WWE exists in an endless cycle of one step forward, two steps back

WWE's worst booking decision in a series of abominable booking decisions.
Image credit: WWE.com.

WWE has made its share of announcements in the last week, but nothing they can do will overcome the bad blood many fans feel after the debacle that was the first ever women's Money in the Bank match. James Ellsworth won the match for Carmella, basically showing exactly how much WWE management really cares for its supposed women's revolution.

Let's be honest: Tuesday's Smackdown wasn't originally booked the way it was booked. Damage control was in full effect, as even major news outlets started to notice the ill fated storyline WWE produced on Sunday night. Vince lives in a world where exposure is always a good thing, but even he can't fix that problem.

Coupled with the ongoing problematic players still in positions of powers (folks like John Bradshaw Layfield and Michael Hayes) creating hostile work places, all while WWE pushes its anti-bullying narrative, the company seems divided between a newer generation of management that wants to take the company into the 21st century and Vince's old boys club.

Mauro is back... in a role far from the auspices of JBL and
Vince McMahon. Image credit: WWE.com.

Don't get me wrong. WWE has tons of bright points in the last week. Braun Strowman, arguably the biggest new star the couple actually developed in house since John Cena, made an impactful return on Monday night. Abbey Laith, better known to indie fans as former Chikara Grand Champion Kimber Lee, will make her debut in the Mae Young Classic. And perhaps the biggest news of all: WWE has signed a deal to bring Mauro Ranallo back into the company as the new play by play commentator of NXT (opening Todd Grisham to be Smackdown's lead full-time.)

However, while the Mae Young Classic has announced several great talents in the likes of Laith, Tessa Blanchard, Sarah Logan and Jazzy "Alpha Female" Gabert, the competition also has already added two homegrown WWE talents with almost no wrestling experience. Lacey Evans has worked a series of uninspiring job matches while MMA veteran Taynara Conti has exactly one match under her belt, and a battle royal no less. It again leaves a lot of wrestling fans disappointed to see amazingly talented females left by the wayside while WWE pushes unknown stars instead. It's entirely contrary to the hopeful spirit created by the Cruiserweight Classic.

WWE's booking on both main brand shows remain a complete mess as well. Mike and Maria Kanellis debuted at Money in the Bank, but barely blipped on Smackdown. Roman Reigns continues to be pushed over all others, though at least WWE seems to be letting him embrace his heeldom at last. The Raw tag division continues to be a complete mess despite a half dozen great teams on its roster. 50/50 booking and Orton's continued challenges against Mahal (seemingly for no reason after two straight losses) threaten to neuter the drawing power of names like Kevin Owens, AJ Styles and Shinsuke Nakamura, all of which are arguably bigger draws than Randy Orton has ever been in his career.

I love to look on the bright side, but in the last two months I have felt zero urge to renew my WWE Network subscription. With the advent of the Mae Young Classic this summer, my opinion might change, but for now WWE still has a logn way to go to earn back my eight dollars a month.

WWE needs to grow up: JBL and bullying

As of today, all indications are that Mauro Ranallo will sit out the remainder of his WWE contract with no hope of renewal in August. It's a far shot away from the enthusiasm he clearly felt for his WWE run when he joined the Smackdown announce team on its move to USA Network in January of last year.

Image credit: WWE.com.

Before WWE, Mauro made no secret of his mental health issues. He dealt with them very publicly at times. I was already a fan of Ranallo from his days as the voice of Elite XC and Strikeforce as well as his amazing work as the American play by play commentator of New Japan's World Pro Wrestling (better known in the US as NJPW on AXS.) He was easily the biggest get for WWE on commentary since Joey Styles in 2005.

And it all came to an end weeks ahead of Wrestlemania and all reports were that JBL was the cause.

If this was the first report about John Bradshaw Layfield acting like a bully in the locker room it would be one thing. But JBL makes no secrets of his history with hazing and bullying. He and former tag partner Ron Simmons have even laughed about it at two straight WWE Hall of Fame shows.

Maybe in the 80s and 90s such things were still considered okay, but the world is a very different place in 2017 than it was in the Attitude Era. And let's be honest: for all the greatness of that time in wrestling, the horror stories far outweigh the highs of the ratings. And backstage, JBL was a key figure in torturing several workers, often to the point they quit the company and wrestling entirely.

The rumors of JBL's personal attacks on Ranallo (several of which could be seen on JBL's twitter before the rumors about the situation came to light) have snowballed in recent days as CBS Sports, Mauro's employer as the continued voice of Showtime's combat sports, have went on record that Ranallo would not be returning to WWE.

The release of former WWE announcer Justin Roberts book doubles down on these stories as he discusses frequent bullying from JBL during his twelve years with the company. JBL took to Twitter to say Roberts' claims were false, only for Johnny Mundo to in turn confirm the story as written.

In the heat of this, former WWE commentator and current ESPN Sports Center host Jonathan Coachman, a man that has regularly brought WWE workers onto the world's largest sports network, has announced he will no longer cover WWE product on Sports Center. Even if WWE manages to maintain their relationship with ESPN, the loss of a man so related to the WWE product only makes them look worse in public eyes.

And as I write this, more and more sports sites are picking up on the story.

At this point, WWE pretty much has one way to save face in this situation. It is time to release John Bradshaw Layfield from his contract. In a world where Jim Cornette and Bill DeMott have been excised from developmental for much the same behavior, WWE cannot afford to have an employee like JBL on the roster anymore.

His era is done. This kind of behavior, whether physically or verbally, has no place behind the scenes of WWE. And it is insane that a company that spends millions of dollars on the Be a Star campaign would ever let this continue for so long.

