United Kingdom Tournament, WWE TV Ratings and More from the Smashing Mailbag

Earlier Thursday, WWE announced plans for a tournament to crown the first-ever United Kingdom champion.

For some, it will be a highly anticipated competition inspired by the success and critical acclaim of this summer's Cruiserweight Classic. But looking deeper, it seems like a competitive move to create distance between WWE and an overseas competitor looking to make major moves in the pro wrestling landscape.

United They Stand

The fact that few people in the States have ever heard of the majority of the participants in WWE's United Kingdom tournament is by design. Does WWE want to create new Superstars with a global appeal? Well, yes, but that's hardly the reason this tournament was announced.

WWE is currently in a battle with rival UK promoters and could possibly lose its stranglehold on the market. Earlier this month, Dave Meltzer of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter (h/t Wrestling Inc) reported that WWE could lose its position as the No. 1 television promotion in the UK, as the World of Sport wrestling promotion recently inked a deal with major network ITV.

The report goes on to state that WWE aggressively pursued UK talents to keep them from signing with World of Sport. My guess is that the UK tournament—and its shiny new championship—creates collateral and incentive for the performers so that it doesn't look like they're being signed simply to sit on the shelf and not compete for a rival. This tournament has less to do with WWE entertaining WWE Network subscribers and more to do with WWE doing everything it can to maintain world domination in the wrestling world.

Content Is Killing?

It's fair to assume that the amount of content on both the WWE Network and television can create WWE fatigue as a result of a diluted product. But if the product were hitting on all cylinders, there wouldn't be enough content to satiate WWE's audience.

WWE is having difficulties creating Superstars who will attract a casual viewing audience. Its current solution to this problem is to fall back on a niche, hard-core audience and scour the independent wrestling scene for journeymen and veterans with a limited appeal with or without WWE. This strategy has done very little for ratings.

Last month's WWE Universal Championship matchup between ROH alumni Seth Rollins and Kevin Owens coincided with a significant drop in viewership from the first to the third hour, per Showbuzz Daily (h/t Wrestling Inc). WWE has now opted to go the nostalgia route, relying on Goldberg and Brock Lesnar to fill up the Alamodome in January at the Royal Rumble.

WWE made creating stars look so easy for so long, but it's truly an arduous process that's made even more difficult by pro wrestling's declining relevance in pop culture compared to that of the Attitude Era.

WWE doesn't have any legitimate full-time stars on its roster. The promotion has struggled to create a transcendent, crossover Superstar since John Cena and Batista in 2005, and that's only made scarier by the fact that it is on the verge of entering life without either.

Sinking Their Heath In?  

"

@ThisIsNasty what next if anything for Heath slater?

— daniel devery (@danieldevery1) December 15, 2016"

Heath Slater will be all right. He has nine lives in WWE. No matter what throwaway role he is presented with, he always manages to make it his own and knock it out of the park.

Slater's potential breakup with Rhyno is a blessing in disguise. The character significantly loses his charm when he is not an underdog. Seeing him reel off win after win alongside Rhyno was like watching a different person out there.

I miss the guy who used to lose to a different WWE legend every week in entertaining fashion. I miss the guy who crowed about being the hottest free agent in wrestling as a tongue-in-cheek boast but, through a series of lighthearted segments, made it a reality. 

I miss the old Slater.

There's a lot of potential in a future pairing of Slater and James Ellsworth. Sure, they can begin as an enhancement tag team, but the WWE Universe wouldn't be able to help itself in rallying behind these two. Underdogs and irony is like catnip for wrestling fans, but once these underdogs achieve too much success, they become targets. This is a reality both Ellsworth and Slater faced in 2016.

To recapture their respective charms as lovable losers, both need to go back to losing.

Alfred Konuwa is a Featured Columnist and on-air host for Bleacher Report and Forbes. Like him on Facebook.