10 Ways WWE Can Prove The Critics WRONG At WrestleMania 37
Drew McIntyre has a chance to prove just how effectively WWE can book a babyface in 2021...
For starters, just call it AEW WrestleMania!
If AEW promoted an event entitled WrestleMania, even though they literally are unable to do this because 'WrestleMania' is a quite famous trademark owned by WWE, the critics would love it!
That's how it works!
Your writer is a critic by profession. You writer is also a critic of WWE through reason.
Many in the wrestling media are, which is interpreted not as damning consensus but rather inherent bias. This tedious discourse resurfaced upon the reveal of this year's Wrestling Observer Newsletter Awards, which, not that logic should get in the way, were voted on by fans. They voted for Triple H as Best Booker in 2015, bang in the middle of New Japan Pro Wrestling's critically acclaimed peak. But that's because NXT was as awesome as it was well-booked as it was feel-good. Funny how that works.
The WWE of 2020 and 2021 is none of those things - hence why critics tend not to rate it.
This week's RAW brought so many of WWE's ills into focus. The repetition was numbing; nobody sold, again, the fact that Randy Orton is vomiting jet-black goo; the scripting in Shane McMahon's promo was terrible, confusing, frivolous. That Shane McMahon is even cutting promos is an indictment.
WrestleMania 37 - with the optics of a big crowd set to amplify that which is good - represents an opportunity to prove those critics wrong.
10. On Sundays, They Often Do
When people don't go ballistic in their praise of a WWE pay-per-view, even when the action is mostly strong, the tribalist mutants hold what is on the surface a decent argument: if WWE is a disgrace, as bad as the pathetic death throes of WCW, how could they possibly run such high-quality shows on Sunday nights?
Your writer hasn't ran the numbers, but a typical WWE pay-per-view does very well in the recurring Star Ratings series. **1/2 is average; *** is pretty damn good. Almost invariably, half of the matches on a WWE pay-per-view exceed the latter. Numbers are lost on certain people. These events are invariably praised on this author page and indeed throughout much of the critical community; the ever-controversial Dave Meltzer awarded a WWE RAW match ****1/4 last week, and nothing on the AEW Dynamite show presented 48 hours later matched it.
So why the general, unwavering disdain?
CM Punk said it, and you'll listen to him: WWE can always be better. With the vast financial resources the company boasts, and the world-class talent roster they have recruited to spend it on, what WWE accomplishes on Sundays represents the absolute bare minimum. Those Sundays can and should be better. WWE could hire or utilise expert wrestling minds to craft stories, allow wrestlers to express them, and pay off this elite-level storytelling in amazing unregulated matches that celebrate the incredible range and scope of the pro wrestling art. Tag team wrestling. Lucha libre. Strong style. All of it.
Many top-level WWE PPV matches are very good to excellent. They don't have to be riddled with checklist tropes and worked in the same rhythm.
And they don't always have to be built so unremarkably...