12 Ups And 15 Downs For WWE In 2017 (2nd Opinion)

3. Shane As A Serious Wrestler

AJ Styles Shane McMahon
WWE.com

Remember when Shane McMahon was the daredevil boss’ son and glorified stuntman who put life and limb at risk to battle guys like Test and Steve Blackman?

Somewhere along the way, Shane become deified as a competitor, to the point where he was deemed one of the toughest SOBs in the business, capable of hanging with the Undertaker in Hell in a Cell last year, and then battling AJ Styles and Kevin Owens this year, the latter needing help to defeat the power of the commissioner.

None of this is to say that Shane doesn’t deserve credit for stepping into the ring and competing, nor that he is a bad wrestler. But a guy who’s wrestled five times in the past eight years should not be considered able to hang with top talent. It diminishes what other guys do week after week, all because of WWE’s reimagining of his earlier in-ring “career.”

And you know it’s going to continue in 2018, with Shane probably getting another plum spot on the WrestleMania XXXIV card.

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Scott is a former journalist and longtime wrestling fan who was smart enough to abandon WCW during the Monday Night Wars the same time as the Radicalz. He fondly remembers watching WrestleMania III, IV, V and VI and Saturday Night's Main Event, came back to wrestling during the Attitude Era, and has been a consumer of sports entertainment since then. He's written for WhatCulture for more than a decade, establishing the Ups and Downs articles for WWE Raw and WWE PPVs/PLEs and composing pieces on a variety of topics.