At the onset of every year, people set objectives they desire to achieve in the New Year. Every year, we should want to become better than we were the previous year (which is the purpose of New Year Resolutions). WWE would greatly benefit from a number of New Year Resolutions. Here are a few the company should consider doing for 2017:
Establish A Hierarchy:
When everyone on the roster is essentially on the same playing field, it makes it challenging for wrestlers to bulge out. WWE should separate wrestlers from one another, dividing them into different categories, especially the main eventers, who should be well above everyone else. There should be jobbers, lower mid-carders, mid-carders, upper-midcarder, main eventers, and then “the guy”. A pecking order would also help wrestlers get more over. Fans enjoy seeing a wrestler climb the proverbial ladder to the top and seeing them overcome the difficulties along the climb.
But, right now, WWE’s wrestlers are pin-balling around what should be divided sections of the roster, going from mid-carder to main-eventer in a blink of an eye. It is part of the reason Raw’s WWE Champion Kevin Owens does not appear any better than the majority of the wrestlers on the roster. Surely, he won the championship because of an unexpected Balor injury, but still, the company has failed to exhibit he is above the pack, which has done neither Owens nor the title’s credibility any wonders.
Wrestlers need to earn opportunities rather than being handed chances. Fans will naturally like a wrestler who works hard for their opportunities versus one being handed one, as we all like to believe hard work pays off. Granted, it is acceptable for heels to be handed chances, as heels path to victory supposed to be cheap and unfair; however, it is, for example, unacceptable that Dolph Ziggler is the new number 1 contender for the World Heavyweight Championship seeing that he lost feud over the inferior IC title. How are fans expected to root for Ziggler in that match?
In Owens’ case, as aforementioned, WWE had no plans of him winning the championship and had to hotshot the title on him. However, a title should never make the wrestler; a wrestler should always make the title. Even though WWE glazes over that golden rule, it could have at least built Owens up as champion. He could have defeated wrestlers beneath him in a convincing and dominating fashion on Raw, showing he is a force to be reckoned with. Instead, WWE has booked him like a paper champion, even though he has held the title for around four months already. Not only does it hurt Owens. It also hurts the title’s credibility and the brand as a whole. It sends the message that a wrestler who WWE acknowledges is not very good is the champion.
And, what does that say about the rest of the roster?
Could anyone imagine Hulk Hogan, The Rock, Stone Cold Steve Austin, Bret Hart, HBK, and other legendary WWE Champions having competitive, hard-fought battles with mid-carders on TV? It would have never happened. Those wrestlers honestly would never have allowed it to happen. To make matters worse, which we will get more into later on, WWE’s champions are pinned regularly on TV. The only ways someone like Steve Austin would lose on Raw would be by screw job or shenanigans, and even that was very rare.
There needs to be an established pecking order. That way, wrestlers can gradually work their way up the card, so by the time they get to the main event section, they are already well-defined and established wrestlers who can smoothly transition into the main event role effortlessly (opposed to being shoehorned into the section).
Stop Booking Champions as Losers
It should be a big deal when a wrestler goes toe-to-toe with a champion. It should be an even bigger deal when the wrestler defeats the champion, even if it is a non-title match. Either going toe-to-toe with a champion, or defeating him, should be a potential star-in-the-making performance. In WWE, though, it is a regular occurrence. One of WWE’s go-to ways of building up a PPV match is by having a wrestler defeat the champion on TV. Words cannot justify the stupidity of this constant decision.
The whole concept of being champion is that you are above everyone else. They are not on your level. Even if you are a mid-card champion, you are better than everyone else in the mid-card is. Even if you are the Cruiserweight Champion, you are the best cruiserweight there is. No one should seem equal, or worse, above you. The fact that champions lose constantly on TV sends the message they are equal or worse than non-champions are. The championship should invoke superiority, but in WWE, it symbolizes next-to-nothing because their champions are not what you would call winners or unbeatable.
Use Part-Timers Better
There is nothing wrong with bringing in former wrestlers. There are some “lost wrestling fans” who used to enjoy wrestling but lost interest in it down the road, thus seeing familiar faces could spark their interest in the product again, no doubt. As said before, there is nothing wrong with bringing in former stars, but there is something wrong with how WWE uses them.
In the long-run, the purpose of bringing in former wrestlers is to help the full-time wrestlers. They could be the jolt needed to lift them to a higher level. In essence, it could transform them from main event wrestler to super-stardom, becoming the face of the company. Part-timers have come and gone and have barely helped any of full-time roster members.
Most of the time, the part-timers square off against each other, helping no one on the roster. It makes them look inferior to the stars of the past, as the stars of the past come in and automatically get better opportunities than the active wrestlers do. Usually, they are wrestling each other higher on the card for something more valuable.
The Rock came in and elevated whom? The only wrestler that defeated him was John Cena, who was already WWE’s cash cow. He did not need to be elevated anymore. It would have done rising superstar CM Punk wonders to knock off the Great One.
Sting came in and lost to Triple H and Seth Rollins. Triple H, again, is somebody already well-established and did not need any help at this point of his career; and, though Seth Rollins defeated Sting, it was after Triple H defeated him, which hurt Sting’s credibility heading into the match. Moreover, Rollins did not exactly defeat Sting in a convincing fashion either. On top of that, Rollins already wrestled a match against Cena beforehand, a match that he lost clean. Thus, ultimately, Sting looked more weak than Rollins looked strong.
Undertaker, who wrestles part-time these days, has only lost to Brock Lesnar. He has put no one else over, and while some could argue that Lesnar needed an enormous victory, the reason he did in the first place was because WWE botched the beginning of his run. If Lesnar knocked off John Cena and Triple H in dominant fashion, he would not have needed to defeat Undertaker at WrestleMania 30. Someone else could have, someone younger and will be around much longer.
WWE could have booked Brock Lesnar as unconquerable from that point on, marching through tons of wrestlers, to set up a moment in time where the chosen one (who is actually beloved by the fans, aka not Roman Reigns) could slay the beast. However, the company has marred his unconquerable aura, thanks to his loss to Undertaker at Summerslam (even if the finish “protected” him), coming up short in a few triple threat matches (even if he was not pinned), and then losing to Goldberg – a flash-in-the-pan former WCW star who’s not been relevant in a long time and had a let down WWE run – in a matter of seconds.
Brock Lesnar will defeat Goldberg at WrestleMania 33, but the story was about Lesnar avenging his loss against Goldberg. So even if he wins at WrestleMania 33, he will still trail 2-1. Meanwhile, Goldberg will ride off into the sunset – which means he will be another wrestler who came in and failed to put anyone over who could have used the rub.
WWE needs to use their part-timers to elevate their future stars. It does not say much about the future when the has-beens are better than the up-and-comers. It makes WWE’s future seem second-rate and desolated instead.
This concludes part one. The next part will include topics such as WWE’s amount of PPVs a year; how long the PPVs are, overexposure, and story-lines.
