7 Quick Fixes To Save WWE SummerSlam 2018
A small summer party
The post-Extreme Rules Monday Night Raw was a dispiriting return to mundanity when the company needed it least.
It wasn't a show without talking points, but the company have reached a show-don't-tell point if they expect to generate excitement for one of their biggest events of the year. Since WrestleMania, the organisation has fundamentally failed its feature performers. Battles over titles have been contested with an undercurrent of comedy, former main-eventers have have been figuratively and literally left swimming in sh*t, whilst 'dream' matches dissolved to dust under the weight of a bloated schedule and terminal creative malaise.
Extreme Rules was in many ways the payoff to the slump. Ordinary to a fault when it was actually any good, the pay-per-view failed to inspire an audience with fingers burnt to stumps by the booking of the past few months. The likes of Asuka and Kevin Owens were destroyed so emphatically that it was too tough for fans to invest as required in Carmella and Braun Strowman respectively. Bobby Lashley and Roman Reigns had a match that perhaps over-performed on expectations that were somewhere in Pittsburgh's sewer system before the bell. The response didn't justify both getting straight back in the Brock Lesnar hunt, but that's now the story set to anchor August.
Bayley and Sasha Banks couldn't make it on to the card, but their segment was the biggest talking point emerging from an important-yet-indifferent Raw. Are they fighters, or lovers? Brooklyn beckons...
7. You're A Brooklyn Baby, You Know How To Love
Bayley and Sasha Banks' stop-start rivalry took a curious turn this week when 'The Boss' confessed her love to 'The Hugger' with such vigour that it was impossible not to catch the inference.
Never ones to shy away from on-the-nose scripting, WWE shot directly for the heart - Bayley's, to be specific. Whilst it's important not to criticise the attempt on the company's part to promote homosexuality (and, really, any form of diversity) as part of a wider move to catch the company up with modern societal attitudes, it's disconcerting that this version of the organisation would attempt to tackle it.
This is a wrestling company that cannot coherently book wrestling storylines. Babyfaces are heels, heels are babyfaces and careers career off cliffs thanks to slapdash writing servicing the whims of one ageing white billionaire at the expense of all others.
It's subsequently why Sasha manipulatively snapping once and for all after her 'revelation' would be the safest track to tread. The company have failed so profoundly with just about everything they've tried with the former NXT pair, but a powerful swerve turn just a few weeks away from their return to the place they cemented their legacy (and transformed North American women's wrestling for good) would make worthy use of a weary twist.