WWE's Lost Art: What's Happened to the WWE's Mid-Card?

I grew up during the Attitude Era, which has perhaps made me a little spoiled. 

The WWE’s roster back then was absolutely loaded from top to bottom, and thus, every division in the company mattered. 

Main event-caliber wrestlers like Triple H and The Rock went after the Intercontinental Championship, big stars like The Undertaker and Kane teamed up to chase the tag team titles and winning the Hardcore Championship actually meant something. 

Nowadays, however, that just isn’t the case. 

Due to what I think is a combination of a much thinner roster and the effect of the Raw “supershow” format, the WWE’s mid-card is disintegrating, while its lower card has almost completely vanished. 

I put a lot of the blame for this on the fact that Smackdown’s biggest stars appear on Raw every week, thus limiting the amount of TV time that Raw mid-carders are able to get. 

Whatever the reason, though, it’s become pretty clear that the mid-card we once knew and loved no longer exists. 

In the WWE, you’re either a main eventer, a borderline main eventer or you’re working at the lower end of the card as someone who’s there simply to make others look good. 

A given episode of Raw focuses on the show’s big names—guys like John Cena, Brock Lesnar, CM Punk, Chris Jericho, etc. While there are other guys sprinkled in throughout the show, how much do we (or the creative team) really care about them? 

Raw’s mid-card title is the United States Championship, and it’s supposed to be used to catapult up-and-coming stars to the next level. Instead, it sits on a comedy character like Santino Marella.

While Santino is over, he is, as noted, primarily a comedy character, and putting the US title on him prevents the WWE from ever really putting on a must-see feud for that belt. 

It’s not just a problem with Raw’s mid-card belt, though. It’s the same with the entire mid-card, or lack thereof. 

Kofi Kingston is one of the WWE’s most popular stars, but is used primarily as a jobber to the main event heels. Brodus Clay is supposed to be “feuding” with Dolph Ziggler and Jack Swagger, but they get three minutes of TV time every week. Zack Ryder is arguably the most over mid-card baby face in the company, but he’s been booked absolutely atrociously over the last four months. 

There’s a theme going on here, and it’s that the WWE simply has no clue how to book anyone who isn’t in the main event or on the cusp of it. 

Things are a little better on Smackdown because the blue brand generally doesn’t have to worry about Raw main eventers appearing on the show and taking up a ton of TV time. 

But still, when you watch an episode of Smackdown, who does it center around? 

Sheamus, Alberto Del Rio, Big Show, Mark Henry, Randy Orton, etc., or in other words, all of the show’s biggest stars. 

This has become a huge problem for the WWE because both Raw and Smackdown focus far too much on the already established stars who are in main event level or World title feuds. 

I get that the WWE wants to make these a priority because after all, these are the feuds where the most money lies. 

However, just because most of the focus is on the company’s biggest feuds, that doesn’t mean that the WWE can ignore the mid-card and let it gradually fade away. 

Yet that’s what seems to be happening. 

Very few mid-card feuds matter, and it’s not because of the talent involved. It’s because of the booking. 

A recent mid-card feud that really worked was the one between Ziggler and Ryder for the United States Championship, a rivalry that started in September 2011 and continued over the course of the next four months. 

You wanna know why that feud worked so well? The answer is simple: Because the creative team actually put some effort into it. 

This isn’t some overly complicated process that it takes a genius to figure out. If the WWE wants to have a viable mid-card, then the creative team has to work hard to make that happen. 

And it’s damn sure not impossible. 

Just look back to 2009 when Chris Jericho and Rey Mysterio, two of the WWE’s biggest stars, had a lengthy feud over the Intercontinental Championship, an awesome one at that. 

It’s feud like that one that prove that the WWE has the power to make mid-card feuds matter. 

It’s not about the ammo. It’s about loading the gun and pulling the trigger.

Drake Oz is the WWE Lead Writer for Bleacher Report. You can follow him onTwitter and ask him any wrestling-related questions (to be answered in the B/R Mailbag) on Formspring.