How WWE Is Quietly Building Its Next Main Event Megastar
The Bloodline's 2022 SmackDown segments have gone from being the most egregious and abusive wastes of people's time to instantly beloved and legendary slices of vintage WWE television. The platonic ideal of the company's programming in the content era, these are snackable snapshots of everything WWE can still do very well when a lot of talented minds are put to work.
Long form, they're a joy to behold for live crowds and linear television viewers, but a whopping return on YouTube suggests friends and telling friends or regular fans are reliving the scenes over and over again. And that's before factoring in social media engagement
If all of this sounds like a boring or mechanical way to assess the quality of a pro wrestling segment, consider the fact that it's probably being done by some wealthy and heartless bore over everything we all watch. These grim kingmakers with minute-by-minute spreadsheets don't care what the sh*t tastes like as long we all continue to eat it - good stuff emerging from those circumstances is remarkable enough. From WWE, it's a minor miracle.
WrestleMania, at eight hours plus and spread out over two nights, remains something of an outlier in this respect - it's still the show that feels mostly about the show, glitz, glamour and all. And that's what makes the prospect of Sami Zayn being on the poster next to 'The Tribal Chief' such a bewitching possibility in spite of obvious megastar opposition.
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