Many have been the complaints in recent years towards WWE, many have been the attempts to find the key to capture the attention of the public, and, above all, many have been the fighters who have tried to be that image that the company intends to project to the top. WWE has used all kinds of strategies to achieve that goal but has not finished finding the solution. However, it has made considerable changes that due to the pandemic or not, have made the product evolve towards another scenario.
The first thing to note is the generational change of superstars. Last year, with the departure of Undertaker, we finalized a series of legends that have appeared in the last decade as a claim. The last loophole is Bill Goldberg, who apparently fought one of – if not the last – last bouts of his career against Drew McIntyre at Royal Rumble. As I mentioned in my 2020 predictions, WWE will say goodbye to that generation and give way to the next, and that puts us in the Ruttles Aggression and Era PG stage.
If we stick to today, we will realize that WWE has once again used fighters from those stages, such as The Miz, MVP, Randy Orton, Bobby Lashley, Carlito, or even Edge. It is the nature of WWE: to try to build new stories by exploiting the image of wrestlers from previous stages. We already saw it in Ruttles Aggression and the PG Era, where superstars like Hulk Hogan, Ric Flair, Triple H, Shawn Michaels, or The Undertaker had a very relevant role.
The clearest examples today are Edge and Lashley. The first, a retired fighter who has returned to have a role that, for many, is disproportionate. He hasn’t done anything; He will be in the main event of WrestleMania 37 fighting the most important man of today. And Bobby Lashley could have his big moment now, at 44 years old. He has never been a WWE champion and that opportunity is at his doorstep.
I’m not saying that’s bad. It is something that WWE has always done. I would even say that we are entering a new stage that could be positive and that repeats itself from time to time as if it were a perfectly machined cycle. WWE is beginning to play with what it has, with its weapons, with the wrestlers on the roster who have spent their entire lives or much of their careers working for the company. In short, with those at home.
We see it with the separation of teams, as is the case of New Day and Big E’s individual career, with the prominent push to Jey Uso and his rivalry with Roman Reigns, and with many others who will begin to take center stage from of these lines.
We have left behind a stage where the novelty and the external surprise effect was the daily bread. After the creation of new stars, such as Roman Reigns, Dean Ambrose, Seth Rollins, or Bray Wyatt, WWE made the most of the nostalgia, bringing back Brock Lesnar, Shawn Michaels, Sting or Goldberg, and suffocating the figure of Undertaker. Despite seeming to be doing the same with those I have named above, it is like these figures are not so far back in time and they fit better in the current project.
Seeing the movements of All Elite Wrestling, it is as if we were seeing part of the past in a mirror, but if we focus only on WWE, it gives the feeling that now they want to create stories with their squad and do not want to depend so much on hiring figures who come. from other places. We saw it at Royal Rumble and we saw it at Elimination Chamber, so I think that, except for the arrival of CM Punk or another star from the previous stage, WWE is going to try to build a near future with the stars that they currently have in your roster.
