The WWE product has been rough at best the last couple of years, and with this year’s Royal Rumble being among the worst, if not the worst, pay-per-view in the company’s history, it begs the question if the WWE is entering the dangerous waters of 2001 WCW.
More times than not, recent Raw episodes brought back memories of the 2001 Nitros, and it doesn’t look like the WWE is intent on fixing anything their product in the near future.
Smackdown has taken over as the top brand in the company thanks to consistency, solid matches, and good story telling. Raw and most PPVs are, well, not up to that level.
And with all of the releases over 2021, they don’t have a lot of talent to work with.
All the years of burying talent and not building up the women and tag team divisions have led to seeing the same matches every week and titles shared between a couple of teams.
Big names
To draw in viewers, the WWE isn’t trying to repair their house and put out compelling stories, they’re bringing in older stars and part timers to get a splash.
Like Bad Bunny outperforming most of the men’s Rumble participants and Knoxville taking four big moves before he was eliminated.
Sounds eerily similar to WCW of 2001, doesn’t it? At least they haven’t put a major title on a celebrity yet, but who’s to say they won’t at some point?
The WWE has always been good at snapping out of their mediocre phases when they had to, but this time feels different.
There are spurts here and there on Raw, but aside from Smackdown’s consistency they haven’t done much.
Losing the plot
The Royal Rumble itself felt like a cluster mess with so many participants that weren’t used to working together simply to give the fans a shock and surprise.
At some point something has to give and the WWE could be nearing that point.
With several stars like Moose and Jeff Hardy saying no to WWE offers, it shows there are alternatives available and that’s going to make things interesting.
The timing for this is also interesting since the rumors about the WWE selling to Disney are growing stronger after their recent agreement for Disney + to air the WWE Network in Indonesia.
We could be wrong, but we think the next few months are going to be very telling for WWE’s future. Will they get things sorted out, or will they continue treading water until they sell or have no choice but to downsize again?
Let us know what you think they’ll do below.
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