Well, I must say there's a hint of truth at foster's words. Mostly, because it brings a tpoic barely challenged.

What's most important, the fans or the company's prestige?

No matter how bad the choices look, the WWE execs realized they had something they couldn't imagine: they have pretty much singlehandedly shaped fanhood into what they exactly want. The biggest example is Cena: he's a mediocre wrestler (who should train and do more than what he currently does, humane efforts be damned) who's right now constantly poised as the next big thing. Heck, they wanna place him as the next Hogan, not realizing the fact that it was because of Hogan that wrestling went the way it was. As well, they are trying to sell the shows to the fans, not to the followers.

Allow me to go deeper into this. For this purpose, "fans" are those who enjoy a wrestling company and very specific wrestlers because they enjoy the gimmicks; they are those who have the money to buy the merchandise, the spirit to cheer for those to whom they prefer, and to mock those who they despise. "Followers" are those who enjoy the very concept of wrestling itself, and that make smarter choices when choosing their favorites; they don't easily buy most angles and gimmicks, they look for technique and mic skills more than to feeling, and most of the time are the most vocal fans of wrestling itself. On a nutshell; fans are fans, followers are the true fans.

What's the proportion of fans upon followers? And what is WWE, a WRESTLING promotion company, a wrestling PROMOTION company, or a wrestling promotion COMPANY? Right now, it's a bit of two and three; it has foregone wrestling for promotion and money-making. Which is the reason why Cena is unbeatable; because Cena-fans love him.

For WWE, the most important thing as of now is the fans, not the followers. Followers are those who they need to convince so that they don't lose their money, and those who they need to mock so that they protest and hence provoke impromptu promotion. Since what promotes best: a billboard, an Internet ad, or a controversial article?

As for Jeff: while I don't condone the fact that Matt has been relegated to Midcarder and only remains as Main-Eventer because his brother is one too, there's one important thing I must recall. Gimmicks =/= real life wrestlers. You can't blame Jeff for his troubles, if he's a real good wrestler with the charisma enough to attract the fans AND the followers. It's important that he realizes that drugs are destructive for his organism (well, a case can be done for marijuana, but Jeff's cases have been for even worse drugs, so the statement is relevant). But that he's a good wrestler and that he deserves to be a main-eventer just as much as his brother? Sure. You can't go and punish a gimmick for what he does in real life (aside from anabolical steroids, because it's tantamount to cheating; I'll speak of that later); a gimmick is a gimmick, real life is real life. It would be the same to have a fan do something bad to, say, Randal K. Orton or Chris Irvine, for what their characters "Randy Orton" or "Chris Jericho" do in wrestling. Sure, something has to be done (and it was done: when CM Punk won the first Money in the Bank, it was because the WWE punished Jeff for his second drug case), but you can't turn them into pariahs because of a mistake. Everybody makes mistakes once in a while; and worse, drug addicts fall over and over again, because their willpower isn't as strong as it was before. And you can be clean for about 10 years, and you can feel the urge and fall again (I believe this last bit is scientifically proven) This doesn't mean you'll leave someone with talent and who might work wonders for wrestling because of it; you got to keep a balance. It was fair that Jeff was punished for running afoul of the law, denying him a chance at the title; it's fair that he attempts to do community service and that his talent has allowed him a chance for the gold; it's completely unfair that Matt hasn't been given the same chance and a proper run as a champ for his effort.

And think of this; if Matt's work for the WWE must deserve him a champ run, then you are pretty much agreeing that Cena should be a champ because he barely has a life. I'd advice thinking about what you say.

Now, steroids. Mostly because of Chris Benoit, whose wrestling skills and good gimmick were stained because of his unfortunate incident. It was quite unexpected, nobody imagined he would do that, and it's not easily forgivable. That shouldn't stain his talent at wrestling (even though it can be now questionable), even though his talent was mostly focused on grappling and holding, with some aerial. And as far as I understand, his rage was caused by 'roids, IIRC. It's hard to say he was a good or bad person because of an unfortunate incident, and it's pretty hard now to determine if he was a proper athlete or if he was a fluke. It's equally as wrong to state he was a cheat because he used steroids, when his array of moves only sparingly used strength, and when most of the concept of doing a hold is making someone "tap out" without causing more harm. A proper grappler should know how to do a proper grapple so that the other person won't receive lasting bruises; it requires a bit of talent, a bit of cultivated talent at least. How much of his was raw or cultivated talent, and how much was artificially induced? Well, right now we can't imagine, but surely it's not 0/100%, and surely it must be close enough in proportion to consider he was quite talented. Sure, you can make a case with that, but you can't tarnish what he provided in wrestling with his real life antics. You can aid, you can punish, you can demand a disciplinary action, but you can't blame the gimmick for what the real-life person did, and viceversa.

Wrapping this up: don't go mixing real life and wrestling gimmicks. You can allow for disciplinary action, but you can't punish a gimmick forever for what his real life interpreter does.

As a final note: kill ECW? That's telling the followers that their opinion is worthless, even more than what it is now. ECW was revived as an attempt to please the followers; turns out that they proved they can't please the followers. Closing ECW is tantamount to allowing them to go forward with it. Better to IMPROVE ECW rather than close it. I'll reserve my opinion towards it until I see how Smackdown! runs nowadays; with the bunch of changes, perhaps Smackdown! will prove that people prefer good stories and good wrestlers than Bulkland and Bulk stories.