10 Reasons Why You’re Watching WWE Wrong

There's much to criticise about WWE in 2017.

Take Monday's episode of RAW. The opening segment saw The Miz, Dean Ambrose and Chris Jericho cancel and renew one another's talk show segments - an angle WWE ran last year, and it was dire then - before General Manager Kurt Angle intervened and forced Miz to find a partner to oppose Ambrose and Jericho in the main event. No partner was forthcoming; instead, the two faces manhandled one heel in the main event of a pay-per-view go-home show. Barring any last minute changes, none of those men even have anything to do with the others on Sunday.

What?

It was an exercise in anti-psychology designed to position an interfering Bray Wyatt as the brand's top (full time) heel. Wyatt destroyed everybody in his path - but he is nailed on to lose at the pay-per-view because SmackDown's top face requires protection ahead of a mini programme with an enhancement talent. If he doesn't, he's owed two WWE Title matches he can't have because he's on a different brand.

Even more infuriating is the fact Angle is probably being positioned as a doofus in the matchmaking department so that Stephanie McMahon can return to the show and b*llock him for her own amusement.

WWE is an endless slog of recycled formulas - but those formulas generated WWE record revenues in 2016. As subjectively bad as the product is, many of the arguments that circulate online run into a wall made of cold, hard cash.

Jinder Mahal as number one contender to the WWE Championship is an insane development. There's no skirting the issue.

He was an enhancement talent one week and manufactured headliner the next. His push was sudden, incongruous and transparent. He has been promoted as something he isn't because of his vascularity and his ethnic heritage - but that Vince McMahon favours physique over actual talent and is a capitalistic oligarch should come as no surprise. Mahal is orbiting the main event scene because WWE is solidifying its presence in India to ward off the threat of Impact Wrestling.

WWE is an international endeavour. That first W has never been taken more seriously or literally, and the Jinder trend is only going to continue apace. WWE in late 2016 signed several developmental prospects from China, in which there is no industry of note, because there is no industry of note. They identified a gap in the market place. WWE this week is holding a four day tryout in Dubai for that exact reason.

WWE, to their credit, is attempting to delineate their international fandom. The introduction of a show and a Championship geared towards the United Kingdom is the first tentative step of an experimental strategy. The dissonance felt by western viewers is understandable. Mahal has (sort of) come out of nowhere - but though WWE portrays itself onscreen as jingoistic, its concerns are global.

It's a smart strategy, really; experiment with Mahal as top heel on a throwaway B-level pay-per-view and enjoy lucrative gains from an emerging market. Mahal makes no sense on the USA Network - but the world is bigger than that.