I am but one lonely wrestling blogger in a world of millions of wrestling fans. I have already taken to Twitter to let WWE know my WWE Network subscription is on its last month should JBL remain as a voice of Smackdown Live. I encourage everyone else out there to do the same. Let WWE know this kind of continued behavior will hurt their pocketbooks in the long run.

It's time for them to make the change. Or we will.

I don't get the hatred of David Otunga

Look, we all know the ideal Smackdown Live! announce team would be Mauro Ranallo and Corey Graves. We all hoped for it. It didn't happen however. Instead JBL made the move, and the recent replacement for Jerry "The King" Lawler became a full time member of the announce team.

But while the show has brought some great storytelling back to WWE television, I hear way too much about David Otunga and how terrible he is. Look, we can all agree Otunga isn't exactly the world's number one announcers. But I see no problem with him. He's perfectly capable of telling the story in the ring. He creates a good counterpoint to Ranallo's over-enthusiasm and JBL's constant push for the heels.

Sure, he will never be the perfect member of any announce team, but neither is he the abomination the internet seems to think he is. Let's give the man a break and focus on the real problems WWE needs to fix: the lack of midcard depth on Smackdown or Raw's inability to get any new stars not named Kevin Owens over.

A true classic... followed by the hard truths of reality

The Cruiserweight Classic ended in epic fashion last week with two amazing semi-finals that needed to be seen to be believed, followed up by a final between arguably the underdogs of the final four with TJ Perkins walking out as the first CWC winner and the first Cruiserweight champion of a new era.


I may not have written about it yet on this site, but I honestly feel the Cruiserweight Classic has been the best thing WWE has produced since the heyday of the Smackdown Six at the beginning of the last brand extension. Booked to feel like a real athletic contest with real stakes, hyped by the perfect salesmen in Mauro Ranallo and Daniel Bryan, and filmed in front of a smart and rabid fanbase at Full Sail University, WWE proved feature programming could be a major selling point of WWE Network in the near future. Smart booking allowed relative unknowns like Sean Maluta, Ariya Daivari and Fabian (Adrian Severe) Aichner to suddenly draw a lot of attention from fans. It brought people like Gran Metalik and Kota Ibushi into a far stronger international spotlight than ever before. Cedric Alexander became a star of the future in just one match, something ROH failed to ever let the young talent ever bring a hint of in his five years of pointless toil with the company.

TJ Perkins' win surprised a few, but he's the right choice to lead the new
Cruiserweight division to glory. Image credit: WWE.com.

And then came Monday night.

Look, the Cruiserweight division is less than a week old, but already it feels like its been ghettoized. With the commentary team seemingly focused on "heart" of the smaller stars, they have immediately framed them into the vanilla midget stereotype Kevin Nash infamously gave them. Worse, instead of focusing on the superb athletic focused contest of the tournament, they gave us a fatal four way spotfest. And that's not to say that it wasn't a solid match, because it was, but it failed to feel particularly different than any other four way match featuring highly athletic competitors, which WWE has in droves these days.

For the Cruiserweights to succeed as a weekly part of Raw they need two things: 1. time and 2. the ability to feel different than the rest of the program. And without the focus on MMA style competition and the laser focused calls of Ranallo and Bryan, I fear that will never happen. WWE can right this ship quickly though.

Starting next week, focus the Cruiserweight division to two matches a night and always make them either traditional singles or tag matches outside very special occasions. Let the talents show their personality and build their feuds between in ring rivalries instead of out of ring snark or antics. Change up the announce team for the matches, perhaps having Saxton sit out in favor of someone who can announce, knows the move and also keep that sense of competition alive and laser focused. They've got a load of them sitting around: Jimmy Jacobs, William Regal, Sara Del Rey, Adam Pearce, Tyson Kidd, etc. etc.

I fear without that, the division will just be a failed experiment. Let's hope that's not the case.

Now, let's wait and watch to see which CWC talent makes a Smackdown debut first.

Jim Ross is a downgrade for NJPW on AXS

Image credit: Fox Sports.

I am not a regular viewer of New Japan's year old English broadcasts on AXS mostly because I do not have a cable subscription so therefore I have no access to AXS. (Yes, I am proud of that pun.) But I have caught a few episodes whether at a family member's house or during my post-neck surgery hospital stay last summer. And Josh Barnett is far from the reason the commentary on the show is compelling. Mauro Ranallo was the sole reason it is worth listening to the action as much as it is watching it.

Of course, Ranallo is now the voice of Smackdown and in two weeks, he has already added a great sport-centric feel to that program. Personally, I think he has already upped the game of both Byron Saxton and Jerry Lawler as well in just that short period of time. And when AXS needed a replacement, they tapped a man that last called a wrestling match at New Japan's Wrestle Kingdom 9 just over a year ago.

But fans that watched that program know that "Good Ol' J.R." was not at his best. He couldn't keep up with the pace of the show, nor did he seem comfortable back in his old role. Color commentator Matt Striker ended up carrying most of the program, which probably is the reason he continues to travel to Japan to call major NJPW events on their NJPW World international broadcasts.

Of course, the AXS tapings have the advantage of being recorded months ahead of time (which is why Ranallo will continue to appear on broadcasts until the end of February.) Ross will have multiple takes to get his recording right and can go back and fix some of the moves he misses. But even so, I cannot imagine him calling with the power Ranallo did during his broadcasts with Barnett. Ranallo has a knack for making sport broadcasting look easy, whether it is boxing, MMA or professional wrestling.

That is not to say Jim Ross as part of NJPW on AXS will hurt the program. I highly doubt that as the action he's calling is already some of the best in the world. While he may be a bit past his prime compared to the man he is replacing, J.R. still has plenty of good years ahead of him. At least he now has someplace to broadcast his play by play once again.