It’s been a rocky few months since WrestleMania. How are things looking today in the world of WWE?

There was a time when these blogs wrote themselves. I would watch a week’s worth of WWE, then have to choose bits to cut out because there was so much going on. Now, it’s a struggle to find a single interesting thread to pick up and be excited about.

And that’s really what this post is about. I’ve struggled to actively follow WWE for the last few months, but I’ve kept a loose eye on it all. Thanks to the actual godsend that is This Week in WWE (available on the WWE Network for just $9.99), I’ve just sat through 30 minutes of what WWE thinks are the highlights of the last week. And it’s not good.

Extreme Rules

Let’s start with Extreme Rules which, by recent standards, wasn’t at all terrible. The only match I really cared about was the five way between Samoa Joe, Seth Rollins, Roman Reigns, Bray Wyatt, and – my boy – Finn Balor. Indeed it was the only match I actually watched on Monday (Monday being the soonest opportunity UK fans have to watch PPVs unless you don’t have a job and can stay up until 4AM on a Sunday – god love ya), electing to watch the rest over the week.

Do you know what? This was a good match, with an outcome that I’m quite happy with. Rumour has it that the plan is to have Roman Reigns win the Universal title from Lesnar at WrestleMania 34 (obviously) – but that’s nearly a year away. Having Joe back and forth with Lesnar for a while is a decent way to tide over the dullest championship in sports entertainment for the remainder of this year. Joe has the ability to put on some evenly matched(ish), matches with Lesnar – whereas the likes of Rollins or Balor would just be forced to wrestle around that great lump in a series of increasingly disappointing main events.

Also at Extreme Rules, The Hardy Boys dropped their tag team titles to Sheamus and Cesaro. Nothing especially wrong with this decision, or the booking logic there. You have the Hardys pick up the titles with a huge pop at WrestleMania, then have them lose them after a reasonable length of time. Now they have a goal to work towards and a quest the crowd can get behind. Makes sense.

It seems though that the incredibly popular team of Enzo and Cass has been thrown to wayside for this programme. I’m not entirely sure what’s going on with them at the moment – they weren’t included in this week’s episode of This Week in WWE – but my understanding is that Cass is about to go heel after a string of anonymous attacks on Enzo (correct me if I’m wrong).

This feels like a bit of a waste. Enzo and Cass were hugely popular – they even won me over eventually, and I found them so incredibly irritating in NXT. It’s like WWE thinks the fans don’t have enough room in their hearts for two beloved tag teams – but we do. We’re a warm, loving kind (sometimes) – we could get behind two teams. Indeed Cesaro and Sheamus are pretty popular themselves.

Raw

Onto Raw, and things seem to be meandering a little. All the best stuff seems to be happening on the midcard, with The Miz being a consistent source of entertainment both in and outside of the ring. His destruction of Maryse’s grandfather clock gift even elicited a genuine chuckle from me – as did the Dean Ambrose cameraman (which I’m ashamed to say I didn’t pick up on until it was really obvious. I’m getting old).

Joe’s in-ring promo at the start of the show was notably good. The bit where he whispered threats into Heyman’s ear was genuinely menacing, and absolutely sold Samoa Joe as a force to be reckoned with. In response, Brock is scheduled to appear on tomorrow’s Raw – which could be interesting.

Whenever Lesnar shows up on Raw it usually only serves to remind us that our champion is absent for the vast majority of the time. But this could potentially be fun – especially if Joe is allowed to have the upper hand occasionally. It would make the outcome of future matches feel a little more unpredictable, even if they’re not.

SmackDown Live

After a few strong months following the brand split, things aren’t currently faring much better over on SmackDown Live. The biggest thing to come out of last week is the announcement of the first ever women’s Money in the Bank ladder match – which is pretty cool. The women’s championships on both brands have proven to be somewhat unpredictable, so the introduction of a Money in the Bank holder as a wildcard will make things even more interesting.

But that’s about it to say about SmackDown Live. There’s a weird thing going on with Shinsuke Nakamura where they keep describing him as “the artist known as…” I don’t know what that’s all about, and if it’s a gimmick change, then I am totally against it. Nakamura’s stock on NXT was huge – rightfully starring in loads of epic main events. His in-ring style and overall presentation were refreshing and effortlessly cool. He managed to get 20,000 ravenous wrestling fans too sit quietly and appreciate a violin solo from Lee England Jr. on more than one occasion. I think we’ll have to wait and see where this all goes – but Nakamura needs to be presented on SmackDown as the huge star he was on NXT. This man does not belong on the bottom of the card.

Finally, there’s everything with Jinder Mahal – which I find quite baffling. They’ve made him the WWE Champion to help sell the show in India, apparently. Which makes some sense, but it just all feels so inorganic – kinda like his gains, am I right? Incidentally, I asked our Newplex health experts if it looks like Mahal has been on the ‘riods and they said it’s entirely possible that he’s not. So let’s give him the benefit of the doubt, people.

I don’t have a problem with Mahal, and I think he’s decent in the ring. In fact, his whole reign has been really rather entertaining. I think I’m able to enjoy because I don’t especially care about anyone else holding that title right now.

I can’t help but sense an undertone of xenophobia in this whole carry-on though, I just can’t decide exactly where. Everyone knows that Mahal himself is from Canada, but is of Indian heritage. You could make the argument that he’s a Canadian playing the part of an Indian – like Lana is an American playing the part of a Russian – but it still feels a little off. As a Brit, watching an arena full of people shout “USA!” at a foreigner feels tremendously uncomfortable. It’s a cultural difference between the UK and the USA, I know that – what Americans call national pride we would call nationalism, and what they call a hamburger, we’d call a whole cow – so it’s swings and roundabouts. To be clear, following developments here in the UK, I’m not trying to get on any sort of high horse here – I’m just pointing out it makes for unpleasant viewing, particularly from a family show.

Overall

WWE is stacked to the rafters with talent right now. Structurally, WWE is also in great shape – the shows have been split up to allow all the various storylines to develop and for different types of Superstars the opportunity to shine.

Yet somewhere between the talent, the structure, and creative – something isn’t gelling. The Superstars are there, so is the format, but the storylines just aren’t. There have been a lot of terrible booking decisions, and what seems like a complete disconnect between the fans and the writers.

Pundits on any one of their plethora of podcasts keep telling us how smart WWE are being. “They’ll tune in to boo the guys they hate”, they say. But we’re not. Ratings are at an all-time low, and now questions are being raised over the upcoming cable TV negotiations with NBC (who are expecting WWE to take a drastic pay cut in line with the rest of broadcast TV). All these people, who absolutely helped make WWE into the global powerhouse it is today thanks to their efforts in the 90s and early 00s, seem to be oblivious to this. The fact that people have stopped watching says everything.

We’re bored.

We want to be entertained, not marketed to. We don’t care how good for business you think Roman Reigns or Jinder Mahal are. We don’t care who you want as champions for political reasons. If you’re asking us to spend at least five hours a week watching your content, then it needs to be good. Nobody has five hours a week to throw away. Being a WWE fan is massive investment of our time and attention, it could easily be spent elsewhere if we don’t feel like we’re getting a return.

Despite everything, WWE is on the strongest ground it has been on in 10 years. There is so much amazing talent, and everything’s set up for a fantastic product. But WWE needs to urgently re-evaluate its strategy – else they’ll be forced into a terrible TV deal when the renewal comes through, and increasing numbers of fans who just cannot justify spending their time on something they know simply isn’t good enough.