Should We Still Cover WWE?

In this edition of The Wrestling Estate roundtable, we discuss whether we should continue to cover WWE.

How often do you watch WWE?

David Gibb: I watched TakeOver 36, which was the first WWE-produced show I’ve watched an appreciable amount of since WrestleMania 36.

Chad Gelfand: I’m still a weekly watcher and enjoy SmackDown most weeks, but Raw just seems to drag and be the same rematches for months on end, making it hard to actually invest in the show.

Juan Bautista: I just watch the highlights. If something intrigues me, I’ll try to catch it the next day.

Steven Jackson: Hardly ever. I don’t have any interest in the product or time to watch it. Plus, all the red tape has really made me disengaged from the promotion.

John Corrigan: I haven’t watched WWE on a regular basis in three years. I’ll watch the Royal Rumble and WrestleMania live, but that’s it.

Jack Goodwillie: Live? Almost never. I, like many I’m sure, see the things I want to see hours after the show airs on YouTube and Reddit. Watching any live television show for three hours straight would be draining, but when it’s an objectively bad show like Monday Night Raw, the risk is simply not worth the reward. Nick Khan told Ariel Helwani that Raw would be eight hours if he had anything to do with it, so producing a quality television show is clearly not the priority. Ads, merchandising and rights deals are the priority for this company. Therefore, this company is no longer my priority.

Have the returns of John Cena, Becky Lynch, and Brock Lesnar renewed or increased your interest in WWE?

Gibb: Cena, a little bit. Lynch, not really, even though she’s great (the weird circumstances of her return obviously made it less than it could’ve been). Brock, a little bit. I’ll probably enjoy the eventual PPV match, but I’m not going to watch all the TV leading up to it.

Gelfand: The returns are exciting initially, but they do feel like Band-Aids for long-term storytelling. WWE is just searching for moments rather than telling good stories.

Bautista: No. John Cena is gone already and came back just to put Roman over. Becky, we’ll get to her later. As far as Lesnar goes, how long is this story going to go on for? We’ve been seeing Roman vs. Brock since 2015. WWE has been trying to make this a generation-defining rivalry when it’s not.

Jackson: John Cena did (as I’m a Cena mark at heart), but not Becky Lynch and certainly not Brock “Manbun” Lesnar! What is that hairstyle about!?

Corrigan: Cena coming back made me check out Raw the next night, but as soon as he bro’ed out with Riddle, I turned the show off. I’m a Becky fan, but I didn’t watch SummerSlam live and her return didn’t get me to watch SmackDown. Neither did Lesnar’s return, which indicates how far gone I am from WWE’s web.

Goodwillie: Increased? Maybe. Renewed? No. And I don’t look at that as a knock on any of the three stars. To be fair, I don’t think any one appearance would be enough to renew my interest in WWE. A change in the creative mindset would be the only thing that could renew my interest and that doesn’t appear to be happening any time soon. At least that way, we, as fans, could speculate who the next John Cena, Becky Lynch and Brock Lesnar could be. That’s called “creating buzz,” something the creatively bankrupt WWE has forgotten about over the last five years.

How do you feel about Bianca Belair being squashed?

Gibb: It’s a bad look, especially considering its SummerSlam and not some rando monthly show that will be forgotten to time. The good news is people seem so universally pissed off about it that a course correction should stick without anybody really being “hurt,” if they do it.

Gelfand: It was a terrible decision and unnecessary to squash someone like Bianca Belair in that fashion, especially because it flies in the face of her charter being the “strongEST, toughEST, and smartEST.” Even if the plan is for Becky Lynch to turn heel, surely that could have been accomplished without having one of your brightest rising stars lose in under 30 seconds off one move.

Bautista: Let’s do a good ol’ breakdown. Bianca Belair, the “EST of SmackDown” who has come miles away from being a second-rate version of Sasha Banks, lost in under a minute. Bianca the champion is supposed to be ready for any challenge, but Becky Lynch, who is not even on the right show and hasn’t had a match in over a year, just shows up and beats her. This storyline and the whole division is a mess. Becky is a champion of a division that has no credibility. Carmella was untouchable for like a week, Sasha is nowhere to be seen and again the former champion lost in 30 seconds.

Jackson: No feelings as I didn’t watch it and don’t know what’s going on.

