10 Glorious Things That Must Happen In WWE Before 2017
8. The Authority Figures Take A Backseat
The New Era was supposed to spell the end of authority figures hogging airtime that could otherwise be used to put the talent over. Has that happened? Sort of, but not really. Stephanie McMahon and Mick Foley haven’t been featured as prominently as they would’ve been pre-Draft and their contributions have been mostly inoffensive, with one notable exception.
On August 15th’s Raw, Stephanie saw fit to publicly dress down Rusev and Lana in the middle of the ring. Just as she’d done a thousand times before, she undeserviedly buried two performers beneath her character’s colossal ego, showing very little has changed in the minds of WWE’s writers.
SmackDown hasn’t seen the same reduction. Shane McMahon and Daniel Bryan are all over the show, and while they’re both affable personalities, do fans really need to see so much of them? They’re a far cry from The Authority’s drudgery, and Bryan might be the most inherently likeable guy in WWE history, but they’re taking up minutes that could be better used elsewhere.
Fans don’t tune-in to see the Commissioners and General Managers flex their authority. These characters should be playing a supplementary role, not starring, and if WWE really want to change for the better, they’ll start cutting them down.