WWE Must Commit To Creating New Stars

WWE TV viewership is in a freefall, and whenever that’s the case, the company typically resorts to relying on stars from the past. But it can’t do that. Not anymore.

Monday Night Raw is just a few weeks removed from generating the smallest audience in the show’s 27-year history, averaging a shockingly low 1.561 million viewers for the July 13th episode or roughly half of its audience during that same week just three years ago. Following in its footsteps was SmackDown, which hit a new “non-holiday low on FOX” that very same week with an alarming average of just 1.893 million viewers. The plummeting TV viewership is undoubtedly a result of a plethora of circumstances, including the Covid-19 pandemic, lackluster storylines and the audience-less shows from the Performance Center.

Perhaps what’s been most noticeable, though, is that WWE is simply hurting for genuine star power, which is something that WWE Chairman and CEO Vince McMahon has apparently noticed and is ready to remedy.

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The Wrestling Observer Newsletter (h/t Wrestling Inc) reported late last month that McMahon wants to create new stars: “Vince [McMahon] recently commented that since WrestleMania 36 season has passed, and now that they have several top talents out of action due to Covid-19 and other reasons, that this is the time where the company has to make new stars.” McMahon reiterated that statement publicly at WWE’s Q2 2020 Earnings Call (h/t Wrestling Inc) when he said, “It’s up to us to make Raw and SmackDown feel more youthful. That is where we’re going…As far as continuing on, acting on what’s new and building and characters, you always have to build new characters. Constantly.”

Many fans and critics have taken McMahon’s comments with a grain of salt, knowing full well that most of WWE’s halfhearted efforts to establish new stars in the past have quickly vanished. Now more than ever, though, WWE desperately needs to stick to its apparent desire to stop relying so heavily on the stars of yesteryear and start creating some new ones who can carry the company into the future.

WWE is now reportedly set to use “more underused talent on the shows in the coming weeks,” which gels with reports that McMahon is spearheading—or at least attempting to create—a new youth movement within the company. The man behind that change, at least on SmackDown, is Daniel Bryan, who was recently added to the creative team in some sort of role, whether official or unofficial, and is clearly focusing on elevating new talents on the blue brand. Having specifically mentioned talents like Gran Metalik and Big E as underutilized stars in the past, Bryan’s position on SmackDown’s creative team has already resulted in stars such as Big E, Metalik, Chad Gable and Drew Gulak suddenly being thrust into the spotlight.

That’s a necessity, not just on SmackDown but on Raw as well, where Shane McMahon was brought back just this week as a short-term fix for WWE’s viewership issues.

Looking at the current landscape of WWE, the company is missing many of its biggest stars and top mainstream names. Roman Reigns, WWE’s No. 1 star for the past half-decade, is out of action indefinitely due to the Covid-19 pandemic, while Becky Lynch, who is pregnant, will be unable to return to in-ring action until 2021 and may not do so full-time when she does. Charlotte Flair is also out of action for an extended period and is apparently becoming a sought-after name in Hollywood, joining Reigns and Lynch as two hot commodities in the world of acting who may be nearing the tail end of their careers.

Of course, WWE is also without a slew of other high-profile stars, including John Cena, who has wrestled just one pay-per-view bout since 2019, the cinematic-style Firefly Fun House match at WrestleMania 36 that wasn’t even a traditional wrestling match. Cena joins top names like Ronda Rousey and Brock Lesnar as increasingly infrequently seen part-time stars who’ve caused WWE’s usual part-timer well to continue to shrivel away following the recent retirements of stars like Kurt Angle and Batista as well as the uncertain in-ring futures of the likes of Triple H, Big Show, Kane and The Undertaker.

As WWE’s platoon of part-timers continues to run thin, the pressure is now on WWE to do what former Raw Executive Director Paul Heyman wanted to do but never got the chance to: Create and establish new stars. To some extent, WWE has accomplished that goal with the likes of Drew McIntyre and a select few other rising stars, but by and large, the company has continued to rely on proven commodities like Bayley, Sasha Banks, Seth Rollins, Braun Strowman and other established veterans who have been there, done that. WWE’s next real challenge will be to genuinely make a concerted and long-term effort to create new top stars who will be around on a full-time basis for the next decade or more.

That’s no easy task, especially given current circumstances, and former WWE star Maria Kanellis—who was released by the company earlier this year—perfectly summed up why WWE’s inability to create new stars is hampering its TV viewership:

With WWE viewership continuing to plummet and the company running out of Band-Aid solutions in the form of quick fix part-timers, it now has to act quickly and decisively to turn things around.

McMahon is apparently aware of the reality that WWE needs more stars, but if history is any indication, the chances of the company actually sticking to plans to make new ones are slim to none.