Long Term Implications of WWE’s Bad Booking

At WWE Super Showdown fifty three year old legend Goldberg defeated “The Fiend” Bray Wyatt in matter of a couple of minutes. Within twenty four hours the amount of reaction coming out over this decision has been overwhelming. For the last year WWE has built up Bray Wyatt to be this unstoppable force. He survived onslaughts from Seth Rollins and Daniel Bryan and still survived, but a man that’s way past his prime beat him within minutes. The following night “The Fiend” automatically forgot he lost the Universal Championship and challenged John Cena to a match at Wrestlemania. Meanwhile, Roman Reigns will challenge Goldberg for the Universal Championship and it’s almost like Wyatt having the title never happened.

Fans should be worried about Wyatt’s booking going forward because this is not the first time bad booking has messed things up long term. Let’s take a trip down memory road back to Wrestlemania 9. Yokozuna defeated Bret Hart to become the new WWE Champion after Mr. Fuji threw salt in Bret’s eyes. The natural thing would have been to build a program between Bret and Yoko going into King of the Ring that year. Instead, Hulk Hogan came out and defeated the new champion within a couple of minutes of him winning the title. This resulted in Bret being completely cut out of the title picture for a year and having to work harder to prove that he should have remained champion all along. Bret would eventually go on to have a successful career, but Wrestlemania 9 was a dark day in his career.

Over the last decade, bad booking has become more frequent in WWE. At Wrestlemania 28, Sheamus defeated Daniel Bryan in about twelve seconds in the opening match to win then World Championship. This decision would hold Bryan back for a year and a half until Summerslam 2013. Even after Bryan defeated John Cena to win the WWE Championship, his reign lasted a few minutes when Randy Orton cashed in his Money in the Bank Briefcase to take the title. Bryan would spend the next six months losing to Orton and being thrown into an awkward storyline with The Wyatt Family. Had it not been for the fans hijacking Raw on multiple occasions, I don’t think Bryan would have been in the Main Event of Wrestlemania 30.

A lot of people wanted the Main Event of Wrestlemania 30 to be Daniel Bryan vs. CM Punk, but a decision that happened a year earlier led to Punk’s downfall in the company. The Rock challenged for the WWE Championship for the first time in eleven years at the Royal Rumble in 2013. He ended up beating Punk to win the title and went to Wrestlemania 29 to lose the title John Cena. After Punk’s rematch he was never inserted into the title picture again. He went on to lose to The Undertaker, lose to Brock Lesnar, feuded with Curtis Axel and feuded with The Shield. Punk ultimately left the company the day after the 2014 Royal Rumble. With all these bad booking decisions ending in disaster you would think the company would learn it’s lesson.

The ultimate disgrace took place at Fast Lane 2017. Kevin Owens was at the height of his Universal Title reign. He had been involved in an amazing storyline with Chris Jericho and was a great champion. His title reign ended in ten seconds by Goldberg, who hadn’t even been back for a cup of coffee. Owens never got his rematch and ultimately got lost in the shuffle until he got injured in 2018. With Goldberg’s Universal Title wins in 2017 and 2020, he has gotten to accomplish more than ninety percent of the current superstars who work a lot harder then he has. Kevin Owens may not have been Bray Wyatt, but he helped establish the Universal Title in it’s infancy. Unfortunately, superstars like Kevin Owens and Bray Wyatt aren’t appreciated by the company that they work so hard for. It’s a direct slap in the face to the performers and the fans who invest so much into the product.

For the fans who are angry about the decision for Goldberg to beat Bray, I say you have every right to be angered. How does Bray come back from that loss? How are we suppose to believe in the character at this point? It’s like Brock Lesnar running through fourteen guys at the Royal Rumble. How are we suppose to believe in any of those guys when they ended up getting eliminated within seconds? The agents, writers and higher ups in WWE have no clue about long term consequences and implications to their bad booking decisions. The best thing the fans can do at this point is to stop watching Raw and Smackdown, cancel the WWE Network and stop feeding the WWE machine your time and money. The only way bad booking decisions will ever end is if the fans just stop watching and spending money. Their bad booking deserves the anger, backlash, and outrage they are recieving. The fans need take action with those emotions. If you don’t believe bad booking decisions have long term implications let’s wait and see how long it takes Bray Wyatt to win back the WWE Universal Championship.