WWE Has Become Self-Aware and It’s Not Going Great | Opinion
On NXT This week, after a very typical “Promo Parade,” Zaria, Kelani Jordan, Kendall Grace and Lola Vice all ended up in the ring yelling at each other (because you know, women be talking until a man steps in) and Robert Stone came out. But before he could even say anything, Vice flatly said “Stone, we get it. Me and Kendall vs Zaria and Kelani tonight.”
Now, I’m sure backstage they thought that this meta-joke was very funny and commentary mentioned that Robert Stone had just had his first ‘Teddy Long’ moment. But as a viewer it highlighted one of the biggest problems facing WWE today: Predictability.
Anyone who’s watched wrestling knows that as soon as those four women were in the ring, we were getting a tag match. It’s simple wrestling math. But the fact that WWE made a joke out of it instead of just making the match shows that they are very aware of their tropes and frankly, don’t seem to care about changing them, leading to a show that feels flat and uninspired.
The King of The Ring Has Been Made Meaningless
A great example of this is Oba Femi’s current run through the King of The Ring Tournament. Femi is the logical choice to win King of The RIng (though personally, I’d love to see Je’Von Evans take it and if you saw any of the Evans/Femi matches in NXT, you’d know why) but he’s spent all his promo time during the tournament talking a Brock Lesnar. So obviously, at some point Lesnar is goung to interfere in a Femi match. He might do it to cost Femi the Crown, or (most likely because WWE loves to have it’s cake and eat it too) he’ll show up after Femi wins to ‘ruin the moment’ for Femi, setting up their rubber match, most likely at Summer Slam.
Are these predictions? Sure, but in the TKO era WWE has been leaning pretty heavily on its ‘Predictions = Spoilers’ stance to appease shareholders and sponsors. So, as a viewer, why do I care if Femi squashes his way to the King of The Ring finals, if it’s all just a set up for his next clash with Lesnar? Just get to the fireworks factory WWE and use the tournament as it was intended: to elevate new talent.
Sometimes wrestling needs to be predictable to make stories work. If you hear about a tag team having trouble “co-existing” then it’s pretty likely they will lose their next match to further their frustration with each other (or if you’re in AAA it will lead to the potential murder of several clowns). This works as a story beat in the larger arc and can usually be accepted by an audience watching a story play out.
However, when the show itself becomes self-aware of these tropes without doing anything to change or address them, it actually just makes the creative direction of the show feel like it just doesn’t matter. If commentary said “Yeah, these guys aren’t going to win because they are mad at each other” during the introductions and then that’s what happened, it is just one more way that WWE is self-sabotaging itself and tearing down the protective barrier that makes their pretend fights enjoyable.
They Can Use Tropes To Their Advantage, If They Wanted To
WWE isn’t alone in leaning too much on tropes and tired formats. AEW is just as guilty, but where AEW has the leg up is that they appear to plan these things out. In AEW that tag match wouldn’t happen that night, but maybe on Collision or next week on Dynamite. In that event, the talent has a chance to work towards the match and the audience has an idea that’s coming and can get excited about what could happen.
On NXT, all Robert Stone had to say was “no! We are going to do something different instead of that tired tag match format” and we’d be talking about it for weeks. In the King of the Ring Tournament, all they had to do was have Femi say nothing about Lesnar and instead big up his opponents and we’d be salivating to find out who wins the tournament. But for now, the audience has been denied the one thing that wrestling fans of all stripes crave: Surprises.
Jeff Moss is a writer, creator and developer in animation, comics and pretty much anything else he can get his mitts on. Pro Wrestling has always been his passion for reasons even he doesn't understand.