Seth Rollins and Cody Rhodes have rekindled their rivalry en route to Crown Jewel. (Credit: Melina Pizano/WWE via Getty Images)
WWE via Getty Images
WWE fans need not be confused. The off-screen accomplishments may be impressive, but the TV product as a whole? Well, WWE has some work to do.
WWE’s financial success, including a recent $1.6 billion deal with ESPN, doesn’t automatically mean that its on-screen product is good. The overwhelming demand for live sports on streaming services and traditional pay-TV providers has caused WWE revenue to soar, but what hasn’t improved with it is the actually quality of Raw and SmackDown.
WWE Chief Content Officer Triple H was consistently praised for the improvements he immediately made in WWE’s booking when he took over that role in 2022. Until 2024, he was worthy of that praise, too, putting out a stellar product across Raw and SmackDown, which produced some of WWE’s best and most original content this century.
Somewhere along the way, however, WWE’s creative direction got cloudied and inconsistent, with noticeable dips in quality at a time when its No. 1 competitor, AEW, has improved in that regard. Because that hasn’t resulted in smaller crowds or a decrease in revenue, it’s easy for those within WWE to assume there are no problems with its booking.
That, though, simply isn’t true. Here are five major booking issues WWE must fix immediately.
WWE’s Overreliance On The Vision Stable
When WWE, more specifically WWE under Triple H’s guidance, finds some success with an upper-tier stable, it tends to focus too much on that faction to the detriment of the rest of the roster.
At times, this has been true of factions like The Judgment Day and, to a lesser extent, The Bloodline. The main difference with the original Bloodline, however, is that it consistently produced must-see storylines for much of its run. The same hasn’t necessarily been true of Seth Rollins’ The Vision, which has become the centerpiece of Monday Night Raw over the past several months.
There has, after all, been some variation of The Vision members, including Rollins, Bronson Reed and Bron Breakker, feuding with the likes of LA Knight, Jey Uso and Roman Reigns for what feels like an eternity now. Throughout 2025, main event segment after main event segment on Raw has pitted a member or multiple members of The Vision against a top Raw babyface or two, to the point that it’s become beyond overkill.
All of the superstars involved are good to great performers, but as a whole, The Vision hasn’t clicked as well as one would have hoped. Thus, it comes as no surprise that Raw on Netflix recently bottomed out to an all-time low in global viewership, with WWE’s laser focus on The Vision proving to be more tiresome than entertaining.
Failing To Create Top Stars On WWE SmackDown
WWE SmackDown has been hurt by two things: the end of The Bloodline and the brand’s inability to create legitimate challengers for WWE Champion Cody Rhodes.
With Knight, Reigns and John Cena moving over to Raw, there has been a massive star power gap at the top of the card. At best, there is less than a handful of capable foes for Rhodes and his WWE Championship. That got even worse at WWE WrestlePalooza, where Drew McIntyre, SmackDown’s best heel, lost to Rhodes in odd fashion.
If McIntyre isn’t a credible threat to Rhodes on SmackDown, then who is? Among full-time stars on the blue brand, Randy Orton is currently the only name who stands out in that regard, and he’s, like Rhodes, a babyface. Likewise, Jacob Fatu, another fan favorite, recently disappeared from TV altogether without much of an explanation before returning on this pat week’s SmackDown.
On the heel side, no one else really stands out as a genuine main eventer, and the established names on WWE SmackDown, like Orton and Sami Zayn, aren’t exactly fresh faces at the top of the card.
Relying Too Heavily On Major WWE Returns
John Cena. AJ Lee. Brock Lesnar. Roman Reigns. Charlotte Flair. Becky Lynch.
These are just a few of the names who’ve made their triumphant returns in 2025after lengthy layoffs of months or even years. In some but not all of those cases, the return created momentary buzz and excitement but not much beyond that. One of the areas where both WWE and AEW struggle is this overreliance on debuting or bringing back major stars as if that will do anything but add another marquee name to the card.
That’s a Band-Aid solution for deeper issues when it comes booking an actually compelling product. From 2022 and even into 2024, Triple H was a more well-rounded booker who didn’t rely too heavily on nostalgiac return pops. Lately, though, it seems that bringing back Reigns every few months, having Lesnar return for no real reason or just having Cena pop up here and there is his entire booking focus.
Of course, it’s a luxury for WWE to have this level of star power, but expecting a significant star’s return to instantly fix other issues is a losing strategy in the long-term.
Small WWE PLE Cards
Part of WWE’s inability to create new stars stems from its strategy of booking small PLE cards typically featuring five or six matches.
Take, for example, WWE WrestlePalooza earlier this month, which featured just five bouts, last month’s Clash in Paris (just six matches) or other 2025 events such as Money in the Bank and Backlash, which also had just five matches.
On one hand, this has often allowed for longer matches on WWE PLEs. On the other hand, if perception is reality, then the reality is that the majority of WWE’s roster struggles to get a spot on PLE cards, especially when part-time stars like Brock Lesnar and Logan Paul are around. Likewise, there is an associated perception that, for the most part, only stars at a certain level will make it onto PLE cards consistently.
Even Randy Orton’s wife Kim recently called out WWE for leaving Orton off marquee WWE cards. Of course, Orton isn’t the only one. A plethora of talented WWE names, ranging from Chelsea Green to LA Knight to Sheamus to Bayley, continuously face an uphill battle when it comes to getting a featured spot on anything other than Raw or SmackDown.
While there are some financial pros to short PLE cards, seven to eight-match PLEs that minimize down time would be much more effective in terms of creating new stars, crafting better fan experiences and producing more entertaining marquee events.
The Unexplained Absences Of Numerous Major WWE Stars
Names like Bliss, Fatu, Penta, Knight and numerous other WWE upper midcarders and main eventers seemingly disappeared from Raw or SmackDown for no logical reason.
Bliss, for example, made her triumphant return at WWE Royal Rumble 2025 to a massive pop and then vanished from TV without a trace. The reason? No creative plans for the former multi-time women’s champion. More recently, Fatu, after becoming one of WWE’s hottest babyfaces, fell off the face of the earth on SmackDown for well over a month despite his strong crowd reactions and stellar in-ring performances.
These are just a couple of prominent examples of WWE getting hot-and-cold with notable stars and derailing their careers in the process. Even the likes of AEW-turned-WWE stars such as Andrade, Penta and Rey Fenix have suffered similar fates, with WWE actually recently releasing Andrade just earlier this month. Combing factors such as WWE’s hyper-focus on mediocre stables and insistence on bringing back marquee stars for short-term gains, this is the result: frustrated, misused and absentee stars across the roster.
WWE has so much elite talent that it got away with that for the past couple of years, but with the overall quality of Raw and SmackDown nosediving over the past couple of years, that short-sighted strategy has clearly caught up with Triple.
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