10 Ways WWE Are Holding Their Own Wrestlers Back
4. Not Letting Them Be Themselves
The Cruiserweight and Mae Young Classics should be used as blueprints for all WWE character development going forward. Yes, both operated on a significantly smaller scale than the main roster, but their reality based presentation worked wonders in establishing relationships between the performers and the audience.
While Raw and SmackDown roster members often resemble actors playing characters, the tournament wrestlers felt like real, fully formed human beings. This is what people want in 2017: reality, not fantasy. Social media has finished kayfabe off, and while Braun Strowman's success shows there's still room for larger-than-life characters in wrestling, he's in the minority.
TJP is the perfect case study. He felt like WWE's most believable babyface coming out of the CWC, because his real-life story of overcoming homelessness and clawing his way to the top built sympathy, and put him on the same level as many in the crowd. On the main roster, he became a 16-bit gamer geek that nobody could buy into, and his reactions nosedived.
Letting these performers be themselves would go a long way to solving the roster's popularity problem. It's no miracle cure, but fans relate to other humans, not gimmicks, and realising this would help plenty of struggling stars get over.