Thursday, March 28, 2024
EditorialWWE in 2021: Biggest Blunders of the Year

WWE in 2021: Biggest Blunders of the Year

3,250 views

I thought 2020 was a mess for WWE and 2021 would go ahead and bring about some stability. Boy was I wrong.

2021 was just as chaotic, if not more. The pandemic opened up in a way that allowed for WWE to go back to live crowds, but that didn’t stop the company itself from being its own worst enemy. Self-sabotaging at nearly every turn, it seemed like the word of the year was “unrest” in some fashion or another.

Now that 2021 is coming to a close, this is the time to reflect back on the previous 12 months and try to learn some lessons to take into the next year so the same mistakes aren’t made. While we can’t force WWE to learn, we can at least point out what problems came up.

With such, it’s time for the annual Biggest Blunders and Greatest Wonders of the Year lists, starting with the bad news first and the blunders.

This means the top mistakes, flubs, mess-ups, bad booking decisions, terrible ideas, awful matches, crappy company strategies, unfortunate circumstances and anything else along those lines.

This list is in no particular order and is quite obviously opinion-based, so I invite everyone to chime in with their own ideas of the worst things from WWE in 2021 in the comments below!

Without further ado and in no particular order, let’s get started…

Black Wednesday…Again…and Many More Times

April 15, 2020 was dubbed “Black Wednesday” for how WWE fired tons of Superstars in an effort to cut costs. It was widely considered harsh and met with criticism that it was cold and unnecessary.

Fast forward to April 15, 2021. Exactly the same day, WWE does it again.

Then, many more times throughout the year, we would see these mass releases pop up out of nowhere. You’re going about your normal day and then POOF, Bray Wyatt and Braun Strowman and others are gone.

Each time this happened, WWE took a hit. The morale not only must be absolutely awful there and getting worse, but the programming isn’t getting any better and the fan base is becoming increasingly more frustrated. Now, the Superstars themselves are being more vocal, complaining about these releases and such.

People who once would have said they thank WWE for their time and that they’re excited for the future are saying “Fuck this company” and the like. It’s a bad look, and it’s an even worse look that WWE seemingly doesn’t care and is continuing to do this.

Rinse and repeat. People get fired, it makes no sense and came out of nowhere, and they say “budget cuts” and nothing else.

While you could argue WWE doesn’t see this as a blunder/mistake, as they think they’re making the right decision, I have to chalk it up to one of the worst things of the year because I can’t help but to feel this is doing nothing but padding out some numbers while the company’s reputation is tanking, and we’ll look back on this and realize it was all a mistake.

Chaotic Lack of Creative Direction

2021 was exhausting trying to provide analysis for. That’s my job here and elsewhere, and more often than not, I found myself scratching my head and pulling out my hair that none of this made any sense.

I’m fine with being wrong if my predictions don’t come out the way I thought they would. If I dislike the outcome (whether it was predictable or not), I’ll be disappointed, but if I’m just flat out wrong and surprised in a good way, I’m happy about that. It doesn’t hurt my reputation all that much and the fan in me is pleased with the end result. But what I don’t like is when I look at something that could go 5 different ways with 1 or 2 logical outcomes, I examine and explain why, and WWE up and does something out of left field because “plans changed.”

What bugs me about that is that it’s so clearly not WWE’s intended idea. It’s not as though they’re doing this to throw people like me off our games. What’s happening is they don’t have any idea what they’re doing in the first place!

How can we predict anything if WWE doesn’t even know what is going on the moment it’s happening?

Look at the way television works these days. They’ll go into an episode of Raw just as it’s airing, not knowing the full scope of what the plan is. They’re writing some shit as it’s going on. Some of it—a lot of it—outright happens with literally not the slightest idea in mind.

Sonya Deville is an authority figure not because they decided it would be a good direction for her character or they needed that spot filled. She has this part because she casually mentioned she’d like to wear a suit, they told her to go get the one she has, and they had her walk down the hallway with it. THEN, they decided they could make her an authority figure. AFTER IT AIRED.

Look at Tian Sha. They spend weeks airing vignettes to hype this story. Weeks after that are spent building up mystique. Not too long into this trio, and before anything of note happens, Xia Li is taken out of the mix. Then, Mei Ying finally wrestles, but by her second match, she loses to Indi Hartwell. After that, she’s gone. Now, she’s Wendy Choo and she takes naps, while Boa is the sole proprietor of this Tian Sha gimmick.

You can’t tell me that was their intention from the start.

