I don’t think I’m breaking any news here when I say that while the financials may be good, WWE has been struggling in many different ways in 2018.
It got to a point where I started compiling a list of everything bad that happened this year that I could think of, and it just kept growing larger and larger.
Of course, this list doesn’t feature every single bad thing. It would be impossible and downright maddening (and depressing) to keep track of every little minuscule error.
Plus, I tried to keep some of my personal bias out of the equation, as there are things that happened that I might not have enjoyed, but others were fond of. Instead, I tried to keep this mostly to the noteworthy things that the majority of the WWE Universe would agree points in the direction of 2018 being a somewhat cursed year for the company.
Without further ado, here is my assuredly incomplete list to illustrate just how much negative energy has surrounded WWE this year, in no particular order:
Roman Reigns’ Battle with Leukemia / Brock Lesnar’s Title Reign
Obviously, this is perhaps the biggest thing to bring up, and it’s not something WWE had any control over, so they can’t be blamed for it like they can with plenty of other things on this list.
Reigns taking his exit to undergo treatment for leukemia completely undermined the most important thing WWE had focused on for the entire year, which was this idea of Reigns being the savior from Brock Lesnar’s universal title reign.
Here’s where WWE can catch some slack, though: they never had to book that to begin with.
Goldberg never had to win the title just to drop it to Lesnar at WrestleMania 33, nor did WWE have to keep the belt on Lesnar an entire year with the damn near promise in mind that it would end at WrestleMania 34, only to drag it out until SummerSlam.
By doing that, when Reigns finally did win the belt, it was only 2 months before he had to relinquish it and it went right back to Lesnar as if that time frame didn’t even happen.
To put that into perspective, WWE spent over 504 days (over 530 if you count Goldberg’s run) building up the idea of Reigns as champion and then 64 days later, go back to square one and revert back to the status quo.
It’s impossible to know what would have been better or worse if Reigns was still holding the title, but WWE purposely put fans through something annoying for an entire year, dragged it out even longer, finally ended things in a way that was “good enough” and then their golden boy, once anointed, gets struck with something absolutely horrible that puts his career and life in jeopardy.
That’s perhaps the biggest sign of a black cloud being over WWE this year, but there are more things to talk about.
Greatest Royal Rumble and Crown Jewel
WWE made a lot of money from working two Saudi Arabia shows this year, but in the process, sold a bit of the company’s soul.
These events were political nightmares, with the latter making the former look like a walk on the beach.
Greatest Royal Rumble was met with controversy over the complete dismissal of all female talent. In an era where WWE touts itself as being progressive with the women’s division (even if they’re very late to the game), it was counterproductive to run an event in an area that refused to let any women be on the show.
That made it seem like WWE didn’t actually care about the Women’s Evolution, and that perception hasn’t dissipated even with the creation of the Evolution pay-per-view.
Greatest Royal Rumble was effectively pointless, as the only thing that actually happened was The Deleters of Worlds winning the Raw Tag Team Championship, but their title reign sucked, so that isn’t even worth having done it.
Then, Crown Jewel came along, and with the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, it became even more problematic to run a second show in Saudi Arabia, but WWE went ahead and did it anyway.
Daniel Bryan and John Cena refused to show up, meaning the card was adjusted to feature yet another match between AJ Styles and Samoa Joe as a lackluster replacement, as well as an injured Bobby Lashley in the World Cup.
That World Cup Tournament in itself was a bust, too. The Shane McMahon angle wasn’t well-received and instead of kickstarting the quick rush of a build to Survivor Series with something hot, people were just pissed.
But hey, we got Hulk Hogan back, right? Oh, yeah, that’s not really a good thing for the company’s image, either. Yeeeesh.
But hey, at least D-Generation X and The Brothers of Destruction were taking their feud to the next level, right? Oh, yeah, Triple H got injured and in the process, one of the big selling points of WrestleMania 35 is no longer on the table as he won’t be able to fight Batista.
And Shawn Michaels is officially bald now. Ugh. My childhood weeps.
The Fans Won’t Follow Orders
By this, I mean when WWE wants the audience to go along with a particular idea and the crowd isn’t accepting of it, which has happened a ton this year.
This is a good thing, in terms of standing up to WWE’s incompetence, but it’s a bad thing in the sense that WWE often acts very stubborn about this and crams things down our throats even more, in an attempt to prove that they are right, we are wrong, and for us to stop going against the script and acting like we know better.
Of course, “the customer is always right” and WWE eventually has to learn that lesson one way or another, which is why Rusev Day was being cheered for months with WWE adamantly denying a babyface turn for the group, until finally caving in. They waited until after he lost momentum to pull the trigger and he hasn’t been at the same level since then.
Then, there’s the Becky Lynch situation, where WWE tried to make her a heel and fans didn’t like it. They tried to make Lynch crap on the fans and they still cheered, and the game plan of heel Lynch and super sympathetic babyface Charlotte Flair started to become “we love Becky, screw Charlotte” instead. They likely would have tried to make Becky the heel against Ronda Rousey, too, and she up and got popped in the nose, changing that around.
Which brings me to…
The Injuries
I’ve lost track of all of the medical problems and I’m sure I’m missing some, but let’s take a look at some of the things other than Roman Reigns and Triple H from this year:
- Becky Lynch vs. Ronda Rousey may actually be a blessing in disguise, but until we have the hindsight to see how this all unfolds, right now, we do have to treat Lynch’s injury as a problem that came up.
