against hope for their glory days. They killed all the faces in the company, which is at odds with the cultural norms of the '90s. Why would I want to see them in WWF? Add in the Scott Hall liability 

My view is that the nWo should have been brought in to be disbanded with in-fighting from the start. Have Austin versus Hall and have someone sabotage Hall. I don't know. Use the 6 weeks to set up the disintegration of the nWo, then repackage everyone for a WWF audience. Same with the Invasion in general. Once the curiosity blew over, casual interest dropped. No one wants to see Hugh Morris and Chuck Palumbo on WWF TV. It's significant that Too Cool was drawing more in 2000 than Hulk Hogan was. As a brand, WCW and any of its offshoots were dead. The WWF audience didn't want that and didn't pay to see that. Characters needed to be rewritten and reintroduced on WWF terms

Note that the company has never really recovered. Well, it did once they started to push Batista, Randy Orton, and John Cena. Those were WWF guys. By that point, I was gone

I also think WCW guys were lazy. They got paid way too much to do way too little, to tour so infrequently. It's not shocking that Booker T, an ex-con used to taking orders and surviving, thrived. Same with Shane Helms given that he was trained by the Hardy Boyz. Add Billy Kidman as one trained by the Wild Samoans. WCW guys never learned to work on WWF terms. They had no sense of camera angles since WCW production was trash. They had no sense of how to work matches in some cases.  Look at DDP and Kronik. Or they'd have these undisciplined meatheads who couldn't be properly socialized like Sean O'Haire. 

By 2001, McMahon didn't care anyway. He got the promotion, they were on Wall Street, he was extraordinarily wealthy compared to where he was years prior, and his audience over time would become mainstream media executives and his bottom line. It's now a company too big to fail that makes obscene amounts of money just to spam content. 

Agreed 100%. Few say what you do and more should. I didn't pay to see a WCW product.  The debut of Bischoff might have been my last straw starting with the Invasion where I'm subjected to the likes of an uncharming loser like Hugh Morris, Chris Jericho being the least convincing champion I ever saw in WWF history by that point, the nWo debut, then Bischoff. Add in the weird stuff like Moolah being power bombed and "Hot Lesbian Action," both of which were cringe, and I tuned out and never came back. 

I read Bob Holly's book recently. I don't see him as very credible but the general insight that I got from his book is WWF started to feel like a weird feudal kingdom run by Triple H. I don't think undercard guys like him really know what goes on or why decisions are made, which only fuels a lot of their paranoia. I just think the buyout led to a lot of McMahon's impulses from his id come out

I was logging the Ruthless Aggression line recently. As I was doing background research on the acts, it struck me how they'd hire and fire people on a whim, almost to laugh at them; everyone is uncomfortably roided up, their licensing didn't even make sense with the Gymini twins (Jake and Jesse) while having Jesse and Festus. Those things used to matter because WWF TV was always made easily digestible for casual fans. They'd never use the same first names like that.  They didn't care

I think WWF became McMahon's playground after the buyout. He was a billionaire or close. He wanted to be friends with people in the ruling class. He wanted to make an insufferable product just to impress mainstream executives, who became his only real audience. They stopped using television as an easy-going infomercial for their big shows. Instead, it was used for McMahon to play out his sexual fantasies on the air, do lazy booking since they no longer had to care, etc. (This is someone who pushed for an incest storyline with his own daughter.) I was tracking the career of Candice Michelle recently. I watched a few matches and was like "All they do is softcore porn for neckbeards. There's no heat here." The money was rolling in, they drew the wrong lessons from the Attitude Era, and they had no reason to think otherwise since Wall Street guaranteed that they'd stay wealthy. The whole company became a frat culture of bros, like a lot of Wall Street.  Too big to fail...

His vices caught up with him. I was said to see that. I met McMahon and his daughter a few times. Not going to say how. He came off as a genuine family man. That was before the buyout. He was very low key. I get the delineation between character and real life in public and private spheres are distinct, but it seems like the wealth and status got to McMahon's head. I was genuinely shocked by the allegations because he was nothing like that when I used to see him every few months. I didn't know him or anything like that. He didn't drive in town in anything flashy. I am able to pick up on dangerous people. He didn't come off to me like that. Just very intense and reserved. I think Cornette remarked as well that he was like a school principal, so we're talking a similar time period to when I would see him in town. Goes to show what a billion dollars can do to one's head. Like holy cow. Maybe all of that will satisfy whatever were your thoughts. McMahon made it and I think his dark side came out. His product became secondary to him. 

I agree. Vince was getting desperate.