3 Ups & 8 Downs From WWE Raw (Oct 11)

3. Booking Babyface Feuds

Drew McIntyre Big E
WWE.com

Why is it that WWE seemingly cannot book a face-versus-face feud without resorting to the same tired, artificial tension?

In our most recent example, last week, Drew McIntyre challenged Big E for the WWE Championship. Drew actually made a great argument for the title match, noting that he held the title for 300 days last year, but never got to soak in the cheers of a live crowd even once as champ due to the pandemic. He said he was chasing that high, that adrenaline rush.

That alone should be enough, and let these two qualified, quality wrestlers do their thing. But instead, we’ve been forced to endure this forced tension of whether they can get along as they’ve been forced to team up in each of the past two weeks, with the duo clashing a bit to tease dissension. (And then sometimes, we get the actual full-fledged breakdown we got in the main event.)

This isn’t hard: You can have tension over fighting for a title without forcing them to get along and then get chippy.

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Contributor
Contributor

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.