3 Major Issues Currently Holding WWE Back
Whether you love them or hate them, WWE is the most popular professional wrestling company in the world. They have been around for over 60 years and they’re not going away any time soon. Every professional wrestling company has their issues, but WWE has three big ones holding them back.
No Other Professional Wrestling Company Exists to Them
Now, more than ever, is a perfect time to be a professional wrestling fan. There are so many wrestling shows, and it gives fans a variety of options to consume the sport. Many wrestlers will compete in different companies and in most cases, the company will acknowledge the wrestlers’ success in other companies. However, WWE is not one of them. It seems like no other wrestling company exists to them, and if a WWE superstar leaves and comes back, they act as if they haven’t been wrestling.
Cody Rhodes is a recent example of this. After being away from the WWE for six years, he decided to come back. He wrestled for various different companies including: Ring of Honor, New Japan Pro Wrestling, and most notable All Elite Wrestling, a company in which he helped start. When he first came back to WWE and started wrestling matches weekly on Raw, the announcers were acting like he hadn’t wrestled since he left. Corey Graves quickly put them in their place, acknowledging that he had been wrestling since he left.
WWE doesn’t even acknowledge their own NXT brand. In the case of wrestlers getting “called up” from NXT, WWE doesn’t mention the accomplishments the wrestler had in NXT. No mentions of titles or anything else. WWE is also known for not working with any other promotions. This past year, there were rumors that NJPW and WWE were in talks to work together. That fell through and now NJPW is working with AEW. WWE acknowledging wrestlers’ success in other companies would help build the wrestlers’ status. The fans might not know who the wrestler is, but if they know they’ve won championships in other places, it builds them positively. WWE should mention wrestlers’ success when they enter the company. It just comes off as ignorant and gives off the idea that nothing really matters outside the company.
Booking the Women’s Division Poorly
WWE has some of the most talented women’s wrestlers in the world in their company and yet, they’re being booked poorly. Although WWE has made some strides in the right direction, with having the women’s division be the main event of weekly shows and premium live events, there’s still a lot of room for growth. WWE introduced the first ever women’s tag team championship in 2019. This was a big step forward for women’s wrestling in the company. The company has failed to do anything with those titles. They haven’t built them up as prestigious, and they feel more like a prop than championship titles.
WWE has virtually no female wrestlers who are legitimately tag-teams. It’s always just singles competitors who happen to team together because they have a common enemy. Sasha Banks and Bayley pushed for the women’s division to get tag-teams titles, and they were the inaugural champions. About a month ago, Sasha Banks and Naomi, who were the tag team champions, dropped the titles on John Laurinaitis’ desk and walked out of the company. They were unhappy with how WWE had been booking the women’s tag-team division. Neither have been seen since, and there’s been reports that Sasha Banks has been released by the company. WWE and Banks haven’t commented on the reports, so it’s unclear if they’re true or not. The company also announced that they were going to hold a tournament to crown new champions, but nothing has been said or promoted since.
WWE has so many talented female wrestlers, and yet it feels like they’re rotating through the same five. They need to put more time and effort into booking the women’s division properly.
WWE Has a Lack of Challengers for Roman Reigns
Roman Reigns has been on a historic run as WWE and Universal champion. When it’s all over, it is going to go down as one of the most dominant runs ever. When you build someone up as strong and dominant as they have Roman, you can’t have just any wrestler dethrone them.
It seems like Roman has beat virtually every main event wrestler in the company, and no one new really stacks up as credibly threat. He’s beaten the likes of Goldberg, Finn Balor, Brock Lesnar, John Cena, and Seth Rollins in his current Universal championship run. They can’t just have any wrestler face him; it needs to be a main eventer. They have a lack of new wrestlers in the main event scene, so they’re struggling to find new challengers. WWE often runs storylines longer than they should. It seems like we get the same two wrestlers facing off against one another hundreds of times.
With Cody sidelined for nine months and Randy Orton reportedly being out the rest of the year, the company turned to Brock Lesnar to feud with Roman…again. It was announced on June 17th, that Brock would challenge Roman for the WWE Undisputed Universal Championship. The match is going to take place at SummerSlam and will be a Last Man Standing Match.
How many times do we need to watch these two wrestle before we realize that WWE is out of legitimate challengers for Roman? The amount of rematches we see and storylines that go on for far too long is concerning. It just shows that WWE is out of challengers for Roman, and it’s solely their fault.
