In the past, I have mostly had answers for all of the dumb stuff that WWE has pulled over the years and normally I have always let things play out with storylines and whatever, but I feel like all of the reasons why I quit watching about 10 years ago are all coming full circle. Not to say that I will quit watching WWE, but they’re not giving me many reasons to tune in each week. I started watching regularly again about 4-5 years ago and for the most part, I have been a content fan of the product, but I can’t say that I have enjoyed the last 6 months or so.

Over the last year, we have seen nearly 100 WWE in-ring competitors lose their job and most of this was done in the name of “budget cuts”. While I agreed there was a lot of dead weight in the company over the last year, severing ties with more than half of your roster is telling fans that we don’t care what you think. We lost a lot of our favorites in a short span and while some have landed elsewhere, how could creative fumble on so much talent development? I’ll tell you why, they put the almighty dollar before the fans. Money isn’t going to mean a thing when all of your fans have left, just a heads up. Also, I haven’t talked about it yet, but Vince let go of his own son, so what does that mean in the long-term for other talents? I’ll tell you what I think it means. It means that you can’t fully believe that you will have a job or not on a week-to-week basis. Not saying the deal with Shane could’ve been more difficult than we perceived, but the whole thing seems odd.

The WWE boasted in their Q4 conference call that they had over $1 Billion Dollars of Revenue in 2021. That’s great, but at what cost did you earn that? Fan interest is down big-time. This isn’t a new thing, but it’s worth mentioning. RAW Viewership is down on average 1.5 million viewers from 5 years ago. Sure, there are more viewing options for people today, but still that is a lot of lost viewers that will likely not come back. TV ratings aren’t everything and I realize that, but I also realize that TV ratings tell you if you are putting out a must-watch product. I can tell by evidence of RAW that they’re not. I also realize that Nick Khan is the bad guy in nearly every way possible in all of this, but at the same time, this is a new WWE than we are accustomed to and he is largely responsible for all of this. In the long-run it could be a good thing, but the title of the article doesn’t say that the WWE is slowly regaining my trust.

Now that I have some of the boring stuff out of the way let’s get down to the nitty gritty. Over the last couple of weeks, we had one of the biggest events of the year in the Royal Rumble. It is always an anticipated event and I have to say, the whole PPV wasn’t bad. For the most part, the PPVs aren’t bad, but most of them haven’t been great. I look at it this way. If I wound up paying $60 for a WWE PPV would I get my money’s worth? In 2021, I would say more often than not, no. I can’t say the same about AEW, but I’m not going to talk about them right now. Getting back to this year’s Rumble. It was very predictable, and I don’t think that is always a bad thing. You can get creative with a predictable outcome and WWE decided to not do that this year. The Women’s Rumble was decent, but not great and the men’s rumble just plain bad. A lot of people complained more about a talent issue in the men’s match, rather than predictability. I definitely don’t blame the talent for that. Creative has constantly put them in spots to fail and there’s really nothing they can do about it. Talent isn’t the issue. It is the creative team’s job to make their talent what they should be and there should’ve been 30 legitimate competitors in that match. After Lesnar lost the WWE Championship, it was a given that Lesnar was going to win the Rumble. Before the show, there were roughly 8-10 superstars who had a shot. When Lashley won the title, there was undoubtedly just one legitimate contender in the rumble match. That’s just garbage creative. I really don’t even care that Lesnar won, I thought the result was fine. I hate that there was no doubt in the predictable result.

This brings me to more recent events. Last Friday on SmackDown, Roman Reigns and the Bloodline kicked off the show, like they do the majority of the time and delivered a great promo. Paul Heyman is back with The Bloodline and I think it was a good twist to get the Roman/Lesnar match at WrestleMania (side note: They’re totally overdoing this feud, but I need to talk about other things right now). The promo was heading in a great direction and then…. Goldberg’s music hits… Fans go crazy. Why? At this point, why are you going crazy for the sound of Goldberg’s music. If you look at social media, Goldberg is severely disliked. If you are going to these events live and Goldberg appears, why are you giving him a reaction if you don’t want him around? Doesn’t make sense to me. Also, why can Goldberg literally walk out and get a title shot? Based on the fact that he has lost 3 straight title matches, has he earned that right? Obviously, he is a package deal for Saudi Arabia, but I will never make sense of this. Can anyone do this? Can I go to a random SmackDown and walk down the ramp and tell Roman Reigns to fight me? If so, that’s actually pretty cool, but obviously this is fantasy. Let’s face it, Goldberg hasn’t been exciting in a long time and he shows his age every time he gets in the ring. It would be different if he were a great in-ring competitor, but he isn’t, never was for that matter.

On a similar note, why couldn't Ronda Rousey prolong her decision for her WrestleMania match? Also, why did she choose Charlotte? If I had to do a poll, I would estimate that 70% of fans would rather see Becky/Ronda over Ronda/Charlotte. Charlotte is not a face. I really don’t envision her being one for quite some time. Ronda can be a face, but the way they’re angling this, they’re both heels. Which sucks. Sure, Becky is a heel too, but only in the sense of storyline. If you listen to crowd reaction, she’s a face. I think they’re trying to get Bianca another shot at Becky’s belt, but I really don’t want to see that again. I think Charlotte would be a much better opponent for Bianca and it’s a feud that we haven’t seen yet. This isn’t huge gripe, but it certainly is fuel added to the fire. And to be honest, I really don’t have a huge problem with this match. The biggest problem that I really have is I think they could’ve taken their time with this decision. Because instead of building some more intrigue, you have both of your main events set, now what?

I read earlier this week that Shinsuke Nakamura will be defending his Intercontinental Championship for the first time in 5 months. Not only that, would the average fan even know that Nakamura is champion? Sometimes I forget, and I watch regularly. This is sad, and It is a slap in the face to not only the talent on the roster, but the fans as well. You mean to tell me that in the midst of all of the garbage content on SmackDown over the last 5 months that Nakamura couldn’t defend the title once in that span? You couldn’t give him a 15-minute slot once to defend the belt? That is a lie. There was nothing important enough to take away a potential IC title feud. Fans don’t care about the minor belts for this reason. We don’t care because creative obviously doesn’t care. They could build up so much talent using the IC and US belts, but simply choose not to for whatever reason. That’s how you get better talent in the rumble matches, that is how we as fans get invested in characters. Look at AEW. The TNT Championship was super corny when it came out, but I look forward to watching people compete for the belt because AEW’s creative team lets their fans know that it is worthy of their attention. How does the WWE not realize this?

I say all that because this is the sort of thing that turns fans off of the product. There are a lot of things to be hopeful for and I think I can speak for a lot of fans when I say that most people that continue to watch hope for a better product each week, but have we gotten it on a consistent basis? I can say definitely not. Their profits tell a totally different story of how the product is and that is a credit to the marketing team, but at the same time, loyal fans don’t generally care about the business side of things. They want a good show, two-three times a week, every week. The success of the company is a great thing, but why does the quality of the product and the success of the business have to be mutually exclusive? Maybe this is just another faze that I’m in as a fan where not a lot is making sense, but I’m just not completely interested in what they’re doing right now and it’s sad because WrestleMania is only a couple months away. Hopefully this is all just a gripe session that I needed to get out and not something as drastic as to completely ignore them.

Yacs

I'm Slowly Losing My Patience With the WWE