WWE seems to be dropping the ball in their build up to WM31. Is that criticism too harsh?
WWE has been a strange place since the 2015 Royal Rumble. Many fans were harsh critics of the outcome of the Rumble match and WWE has been a bizarre place since then. Yet everyone figured WWE would get things back on track for the shows leading up to WM31, but to this point it appears they have taken a few steps back.
There are three main event matches that have been building for some time. All of them include part time talents that make infrequent appearances or wrestle infrequently. The HHH and Sting match is a battle between two guys who are both severely part time. WWE is assuming that these three matches will make the show worth purchasing or subscribing for.
Brock Lesnar vs. Roman Reigns has been set since the Rumble, yet neither man has been in the ring with each other…ever! This week WWE had Brock in the building and Heyman cut a hot promo nearly begging anyone to take the title away from him, but Reigns didn’t even tease coming out. Later in the show Reigns was an afterthought in the main event that he won. Instead WWE chose to focus on Randy Orton’s angle with Seth Rollins.
Reigns finally decided, after taking three storyline days to think about it, to address Heyman and Lesnar on Smackdown, a show they would both never appear on. It’s also conveniently the show that WWE can tape and edit. The crowd that was seemingly dead for Reigns on Wednesday, but suddenly this crowd was popping for him like crazy. (It has been reported that live Reigns was booed harshly.) There’s just nothing like your babyface and guy you are pushing to the moon not able to get even a moderate pop.
The Reigns/Lesnar angle has suddenly become about whether or not the WWE has the guts to keep the belt on Lesnar. That’s how Heyman has been able to build any interest for the match. He might have saved the entire event, but that could also backfire if Reigns goes over, as fans might feel even more betrayed. At this point it would seem that Reigns is going to catch hell in any outcome where he walks out champion.
He didn’t do himself any favors this week when on answering questions on “the Josh Podcast.” Reigns clearly indicates that he doesn’t understand why fans dislike him. If he tried to understand that then possibly he could start turning things around. He spoke about Rollins and Ambrose in a way that made you feel like they were lesser talents than him. It’s the kind of arrogance that doesn’t help him at all, but sadly it seems to all stem from him simply not being ready in yet another facet. Even for low-pressure podcast interviews.
When promotions talk about having guys pay their dues, it’s not about them losing matches, but learning to respect the business and how it works. If Reigns was at that level then he would handle these interviews better instead of coming off like some guy that simply wants to get rich and happy to blindly do whatever the company says. If he does win the title and hold it for a long time the prospect of him becoming an egomaniac behind the scenes does not seem very farfetched.
In another big main event quality match Sting is taking on HHH. This match is eagerly awaited by many and for good reason. They have done a nice job building from Survivor Series until now. That’s the type of slow build matches used to get, but rarely do these days. Yet the WWE seems to have dropped the ball in regards to Sting’s motivations.
HHH has suggested that Sting is here to avenge the WCW that HHH put out of business. (Nothing could be further from the truth in reality.) He’s cutting promos from the standpoint that Sting wants revenge and that’s why he’s here. That’s the right approach for HHH to take because in story line that’s probably not why Sting is there at all. He’s likely there to stop HHH from ruining the WWE by abusing his power in the Authority.
HHH has done a great job building up to a moment wear Sting speaks and lets us all know the truth. Many figured at WWE Fast Lane Sting would take his opportunity to speak and that would be the pay off for that confrontation, but instead the WWE kept him quiet. Perhaps then Sting would speak on Raw in the coming weeks, but after three Raws there has only been a strange taped promo.
In that promo Sting’s voice was distorted and it may even not have been Sting talking. The promo did seem to suggest that Sting was in WWE to stop HHH from being a corrupt leader and he had enough of the Authority. Yet, the video was so poorly done and communicated that the message might have been lost when Sting ended the promo by saying he had waited 14 years for this chance. That comment seemed to undo all the previous ones and fall in line with what HHH has been saying. That Sting perceives him as the reason WCW went out of business and wants payback.
If Sting was saying he waited 14 years because he saw HHH snuggle up to the bosses daughter, then use his connections to stay ahead while holding others down, and now seemed to be running the WWE into the ground, in a live promo the place would come unglued for it. People’s heads might explode off their bodies.
Yet this mess of a promo seemed to confuse everyone and hurt the buildup instead. The claims that Sting works better silent are silly. Fans have waited all these years for him to arrive and they probably want to hear from him. Fans that don’t know him probably would benefit by him clarifying his stance on why he is here. That might allow him to connect with the fans and elicit a better pop at WM31. Yet Sting not being around is again par for this course so far for this WM31 build.
