WWE Debate: What Is Currently the WWE's Biggest Problem?

Professional wrestling is, to borrow a cliché, like a rollercoaster in that it has its peaks and its valleys. 

Even when wrestling is at its highest point, however, it’s never perfect. 

There will always be problems in the WWE because even if what we see on TV each week is going well according to the masses, there’s always going to be someone who isn’t satisfied. 

The problem with the WWE, though, is that the number of dissatisfied fans often outweighs the number of satisfied ones, and I think that’s especially true right now. 

No one seems to be in love with the WWE at the moment, and the question that people within the company need to ask themselves is: Why is that the case?

Well, I’m going to explore that as I take a look at and rank what I think are the five biggest problems in the WWE today. 

Be sure to provide feedback and offer your own thoughts in the comment section below. 

Problem No. 5: A Thin Roster 

I don’t want you to take this to mean that the WWE currently has no talent, because it actually has a lot. 

It’s just that the company doesn’t have anywhere near the talent that it did 10 to 15 years ago, when main event caliber performers were stretched out across the entire card. 

You would have guys like The Undertaker and Kane working together as a tag team, Chris Jericho battling for the Intercontinental Championship, Jeff Hardy in the tag team scene and so on and so forth. Meanwhile, the main event picture would be loaded with The Rock, “Stone Cold” Steve Austin, Triple H and a ton of others, while newcomers like Randy Orton and John Cena were making some noise as well. 

Nowadays, though, the WWE’s roster is so paper thin that it’s essentially forced the creative team to end the brand split without actually ending it. 

There are so few superstars that the WWE fans generally care about, and the ones that we do care about are often overexposed because there just aren’t enough over superstars to fill out Raw and SmackDown each week. 

This has had a ripple effect on the WWE, too. 

With so few stars to go around, it’s completely killed the tag team division and women’s wrestling and has resulted in pay-per-view cards that generally only feature five or six matches that have been announced beforehand. 

Why? Because the WWE doesn’t have the number of draws that it once had, which is a direct result of a thinning roster that has stemmed from the release of countless talented men and women. 

Problem No. 4: Too Many Heels and Not Even Top Baby Faces 

It seems like the WWE is always heel heavy. 

The primary reason for this is that, especially in the PG era, it’s much harder for baby faces to get over than it is for heels to do the same. But that’s still not an excuse. 

The WWE hasn’t done a good job of building up enough top baby faces to combat the bigger heels in the company. 

Realistically speaking, we have John Cena, Randy Orton, CM Punk and Sheamus as the top full-time faces (sorry, Big Show), while most of the other upper mid-card and main eventers are heels: Daniel Bryan, Chris Jericho, Brock Lesnar, Cody Rhodes, Wade Barrett, Dolph Ziggler, The Miz, Alberto Del Rio, etc. 

I think this heel heavy problem is never more evident than when the WWE has to take Jerry Lawler from the announce table and put him in a match on Raw because there aren’t enough baby faces on the roster. 

That’s pretty bad, and it’s something that—like the thin roster—has a domino effect on the WWE.

Because there are so few top baby faces (and there is a general lack of baby faces overall), the likes of Cena, Punk and Orton are almost always in the spotlight and involved in the WWE’s biggest feuds, which causes us to get sick of them rather quickly. 

It’s absolutely imperative that the WWE builds up some more top good guys because it can’t expect to shuffle Punk, Bryan, Cena and Sheamus in its top feuds every year and still be successful. 

Problem No. 3: No Mid-Card 

This is yet another problem that has resulted from a thin roster and perhaps from the Raw supershow format. 

Since SmackDown stars can appear on Raw every week, this has severely limited the amount of time that Raw’s mid-carders get on the show, and that, in turn, has resulted in a completely dead mid-card picture. 

All you have to do is look at the WWE’s mid-card titles, and you’ll see that the United States Championship has become a joke since being put on Santino Marella (well, it actually was before then) while the Intercontinental Championship is on a guy who’s teetering on the main event. 

There is no mid-card whatsoever anymore, and this is because the guys who should be in the mid-card are forced to work in the main event (look at the Elimination Chamber matches as a perfect example of this) and thus, can’t build up meaningful mid-card feuds. 

Aside from Zack Ryder vs. Dolph Ziggler last year, it’s hard to think of a mid-card feud in the last year or so that has genuinely mattered. 

The WWE’s mid-card feuds are really nothing more than filler—they get hardly any TV time, rarely feature any mic work or promos and often don’t even get matches on pay-per-view. 

The fans cannot and will not care about the mid-card if the WWE doesn’t care about it first. 

Problem No. 2: A Lack of Continuity 

While “lack of continuity” may be a broad term, it applies perfectly to the WWE. 

There are so many examples of the company’s lack of continuity that I’d be here all day if I were to name them all, but let’s just look at a handful of the recent ones:

• The anonymous GM: What the hell ever happened to the laptop?
• Who raised and lowered the cage at Hell in a Cell last year and allowed The Miz and R-Truth to attack the three competitors in the WWE title match?
• Hey, brand split, where ya at?
• The billions of firings: Stop firing people and having them return a week later, WWE.
• If John Laurinaitis controls both Raw and SmackDown, why does he have to listen to anything that anyone else tells him?
• Is Zack Ryder ever gonna get his United States Championship rematch? 

OK, I think you get the point. 

The bottom line is that the major glaring weakness in the WWE is that it rarely has a consistent flow and often completely ignores things that have happened in the past. 

This lack of continuity is a huge detriment to the WWE product and one of the main reasons why it makes me so frustrated. 

Here’s some advice, WWE: If you do not have plans to follow up on a storyline or explain something that happens on WWE TV, then do not start the storyline in the first place. 

Problem No. 1: Bad Booking 

This seems particularly applicable after that horrendous episode of Raw we had to sit through last night. 

I could critique all the bad booking on that show all day, from wasting 20-minutes on Big Show crying to trying to turn John Cena into a stand-up comic to giving Daniel Bryan and CM Punk no promo time whatsoever. 

But going even further back toward the beginning of 2012, you can point out the WWE having Brock Lesnar lose his return match, the complete burial of Zack Ryder (and the lack of follow up to his storyline with Kane), the total ignorance of the “Embrace the Hate” storyline, having Cody Rhodes continuously look like an idiot and countless others as instances of terrible booking on the part of the creative team. 

Look, I get that their job isn’t easy—I really do. Thus, I don’t mind seeing minor booking screw-ups every now and then. 

The thing is, though, that WWE’s creative team consistently gives us bad story lines and angles, often ignoring what should have been the most logical booking in the world. 

Predictability isn’t always a bad thing, but the WWE’s mentality is that they want to try to swerve us if we have the slightest clue as to what might happen. 

That needs to stop. 

Book a show that makes sense. Don’t give Big Show an Intercontinental title reign just because he had never won the belt. 

That is stupid. 

Then again, I guess I really shouldn’t be surprised by anything the creative team does these days, huh?

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