Antonia Rodriguez

After watching Monday Night Raw and Tuesday Night Smackdown this past week, I am left unsatisfied yet again by WWE and their creative team. Yes, there are some areas of hope for the future, like the Women’s Money in the Bank match coming up at the next Pay-Per View, but other than that, I feel like the current storylines are too stagnant. There seems to be very little decision making going on and, in turn, the WWE Universe is left feeling unsatisfied and maybe even angry.

Just make a decision. You’re not going to be able to please everybody so just make a decision.

Brock Lesnar as Universal Champion is not working, so change it. Let someone finally beat him and make that title relevant and not a joke. I really don’t have any preference in who takes the title from him anymore. For a title that should mean so much for your company, ideally you’d want to see it being fought over every week and for quality storylines to be formed around it. Right now, there is none of that and I think that they way to remedy that is to move this title into a more abundant weight class. The fact of the matter is that there are few WWE superstars of Brock Lesnar’s size and weight, which means there are few guys that would believably beat him in a match. By moving this title to a smaller weight class, such as Seth, The Miz, or even Rusev, the ability to create more interesting storylines would open up.

In my opinion, Nia and Carmella work as Raw and Smackdown women’s champions respectively. I do not agree with Rhonda getting an immediate title shot at MITB although I did appreciate WWE Creative making it seem like Nia was challenging her instead of making it an obvious push for Rhonda. I could easily see Creative trying to create some storyline with the “besties” Rhonda and Natalya if both women are victorious at MITB. As for Carmella, I think her character works for a heel champion. I’m interested to see what storylines emerge with her and whomever at this point.

Seth Rollins is the WWE MVP right now. No one has wrestled in more PPV matches period. He puts in work, week in and week out, and he is a fighting champion. The open challenge for the Intercontinental Championship that he has issued every week since becoming the champ is exactly the kind of behavior one should expect from a “reigning, defending champion.”

Also, I think WWE Creative is very hit-or-miss when it comes to utilizing the talent they bring up from NXT. For a majority of the women (looking at the Iconics, Absolution, and Riot Squad), they entered with a set backstory and are going to have to put some serious time in on the main roster before much comes of them. I really like how they have utilized Ember Moon so far; she was a heavy hitter on NXT and I have high hopes for her on Raw. As far as the men go…what are they doing with Andrade “Cien” Almas? First of all, having him debut on Smackdown while they were in the UK made no sense to me. Secondly, why have him run through nameless jobbers for several weeks in a row? I really need for Creative to have a plan to utilize the talent they have before they get lost in the shuffle and lose their spark.

There need to be some major shifts on Monday Night Raw and Tuesday Night Smackdown in order to get them out of this slump. I continue to watch every week because I love the characters and genuinely want to see the more interesting things that happen on WWE. I eagerly wait for when things will change and the shows will surprise me or when I can get excited about watching the show again.