10 Worrying Trends WWE Need To End

It can be frustrating to be a pro wrestling fan at times. Knowing that there is a script to follow makes it somewhere in between a sports broadcast and a television show and because of this, we have the unique experience of noticing annoying trends in the writing.

Out of nowhere you will see head-scratching decisions being repeatedly used as if they were genius ideas. Remember when Hornswoggle got so entrenched in WWE programming that he was Raw’s surprise GM? Or his feud with El Torito? Once WWE is stuck on something, they are committed to running it into the ground.

But there is a shred of hope to this constant problem. WWE has slowly begun to distribute the power away from Vince in small doses and finally, this past Raw felt like a new product under Heyman’s influence. So the hope is that with these changes, WWE will start to abandon some of their lazy booking and repetitive writing habits. And there are plenty of things to fix.

One of the most powerful moves in all of WWE is the surprise roll up. We all have seen tremendous, top of the card talent be reduced to jobbers by the power of the roll up. Somehow wrestlers can kick out of superplexes, but a simple pin maneuver is impossible to lift your shoulders from. Ali even just got a United States title shot off of this amazing finisher on SmackDown. But what makes this tool so powerful?

Very lazy and uninspired booking is the culprit. If you book a roll up, the thought the writers have is that both wrestlers are protected. But what it really does is make the whole thing feel pointless. A face gets a roll up, they got lucky on a tougher opponent. A heel does it and they feel like a slippery, spineless snake. That is fine when you use it on people who make sense, but look at Ali as an example. He is supposed to be a legitimate contender to Shinsuke’s title yet he looked like a scared little boy escaping his demise. How does this help anybody?

This is shockingly popular even if the fans hate it. It has replaced DQ finishes in recent years as the go to booking trope. And before long, with how many wrestlers the roll up puts down it might join the piledriver on the banned moves list for the shear devastation it causes. Or at least that is what we all can hope for.