What happened to the storylines in WWE?

[R=G]

I honestly think they've gotten extremely lazy with storylines and with mixing up booking, but part of me feels that it's not just because it's easier.

As much as I want to blame the WWE for being pretty linear with their arcs and feuds, I can't help but remember a few instances, one of which was where this was the reality...

This was 2011. Now, only 2 of those people work with the company.

They gave Daniel Bryan a SummerSlam win over Cena and the opportunity to stand tall over all of Evolution in one night to main event WrestleMania with the title.

He had to retire.

Gave Punk the longest reign since Sammartino. He's out. The beat goes on...

I remember a particular point in time where Reigns had won the Rumble and everyone was complaining about it (justifiably so, perhaps), but no one had a definitive answer for who would be pushed in his place as the person to face Lesnar because damn near every other choice was injured or a liability for injury.

They pull a big swerve and have Seth cash in for that match and reign as champion....

...only for that reign to be cut short because of injury. Wins the title at Mania and ends up missing the next one.

They bring in Sting for a storyline.

Injured. Damn Retired. fukk.

They create the Universal Title and put it on Balor while he's hot. He's fresh, he's got the look, and the IWC approval. Surely, he....

Injured before he ever defends it.

I was in the building on the night where they tried to create a Bray Wyatt/Roman Reigns tag team in the main event for Raw.

Bray was injured by the next week.

It could be the coincidence, schedule, or the style but sometimes I wonder if they keep guys in repetitive programs and keep the same guys at certain tiers of the card because they're more durable and take less risks while still getting great reactions (for themselves and for the guys they face, which is most important.)

To them, it probably feels like a safer bet and you kind of see how it is when they trust guys. Look at how long they've had the secondary titles on Miz, who proudly lauds being the "King of Safe Style" and have many outside opportunities he gets because he's always available.

They should definitively be more creative with storylines, but I think they're afraid to shake up the dice.

They could of took chances on undefeated Rusev..Cesaro in 2014..they chose for things to be this way.

 

[The Wall Brother]

Right on time

 

[Roman Brady]

The lack of long term booking has really hurt WWE.

lol when rasslers have "feuds" today they wrestle the same guy every week for like 3-4 months if thats not long enough time to write a storyline idk

 

[TransJenner]

lol when rasslers have "feuds" today they wrestle the same guy every week for like 3-4 months if thats not long enough time to write a storyline idk

They litterally wrestle every week
With the 6-man tag before big PPV
they really need to switch they're shyt up

 

[Mantis Toboggan M.D.]

They litterally wrestle every week
With the 6-man tag before big PPV
they really need to switch they're shyt up

This is another problem they have. Too many matches that don’t mean shyt. It feels like 90% of the time, there’s nothing at stake in a match. Win or lose, you’re in the same spot in the standings and on the card. This overexposes people in the ring, makes matches feel less important, and takes away time for developing characters for the crowd to care about while a lot of guys basically wrestle the same match every week in a feud that has no substance to it beyond a lot of pointless matches. To put it in perspective how many more matches guys wrestle now, I think Steve Austin wrestled 270 total matches for them including house shows. By comparison, was wrestling well over 200 matches each year for I think the last 3 years before he got hurt and Rollins was on pace for 220+ in 2015 when his knee blew up. This leads to overexposed wrestlers who don’t feel like special attractions since they wrestle so much and have so little personality that just get injured more.

 

[TransJenner]

This is another problem they have. Too many matches that don’t mean shyt. It feels like 90% of the time, there’s nothing at stake in a match. Win or lose, you’re in the same spot in the standings and on the card. This overexposes people in the ring, makes matches feel less important, and takes away time for developing characters for the crowd to care about while a lot of guys basically wrestle the same match every week in a feud that has no substance to it beyond a lot of pointless matches. To put it in perspective how many more matches guys wrestle now, I think Steve Austin wrestled 270 total matches for them including house shows. By comparison, was wrestling well over 200 matches each year for I think the last 3 years before he got hurt and Rollins was on pace for 220+ in 2015 when his knee blew up. This leads to overexposed wrestlers who don’t feel like special attractions since they wrestle so much and have so little personality that just get injured more.

They need to bring back the fukkery
I also think the production looks weird as hell

 

[Mantis Toboggan M.D.]

They need to bring back the fukkery
I also think the production looks weird as hell

It’s too clean and crisp looking. The whole product looks sterile, like it was created on an assembly line or in a sealed off lab. Pro wrestling should look a little gritty or imperfect. The hell in a cell and elimination chamber designs especially suffer from this issue compared to the old models used for them. Visually it’s the same problems the hobbit trilogy and Star Wars prequels have with all the cgi instead of practical effects and set pieces. You got LED displays on all the ring aprons and ring posts. The whole stage is an LED screen with no real shape or design to it as opposed to the stage and ramp having some real design up until about 2008. The ramp is an LED screen. Guy’s titantrons these days is just their logo slapped on a background. Nobody has any pyro anymore that stands out. Nothing is really designed to stand out from each other. Think about how raw and smackdown used to have entirely different lighting styles, ramps, announce table placements. Each pay per view had it’s own stage. Now everything looks the same. Even most of the belts look identical and all of them but the raw women’s belt looks hideous and even the names of these belts feel lazy and half assed. “Raw tag team titles”, “smackdown tag team titles”, “raw women’s title”, “smackdown women’s title”, “universal title”. No effort put into naming or designing these belts or anything else really.

 

[ExodusNirvana]

I think they don't know how to write for this era and please Vince at the same time. Cokeboy wants who he wants over and that's that. The problem is...the person he wants over at the moment is not over organically and in 2018, the fans will either hijack the show or just not give a fukk about it. So now, storylines barely exist. They just trip over themselves from show to show from PPV to PPV until shyt fizzles out or someone gets injured and they have no choice but to shift.

What you gonna do? Avoid smark cities except for PPVs? Come on man

 

[Mob H]

Think about how raw and smackdown used to have entirely different lighting styles, ramps, announce table placements.

The ovaltron
The fist

 

[ALonelyDad]

Last good one was Jericho and Owens