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World Wrestling Entertainment began their premiere week on September 30 with the “season premiere” of RAW, the premiere of NXT on the USA network and the big prize – Friday Night SmackDown on FOX.
FOX in particular paid a hefty sum of money to bring WWE to their network. It makes sense on both ends – FOX gets a “sports” replacement for UFC and WWE has the potential to get its product in front of new viewers on network television. It should be a marriage made in heaven but already WWE is making some bad choices — choices their hardcore fanbase has seen far too often.
Hardcore fans knew going into the debut of SmackDown on FOX that FOX would pressure WWE into making sure the show featured brand names that the casual fan
would recognize. WWE would capitulate by having heavyweight boxing champion Tyson Fury get into a squabble with Braun Strowman. WWE has done gimmick fights before so this actually came as no big surprise. The big surprise came during the main event of the October 4 show when WWE champion Kofi Kingston, who is supposedly holding WWE’s top title, got squashed by Brock Lesnar in 9 seconds. That’s right – 9 seconds. That squash was quickly followed by the appearance of former MMA champion Cain Velasquez who took to the ring to confront & cause newly minted WWE champion Lesnar to quickly retreat.
Fans immediately took to social media to express their outrage at WWE’s booking of the WWE title match and the company’s disregard for Kingston’s title reign & legitimacy as a top talent. The hashtag #JusticeForKofi quickly trended. Most fans knew Kofi wouldn’t retain the title but what had fans irate was just how quickly WWE disposed of Kingston & his incredible reign to focus on another gimmick match between Lesnar & Velasquez.
That decision came on the heels of the ending segment of RAW that saw the Universal Championship between Seth Rollins & Rusev interrupted by a returning Bobby Lashley. Lashley brought out Rusev’s real-life wife Lana, who hadn’t been seen on TV in months, and the two engaged in a stomach churning kiss in front of a helpless, and hapless, Rusev. Why WWE continues to go with these types of angles is beyond me. They should have learned their lesson from the last time they tried to break up Rusev & Lana by using Dolph Ziggler. It was an unmitigated disaster.
WWE seemed to dodge those bullets but then the main event of this past Sunday’s Hell In A Cell match happened. Universal Champion Seth Rollins took on The Fiend Bray Wyatt in a Hell in a Cell match. The lighting for the match was questionable but the finish, or lack thereof, was one of the worst things I’ve ever witnessed. The referee called for the
bell because Seth Rollins hit Wyatt with a sledge hammer while Wyatt was buried under chairs & a toolbox. Rollins “went too far”… in a match where there is no DQ or count-out. The entire purpose of a HIAC match is that there MUST be a winner. WWE took a character in Bray Wyatt who was supremely over as a psychotic heel and made him into a sympathetic face, the same role that Rollins is supposed to play. The other boneheaded decision WWE made was putting the Universal Championship on the line. The decision was so bad WWE refused to talk about it the following night on RAW.
Then came this past Friday night when WWE had Night One of their draft on SmackDown. The decision to have a “war room” for both the FOX & USA networks was comically corny. No disrespect to Natalya but no one should be erupting in celebration because she was drafted. Equally corny was the decision by FOX to have its NFL & MLB analysts talk about the draft as it if were real. It’s no wonder ratings fell by nearly 1 million viewers from October 4 to October 11.
WWE’s creative writing & booking decisions have been derided for most of this year. At a time when their talent roster across their three brands(RAW, SmackDown, NXT) is the deepest in the history of the company WWE instead chooses to focus on a handful of stars while letting others wallow in the back with catering. The tag team division is still in shambles. The women’s division is non-existent if your name isn’t Becky Lynch or Charlotte Flair. The lack of believable faces to heels is a real problem. The WWE Championship has main-evented only 3 PPVs since January 2018. Keep in mind that A.J. Styles, Daniel Bryan & Kofi Kingston have held that title in that timespan.
Unless WWE can get back to doing a traditional show with coherent story lines that focus on more than a handful of stars then they will continue to have frustrated fans who will look for other options — and they have plenty of options now.
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