10 Reasons WWE Feels UNDERWHELMING in 2026

4. Too Many History Lessons

The above image would have had wrestling fans salivating a few years ago. Kevin Owens and CM Punk, two of the most gifted talkers in modern wrestling, engaging in a war of words? How could this be anything other than feud of the year? 

Answer: Have both men's beef be about petty grievances from quasi-imagined slights that occurred in other company's locker-rooms over twenty years ago. 

Vince McMahon was infamously disdainful of discussing wrestling's history due to his fear of him or his company appearing old (a fear evident from one look of his over-botoxed face). But CM Punk and Kevin Owen's griping is symptomatic of the WWE going too far in the other direction, treating every scrap of wrestling history as something worthy of parading on television. 

CM Punk and Cody Rhodes' infamous go home promo on RAW before this year's WrestleMania was another example of this tendency, as the two company mascots engaged in a lengthy blab over their careers rather than focus on their upcoming matches. There's a difference between respecting history and being in thrall to it, and wrestlers focusing on events that occurred near the beginning of this century veers towards the latter.