Much like the chicken-and-egg debate, the question of which came first and caused the other also can apply to WWEs dependence on part-timers and its poor booking/writing. Does the company rely on part-timers because poor booking has left them no viable alternatives, or is the writing poor because part-timers have been pushed as being superior to the rest of the roster? When even the announcers constantly gush about the Attitude Era and how incredible the stars of yesteryear were, its tough to be seen as a top-flight guy. That task becomes doubly tough when youre booked to lose half your matches, trading wins with the same five guys for months with no real direction. If youre lucky enough to hold a mid-card title, you might lose every nontitle bout, with guys earning title shots by pinning you in these matches, only to pull out wins when the title is on the line. Look at Dolph Ziggler, who eliminated three guys in the main event of Survivor Series last year. Fans thought that maybe WWE finally had big plans for him, but they clearly didnt. We can argue about whether Kevin Owens was severely damaged by losing his feud with John Cena, but its safe to say that WWE missed out on an opportunity to create a new megastar by having KO win. Those examples just scratch the surface of the problems created by the piss-poor work of the WWE creative team. Look at previous items for other examples: the Wyatt Family, the Rusev/Lana/Zigger/Summer Rae love quadrangle, Kane, Sheamus as champ, Damien Mizdow, and of course these last two items
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.
