10 Totally Stupid Things WWE Has ALREADY DONE Since WrestleMania 34
April Showers
Unpopular opinion: WWE has been pretty good this year. Pretty pretty pretty pretty good. Alas, why are such views often so unpopular? Mainly, because of the times in which the company ensures the entire fanbase curbs their enthusiasm.
The 2018 Royal Rumble was a creative and critical success, doubling down on the company's most beloved gimmick with perhaps the most positive concept-to-execution delivery in the clunky history of their 'Women's Evolution'. NXT remains the standard bearer of Sports Entertainment excellence, whilst centrepiece exhibition WrestleMania was a show of two halves that thankfully earned enough goodwill in the initial salvo to make up for a laborious latter stage.
Since the 'Show Of Shows' though? Diplomatically ponderous.
It'd be folly to suggest there's been pause for thought, because WWE certainly haven't stood still. If WrestleMania was silly season, the company made the immediate aftermath the post-holiday sales. Customers chasing their favourite bits of the product like wild shoppers - the organisation only too happy to oblige with output so all-over-the-place the company literally managed to host the biggest ever Royal Rumble on entirely different continent just weeks before bringing Raw and SmackDown Live! tapings to another one.
Everything seems to be going on, but very little's actually happening. This fundamental lack of focus has manifested itself in rather boneheaded fashion. Shortly before the 'Show Of Shows', WWE initiated a text-to-screen promo style despite their characters and storylines not benefitting from such low-rent signposting. But then, hardly any of them have a clear direction anyway.
10. The Life And Death Of Roman Reigns
The chorus of boos that greeted Roman Reigns in Montreal following Greatest Royal Rumble wasn't overtly different to the 'mixed reaction' he'd normally receive in any city either side of the Atlantic, but his actual situation has substantially worsened since the 'Show Of Shows'.
Not for the first time, 'The Big Dog' choked when pushed to over-achieve. His WWE Title victories came thanks to victories over Alberto Del Rio, Dean Ambrose, Sheamus and Triple H - four men he'd never realistically have bother beating on any given episode of Monday Night Raw. His high profile failures came in matches against Brock Lesnar, Braun Strowman and on the microphone opposite John Cena. Proper stars with proper fanbases and proper auras that have rendered Reigns a proper loser.
Audiences will pick and choose their favourites based on all sorts of different criteria, but they'll ultimately only ever back a winner. In an art-form in which such results are controlled, the inexcusable mismanagement of a multi-year pet project is perhaps the most damning indictment of the clunky star-making structure WWE has become.
For a performer entering his prime, this must be hugely dispiriting. When a longterm injury lay-off would be the best thing for your career, your time at the top is up.