10 Things That HAVEN'T Totally Sucked About WWE In 2021
Roman Reigns, Bad Bunny, and a WrestleMania audience prove WWE hasn't been entirely tedious in 2021.
WWE finds itself in a dire situation right now.
Shayna Baszler, the once legitimate badass MMA fighter who could make even a simple stomp look vicious as f*ck, has gone from biting a gash into Becky Lynch's head to feuding with an actual doll. Cedric Alexander and Shelton Benjamin, Elias and Jaxson Ryker, and Rhea Ripley and Charlotte Flair are all examples of a story being dragged out for literally no reason other than WWE having a serious lack of creativity.
Even a half-decent match on Raw, like the New Day vs. R-K-Bro from Raw a few weeks back, isn't praised because it's exactly that; a half-decent Raw match that has no doubt come in the immediate aftermath of some nonsensical gag that Vince McMahon deemed utterly hilarious.
Monday Night Raw is the worst weekly professional wrestling show. Hell, it's up there as one of the worst television shows period. It simply is not enjoyable. WWE simply is not enjoyable. SmackDown is decent some times and NXT are slowly gaining notable plaudits like it's 2018 all over again, but the stench of WWE still lingers.
In short, 2021 has been abysmal for WWE. When you dig deep between the lines, however, there have been a few glimmers of hope for the 'E this year...
10. An Array Of Decent Stipulation Matches
WWE can, surprisingly, be half-decent as it pertains to stipulation matches. Regardless of their actual overall quality, there's at least a couple of show-stealing spots guaranteed in an Elimination Chamber or Money In The Bank ladder match, for example.
In 2021, the company have promoted a decent amount of stipulation matches that were alright:-
Drew McIntyre and Sheamus' no holds barred contest from Fastlane was an intense, hard-hitting brawl that saw both men depart covered in kendo stick lashings and the latter being thrown through some electrical equipment.
Daniel Bryan and Jey Uso's steel cage outing from the 5 March SmackDown was a different form of intense, with the Uso twin scraping Bryan's face against the cage mesh in front of his impending Fastlane adversary, Roman Reigns.
Gauntlet matches - namely the one involving Sheamus, Drew McIntyre, Randy Orton, AJ Styles, Kofi Kingston, and Jeff Hardy from Raw's 15 February broadcast - have acted as a way to perfectly build towards a marquee pay-per-view clash, in this case the WWE Championship Elimination Chamber match.
More recently, Bianca Belair and Bayley's Hell In A Cell match, while a notable step down from the likes of Bayley vs. Sasha Banks in the Cell, had some decent spots, too; the match-ending KOD on a propped ladder was superb.