The WPA, in its current iteration and under the management in place for the last couple of decades, has been the most incompetent and useless organization in pool, possibly the world. They literally serve no current purpose whatsoever and should just go away. That's not to say that there isn't a need for an organization that could properly fulfill the roles that they were designed to serve, because there certainly is, it is just just that they aren't the right organization to do it, or at least they would need all new management, every last single person, to ever have a chance because the current crop are, based on results, a bunch of bumbling fools.
To be fair, in the climate of pool of the last couple of decades, it could simply be that the WPA didn't have enough industry cooperation along with the ability to have any real bite to their oversight to ever have a chance of being effective no matter who was leading it, although there is also no doubt that some level of a better job could have been done because you literally couldn't possibly do worse. One thing is certain though, whoever fills the role of the WPA must remain independent from other parts of the pool industry in order to have any chance of being effective and being in the best interests of the sport, the fans, and even the players.
That said, for what might seem like the first time, I'm in 100% agreement with the WPA on this one. What Matchroom is essentially trying to do is make it to where nobody else can even attempt to compete by putting on any other big 9 ball events. For example, if Matchroom was in charge of the official 9 ball rankings, even if somebody else came along and wanted to do a 9 ball event with a million dollar prize fund, Matchroom could just say "well we aren't going to allow that event to count towards the official rankings" which might effectively kill it, or they could even say "any player that plays this event will be removed from the rankings list" which would almost certainly kill it. Matchroom's attempted actions here are both in spirit, and by definition, anticompetitive.
I don't begrudge any company for wanting to own their market, but kill them by out-competing them, not by rigging it to where nobody else can even try to compete.
Kudos to the WPA for finally once in their life having a backbone and being willing to put their foot down when it was needed instead of letting themselves get bullied around. It was their constant acquiescing to various other unacceptable behavior in the past that perhaps more than anything else made them so utterly useless, and if they can continue to have a backbone along with some other changes then maybe, just maybe, they can actually and finally serve a needed and useful purpose.