5. Lack Of Midcard Development In General
So let's say that you're Damien Sandow and the company clearly has no plans for you at the top of the card. The one thing that you could say about the Vince Russo era was that someone like Sandow could at least count on getting some ideas for his character thrown at the viewer. Stuff like Marc Mero feuding with his ex-wife, or the various geeks in the Hardcore division fighting 24/7 over the silly title in playgrounds and such, or Hardcore Holly challenging giants because he thinks that he's 400 pounds. Now, what do you have past the main event players? Has Fandango even had a FEUD since Jericho months ago? Ryback flopped at the top of the card with Heyman, and they immediately lost interest in him and stuck him in the middle with Curtis Axel, with no promo time and no storyline. Creative has three basic storylines for guys below a certain level: Beating the secondary champion to "get back in the hunt" for the title, trading wins with another poor sap to build for a "rubber match", or just having a losing streak. Talk about a self-fulfilling prophecy. No one can ever get over given that kind of crappy support from the company, and then they get shunted down the card and eventually tossed aside like Mason Ryan or Ezekial Jackson because they just couldn't get over and "creative has nothing for them." Ah, but at least some guys get recycled into tag teams occasionally in attempts to salvage them, right? Great in theory, but then the booking falls prey to the same 50/50 nonsense, where the Real Americans are kind of getting over and beat the Rhodes Family a couple of times in non-title matches to set up their title challenge at the PPV...in a four-way match with two other teams. How is anyone supposed to get invested in any of that? Like, remember all the classic tag team wars in the 80s, where the Hart Foundation stole the tag titles from the British Bulldogs, and then did a bunch of jobs to set up a four-way match against the Bulldogs, Moondogs, and two random jobbers thrown together? No, because that would be stupid. Even during the days of the endless Hardyz v. E&C v. Dudleyz matches, they at least had some motivation to continue feuding, rather than "Well, it's this team's turn now." And speaking of whose turn it is...