7 Ways WWE Can Improve The Product This Year

WrestleMania isn’t just the biggest WWE event of the year, it’s also a season finale. It’s the culmination of months’ worth of storylines. It’s the perfect platform to see old stars battle again, new stars rise, and for the talent on the roster to shine in ways they’re typically not afforded throughout the course of the year.

It’s the Super Bowl for WWE—the only difference is no offseason follows. Instead, WWE has to head into the following “season” immediately. But, if approached correctly, this new season can be a chance to shift the paradigm toward the future rather than doubling down on the mistakes of the past. 

If the RAW after WrestleMania taught us anything, it’s that the fans willing to travel and pay big money to see the product are devout followers of the Network, and its developmental organization NXT (just watch the Enzo and Cass segment if you disagree). What they are pining for—what we all are—is to see these future stars be given the opportunity to shine. Putting them in meaningful, smart storylines instead of burying them to dying talent would be a good start. The old guard of Stone Cold, The Rock, and Undertaker are relegated to one show a year, if we’re lucky. Their time to carry the weight of the company has gone, and WWE’s reluctance to build new superstars is now hurting the company.

To be fair, the first couple shows since WrestleMania have seen improvements, but there is still a lot of work to do if the aforementioned paradigm is truly to shift. Organic moments created by the fanbase should never be ignored. Storylines need to be better developed, and at the very least they need to make sense. Characters shouldn’t be shoved down our throats. And the announcers should never insult our intelligence, as illustrated by JBL and Michael Cole during the RAW after ‘Mania when they said this particular crowd “Boos people they normally cheer for, and cheers people they normally boo for.” This encapsulates what is currently wrong with WWE’s strategy. Treating fans as ignorant adolescents in an era when the average wrestling fan is smarter than at any point in history is insulting.

So, I’m proposing five ways the WWE can improve their product immediately, and take the company in a better direction this year.

If you zoom out the past few years, you can pick out several moments when the fanbase was rabid for something or someone, and WWE chose to go in a different direction. They were a year late on Daniel Bryan, and as a result they never got a chance to capitalize on his success prior to his injuries. They dropped the ball completely on Ziggler, they weren’t sure what to do with Bray Wyatt, and they mishandled CM Punk in both the early and late stages of his run. The fans were as vociferous as they could be, yet the WWE was recalcitrant to go all-in with any of them. What they didn’t realize at the time was how much that would hurt the product long term.

The WWE is unique in that you don’t need to poll the audience like other television shows. You don’t have to wait for critic reviews to start rolling in. All you have to do is listen to the fans. They will tell you what they like and what they don’t. For too long of a time now, the fans are being ignored for archaic reasons. The old stigma in the WWE has been one of “earning your stripes” prior to the big push. That may have been acceptable years ago when you had several people to fill the main event void, but today it’s severely lacking, and it’s standing in the way of progress.

Vince McMahon has long viewed Roman Reigns as the next big thing, but the fans have mostly rejected that idea. It doesn’t matter. Instead of allowing organic moments to dictate the direction, Vince has shoved several plots and characters down our throats. He has held back stars for reasons ranging from absurd (not the right look, too many tattoos, not big enough) to downright confusing (“he’s not ready yet”).

It’s time to start allowing organic moments to dictate the pace of the show. Go with the momentum, not against it. The worst that happens is you find out someone truly isn’t ready, or isn’t the superstar we thought he or she might be. And that’s okay. That will happen. But the fans will be more invested because they will have a sense that their voice counts.

There is a reason the ratings have steadily dropped over the last few years, and it has nothing to do with the departure of the old guard. It has everything to do with mishandling organic moments when they arise, and not allowing new stars to form. Listening to fans is paramount to success, and here’s an example of one way they’re not listening…