The same goes for Hit Row. In the span of a few months, the group was formed, B-Fab took forever to wrestle her 2 matches, they put the North American Championship on Isaiah “Swerve” Scott (after wasting it on Bronson Reed, who they planned for the main roster and cut at the same time), then moved everyone to SmackDown, took the belt off Scott, started hyping them, brought them in for their debut, fired B-Fab, then fired the rest of them.

2021 was filled with far too many examples of pushes stopping abruptly, storylines ending with no resolution, babyfaces and heels switching alignment as if everyone is Big Show and has mood swings every other week, and all sorts of “oh well, plans change, get over it and don’t think about it.” WWE really wants you to have short term memory loss, forget anything that’s ever bad, remember only the good, give them the benefit of the doubt no matter how many times they prove that to be foolish, and to always be so glass half-full that you perpetually think the next thing will make up for all the bad.

The problem is that they haven’t built up the trust to deserve that.

All 2021 did was to show that we can’t depend on anyone to be safe from a release even if they’re currently in the midst of a push, holding a championship or someone WWE holds in high regard.

Samoa Joe’s NXT Run

When Samoa Joe was released, it sucked. He was then brought back and that made me happy, as I’m a big fan. Even though he would be an authority figure on NXT, it was still better than nothing.

That lasted all but what, a month? WWE fast-forwarded straight from “he can’t touch anyone” to “eh fuck it, he can fight for the NXT Championship” in no time.

Once he won the title, he quickly got injured again and hasn’t been seen since.

This isn’t entirely WWE’s fault, but it’s still one of the biggest blunders of the year. With the benefit of hindsight, especially considering how Karrion Kross turned out, it seems like it would have been better if someone else had won the championship. Maybe Tommaso Ciampa should have been the guy and they could have skipped straight to his title run.

Karrion Kross and Scarlett

Speaking of Karrion Kross. Good lord, this guy had a rough 2021, and that’s after it looked like it would be a redeeming year for his unfortunate injury in 2020.

To get the belt and immediately have to relinquish it due to injury sucks. He got it back, but 2021 was spent ruining all that progress.

It all started when he made his Raw debut and lost to Jeff Hardy in something like 2 minutes. That immediately killed so much of his mystique as he was an unstoppable juggernaut and undefeated.

The bandage was ripped off. He was no longer invulnerable and he was clearly going to lose the NXT Championship soon to Samoa Joe, which happened.

Then, after moving to the Raw roster officially, Kross never once paired back up with Scarlett. Instead, he was given some absolutely atrocious ring gear that looked like a cross between a gimp mask and something from Zardoz, or a cosplayer’s attempt at some personalized Demolition gear.

Before long, Kross was taken off television and fired, along with Scarlett, who never got to wrestle for WWE.

Isn’t that insane?

Keith “Bearcat” Lee and “Reckoning” Mia Yim

I can’t mention how badly WWE botched Karrion Kross without talking about the nonsense that went on this year with Keith Lee and Mia Yim.

First off, RETRIBUTION was awful. Absolute shit. How that lasted as long as it did without someone pulling the plug is beyond me. Poor Mia Yim never got a chance to be anything but “Reckoning” on the main roster and she deserved so much more.

This year, she spent most of her time MIA helping Keith Lee fight off COVID complications.

After months of inactivity, Lee finally made his return, only to be rechristened “Bearcat” for some reason. He didn’t need it. He’s The Limitless One. He had a great entrance theme, followed by an awful generic one, followed by another great one, and they stripped him of that, too.

All his personality was gone. He was just some big guy wrestling on Main Event. Then, he was fired.

“Look what I’ve got here” is something Vince McMahon said about Keith Lee. He knew Lee had potential. So why did they cut his feet off and then act like it was his fault he couldn’t run?

Handcuffs in the Last Man Standing Match at Royal Rumble

The worst thing Roman Reigns was part of this year was his Last Man Standing match against Kevin Owens at Royal Rumble.

Arguably the biggest legitimate normal botch of 2021, the handcuffs in that match worked a little too well and Reigns was truly unable to get to his feet before the referee’s 10-count. That should have signaled the end of the match, and if it wasn’t The Tribal Chief and a championship match on a pay-per-view, the referee would have done his job to say “Nope, I’m supposed to count the real thing and treat it as a shoot, so if you guys mess up, it’s on you.”

Instead, they fumbled around and panicked while trying to film different angles that wouldn’t show that it was all going to shit, hoping fans would just cover their eyes and act like that didn’t happen. It was awful and hilarious.

