4 Ups & 9 Downs From WWE Raw (Feb 15)

2. Up-And-Comers

If you wanted to point to a manifestation of the problems WWE is facing today, look no further than the Raw Elimination Chamber match.

Six men with a combined 19 WWE Championship title reigns (26 world titles altogether), five of whom debuted on the main roster more than a decade ago, with the six averaging 12 years in the company. AJ Styles is by far the “freshest” face, at only five years (and two world title reigns) in WWE, while Drew McIntyre has only been back on the main roster for three years (but spent seven years with the promotion earlier).

All this is presented to say, we’ve literally been watching people like Jeff Hardy, Randy Orton, Sheamus and Kofi Kingston wrestle day in and day out for what seems like forever. In that time, ratings have steadily declined, and the product has gotten staler than week-old bread. Rather than inject a big multi-man world title match with some honest up-and-comers, the big addition on Monday night was 13-year veteran Kingston.

Simply put, if you keep pushing the same guys over and over and over, then you can’t be surprised when nothing changes. None of these men – other than McIntyre – winning is going to juice ratings, and Drew defending his title just means that the company is invested in him remaining champ longer, which is in itself a positive development. But none of these participants is going to spark interest from fans, and none are "draws" in the sense that people will go out of their way to see them in the chamber.