10 Times WWE Tried To Force Historic Moments
Never before has wrestling's history been treated so flippantly.
There are many reasons to be cheerful about WWE in 2017, but great storytelling - the lifeblood of professional wrestling - isn't on the list.
WWE can still concoct the odd exciting angle every now and then, but their storytelling mechanism has never been so broken. The company just don't tell convincing tales with any kind of regularity anymore, resulting in a product that rarely gives viewers a reason to tune in the following week.
WWE's obsession with "making history" and "creating moments" is one of the main reasons behind this. No longer content to let major storylines succeed on their own merit, it often feels like everything that happens in 2017 must be compared to a past event, and if WWE have the opportunity to break a record along the way, they'll do it regardless of how little sense it makes.
Rather than letting these moments unfold naturally, WWE now jam them down the audience's throat at every opportunity. This has resulted in a fractured storytelling model that limps from one "historic moment" to another, often with no rhyme or reason.
At best, the company are selling themselves short by artificially constructing these moments and blowing them ahead of schedule, but at worst, they're insulting everyone's intelligence...
10. The First Women's Hell In A Cell
Last year’s Hell In A Cell pay-per-view continued to water the show’s concept down to by presenting three of the titular matches in a single evening. While none of the bouts were outright bad, each suffered from the extreme safety restrictions that WWE’s PG rating places on such matches, which each struggling to invoke the sense of dread that HIAC used to carry.
The night was all about Charlotte vs. Sasha Banks. Not only was it the first time two women had headlined a WWE pay-per-view, but also the first time they’d ever competed inside HIAC. They made history, but unfortunately, it was at the expense of the long running storyline that had brought them this far.
Instead of focusing on Charlotte and Sasha’s hatred for one another, the build-up as entirely about breaking new ground. WWE presented what should have been one of the year’s most heated matches as an exhibition, and while things definitely got fiery during the bout, shifting the focus away from the rivalry and onto the history books killed much of the pre-match buzz.
There was no real need for the duo to be put in such a spot, and to make matters worse, the match finished with a demoralising hometown loss for Banks.