- Alexa Bliss is dealing with concussion issues and we don’t know when or if she’ll be cleared to compete again. Her injury happened just at the wrong time to ruin her spot for the Evolution card, downgrading that match as Alicia Fox became her replacement.
- Matt Hardy retired from in-ring action.
- Paige retired from in-ring action.
- Jason Jordan suffered his neck injury and effectively might be done with wrestling, too, in the midst of the biggest push of his career.
- Braun Strowman’s knees may be shot. We know he’s currently out from elbow surgery and TLC may need to be changed.
- Shane McMahon had health issues around WrestleMania.
- Aleister Black was injured before TakeOver, resulting in the planned Triple Threat not happening (although the storyline to come out of that has been great)
- Kane suffered an injury during the Team Hell No angle, cutting that short.
- Erick Rowan was injured while The Bludgeon Brothers were champions, so they had to drop those titles. Then, Luke Harper suffered an injury as well, so both are on the shelf.
- Brie Bella’s horrible botches are an entirely separate thing to complain about, but in the process, she managed to injure Liv Morgan
- How many people have been replaced during Mixed Match Challenge because of injuries?
- Other injuries include Kevin Owens, Sami Zayn, Sin Cara, Tye Dillinger (who got injured right before he was going to wrestle for the first time in a while), Zelina Vega, Maria Kanellis, Fandango, Goldust, Jinder Mahal, Jeff Hardy, Samoa Joe, etc
Poor Ratings
People are really hating Raw nowadays in particular, and the ratings have gone down so low that they recently had the lowest rating in the history of the show.
When you start the year off with a Raw 25th anniversary celebration (which was massively underwhelming, by the way) and then you end the year with your worst viewership ever, that is indicative of major problems going on.
Botched Storylines
How great was that Sasha Banks and Bayley feud?! You know, the one where they kept having the same argument every single week for something like six months and then it just sort of ended with them apologizing for the umpteenth time and being besties again?
Asuka and Shinsuke Nakamura won their Royal Rumbles. They both failed to win their titles at WrestleMania. Since losing her undefeated streak, Asuka has fallen significantly down the totem pole. Nakamura, even as United States champion, can barely ever get any screentime on SmackDown, let alone an actual feud to sink his teeth in. He’s mostly popped up once a month to randomly lose to someone.
The best way to illustrate to FOX executives how viable a brand SmackDown is for them after their purchase is clearly to have that roster get destroyed at Survivor Series with a clean sweep, right? Oh wait, it wasn’t a clean sweep entirely, because someone screwed up and had the wrong match finish for the pre-show, so WWE managed to mess up doing a stupid idea, and their answer to that was to just say “it didn’t count” to everyone who just witnessed it!
When looking back, AJ Styles had a massively uneventful title reign. For a full year, he basically feuded with Nakamura and Samoa Joe in a series of nut-shots and that’s about it.
Rich Swann, Enzo Amore, Big Cass and Lars Sullivan
Technically, the Rich Swann stuff is a carryover from last year, but his release officially happened in the early part of 2018.
Then, Enzo Amore ran into a gauntlet of problems that made the company look bad, resulting in his dismissal and the need to retool 205 Live to no longer surround the most featured person and the champion on the program. Enzo would later also make a mockery out of Survivor Series, because WWE didn’t manage to see that coming with him sitting ringside like that, somehow.
Even without Enzo by his side, Big Cass still managed to get into trouble, too, going from being someone they were clearly pushing to being fired for multiple behavioral problems.
Now, the current person dealing with these kinds of issues is Lars Sullivan, whose offensive message board posts from years ago were drudged up, putting WWE in a bad situation where they obviously want to push him, but by going through with that, they’re effectively saying they are okay with what he had done, which seems hypocritical given how many other people do or have done similar things and aren’t given a pass like Sullivan is, or Randy Orton, who also had some bad stuff come out about him several months back that were just brushed aside.
Miscellaneous Other Things
NXT UK took forever to get up and running, didn’t it? It started in January of 2017 and it took a full year and a half before tapings even began, and even then, someone on the planning board didn’t understand how calendars work, which meant episodes didn’t air in time to coincide with plans for Evolution. The NXT UK Women’s Championship was supposed to be defended, yet the champion wasn’t established on television until just recently, well after Evolution.
John Cena and Nikki Bella went through their whole breakup this year. That’s good for the Total Divas crowd that loves the reality show gossip, but if it’s a legitimate thing that has a lot of heartbreak involved, then by all means, 2018 wasn’t a good year for either of those two.
Deaths for this year included “Grand Master Sexay” Brian Lawler, Jim Neidhart, Bruno Sammartino, Vader, Nikolai Volkoff, Matt Cappotelli, Jose Lothario and more, including how in just the span of this week, Dynamite Kid and Larry Hennig passed away.
So What Does This Mean?
Ultimately, I’m not a superstitious person. I don’t believe things will change if Vince McMahon throws some salt over his shoulder or something. But it’s clear this has been a rough year for WWE and they need to acknowledge that, learn from the mistakes and actually try to put in the most amount of effort to prevent these kind of things from happening again in 2019.
WrestleMania 35 cannot be a “good enough” event like WrestleMania 32. WWE can’t treat this bad year as stretching until April and then they can start to heal. They need to start that process right now and take the holiday to reflect on the problems going on and brainstorm ways to fix them.
2019 needs to start off with a bang in a good way. They need to show fans that this coming year will be different and not just plagued with the same issues that have been going on for far, far, far too many months.
Otherwise, those ratings will continue to fall, the audience satisfaction will follow suit and everyone will be in for a miserable 2019.
