13 Ups & 9 Downs For WWE In 2022

8. The (First) Lacey Evans Return

Lacey Evans has made three distinct comebacks this year, so the title's clarification isn't just for snark.

Her most recent, with a heavy leaning on her military background, is too new to analyse either way. Her second, a "getting serious this time, honest" reappearance on the SmackDown undercard for multi-woman action, was so indistinct that fans have almost been instructed to forget it ever happened anyway.

Her first, though, was the sort of sh*t that WWE hardcores had become so conditioned to that her maiden live appearance in the gimmick drove long-standing observers into an existential crisis about if the entire business was doomed forever.

That's not an exaggeration - the company cackhandedly forced her in front of a lens for several consecutive weeks to explore in great detail an upbringing that included multiple patterns of abusive behaviour, tragedy not-limited-to the death of immediate family members, and pain and poverty no child should have to endure. They could barely be threaded into the silliness of WWE's weekly show anyway, but this traumatic revisiting was made even more soulless when she was brought back to television as a heel.

And it got worse.

In some terrifying vision of how the world almost completely turned before Vince McMahon resigned in disgrace, ring announcer Samantha Irvine asked live fans to cheer for Evans as per her rather cynical request. But the traditional heel bit backfired when the conditioned and obliging fans simply did what they were told. She got cheered, she switched brands, and by the time she did her "each and every one of you" generic shtick, the fans had forgotten the backstory that made the whole thing so sickening to begin with.

It's always darkest before dawn but this was pitch f*cking black.