10 Staples From Wrestling's Past WWE Must Bring Back
5. Decisive Victories
50/50 booking extends beyond trading wins.
The majority of WWE matches in which Brock Lesnar, Nia Jax or Braun Strowman aren't involved follow a familiar template: two wrestlers throw their arsenals at one another, diminishing the power of their finishers in the process, before succumbing to a narrow loss. In most cases, the result, for all intents and purposes, could have gone either way.
There is a middle ground between the squash and back and forth format. Take Randy Savage Vs. Ultimate Warrior at WrestleMania VII as an example.
Savage throughout the match, in the heel role, is continually depicted as inferior to the Warrior. He relies almost entirely on Sensational Sherri's interference to claw back the advantage, but once she is removed from the equation, his fate is sealed: Warrior defeats him handily, without exhausting a sub-repertoire of signature and finishing moves. He even pins Savage with one foot stamped down on his chest in a simple - but telling - demonstration of dominance.
The message following the match was clear: Warrior, decisively, was the better man. He never recovered his standing as The Man in the WWF - Hulk Hogan compromised the plan on the very night of his coronation one year earlier - but the match layout, which would go some way towards separating today's homogenised pack, was incredibly astute.