After digging into the standards for non-WWE wrestling promotions, Steve Cook presents his standards for WWE itself!

In case you didn’t join us last time, I was in the midst of answering a question from a long-time reader & wrestling fan. It’s something that I feel needs discussing here in the year 2019 as we have more viable wrestling companies available for wide viewing than I can remember in a long time.

Should smaller companies (ROH, Impact, indies…hell, even NXT) be held to the same standards as WWE? I realize that’s a broad question, but I’m thinking of things that I see people saying “If wwe did this, everyone would be criticizing them,” so mainly booking/storyline type things (but feel free to expand the playing field if you think there are other things worthy of discussing).

I covered my feelings on ROH, Impact, the indies, NXT & AEW in the previous column. So now we can get to the Big Dog. Some might call them the Evil Empire. I wouldn’t. Sure, they’ve done some shady things & some of their creative decisions of late have been interesting, but they give me countless hours of classic wrestling to watch via the Network. You gotta take the good with the bad.

Some will tell you that WWE gets a bad rap. That WWE just can’t win no matter what they do. They’ll never be able to satisfy all of their fans, and we should just give them a break. We also shouldn’t hold them to higher standards than everybody else just because they’ve accomplished more.

WWE has high standards. (Well duh.)

The standards are always going to be higher for WWE. We expect the most from them because they’ve been in business the longest and have had the most success over the years.

They are the New York Yankees of the wrestling business. In fact, the current Yankees & WWE have a lot in common. The Yankees have the best record in the American League as I write this. They have an insane amount of talent, even when some of their top stars are out. There are some flaws (creative, starting pitching), but overall they’re still a team that has a good chance of winning the World Series.

Yet Yankee fans still call for manager Aaron Boone’s head because they don’t like his strategy. Maybe they have a point about some of his decisions, but the Yanks are still far & away one of the top teams in the league. Even if the Yankees end up short of their ultimate goal at the end of the season, they’ll still be in the best place to make it happen next year.

Just like WWE is still far & away the biggest wrestling company in the world. If they end up short of record numbers this year, they’re still in a good place to make it happen next year.

With that being said, things would be tremendously boring if Yankee fans weren’t allowed to voice their complaints. The same goes for WWE fans. We’re all fans at the end of the day, but debate & discussion are among the best parts of fandom. Sports talk radio might be a cess pool, but when it’s done right it’s really great. The same applies to sites like this one.

Of course WWE is #1 and will stay that way for a long time.Think about it…their main competition right now consists of a fed based in Japan & a brand new wrestling company that got a deal with TNT. Why wouldn’t we expect WWE to run all over these people the same way they’ve treated ROH & Impact like afterthoughts for years?

In-Ring/Creative

People tell me that WWE’s current roster is more talented than its ever been. They’re probably not wrong. It’s certainly deeper since Triple H & his department have decided to try and sign every professional wrestler under the sun with the least bit of talent. There was a time where WWE style was dramatically slower & less physical than the style you’d see elsewhere. Now, it’s all the same speed. WWE Superstars can pretty much do anything except bleed & drop each other on their heads. The matches themselves are not a problem. Raw, Smackdown, the PPVs…every WWE show is bound to have at least one really good match. The PPVs are usually mostly good to great matches. Barring New Japan’s G1 craziness, WWE ranks pretty well wrestling-wise against most promotions.

The problem I find myself running into is that it’s tough to care about the awesome matches when there are no stakes involved and no interesting reasons precipitating the action. I had my “don’t care about anything but the matches” phase when I was a kid. Now I need more to get invested. WWE’s stories seemingly try to do whatever possible to not get us invested. The build to Ronda Rousey vs. Becky Lynch vs. Charlotte Flair at WrestleMania was a prime example. Outside of one pretty kickass brawl on Raw, everything they did to build to that match made me want to see it less.

I would very much like to see Roman Reigns vs. Daniel Bryan! The Big Dog vs. The Planet’s Champion? Where do I sign? If they’re using a silly looking attempted murder that Reigns shrug off as the build…come on now. That’s wack.

Discipline

One gets the feeling that WWE isn’t as strict with their performers as they were when the Wellness Policy was first instituted. Unfortunately, we’ve seen a couple of high-profile examples recently. Jeff Hardy was found passed out in a stairwell and arrested for public intoxication. I think we’ve all lost count of how many strikes he would have under a wellness policy at this point. Both Jimmy & Jey Uso have arrested for DUI within the past nineteen months. Jimmy was also arrested after getting into an argument with police after his wife got pulled over for driving the wrong way down a one-way street.

Addiction is nothing to trifle with. We’ve all either known somebody with it or dealt with it ourselves. Being an addict doesn’t make one a bad person. Wrestlers especially can be prone to addiction due to the pain they put their bodies through on a nightly basis. However, there comes a time when somebody needs to be held responsible for their actions, and repeated offenses would seem to dictate that drastic measures be taken, if for no other reason than to try & scare the person straight.

WWE’s response thus far has been to state that Jeff Hardy & Jimmy Uso are responsible for their own personal actions. The last time Jimmy got arrested, the Usos won the SmackDown Tag Team Championships just days later. Naturally, many wrestling fans were outraged by this. It seemed as if the Usos were being rewarded for misbehavior. The only bad thing that’s happened to them so far is John Cena making a joke about their mugshots. We shouldn’t be surprised by any of this, as the Usos’ familial connections make them basically untouchable. WWE doesn’t want to anger Roman Reigns or The Rock, so its for the best to let the family (hopefully) take care of the situation.

Hardy is out of action with a leg injury and he & WWE are counting on everybody forgetting about his issues whenever he comes back. That strategy has worked in the past.

The main reason cited by WWE defenders on this issue is the idea that WWE doesn’t want to giftwrap key talent to other promotions. AEW would probably get pretty excited at the idea of booking the Young Bucks against the Fatu Brothers. New Japan would surely involve them with Guerillas of Destiny if given the opportunity. As for Jeff Hardy, he’s still a drawing card and there would be no shortage of promoters looking to sign him. Which is all fine.

As long as you manage to stay on one side of this issue, I don’t care whose side you take. If you’re out here demanding that WWE do something about the Usos’ alcohol issues, you can’t be celebrating when they show up on the first episode of AEW on TNT to attack Nick & Matt Jackson. If you’re outraged by Jeff Hardy getting strike after strike, you better be outraged if an AEW roster member gets into a similar situation. And if you’re cool with WWE Superstars drinking & driving, you’ll have to be ok with AEW *fill in eventual brand name for “wrestlers” here* doing the same thing.

Be consistent.

Be consistent with guys that got fired for other reasons, too. Chris Jericho has two mystery partners lined up for the AEW television debut. If they end up being the artists formerly known as Enzo & Big Cass, will people be as outraged as they were when ROH brought them in for their MSG show?

WWE is obviously held to higher standards than everybody else. But there are some areas where other feds need to act like adults too. If they want us to treat them like adults.

I hope somewhere in there I answered this question.