10 Stars WWE Are Booking Perfectly
5. Bobby Roode
It's not just the robe; Bobby Roode is a phenomenal heel throwback because he is almost entirely removed from the irksome modern chickensh*t trope.
You know it well enough by now; heel takes count-out loss to elongate a rivalry, even though the intrigue surrounding it dissipates as a result of the carny chicanery. How many times have you really wanted to see a guy get their comeuppance for bailing on a match? It induces groans, not genuine heat.
Roode has not been booked so transparently. He's really good at cheating. He revels in it. He's not some pretender holding onto his gold because he breaks the rules without, for some stupid reason, incurring a financial deterrent; he bends them, laying into limbs with a vicious, detestable (but not illegal) zeal. His vastly underrated matches with Shinsuke Nakamura earlier this year were awesome in that he forced you to hate and begrudgingly respect him. His match opposite Hideo Itami at TakeOver: Chicago, naturally upstaged by that UK Championship bout, was as good, offering a glimpse of weakness and a scant promise of catharsis.
He's not on the level of spiritual antecedent Ric Flair (in the workrate era, that is a good thing, ironically) but he has channelled his essence as well as anybody.