Today we’ll be taking a look at yet again another wave of WWE releases, a story with
Big-E, latest with Becky Lynch and more
Let’s start things off with the WWE releases
It’s barely been a few weeks since the last wave of shocking releases, but there’s already
more releases on that WWE is once again labeling as “budget cuts”
John Morrison, Top Dolla, Ashante Adonis, Isaiah Swerve Scott, Tegan Nox, Drake Maverick,
Shane Thorne, and Jaxson Ryker were all released late Thursday evening, so let’s breakdown
the standout stories here
Starting off with the biggest shock of the releases, the entirety of Hit Row
Why were they the most surprising names on the list?
Well they’re the most surprising because of how WWE promoted them, heavily advertised
their main roster call-up, and misled us, the audience, to believe that they were actually
going to play a big role in this new era of Smackdown
So naturally, when we see all the teasers, the hype videos, how they purposely included
Hit Row into the WWE Draft for them to come to Smackdown, fans bought in and were interested
because it honestly seem like WWE had plans for them
Why else would they get called up so suddenly and heavily promoted right?
Well Hit Row didn’t even last a month on the main roster
B-Fab, a core member and true center piece of the group, was released a few weeks ago
and we discussed how that might be a devastating blow to Hit Row and signs of more bad things
to come
And unfortunately that was true, with the remaining three members not even lasting two
weeks after B-Fab’s release
After B-Fab’s release, a lot of fans were writing Hit Row off, but other reports and
rumors claimed other wise
They talked about how there were plans for Top Dolla to be a breakout singles star and
that Ashante Adonis and Isaiah Swerve Scott would make noise in the tag team division,
creating an impactful trio on Smackdown
And who knows, with the right writing and direction, Hit Row vs The Bloodline could’ve
been a nice trio versus trio matchup to see down the line, but obviously none of that
happened
Fox analyst and Out Of Character podcast host, Ryan Satin, was also devastated by the releases
and shared some great thoughts on the topic on twitter, he had this to say: quote
“I do not understand the thought process behind dedicating considerable amounts of
TV time to get people hyped on an act, then immediately releasing them once people are
interested ala Aleister Black and now Hit Row.”
End quote
And everything he said right there couldn’t be more true
It’s not like these releases are quietly happening backstage amongst inactive talent,
that may be true in some cases, but not all
The real bizarre head-spinning releases happens when WWE introduces us to a new act, really
hammers it in to the audience for several weeks, more and more fans start to get interested
in said act, but then WWE releases the superstar with the new act that they’ve been heavily
promoting on their television programs
Going back to what ryan said, what is the thought process?
If you’re going to release a superstar, why spend so much time selling the act to
your audience as if they’re gonna play a big role on WWE television when you’re know
that you’re just gonna release them
Why waste your own time, why waste your audience’s time?
It’s a lose - lose every which way you look at it
Same thing with Aleister Black from last spring
Fans were already worried about Aleister being on the cutting block, but then it was reported
that Aleister was filming new content for a WWE return and fans figured “well okay,
he’s safe for now and they’re gonna give him another shot”
We did get 5 weeks of Aleister Black promos and hype videos
Big production videos with a nice set, great animations to tell the tales of the Dark Father
story, it just really appeared that WWE was fully invested in this new version of Aleister
Black
He actually, physically, makes his return during the main event of Smackdown to attack
Big E, we’re about to hear from him and see his new character for the first time…and
he literally gets released days after this actual return
Just mind blowing stuff that leaves you confused and just throwing your arms up
Why show us the five weeks of buildup of his story and his return if you were going to
release him?
The way they constantly do that and continue to do that just almost feels insulting to
the audience
As if there saying “yeah, wipe your memory of that, it never happened…moving on”,
And that’s not right.
It’s not right because now it’s starting to become a trend and yours fans and even
talent themselves may start picking up on this
In the WWE pyramid, you’re supposed to work your way to the main roster, that’s supposed
to be your dreamland, your endgame goal
But in reality, the main roster may be your worst nightmare as an NXT talent
Imagine being a great NXT talent with a strong character and great sense of direction
If you get called up to the main roster, you can most likely be stripped of both of those
things and be released from the company within a month
And now on the flip side, it also negatively affects your fans
Now you’re showing new teasers of whatever NXT superstar that’s getting called up and
how amazing they’re going to be on the main roster with all of their “coming soon”
video packages
But now some members of your audience probably learned their lesson by now and they’re
not gonna get invested or care about this superstar this time around because they know
“hey, they there’s a chance they’re not even gonna be here in a few weeks”
So now it’s gonna be harder than ever to really sell a new call-up to your audience
because they know not to get invested anymore in these new superstars, but we’ll see what
continues to happen here with trend
————————
WWE Champion Big-E is on top of the world right now as WWE World Heavyweight champion
and will face off against Roman Reigns at Survivor Series, but things weren’t always
smooth for Big-E
He recently appeared on the Jim and Sam show and had this to say about how WWE was receiving
complaints in regards to some of the things he was doing, quote:
“People are allowing me to do this, so I just kept doing stuff.
And people enjoy it, or didn’t yell at me, so I was like, ‘Let’s keep going.’
I was told there were a couple of times where the company got some emails, I don’t know
if it’s like FCC, something where people complained and wanted me off TV because the
gyrations were too much.
Me, Elvis, there’s no real difference there”
So believe it or not, looks like complaints were actually sent in to WWE because some
people didn’t like the body gestures, movements, and dancing Big-E would do
They didn’t enjoy it to the point that they were even calling for him to be removed from
TV
Thankfully it doesn’t appear like it was FCC or any higher up complaints like that,
so Big-E was allowed to continue to be himself and now he sits on top of WWE as the world
champion
———————
When it comes to this year’s survivor series, it sort of felt like a two match card because
there were only two matches that were properly built up
These matches being Becky Lynch versus Charlotte and Roman versus Big-E
These were the only two matches on the survivor series card that had proper story to them
Roman has been taking out Big-E’s fellow New Day members and even sending Jimmy and
Jey to go deliver a message and beatdown to him, so there’s lots of story there for
that match
Then what WWE did with Becky and Charlotte was great as well
They took all these reports and narratives of Becky and Charlotte no longer being close
friends and turned it into the driving force of their story
They got Becky and Charlotte talking about each other on TV, they’re taking shots at
each other Twitter, shots towards each other during interviews, and even other WWE superstars
are hyping the match up by saying that they really don’t like each other
Of course it’s all for the story of the match and it did it’s job, Becky versus
Charlotte had fan’s interest not because of “brand supremacy bragging rights”,
it had their interest because of this narrative that they really didn’t like each other
It’s a real shame that survivor series only had two matches with a storyline, imagine
how hyped up everyone would be for the entire card if there was story from top to bottom
But what are your thoughts on today’s stories?
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