10 Greatest Long Term WWE Storylines Ever
Just about worth recycling to diminishing returns nearly twenty years later.
WWE's booking strategy is all too formulaic in 2016.
Most feature programmes are initiated just because. Roman Reigns, top WWE babyface, challenged Rusev to a United States title match in the summer months because he fancied a crack at the title. No complaints there. But then Reigns, who we're meant to cheer, crashed his wedding ceremony. We were meant to laugh at this because Lana's face was planted in the wedding cake. Girls are stupid and RAW is written by five year old boys. A predictable three match series followed, in which, like countless other trilogies before it, Reigns emerged from Match 1 chicanery to cleanly win Match 2 and Match 3. Rinse and repeat.
It wasn't always so unimaginative. When WWE is firing on all cylinders, no promotion can touch them. When they have a long-term plan in place - one that does not involve Vladimir Kozlov - they are very much capable of sustaining audience interest over the span of months. Included herein are the best storylines WWE took their time with.
There are some conspicuous omissions herein. As rewarding as Daniel Bryan's 2013-14 march to the WWE World Heavyweight Title was, in retrospect, WWE don't really deserve the credit for it. They had to be dragged, kicking and screaming, to write the last chapter...
10. The 24/7 Hardcore Title Ruling
Beyond formulaic main event storytelling, WWE is in a creative malaise because so few of its lower and midcard are given anything meaningful to do. Instead, countless talents trade wins in feuds which happen just because. WWE doesn't really "do" storylines anymore, and as a consequence, even guys like Apollo Crews, with WWE-approved looks, are really just there to make up the numbers.
The Hardcore Championship's 24/7 ruling - in which the title could be contested anytime, anywhere, as long as a referee was present - gave practically every lower card member of the Attitude Era roster a reason to exist. It was a triumph of shared universe storytelling, in which the WWF served up a heady cocktail of comedy and violence, making fabulous use of the otherwise drab likes of the Headbangers.
Before they made their inexplicable and intermittent return to the SmackDown roster in 2016, messieurs Mosh and Thrasher had been rendered irrelevant by the TLC triumvirate of The Hardy Boyz, The Dudley Boyz and Edge and Christian. Languishing in the obscurity of the ironically-monikered Heat, the 24/7 title ruling somehow furnished that stale act with intrigue.
Tracking the champion at the Fun Time USA amusement arcade on a March 2000 edition of SmackDown, the Headbangers chased the beleaguered Crash Holly down a slide (!), at the descent of which he was met with an unceremonious garbage can shot to the face.