Nikki A.S.H. Beats Tamina by Accident

Another botch that stands out to me was when Nikki A.S.H. pinned Tamina on Monday Night Raw when she wasn’t supposed to. You can tell because of the confusion that happens, including Tamina being announced as the winner and her music playing despite being pinned.

If you missed it, check it out:

Mandy Rose Slips at WrestleMania

On the subject of botches, one of the more publicized of 2021 in WWE was when Mandy Rose slipped and fell during her entrance at WrestleMania 37.

At the time, it was one of those moments that you chuckle at, say “oh no, poor girl” and, at least in my case, write it down on your notes to remember for the end of the year. Everyone makes mistakes and it was a funny one, but not the most uproarious laughter kind of botch.

Unfortunately, WWE thought it was an hilarious thing to milk and managed to run it into the ground with our next topic…

Everything with Nia Jax

I think in 2021, every time someone said “I know, what about ___” in regards to Nia Jax, someone should have slapped them in the face before they got the idea out.

Mandy Rose slips and falls, so WWE thinks they can spin that into some thing where Jax is slipping and falling. It’s very “let’s make this our own and capitalize on it. Uh oh. It sucks now.”

This was the year of Jax falling on her ass and shouting “my hole”, too.

All the injuries. The bad matches. There’s that weird fight with Charlotte Flair. Finally, there’s a release.

Normally, that would mean a good thing to end the suffering, but that’s not even true!

If you take her account, Jax had requested time off for a mental health break and WWE effectively fired her as a result. That’s absolutely terrible. Even someone with her track record and problems doesn’t deserve to be let go for that reason.

If that’s the truth, that means Jax had every reason to be let go for a long while, only to be released for something that she shouldn’t have been fired for. Imagine that.

Everything with Eva Marie

Eva Marie came back this year. I bet you wish that wouldn’t have happened, right?

We knew how this would go. She’s an incredibly attractive woman, but she can’t wrestle, struggles to cut a decent promo and only really has one character trait to pull off.

This whole thing with the Eva-lution was trash. We didn’t need yet another person using the phrase “role model” to try to get heat this year, as that’s overplayed.

Doudrop herself, aka Piper Niven, isn’t bad, but the Doudrop concept was flawed and the sooner it was done, the better.

Eva Marie’s feud with Alexa Bliss was garbage, capped off with her terrible trip that she did on the playground promo. You might recognize that from many clips of Botchamania since then.

After this short experiment, Eva Marie was let go, making all of it rather pointless.

Peacock

RIP WWE Network. Instead, the United States has been using this Peacock service, which has been by and large crap.

It took MONTHS to get the ability to pause, rewind and rejoin the live show. That should have been there from day one.

It also took months to get most of the old content on there. Not all of it is there, some of it is edited, and it’s all harder to find than it should be. That’s because the interface is trash and groups things as seasons, rather than having a more intuitive search function like it used to have.

No more match segments or the ability to search for individual matches.

You can kiss most of your shows goodbye, too. WWE essentially stopped producing content. Ride Along, Table for 3 and other staples just haven’t happened this year. Even the shows they did already produce haven’t aired most of the time. I’m still waiting on that Vladimir documentary, for instance.

I personally spent week after week bugging Peacock about NXT UK not ever starting on time. If you’re finally seeing it airing at 3 p.m. ET like it should, you have me to thank for that, and that’s not even an exaggeration, as I was the only person apparently who was willing to put in the effort to sit and talk with them Thursday afternoons to try to figure this out.

I miss the WWE Network, don’t you?

WrestleMania Rain Delay

You can’t mention botches and Peacock and programming without talking about how finally, after so many months of not having any audience, WrestleMania suffered its first ever rain delay.

Weeeeeeee’re baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaack just kidding, hold on for a while.

Obviously, this is not WWE’s fault. Try as they might, they don’t have the power to control everything, including the weather. But this was still one of the biggest blunders of the year in general.

Any other year under any other circumstances, this wouldn’t have been as big of a deal. But the fact that it happened at WRESTLEMANIA and after a year of being without a crowd, at the beginning, felt like bad luck and fate had a baby that day.

Ember Moon / Shotzi Blackheart / Tegan Nox

Ember Moon was all over the place this year and none of what she attempted to do really worked. Despite being a tag team champion, it was a superfluous run that meant nothing, really.

Ember’s Law, at this point, should be defined as “saying you’ve figured out how to correct your flaws and that you finally know what to do to get back on track, only to then dig the ditch deeper.”

