THIS Is WWE's Secret Biggest Problem

Brrezango Imperium
WWE.com

Weak champions; stop/start booking; glaring continuity issues: WWE's rampant awfulness is the norm now. It is accepted to be bad. WWE, through being so bad for so long, has normalised its sh*tty self and eliminated outrage from our collective limbic system. Remember when Goldberg buried The Fiend? That is a distant feeling now, and it was a strange controversy then. What did you expect?

That question, you feel, is definitively rhetorical now.

WWE's present is a joke. It's 'Future' is so irrelevant that it barely even charts some weeks. Its past has been cannibalised to such a greedy extent that even nostalgia is failing. Just three years ago, ahead of a major pay-per-view, you would be inundated with SummerSlam-themed content on this site and others. You probably watched old editions to get fired up. That sh*t's dead now. "Who is 'Mr. SummerSlam'?" Backstage asked last week. It's Bret Hart. Everybody had that conversation ages ago.

A more interesting present has subsumed WWE's past in the content game, and that present, as it pertains to WWE, is only ever an evaluation of its failures.

A belated and non-committal response to problems of their own making had almost exclusively sustained the infrequent jolting of the sleeping giant for a long, long time. This should be of particular concern to WWE. The fans have essentially created WWE's stars for them in recent years. This is the way 'round it should go, but not, ideally, by way of "Do we absolutely f*cking have to?" boulevard.

CONT'D...(3 of 6)

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Michael Sidgwick is an editor, writer and podcaster for WhatCulture Wrestling. With over seven years of experience in wrestling analysis, Michael was published in the influential institution that was Power Slam magazine, and specialises in providing insights into All Elite Wrestling - so much so that he wrote a book about the subject. You can order Becoming All Elite: The Rise Of AEW on Amazon. Possessing a deep knowledge also of WWE, WCW, ECW and New Japan Pro Wrestling, Michael’s work has been publicly praised by former AEW World Champions Kenny Omega and MJF, and current Undisputed WWE Champion Cody Rhodes. When he isn’t putting your finger on why things are the way they are in the endlessly fascinating world of professional wrestling, Michael wraps his own around a hand grinder to explore the world of specialty coffee. Follow Michael on X (formerly known as Twitter) @MSidgwick for more!