The Pat McAfee heel turn wanted to be Attitude Era WWE, but it was WCW 2000 | Column
Pat McAfee was revealed as the mystery caller on the line with Randy Orton on this week’s SmackDown. McAfee, the former NFL punter turned media personality who built genuine (some) goodwill during his run as a WWE commentator, has been inserted into the Cody Rhodes vs. Randy Orton main event picture for WrestleMania 42. While the reveal tried to bring some mainstream buzz to Night One’s main event, it just ended up feeling like the dying embers of WCW in the year 2000.
People overuse the phrase “WCW 2000” as a derogatory term, but I LITERALLY mean it here. Confusing heel turns out of nowhere, breaking kayfabe, talking about terrible TV ratings…it was seriously just missing a “that wasn’t in the script!” line. I felt like I was launched back a quarter-century to when WCW Nitro was desperately trying to be cutting-edge and fourth-wall-breaking. It didn’t work then, and it certainly doesn’t work now.
Steve Austin flipping off his boss in the Attitude Era worked because the story underneath it was (pretty much) airtight. The chaos felt real because the structure holding it together was invisible. When it worked, the outrageousness meant something. WWF in the late 90s was the product of slow build, earned heat and a crowd that had been taken on a journey. That’s the version of this that the McAfee moment wanted to be. Instead, it’s the other version…so all the noise and none of the architecture heat.
WCW 2000 angle on WWE SmackDown
I am by no means saying that WWE is going to die out like the ill-fated World Championship Wrestling, but WCW’s death spiral was a masterclass in what happens when you confuse chaos with creativity. Vince Russo was booking swerves upon swerves until the swerve was the product. WCW in 2000 was a company so consumed with being edgy and unpredictable that it forgot to be good, and isn’t that exactly what’s happening right now? Adding a former NFL punter to a Cody Rhodes vs Randy Orton story nearly 20 years in the making? That feud has history, texture, and genuine emotional weight. McAfee’s involvement doesn’t add anything to that story.
Why the Pat McAfee heel turn?
So why is McAfee here at all? The answer is straightforward. Randy Orton was getting cheered by fans after his heel turn on Cody Rhodes. There’s no other reason to put McAfee in there. WWE is desperately trying to get the live audience to boo Orton and cheer Rhodes ahead of another big WrestleMania match for the American Nightmare.
But as we saw during John Cena’s final run, where no crowd in the world was going to jeer one of the greatest careers in WWE history on its way out the door, people are simply not willing to boo Randy Orton in 2026. Bringing back the 2009 Viper version of him was never going to fix that. If anything, it made everything worse because fans want to see that side of him again. It’s pure nostalgia, and no one wants to boo good nostalgia. The fact that WWE pulled the trigger on the heel turn without accounting for that is genuinely baffling.
I’ll leave you with this, and tell me if you notice anything familiar. WCW 2000 wasn’t failing because people weren’t swinging for the fences or trying to outdo the competition. They were swinging constantly. The problem was that every swing was completely disconnected from the last one. There was no through-line, no earned heat, no real stakes. The “shocking” moments felt shocking only in the sense that you couldn’t believe anyone had actually signed off on them. Not in a fun way, but in a who-thought-this-was-a-good-idea way.
Jake is an SEO-minded Football, Combat Sports, Gaming and Pro Wrestling writer, successful Editor in Chief, Sports SEO Coordinator for NationalWorld and SEO Writer for F4Wonline.com. He has more than ten years of experience covering mixed martial arts, pro wrestling, football and gaming across a number of publications, starting at SEScoops in 2012 under the name Jake Jeremy. His work has also been featured on Wrestling Headlines, Wrestlingnewsco, HotNewHipHop, The Hard Times and Sportskeeda.
Previously, he worked as the Editor in Chief of 24Wrestling, building the site profile with a view to selling the domain, which was accomplished in 2019. Jake was previously the Editor in Chief for FightFans, a combat sports and pro wrestling site that was launched in January 2021 and broke into millions of pageviews within the first two years. He previously worked for Snack Media and their GiveMeSport site, creating Evergreen and Trending content that would deliver pageviews via Google as the UFC and MMA SEO Lead. Jake managed to take an area of GiveMeSport that had zero traction on Organic and push it to audiences across the globe. Jake also has a record of long-term video and written interview content with the likes of the Professional Fighters League, ONE and Cage Warriors, working directly with the brands to promote bouts, fighters and special events.
He previously worked for the (then) biggest independent wrestling company in the UK, PROGRESS Wrestling, as PR Head and Head of Media across the social channels of the company.