The following editorial was written by Tyler Treese and does not reflect the opinions of WrestleZone as a whole. We encourage you all to discuss Tyler’s thoughts in the comments section at the bottom of this post and follow him on Twitter @tylertreese.
Back in November, I wrote an article titled “Becky Lynch Being Pulled From Survivor Series Is A Blessing In Disguise.” In it, I wrote about how Becky Lynch vs. Ronda Rousey could “even possibly be a WrestleMania main event … if done correctly.” Now it looks like it will be, albeit as a triple threat, and I should be overjoyed about it. Instead, I don’t care in the slightest.
WWE was practically handed the perfect storyline to make Becky Lynch vs. Ronda Rousey a WrestleMania main event. Forcing in Charlotte Flair is one thing, and I don’t even really have a problem with it since she’s a fantastic performer, but the storyline has been one giant mess. They took one of the most organically over stars in the past decade in Becky Lynch and have undercut her at every point since Survivor Series. Not only did she lose her belt, but was forced to tap out to Asuka at the Royal Rumble. Her battle royal match victory afterwards was a nice rebound, and set up the WrestleMania bout, but she’s been booked like more of a fool than a badass ever since then.
Making matters even worse is the social media feud between Lynch and Rousey. This is not an indictment of “The Man,” as her wit is as sharp as ever before, but Rousey has taken it to WCW 2000 levels of bad by constantly talking about how wrestling is fake. Do we really need New Blood Rising-esque angles where the performer says that they’re not going to follow the script? For as well as Rousey has been booked for the last year, the company is doing a horrific job when it matters the most.
Let me explain exactly why this does not work. Breaking the temporary suspension of disbelief that wrestling is supposed to provide by saying something is finally going to be real doesn’t heighten my enjoyment of that angle. Instead, it does the exact opposite. It not only makes me want to not bother with it, but it also lessens the rest of the event because it, as acknowledged by WWE by itself, is lesser and fake within storyline.
Richard Fliehr Drip
Making matters even worse is that WWE has doubled down on this form of storytelling that I had thought died. Another match that I was advocating for is Triple H vs. Batista (to the point where I wrote an article title “Batista vs Triple H Is The Match WWE Should Be Building To” back in October). The start to this was great, as Batista viciously attacked Ric Flair to get Triple H’s attention.
However, the follow-up promo by Triple H was horrendous. Not only was it poorly written and distastefully went from joking about how many marriages Ric Flair has had to the death of his son, but it revolved around Triple H calling out Batista for being a generic heel and basically saying that this is real beef and not storyline. Like I explained above, this does not make me want to see the match anymore.
The buildup to WrestleMania 35 so far on the RAW brand has absolutely sucked. I’m getting two huge matches that I want to see and yet the scripting is so awful that I don’t even care about them anymore. What a waste of potential so far. Thankfully, there is still a chance to save these builds, but they require a big 180 from the current creative direction. I’m not sure we’ll see that.
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