Corrigan: It made no sense. As Gelfand mentioned, Belair being squashed like that destroys her character. This wasn’t like a Money in the Bank cash-in where Belair had just wrestled a grueling match. She was amped up, ready to compete and then after an elbow to the jaw and a Rock Bottom, she’s out cold. I also don’t understand why Lynch would turn heel – she’s one of the few wrestlers in the company that people actually care about.

Goodwillie: I didn’t really see the logic. This is one of the few new stars who did seem to be on the up and up in the company, and I’m sure if you asked Bruce Prichard that notion probably hasn’t changed. This just isn’t the way you treat a star. Hulk Hogan might be a bad example, but can you imagine if Vince McMahon did this to the Macho Man after WrestleMania IV? He would never! So, my only question is, what changed? When and why did the thinking change that you can just squash stars you’re trying to build? It can’t be good for locker room morale either, and Becky Lynch isn’t even a part-timer.

Of course, Nikki Bella was not a fan of the match, but then again, she doesn’t have room to talk considering she won the Diva’s Championship with a “kiss distraction finish.” Regardless, I can and have said a lot about some of AEW’s booking practices, but I can confidently say Tony Khan isn’t just going to job Britt Baker out to Serena Deeb next month. That is why AEW is the preferred promotion right now.

Now that it’s been a few months, what do you think of WWE on Peacock?

Gibb: It’s fine! The WWE stuff definitely works a lot better than the Olympics stuff did. The WWE Network was still a much better experience, from an organizational perspective.

Gelfand: Disappointing. WWE still hasn’t moved all of the content from WWE Network over, and the interface is a lot worse than the Network’s with rewinding a live show not even being a possibility.

Bautista: It’s okay.

Jackson: Again I can’t comment as I’m not a WWE Network subscriber.

Corrigan: Godawful. It’s extremely slow, the editing blows, the inability to navigate to certain matches sucks and the lack of old footage is disappointing. Even though I don’t even pay for Peacock, I’ve grown so frustrated that I subscribed to the Wrestling Legends Network to get my wrasslin’ fix. For more details, check out The Business of the Business’ interview with head honcho Adam Parsons.

Goodwillie: 0/10. NBCUniversal seems more interested in whitewashing WWE’s history than actually putting out a quality streaming product. In that way, it’s a great partner for WWE: All sizzle and no steak. I still couldn’t tell you if any of that old content that got left off from the transition to Peacock is on there. But the streaming issues people have had during events and with accessing on-demand content is just bottom-of-the-barrel. Wrestling fans deserve better. “Zero. Point. Zero.”

Should we reduce our coverage of WWE?

Gibb: WWE is still the industry giant, so it would be hard to justify not covering it extensively, unless the goal is to become a niche site.

Gelfand: Our coverage of WWE is fine, as it’s still the most recognizable name in wrestling and a lot of the biggest stories still come from there, but the site has also done a great job in highlighting smaller independent promotions as well that may not get widespread coverage.

Bautista: We shouldn’t shut it down completely, but there is a lot more stuff going on. CM Punk is with AEW and Rampage is its own show, not just Dynamite lite. The NWA is getting its act together and its anniversary weekend looked intriguing. Warrior Wrestling is putting on great shows. Impact looks great, too.

Jackson: I’d much prefer indie coverage and coverage of other promotions over WWE. Those people need the light shining on them. I have no desire to read anything WWE-related on any website.

Corrigan: Our WWE coverage consists of pay-per-view roundtables, bashing the company or lists about specific wrestlers or events. Rarely have we written something praising the company, which makes me wonder if it’s worth writing about something we don’t seem to enjoy. But our writers have the freedom to wax poetic about whatever they feel passionate about, good or bad, so by all means, let’s continue doing what we do.

Goodwillie: No. In spite of everything I said, WWE, for now, is still seen as the top of the wrestling business. Being the WWE Champion still means something. That could change in a year or two, and the recent changes coming to both WWE and AEW certainly suggest it’s likely to change in a year or two, but for now, the top men and women in WWE are still worth talking about. They’re among the top earners in the business and generally speaking, they’re not really to blame for the lack of quality of the shows.

Do I still feel compelled to write about how “midcarder A” is a future WWE Champion in the making? No. But this site does a great job of blending mainstream wrestling coverage with local, and as long as WWE has the John Cenas, Romans Reigns and Brock Lesnars of the world, it’ll still be worth discussing.