10 Major Mistakes WWE Has Made In 2016 (So Far)

How we all cheered at Shane McMahon’s surprise return in February. It’s so rare that WWE gets to actually pull off a crowd-pleasing shocker like that without being spoiled in advance that for the most part everyone glossed over the holes in the story being told.

Like this mysterious deal between Vince and Shane which allowed McMahon The Younger to blackmail his own father, which hasn’t really been mentioned since. Like the reason that Shane would agree to take on the Undertaker in his signature match at an event that’s almost synonymous with him (because that’s really not how blackmail works).

Then it got weirder, and the holes became gaping pits of logic. Why was the Undertaker agreeing to this match? Everyone knows that Mark Calaway does whatever Vince tells him in real life, but in the context of WWE’s storylines, he’s the Last Outlaw, the Dead Man, and no one tells him what to do.

Even if you ignored that, the story didn’t work. We were supposed to root for Shane to win to vanquish the hated Authority, right? But doing so meant rooting against the Undertaker at WrestleMania, something the WWE had spent literally decades training us not to do.

Still, we knew that the match itself would sort all of those problems. There was no chance in hell that WWE were really going to put a grey-haired Shane McMahon, with his baby kangaroo boxing, in a competitive match with their greatest and scariest icon in the bloody Hell In A Cell at WrestleMania.

The Cell was a no-disqualification match, after all. There would be a swerve, a screwjob. The Undertaker would drag Vince in to take his place! Shane would have a representative, a champion: a returning Kurt Angle! John Cena! The Rock! And, to cap it all off, Shane would do something stupid - namely dive off something high - and everyone would cheer!

Well, one of those wild predictions came true. Incredibly, the company had decided that the pair of them would go for half an hour (not including entrances) with no interference and no surprises. The Dead Man was forced to sell for Shane’s awkward, weak offence while non-wrestler Shane shrugged off attacks from a far bigger and stronger wrestling legend.

Nobody looked good coming out of this nonsense, even after that telegraphed (but impressive) leap from the top of the cage - and when the dust had settled, the story continued to make no sense, as Shane was given control of RAW despite losing his match.