I was never a big fan of WCW. I can appreciate the historical significance much more twenty years later than I ever did at the time. WWF always had a more polished product, and I've always been a sucker for flash over substance. Subsequently, while I was well aware of the phenomenon that was Bill Goldberg, I was too busy riding the wave of Steve Austin and The Rock to pay any real attention until he came to WWE in 2003. At that point, WWE did such a poor job of presenting Goldberg to a non-WCW audience that whatever remaining spark was left from the late 90's was almost gone.
Twelve years later, Goldberg is looking to make one last comeback against the man he beat on his way out. And while the promo that ended Raw did much to heighten my interest, there are a few glaring issues with this scenario that I'm sure WWE and its fanbase would love to ignore.
As noted in a video package on Raw, Goldberg debuted in 1997, and though I would love to believe the 90's were just a decade ago, the truth is that it's been 19 years since. It's great that someone like Goldberg--whose time in wrestling was relatively fleeting--can come back almost two decades after his first appearance and receive this type of fanfare, the fact of that matter is that Bill Goldberg is positioned better than 95% of WWE's current roster.
How many of today's WWE Superstars would receive the same adulation if they were to come back twenty years from now? John Cena, perhaps? We see glimpses of it with Lita, who debuted a whopping 15 years ago and is still considered more capable than many present-day female Superstars (I'm looking at you, Dana Brooke). It's become painfully obvious that WWE has done a terrible job of building new stars.
I've been preaching this since the "Ruthless Aggression" era: the lack of competition--true competition--in the wrestling industry has allowed WWE to rest on their laurels and simply churn out new talent. Talent, mind you, that has been continually fed to established veterans like meat on a conveyor belt. John Cena's career is filled with examples of men who ascended to the top of the ladder only to be gobbled up by the WWE's Superman. Sheamus, Ryback, Bray Wyatt, and Rusev are all men whose futures looked bright until they ran into the John Cena buzzsaw. Go back and watch Cena/Wyatt at Wrestlemania XXX and try not to cry as you reconcile it with the man stuck on Smackdown mumbling nonsense and losing to another established name, Randy Orton.
The baffling part of it all is that WWE seems to bury these stars even when they know they have something good on their hands. I understand that you can't allow fans to dictate your programming, but you also can't openly ignore the feedback you're getting. I'm not talking about comments on Facebook or some smarky tweet. I'm talking about the live feedback you get from an arena full of fans. Roman Reigns is the whipping boy for the WWE Universe right now because of how poorly he is booked, yet WWE's booking of Roman doesn't change. Meanwhile, the team of Gallows and Anderson came in with all the fan support you could dream of and they spent months pretending to be doctors and making testicle jokes with The New Day.
So while we should have spent the last fourteen years building the next generation of stars, the truth is the main event picture in WWE hasn't changed all that much. The proof? Triple H was the WWE Champion going into Wrestlemania 32. Why? Because WWE hadn't built up a proper heel to get Roman Reigns over as a face. Even now, with Kevin Owens as WWE Universal Champion on Raw, Triple H is still heavily embroiled in the main event storyline as the man that "handed" him the title.
WWE wasn't shy about touting the 2016 Draft as the dawn of a "new era." Much like the "Divas Revolution," it sounded great on paper, but when Raw is being headlined by Brock Lesnar and Goldberg, it's hard to take that moniker seriously. John Cena is still at the center of the world title picture. That's probably due to Smackdown's lack of star power, which in turn goes back to the original argument of WWE's failure to establish big-name stars over the last decade.
Finally, for all their talk of making Raw and Smackdown equal shows, WWE has made it painfully obvious that Monday night is still where the flagship resides. I'm going to set aside the fact that Raw is 3 hours long to Smackdown's 2, and that Raw got to draft 50% more wrestlers than Smackdown during the draft. Raw may not be getting the astronomical ratings of the Monday Night Wars (and those ratings continue to slip), but Smackdown still lags behind in exposure and viewership. WWE has tried to combat this in recent months by having top stars like Brock Lesnar appear on Smackdown and even drafting John Cena exclusively to the blue brand. But is that really enough?
With Survivor Series coming up, WWE is taking the quick and dirty route for their main event and doing the tried and true "Raw vs. Smackdown" tag team elimination match for...I don't know....bragging rights or something. That being said, you could easily have made this a cross-promotional feud between Goldberg and Lesnar. With Brock already drafted to Raw and the announcemnt that Goldberg would be answering Brock's challenge live, why not have Shane and Daniel Bryan swoop in and declare that they've signed Goldberg as an exclusive member of the Smackdown roster?
And I'm excited for that encounter. Really. More excited than I thought I would be going into Raw last night. But there's no denying WWE's continued reliance on part-time and past talent in an age where they've failed to grow new stars of a meaningful and long-lasting caliber. Fans are more pumped now to see a rematch of something they booed out of Madison Square Garden twelve years ago than any other match on the card. If that doesn't speak to WWE's lack of creative depth over the last twelve years, I don't know what does.
