Wondering what happened to the Tribute to the Troops special?
According to Dave Meltzer, the Tribute to the Troops was quietly cancelled. The annual show had WWE superstars performing in front of a live audience of the United States Armed Forces. That tradition began in 2003 and ran every single year. Until now. There isn’t a reason given on why WWE opted to stop doing the annual event, but all signs point to it being due to the close association with Vince McMahon.
“It’s done. Obviously the year being up, for the last month people have been asking, when are they taping it? It was not being taped, they had too many other things going on. I don’t know if it’s done for good but this is the first year that they haven’t done anything with that. I think 2019, I believe they didn’t do a television show but they still did events, they still taped stuff. But this year nothing.
It was a Vince McMahon thing and it’s not Vince’s company anymore. It’s not something you’re going to advertise ‘we’re not doing this anymore’ but it quietly went away this year.”
Though it ran under Vince McMahon, the idea actually came from JBL. It was a nice and wholesome event and the former WWE star was proud to take part in it. John spoke about Tribute to the Troops on Something to Wrestle, and he feels it’s something important to carry.
"It’s just been such a cool legacy, such a cool thing to do. I know there’s been some detractors out there, and that’s fine. Overall, Tribute to the Troops, it’s been one of the greatest things I’ve ever been blessed to be a part of, and most people would agree that it has been. I’m glad they’re still doing it.
They still call me and say, ‘Hey, would you come back and do commentary for Tribute to the Troops.’ I’m always happy to do it. There’s not a big war going on now, so it’s not the need for encouraging guys at Christmas, which was our whole goal then, but I think it’s important to carry on, just let people know that we support these guys,"
It’ll be interesting to see if Triple H ever addresses why they didn’t do Tribute to the Troops this past year. Hopefully WWE hasn’t permanently dropped the event, but since it’s synonymous with Vince McMahon then it’s understandable why they would.