The Problem With Edge That No One Wants To Talk About

In Edge's defence, this is a largely star-less era. People like to argue this commonly-made point when they shouldn't, as the list of wrestlers one can point to and credibly say that they drive the business forward, using data as evidence, is minuscule. For the past six months, we have Roman Reigns, Bayley, and Sasha Banks. Bray Wyatt's 'Fiend' character has at least been a reliable merch-shifter since debuting, but doesn't necessarily compel people to tune in to Raw.

And that's about it.

Stars of previous eras reliably provide short-term ratings boosts, as was last seen when Raw Legends Night. The great hope when bringing the likes of Ric Flair, Hulk Hogan, and others in is that people who don't watch every week will see something they like and come back the following Monday, but they never do. Legends Night pulled 361,000 extra viewers on 4 January but Raw had lost almost all of them by the next show.

Edge ties into this problem. He's 47 years old now, and yes, it's a great comeback story, but he's the oldest person to ever take the Rumble after novelty winner Vince McMahon, and WWE still felt he was the best option to help Reigns and McIntyre lead the company through its most important part of the year. So far, he hasn't succeeded in attracting extra eyeballs. The data tells us that people beyond WWE's hardcore viewership are no more interested in him than anything else on Raw, SmackDown, or NXT.

CONT'd...