New Year’s Resolutions. No, that’s not the name of WWE’s newest January pay-per-view – those are given far more descriptive, often disturbingly phallic, names. Like Great Balls of Fire. Or Crown Jewel(s).
No, I’m talking about the common year-end tradition of undertaking to change an undesired trait or behaviour, in order to accomplish a personal goal or self-improvement. Whether it be to spend more time in the gym, to work less, eat better or visit family more often, we’ve all got designs on how to make next year even better and more productive than the last. After all: new year, new you and all that!
Although the practice is normally reserved for individuals, surely we could all agree that corporate conglomerates stand to benefit just as much from changing a thing or two. Possibly even a thing or twelve if that company happens to be WWE.
Speaking of which, I’ve conveniently picked out twelve such areas in which WWE could improve itself in 2019. Go figure. This is not an exhaustive list of course, as there are countless ways in which the company could do better in the coming year. Don’t have people indiscriminately piss on things, for starters.
Instead this is meant to address only the major areas of concern, those which could have the most immediate impact on the product going forward. Although there is no guarantee that WWE will take any of these ideas on board, there is nevertheless no better time than the present to introspect and make some considered choices on the path forward. For as Mark Twain once so eloquently said about New Year’s Day:
“Now is the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions. Next week you can begin paving hell with them as usual.”
Couldn’t have said it better myself, Marky T. Let’s get the ball rolling with something we can all agree on.
1. End the Brock Lesnar Experiment
I’m sure we’ve all resolved at some stage to let go of the negative influences in our lives. Close the chapter on that toxic relationship, forget the friend who does nothing but bring you down.
Well, Brock Lesnar is that 300-pound, multi-millionaire, knuckle-dragging friend. You know the type.
Once one of the biggest draws in all of sports, the Minnesotan mastodon has finally overstayed his welcome. If SmackDown is indeed “the House that AJ Styles built”, then Raw is “the House that Brock Lesnar is squatting in”. Get your own place, Brock! You’re 41 years old, for goodness sake!
In this purported “New Era” that Shane McMahon loves to yell at the locker room about, one major audience annoyance remains. Get the title off Brock, give it to someone who cares enough to show up every week, and let’s collectively move on with our lives.
2. Braun Strowman Wins the Universal Title
Speaking of crowning a new champion, one popular candidate to take over the mantle will surely be ‘The Monster Among Men’. In fact, beyond being just a popular choice, we’ve likely reached the point where Strowman needs to claim the belt.
Previously believed to be impervious to big losses, that theory was too often put to the test in 2018. The behemoth, who easily swept aside the likes of Elias and Kevin Owens, repeatedly faltered when the biggest prize was on the line.
In five Universal Title challenges dating back to SummerSlam in 2017, Strowman has failed to triumph in any of them, with the most recent loss coming in barely three minutes against Brock Lesnar at Crown Jewel.
I’m not sure how many more championship losses Braun can rack up before he stops being seen as a credible threat and starts becoming the modern-day Kane – a reliable body with a respected career, yet someone who could never quite break into that upper echelon of talent.
Instead of finding out, just hand the giant Meat Castle the belt and let’s see what he can do.
3. Build More Stars
Stars are like honest, hard-working politicians. You can never have enough, but they’re incredibly hard to find. Satire! (Well, sort of.)
And this is something that WWE appreciates more than most. For much of last year, the company has devoted most of its resources towards building three men. Braun Strowman, to be fed to Brock Lesnar. Lesnar, to be fed to Roman Reigns. And Roman himself.
Sadly, with Roman battling serious illness, Brock out smashing big rocks against slightly bigger rocks (or whatever he does in his spare time) and Strowman dealing with injury, WWE spent the last few months of the year bereft of any major main event talent.
While the promotion’s blue brand was just about able to survive thanks in great part to Daniel Bryan and Becky Lynch, Raw has been a figurative wasteland. I’m talking Baron Corbin in the main event kind of wasteland.
While no one could have predicted this confluence of events, WWE only has itself to blame for not having a ready-made act to step up. Outside of the men spoken of above (and Ronda, Becky and Charlotte in the Women’s Division), the company has neglected most of the rest of its roster.
