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

8. Roode Debuts As A Face

Bobby Roode Baron Corbin
WWE.com

Throughout the first half of 2017, NXT was dominated by a cocky heel champion who looked down on everyone who stepped in the ring against him and defended his NXT Championship for seven months.

And then, three days after losing his title, Bobby Roode showed up on SmackDown… as a smiling babyface.

What. The. Actual. Hell.

There was no real reason for the sudden about-face, just a change of venue led to the change in personality. So after a year of rolling through NXT as an awesome heel who riled up fans, Roode was reduced to spending 2017 on SmackDown feuding with Dolph Ziggler over his entrance (an interesting theory but ultimately went nowhere) and getting eliminated from the Survivor Series matchup without really making an impact.

Talk about miscasting someone.

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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.