3. Woefully Small Field
WWE currently has about 40-50 wrestlers on its roster right now and another 25 or so in NXT, plus backstage personnel and Legends who can still perform. Putting on a tournament with only eight wrestlers cheapens the prestige of the event (announcers used that word several times to describe King of the Ring). Thats not to say that WWE should revert to the 2000 KOTR, which had 32 participants, but a field of 16 is easily doable. It would give others a little exposure and something to fight over for a change while casting a longer, brighter spotlight on the tournament itself. Even though someone like Zack Ryder would likely lose a first-round match, at least hes wrestling for a purpose instead of just being a random jobber. Hopefully, this is something that WWE will consider next year. One idea that would have been fun for this year would have been a 12-man tournament, with four former Kings of the Ring getting byes into the quarter-finals: Sheamus, William Regal, Booker T. and Billy Gunn. Add Cesaro in place of Sheamus in the first round and then have Booker face Barrett, Gunn against R-Truth, Sheamus versus Ambrose and Regal against Neville.
Scott Carlson
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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.
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