By Wade Keller, PWTorch editor

The last two weeks, Vickie Guerrero has been treated like garbage. Both times I recoiled a bit, not because fans don't like to see her get shown up, but because the way the babyfaces went about dressing her down went too far.

Last Monday on Raw, Ryback told Vickie to shut up twice. Now, that's no big deal in general, but the tone he took and the timing of it was awful.

Both times, Vickie was speaking and about to give Ryback what he was asking for. It was like complaining to a store manager that you got bad service and as he's offering you a gift certificate, you interrupt him and tell him to shut up. It made Ryback look like an idiot, actually, in addition to being a jerk.

Last night, Mr. McMahon's dressing down of Vickie also was too much for me. I get that McMahon is not by any means a pure babyface. I think even that's a mistake, as he should be consistent. Either he's the embodiment of WWE and all the good it represents bringing smiles to people's faces, or he should be the egomaniacal rich boss who looks down at his workers as unworthy of sharing his oxygen.

But McMahon was portrayed as a smiling nice guy in the pictures they aired from the visit to the troops overseas. He's been a guy who has shown up heels. He is standing opposite of Vickie Guerrero and manipulating her into making fan-friendly decisions that she didn't like. So everything was set up for him to be a good guy, cheered and liked by the fans, who would be rooting for him to humiliate or show up Vickie, and therefore also stick it to Dolph Ziggler.

The way he addressed her, though, just felt uncomfortable. He seemed to be bullying her in a way that crossed the line from giving fans the satisfaction of Vickie getting what she had coming and kind of felt like he was rubbing her face in dirt and being excessively mean. Had McMahon acted that way to Teddy Long, he wouldn't have had to change anything about his tone or demeanor or body language to have come across as a complete prick.

There's also the aspect of Vickie being a woman and McMahon towering over her and even demeaning her looks at the start of the promo. I just don't think that's the type of thing WWE's female audience is comfortable with. Even if women like to boo Vickie, I think McMahon's treatment of her would make even the most anti-Vickie WWE viewers feel sorry for her.

Is it a coincidence the female demographics were way down last night? They did a 0.72 rating among women 18-34 last night, down from the usual 1.00+ level. I wonder if there was a drop off after the McMahon segment? I wonder if Ryback lost some female fans after the way he treated Vickie last week?

I'm not saying coddle Vickie, but I am saying that WWE as a testosterone-driven show written primarily by men with a history of treating women on air pretty poorly should be more aware of how they might come across. Heck, the dressing down of A.J. Lee by Dolph Ziggler three shows ago was also heavy-handed and, I felt, went too far even for a heel who was trying to come across as a jerk.

As a babyface, there are ways to get over on a heel by being more clever, more funny, and simply more noble than the heel you are calling out and confronting. The treatment of Vickie the last two weeks went too far and crossed into being uncomfortable, and I felt both Ryback and McMahon came across as unnecessarily harsh and mean-spirited, to the point of making Vickie seem somewhat sympathetic. WWE does not want Vickie to seem sympathetic, so they should tone down the level of nasty intimidation techniques men on the show use against her.

(Wade Keller founded Pro Wrestling Torch as a newsletter in 1987. Issue #1282 will be published digitally and a print copy mailed worldwide to thousands of subscribers this week. He also hosts the daily PWTorch Livecast on Tuesdays and Fridays. He interviewed live former WWE Creative Team member John Carle last Friday at 5:30 ET at www.blogtalkradio.com/pro-wrestling-torch.)

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