Just look at the Bray Wyatt Undertaker situation. Bray has nearly done everything to sell this match outside of bring back the corpse of Paul Bearer. (Don’t be surprised if he cuts a promo over his grave though.) There’s nothing left to say and finally the Undertaker accepted the challenge, but not in person. Instead it was a pre-recorded, probably very old, voice over combined with yet another cryptic message on the Titantron. That seems to be the WWE’s way of not paying talent for appearances these days.
In years past when the Taker has made a comeback he has done it exclusively at Wrestlemania, but it would seem this year with WWE getting so little out of Sting and Brock that they could really use him for a Raw appearance to push things along, but they are opting not too.
So that means in three weeks of Raw so far leading into WM31 fans have only seen Brock Lesnar once, no Sting or Undertaker. So there have been exactly zero confrontations between the men in those matches to date so far. If WWE is wondering why the Raws have been largely panned the last three weeks and why many are feeling down on WM31 look no further than those facts right there.
Each of the five shows leading into WM31 could have given fans something and the last two still may, but all indications are that they won’t. With the WWE dropping the ball so much lately why would there be any faith that they will. This is what happens when you rely so much on part time talents. It’s almost like the WWE hasn’t learned the lesson from the past few years. They can’t build new monster stars if they keep reaching back on old ones.
Then there’s Daniel Bryan situation that seems to add insult to injury. He seemed destined to be in the IC title match a few weeks ago, but WWE didn’t put him in it until this week’s Smackdown. This was likely done because it was something they could use to fill an SD show as an interesting story progression, but also in case they really did have Brock bail on them.
WWE has a chance here to use Bryan to revitalize the IC belt and perhaps elevate it the same way Shinsuke Nakamura has in NJPW. This could potentially make it a little easier to fill TV and PPV by having major angles around that belt as well as the World Title. For the most part the IC belt has been a throw away in the last few years.
Yet somehow this week WWE found a way to mess this up too. At the end of Smackdown where Bryan, Ziggler and Ambrose beat a team of Harper, Barrett and Stardust, WWE had the winners cut a promo. Bryan seemed happy with the win, but Ambrose called him a kind of a turd. Then Ziggler stated he agreed with Ambrose’s assessment. Right in that promo any hope that Bryan was going to grab the IC belt and elevate it was quickly squashed.
It would appear that WWE want to continue to devalue Bryan so he’s not taking away from Roman Reigns, despite the fact that they are not working in a program against each other. The WWE seems to be single minded in their approach that you can only have one really over guy in your company at a time. They probably believe this because Bryan’s popularity was part of the reason, in their eye’s, the fans at the Rumble hammered Reigns.
That notion by WWE is flawed like many others they have. The WWE honestly believes that by degrading Bryan fans will look to jump behind a new guy. They want that guy to be Reigns. This is really bad and underhanded booking. The fans would be happy to get behind Reigns if he had done something beyond winning the Rumble to earn that respect. He has two major singles wins on PPV going into WM31.
He beat Bryan at Fast Lane and he beat Orton in a bad match at SummerSlam and beyond that he has a few wins on Raw that have not been memorable. When the Authority were pushing John Cena and other stars around to start the year Reigns never stood directly in their way and tried to stop them. He didn’t help get Ziggler, Rowan, and Ryback their jobs back. That probably would have helped his case, but the WWE feared Reigns might melt under that pressure as he did in all his promos leading up to the Rumble. What WWE wants is for you to get behind Reigns simply because he’s cool. Almost in the same way the WWE wants you to watch WM31. Because it’s cool and that’s the show everyone watches.
While many will almost always tune in because of habit or tradition the casual fan may not. The casual fan might not connect with Roman Reigns because he’s not believable and he might find the rest of the card pretty low quality. How good will match between part time HHH and Sting be? How epic will the Undertaker be given his age and the way last year went? How epic will Reigns and Lesnar be with Reigns being so green?
Lastly they might tune in and take note of the comedy angle that WWE has turned the IC belt into and in their own eyes not take any of the participants in that match seriously ever again. They will probably conclude that if WWE isn’t doing that why should they? There may be some fans who enjoy the show and subscribe for next month. They will probably be very surprised when at the next PPV three quarters of the WM31 stars aren’t even on the show. Yep, that’s where this is headed.
So the road to WrestleMania is off road right now. There seems little hope things will change in the next two weeks, but many will tune in hoping otherwise.