9 Exact Moments WWE Booking Stopped Making Sense
2025 changed everything for WWE, and not much of it for the better...
Despite the pyro and ballyhoo and Triple H exposing the business on a bedsheet, the debut of WWE on Netflix was as much about the end of something as the beginning.
Between 'The Game' taking the creative reins after his father-in-law resigned in disgrace in 2022, to the tail-end of 2024, the market leader actually led the market creatively again thanks to the machine feeling well-oiled by solid storytelling, careful plotting, and a commitment to protecting the integrity of heels, babyfaces, and the matches themselves. Through all of the above and/or the completely reinvigorated and revived fanbase WWE had gained, the company was welcomed into the arms of the biggest streaming service in the world and responded by...neglecting those principles one by one.
Through arrogance, laziness or a shortage of genuinely fresh ideas, the product became hub for self-flagellation and stories about the stories. Paul Levesque seemingly wanted as much credit as the main eventers he'd helped build, and as WWE Unreal has since revealed, he'll now plot for the show about the show about the plots in order to keep topping the plaudits. Houses are hot and business is good for now, but every boom busts eventually and the more things stop making sense on screen, the more they stop making money off.
To go back to that Netflix special though - it's one thing for the bookers and wrestlers to , but quite another when the Final Boss himself does it...
9. The Rock Kills Two WrestleMania Main Events In One Night
More - much more - on 'The Most Electrifying Man In Sports Entertainment' and one of the most public-facing power players in WWE elsewhere in this list, but nothing could have set the stall out more for WWE's 2025 creative decline than The Rock's opening salvo on the Raw Is Netflix January 6th special.
Advertised ahead of time and expected (at very least) to build on the incredible post-WrestleMania 40 promo with Cody Rhodes, Rock almost immediately squashed their beef with a patronising attaboy to the company quarterback and WWE Champion, grossly misreading the room and flushing months of hotly anticipated conflict in the process.
To recap; Rock had pinned Rhodes in the WrestleMania 40 Night One main event before 'The American Nightmare' dethroned Roman Reigns. There was good reason to assume a singles match wasn't just coming, but required in order to, appropriately, finish the story. The disappointment continued later in the show when Rock re-inserted himself into Reigns' business simply to calmly crown him as the 'Tribal Chief' despite months of reasonable speculation that he was behind the rise of the new heel Bloodline offshoot group. But no, he was a babyface, backing the two top babyfaces ahead of whatever lay ahead on the Road To WrestleMania.
It was on this night that 'The Final Boss' said without saying that he wouldn't be at WrestleMania 41, but there'd been that much back and forth (including from Rock himself!) that plenty assumed he still would be.
But when he wasn't...