10 Things WWE Fans Have To Look Forward To In 2018
In which a spiteful beast rises from its slumber.
This is a further attempt to preserve one's sanity, the fleeting optimism surrounding the first having disappeared.
The B-Team, while entertaining, are scant consolation for a RAW doubles division that last year mattered on pay-per-view, if not television, in matches that both delivered in excitement and saved Seth Rollins and Dean Ambrose from irrelevance. Big Cass isn't on the slide, but rather Daniel Bryan is struggling to climb up it ahead of a pay-per-view rematch absolutely nobody wishes to see. Even Bryan himself seems aware of this, damning Cass with faint praise in a well-intended attempt to compartmentalise his situation. Bryan had the following to say to Inside The Ropes:
"I know that everybody wants to see the big matches. I enjoy the challenge of wrestling somebody who is that big and newer, that sort of thing."
Translated from Bryan's good-natured euphemism:
"Cass is as green as goosesh*t despite having wrestled for nearly a decade, but it's almost over, and it cannot get any worse."
WWE, quietly, is already showing glimpses of stereotyping Andrade 'Cien' Almas; that they paired him with Sin Cara, a fellow latino performer, for his first programme is slightly worrying. Already, through this association, we have been provided with an insight into the way in which WWE perceives Almas: A Mexican! Still, that might manifest as an Alberto Del Rio mega-push, which Almas actually has the charisma, in-ring game and explosiveness to pull off.
Something worthwhile must happen soon.
The law of averages demands it...
10. The Imminent Reset Button
We know now what happens when WWE isn't faced with an imminent pay-per-view. We thought, optimistically, that this would force WWE to break the usual, deadening copy and paste formula. For six abysmal weeks, WWE instead opted to copy the same keyboard shortcut, which yielded yet more copy and paste booking and myopic storytelling. Bobby Roode's 50/50 club membership has expired; confronted with weeks of TV time to fill, he simply lost over and over again and over again, as opposed to over and over again, his act becoming more synonymous with the likes of Curt Hawkins in the process. More TV time simply lessened everything.
Happily, the events of Money In The Bank should draw a line under the various, endless ongoing feuds and curious relegations. What's sobering is that several of these feuds haven't actually dragged on that long; it just feels that way because the segments, putrid to begin with, have deteriorated in quality from there. Deteriorated in quality from an interview in which Bobby Lashley more or less outed himself as a serial killer.
We should see the end of the stasis in which the SmackDown doubles division finds itself, and the maligned 2017 writing did at least get that right. So there's cause for optimism there. We should see the end of the infamous Bobby Lashley vs. Sami Zayn feud before it makes its protagonist an infamous disaster.
And, even if we don't...