Her team with Shotzi Blackheart was thrown together, then tossed aside. Shotzi was brought up to SmackDown alongside Tegan Nox, for some reason.

Nox and Shotzi then had their issues. They won numerous No. 1 contender matches, only to never get their title shots. After being split in the draft, Shotzi turned heel and Nox never popped up at all for Raw before being fired.

Product Placements and Advertisements

WWE got paid handsomely for two product placements on pay-per-views this year. The first advertisement was to tie into Batista starring in Zack Snyder’s Army of the Dead by having a bunch of zombies involved in the Damian Priest vs. The Miz match, which resulted in The Miz getting injured for the first time of his career. No Batista, by the way.

Most recently, at Survivor Series, the next tie-in was with The Rock’s Netflix film Red Notice. Vince McMahon grumbled over having Cleopatra’s egg, gifted to him by The Rock. It was stolen, with the grand plot of this turning out to be that Austin Theory wanted a selfie with it and took it pretty much “because they couldn’t think of anything else. Shut up. Stop criticizing and just be happy Vince is on screen.” No Rock, by the way.

Both of these made them some money, but both of them sucked.

Lacey Evans pregnant ric flair storyline

It feels like a lifetime ago, but the beginning of the year had one of the worst storylines of 2021 revolving around Lacey Evans feuding with Charlotte Flair. Ric Flair was stuck between the two in a weird way in that Charlotte wanted nothing to do with him, but kept being badgered by Evans flirting with her father.

This resulted in a pregnancy bit and Evans legitimately being pregnant and taking the rest of this year off. Ric eventually left the company and Charlotte was taken off the card for WrestleMania due to COVID precautions.

We got Rhea Ripley beating Asuka for the Raw Women’s Championship in what felt like a haphazard scenario because it was never the plan. But imagine how bad it would have been if they had done Evans vs. Flair, probably with Ric as a special referee or something, like what they seemingly intended to do. Yikes.

Superstar Spectacle and NXT Expansion

Remember when Superstar Spectacle happened at the beginning of the year as a ThunderDome special featuring a bunch of people nobody had ever heard of who couldn’t wrestle and were just smiling ear to ear as if they had a gun to their head and would be shot otherwise?

How about how some of those people were never seen again, like Sareena Sandhu or Giant Zanjeer?

This was a pilot of sort for an expansion of NXT, likely to be called simply NXT India. It went absolutely nowhere.

It seems this is also at least indirectly responsible for killing NXT Japan, too. Kairi Sane was rumored to be a part of getting that together and nothing came about. At all. Not even any teases or announcements of meeting with people. No purchases of Japanese companies to fill the void and start with that talent. Nothing.

Instead of expanding, NXT is shrinking. Imagine that.

Bray Wyatt

I’ve long been critical of Bray Wyatt because I could always spot flaws in the presentation. It never seemed like they wanted to fully pull the trigger. They always back away and waste a lot of time going absolutely nowhere.

I knew in November 2020 that we’d get Wyatt vs. Randy Orton dragged out all the way until WrestleMania and that it wouldn’t amount to jack shit. Unfortunately, I was right.

For months, WWE wasted time dawdling with that feud, only to have it end with a giant jack-in-the-box, a swerve turn from Alexa Bliss for the sake of a turn and nothing more, no follow-up, and soon after, Orton turns babyface. Thankfully, his stuff with Riddle as RK-Bro has been amazing, but the Wyatt side of 2021 was atrocious.

No wonder Wyatt was let go if he was critical of this type of creative direction (or, rather, indirection). I’d be complaining, too! For them to spend all this time and have no endgame in mind, then to pull that crap and go “Well. Good enough. Let’s move on.”????

Honorable Mentions

  • UpUpDownDown got neutered in so many ways this year. They lost tons of regulars and then stopped producing content altogether.
  • How does WWE let Christian come back after all these years, with Edge back as well, and they manage to lose him to AEW? No team-up with Edge outside of Royal Rumble, or feud with each other? What a wasted opportunity.
  • WWE shouldn’t have split The Hurt Business. Even after teaming them back up, they’ve really only had Shelton Benjamin and Cedric Alexander as a duo, rather than standing alongside MVP and Bobby Lashley. It’s not the same and they messed up something that was going so well.

Stay tuned for the flip side of this with the upcoming Greatest Wonders of the Year post.

What do you think were the biggest mistakes and worst things to happen from WWE this year? Drop your list in the comments below!