10 Things WWE Needs To Improve In 2018

The inevitability of long-term injury makes the task of mapping out an entire calendar year of pay-per-views an intrinsically difficult one. But you still get the nagging sense that planning in 2017 wasn't as good as it could have been.

Take Hell in a Cell, for example. The WWE Title match for this show was Jinder Mahal versus Shinsuke Nakamura, a feud that didn't have anywhere near the sort of bad blood necessary for a match inside the Devil's Playground. If they're going to insist on annual, themed shows they need to fashion storylines that demand extreme stipulations.

Baron Corbin's Money in the Bank disaster is another salient case in point. Clearly something happened backstage between The Lone Wolf unhooking the briefcase in June and his failed cash-in two months later - but you don't lose faith in guys you really believe in that abruptly.

It's not like long-term booking is a lost art, either. It was as recently as three years ago that Seth Rollins' slow-burning push culminated at WrestleMania 31, with Roman cast in the same role the following year. When WWE plans things out, they tend to get rewarded - and so do we.