How WWE Could Creatively Flourish Under Fox Sports
If this all seems optimistic, that’s because it f*cking is: WWE’s traditional response to ratings woes is less full creative philosophical overhaul, more short-term part-time star injection.
Increasingly, finally, this stopgap approach isn’t working. Last night’s go-home RAW final segment was, and this isn’t snark-laced hyperbole, a disaster. Stained already by the wider Crown Jewel controversy, and the glacier-slow main event of Super Show-Down, DX and the Brothers of Destruction failed to create a sense of must-see urgency around their improbable match. If anything, they lessened bedrock-low expectations; Triple H attempted to raise laughs by interrupting an Undertaker and Kane promo littered with ill-advised death imagery. But he had forgotten Shawn Michaels! So, he played dumb, and ushered him from the backstage area. It was a trap. Michaels, still wearing that appalling bandana, entered the ring and dropped ‘Taker with a Superkick. ‘Taker bumped like a felled tree.
When he sat up, Hunter and Shawn acted frightened, failing to hit yet another story beat. After the initial nostalgia pop subsided, nobody reacted to the sit-up spot in the arena. It once conveyed ‘Taker’s indestructibility. As he sat there, his immaculate legacy in danger of destruction, the psychology was weightless.
This was all born from the whims and money of the Saudi Arabia General Sports Authority. Mercifully, per the Wrestling Observer and PWInsider, Fox is less interested in 1990s nostalgia, and more interested in aligning the WWE product with the wider sports-oriented vision of its existing programming.
This feels like a vital—and plausible—step forward for WWE SmackDown, a show that already is drastically superior to its Monday Night RAW counterpart. Paige is a benevolent authority figure who does not hand out opportunities to fellow baddies purely because they are bad; the roster is strong; the writing has serviced the likes of Randy Orton and Becky Lynch wonderfully in recent months; they haven’t totally botched Andrade ‘Cien’ Almas yet.
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