It’s a travesty that needs to be remedied in 2019. Elevate new faces into the main event frame, cycle good workers into the mid-card and above all else create interesting stories to build feuds around. If WWE has learnt one lesson it’s to pay more attention to those outside the Universal Title picture, and it’ll create more stars to carry the company to greater heights.
4. Create a More Inter-Connected Universe
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-M4qKQKZxPM
WWE recently produced an intriguing short film, chronicling the period between Becky Lynch’s injury at the hands of Nia Jax and her awesome TLC triple threat match, as told from Becky’s perspective.
One of the more fun aspects of the documentary was seeing the Usos giving the then SmackDown Women’s Champion a wide berth while she was filming a backstage interview. Not one to ever leave someone unscathed though, ‘the Man’ quickly pivoted to direct some of that Irish fire at the decorated tag team. When a trailing Killian Dain dared to mumble something under his breath, he too was met with a fierce “What did you say, Damo?”
None of this strictly served to promote any of Becky’s various feuds with Jax, Rousey, Charlotte or Asuka, however it revealed everything we needed to know about her character. She’s a badass who refuses to ever yield a backwards step to anyone.
It was the kind of organic, fluid backstage atmosphere WWE should always strive to foster. A universe where men, women and Nicholas freely interact with one another and storylines bleed across divisions. Why can’t we live in a world where Becky crosses paths with Seth Rollins? Or Tommaso Ciampa runs into Daniel Bryan? Make the backstage area feel more alive; it would only help build characters and tease future programs.
5. Raw Should Drop an Hour
We’ve spoken about expanding the ambit of WWE’s shows, now it’s time to talk about reigning it in a bit. Specifically, bring Raw back to the two-hour format it held prior to Raw 1000.
Three consecutive hours of anything is simply too long, and bad wrestling is certainly no exception. Especially if it’s delivered on a weekly basis. Asking the Raw writers to produce that amount of compelling content every Monday night is an impossible task, destined to end in meaningless No Way José matches and awful women’s Q&A sessions.
Both NXT and SmackDown Live are far superior offerings, aided in part by their shorter run times. Cut Raw down to two hours, trim off some of that mind-numbingly bad drivel, and the show can only improve.
6. No Middle-East Show
While we’re on the topic of cutting things out, how about we go a year without a blatant money grab that turns into a political firestorm?
Far from being the unifying, diplomatic projects they were marketed as, The Greatest Royal Rumble and Crown Jewel were merely vanity exercises which drew the ire of many fans. Without revisiting too much of the controversy, WWE essentially decided to sacrifice storytelling, exciting matchups and even some of its talent in order to hold the Saudi showpieces. Daniel Bryan and John Cena flat-out refused to attend the more recent event, while Sami Zayn was reportedly prevented from even entering the country for the former.
As if that weren’t bad enough, the wrestling itself was just plain abysmal. Watching Shane McMahon being crowned the ‘Best in the World’ (after beating Dolph Ziggler of all people) reminded me of a call that Mauro Ranallo made during the WarGames match this past November: “Mama-effing-Mia”. Only not in a good way this time.
As unlikely as it is that WWE ends its relationship with the controversial Saudi government in 2019, we could all do without a repeat of last year’s middle-eastern disaster.
7. Lay Off the Part-Timers
A continuation of the Crown Jewel debacle, it’s time to let go of WWE’s legends. While titans like Shawn Michaels, The Undertaker, Triple H and Kane should absolutely be revered and celebrated in wrestling circles, they should never be allowed to step inside a ring again. And that goes double for Shane McMahon!
Watching a 50-year-old Undertaker drag his body around a ring for half an hour was downright depressing, especially when the other competitors were faring equally poorly. Triple H tore a pectoral muscle, Michaels concussed himself and at one point things got so bad that even Kane’s mask attempted to escape the match prematurely.
At best, the reliance on part-timers leads to Shane jumping off something really high and crashing through something very brittle. At worst, you have that chump winning a Best in the World Tournament and forming a tag team with The Miz. Either way, it’s not drawing any more eyeballs to WWE TV and takes up critical spots on the card that could be better filled by younger, up-and-coming faces. Like Chad Gable.
8. An NXT Call-Up Should Claim Gold
This plea isn’t reserved to the six announced call-ups due to arrive in the coming weeks. WWE is blessed with an abundance of talent, a lot of which has been routed through its developmental brand, NXT.
