This past week we saw several bright spots for the WWE at Backlash, and on Raw and Smackdown Live. At Backlash, AJ Styles beat Dean Ambrose to become Smackdown’s World Champion, Becky Lynch crowned herself as the Women’s Champion, and the team of Heath Slater and Rhyno won the tournament for the Tag Team titles. We also saw Ambrose turn on John Cena at Tuesday’s Smackdown Live in Philadelphia providing us with something that has great potential as a feud between those two. But despite all of these bright spots with potential for the future, I can’t help but notice the glaring issues that the company is doing a piss poor job of masking. The company continues to bury its own talent, and on both Raw and Smackdown right now.
With Orton being scratched from the Backlash card due to a concussion he allegedly sustained from Brock Lesnar’s elbow at Summerslam, Bray Wyatt was dealt a match with “Demon” Kane. It ended with Orton appearing anyways, to hit Wyatt with an RKO and cost him the match to Kane. This move clearly proves that the company has no idea what they’re doing with Bray Wyatt! The way in which the company did its brand split, it seemed as though Bray was handpicked to be Smackdown Live’s top heel during the draft. Yet since then, the company has repeatedly done a job of burying Wyatt. And while his feud with Orton still exists, it would’ve been wise to have had him beat Kane and begin to reclaim his credibility in the ring.
Similarly with the Raw roster, the funeral of Roman Reigns’ character continues. Look I get it, he screwed up a few months back when he tested positive for something and the brain trust wants to make him pay for his mistakes following his 30-day suspension and inclusion in the Battleground main event. But the guy is better than being used in a feud with Rusev over the U.S. title that nobody has cared about for years. Again, it would have been wise to have had Reigns win his match against Owens on this past Raw, and advance to the triple threat match at Night of Champions for the Universal Championship versus Owens and Seth Rollins. There’d be more interest in that match than another Reigns-Rusev stinkfest. Give the fans what we want and not what we’ve already seen and almost unanimously disliked again!
Now if I may backtrack a little here, there were two great moments for Smackdown Live’s main event card. AJ Styles winning the championship greatly opens the doors for a main roster bump up of Shinsuke Nakamura from NXT. Styles and Nakamura both have extensive experience working in Japan where the fans treat wrestling like more of an artistic form than sports entertainment. Those two would provide a great program with a series of very entertaining and impressive matches that would naturally enhance PPV buyrates and/or WWE Network subscribership.
While I maintain that the company turned the wrong guy heel on this past Smackdown, a Dean Ambrose and John Cena feud still has tons of promise. We’ve got two solid performers and former world champions with loads of talent in the ring and on the mics, and best of all it’s something that we’ve never seen before. The entertainment value is already there so if the company can play their cards right in building up this feud to be as important as whatever feud we now see Styles thrown into to defend his belt, then this move could be money!
