“What’s best for business”

The WWE Network production The Cruiserweight Classic (CWC) was an exemplary convergent text that delineated the various ways in which World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) uses its online distribution platform to negotiate and manage the disparate demands and grievances of a frequently hostile “hardcore” viewership. Adapting the concept of affective economics, the author outlines how the CWC points “renegade” consumers toward multiple paratexts, at once segmenting them from the central texts (i.e. Raw and Smackdown) while also preserving their emotional investment in them.