Tragically though, much of this talent has been squandered once called-up to the main roster. It’s a sad indictment when the most successful of all the NXT graduates in 2018 is unquestionably Drew McIntyre – a man who spent most of the year as Dolph Ziggler’s muscle and whose lone championship came as a result of defeating the B-Team.
WWE needs to make better use of its developmental talent. Andrade ‘Cien’ Almas, responsible for one of the few five-star matches in WWE last year, should be in the title picture. SAnitY is an exciting tag team who should be utilised better. Ember Moon is one of the best wrestlers in the company’s women’s division, yet hasn’t even had a single storyline all year.
WWE can’t afford another lacklustre year of NXT call-ups and should ensure that at least one of them claims gold (and goes on a good title run) in 2019.
9. Coherent, Long-Term Booking
As anyone who witnessed the feud between Baron Corbin and Finn Bálor could attest, the word “coherent” is key here. Because WWE has a tendency to confuse story with a long sequence of Lashley sister appearances and obstacle course segments. We can do far, far better.
Instead of reducing women’s feuds to either friendships or broken-down friendships, and men’s programs to eight weeks of the same match before a winner is arbitrarily announced, WWE should have a definitive beginning, middle and end in mind prior to any storyline. Let programs evolve logically, with wrestlers taking rational actions and developments that make sense.
Frustratingly, we know that the promotion is capable of doing it too, as Ciampa and Gargano have so ably demonstrated in 2018. All we’re asking for is more of that and less images of Natalya’s deceased father plastered on a table.
10. No More Automatic Rematches
And don’t you dare tell me that it’s a contractual clause! We all know those things aren’t worth the imaginary paper they’re written on.
In theory the automatic rematch is designed to grant the defeated champion an opportunity of reclaiming his title. In practice however, they’ve morphed into a reprehensible excuse to extend a feud beyond its sell-by date. Consider, for example, some of it’s greatest sins.
It’s the reason we were forced to sit through thirteen separate matches between Seth Rollins and Dolph Ziggler across June to October last year alone, as first the Intercontinental and then the Tag Team Championships pin-balled between them. More recently, it was responsible for giving us AOP vs Roode & Gable on five occasions to end the year.
The repetition was one of the chief issues with WWE’s booking last year. The completely made-up clause stagnated title feuds, locking competitors in the same program for months on end, thereby also scuppering anyone else’s chances of moving up into the title picture.
There’s little variety as we were served different iterations of the same match-up over and over. It’s lazy, derivative and the antithesis of competitive sports. Get rid of it.
11. End the McMahon Family Dominance
This is a simple one. Enough with the McMahons. In fact, while we’re at it, enough with the Helmsleys as well.
I could go a lifetime without hearing Triple H preach about what’s “best for business”, or Stephanie emasculate one of her charges, or Shane McMahon sweat his way to a competitive match against AJ Styles. This pattern becomes all the more frustrating when you consider that we’ve seen how bright the alternative could be. William Regal does a phenomenal job on NXT and, for a few glorious months while Shane was away, SmackDown Live was governed by the sure hand of Paige.
Now, under this “New Era”, General Managers have been dispensed with, leaving us with McMahons aplenty to run both main roster shows. It’s a troubling start to the new year and one that I hope doesn’t last throughout 2019.
12. Becky Must Go Over Ronda
‘The Man’ is currently the hottest star in WWE and there is no time like the present to solidify her standing in the company.
Too often WWE hesitates to push a fan favourite act, choosing instead to stubbornly ignore their popularity until the spark well and truly dies out. It happened with Zach Ryder, it happened for a time with Daniel Bryan, and we witnessed it most recently with Rusev Day.
Becky almost suffered the same fate until she simply became too hot to ignore. Begrudgingly, Lynch was shifted into a tweener role before winning the SmackDown Women’s belt off Charlotte at Hell in a Cell. However, despite her successes, it’s always felt like Becky’s place atop the WWE mountain was rather precarious; as if the company could pull the rug out at any time and return the belt to its first choice, Charlotte.
WWE needs to capitalise on the popularity of the ‘Irish Lass Kicker’ and fully commit to her push, firmly establishing her as the face of the promotion. And there is no better opportunity to do so than by having her conquer the unconquerable, and defeat the unbeaten Ronda Rousey on the ‘Grandest Stage of Them All’ at WrestleMania 35.
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