9 Exact Moments WWE Booking Stopped Making Sense

6. Adam Pearce No-Sells Bayley's Nervous Breakdown

John Cena CM Punk
WWE.com

Or at this point, should that be "everybody" no-sells Bayley's nervous breakdown?

This would be a wider criticism of WWE's house style and usage of the invisible camera had they not gone some way to making abuse of the tactic a little less egregious over the years. Conversations still take place with a ginormous lens and boom mic leering close, but typically the company will work mostly within the bounds of reality elsewhere. This hasn't been the case with the introduction of Bayley's "inner" thoughts, and that's served to make everybody who speaks matter-of-factly about it sound callous and unbothered.

Following a failed run-in at SummerSlam and talk of a long losing streak she'd been on, Bayley's backstage vignettes found her sat in a darkened room listening to her old heel and babyface personals warring with one another. Not nonsensical on a fundamental level, but the fact that Lyra Valkyria and Adam Pearce can hear all of it and sit respectively between mild concern and not giving a single toss presents them both as naive at best and carelessly stupid at worst when she makes her inevitable warped return.

The future's not bright for it; the company has experimented with stories that ask for engagement beyond the realms of reality elsewhere, but the whole thing inevitably gets reduced to rank-and-file in the end...

Contributor
Contributor

Michael is a writer, editor, podcaster and presenter for WhatCulture Wrestling, and has been with the organisation over 8 years. He primarily produces written, audio and video content on WWE and AEW, but also provides knowledge and insights on all aspects of the wrestling industry thanks to a passion for it dating back over 35 years. As one third of "The Dadley Boyz" Michael has contributed to the huge rise in popularity of the WhatCulture Wrestling Podcast and its accompanying YouTube channel, earning it top spot in the UK's wrestling podcast charts with well over 62,000,000 total downloads. Within the podcasting space, he also co-hosts Benno & Hamflett, In Your House! and Podcast Horseman: The BoJack Horseman Podcast. He has been featured as a wrestling analyst for the Tampa Bay Times, Fightful, POST Wrestling, GRAPPL, GCP, Poisonrana and Sports Guys Talking Wrestling, and has covered milestone events in New York, Dallas, Las Vegas, Philadelphia, London and Cardiff. Michael's background in media stretches beyond wrestling coverage, with a degree in Journalism from the University Of Sunderland (2:1) and a series of published articles in sports, music and culture magazines The Crack, A Love Supreme and Pilot. When not offering his voice up for daily wrestling podcasts, he can be found losing it singing far too loud watching his favourite bands play live. Follow him on X/Twitter - @MichaelHamflett