Talk about your all-time backfires. On Sunday, WWE superstar Roman Reigns was booed out of the house after overcoming the odds to win the annual Royal Rumble. The man had just survived one of the biggest matches of the year and was embraced by legend and fan favorite Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, and yet the duo was still showered with boos and jeers. It wasn’t just the in-house reaction of Philadelphia’s wrestling-savvy crowd, either, as the #CancelWWENetwork hashtag was one of Twitter's TWTR +2.32% top trends.
UPDATE – A WWE spokesperson denies that the WWE Network’s cancellation page crashed at any point over the weekend, as previously reported in this story and elsewhere. Any service failure experienced by users, including the present author, were not caused by server overload on WWE’s end, according to the company. The WWE spokesperson also clarified that there was no spike in WWE Network cancellations following Royal Rumble.
The response was pretty clearly not a reaction to just the Royal Rumble’s booking, but also to the months of stale, repetitive and even outright boring programming that WWE has been putting out recently. Yet what might be even more surprising than Philly’s hostile reaction is that the company has been thriving throughout 2014 and appears to still be trending upwards despite the deluge of disappointing content.
The problems with WWE’s in-ring action are myriad. Many pay-per-view events feel like glorified episodes of Monday Night RAW, which itself has become a chore to watch. What’s more, it often appears that talented and hard working talent has been overlooked in favor of less skilled but more muscle-bound wrestlers. That would help explain why a jam-packed Wells Fargo WFC -1.59%Center spent the second half of the Royal Rumble match sitting on their hands after Daniel Bryan was eliminated, and why that silence turned to outright revolt when it became clear that Reigns would earn a title shot at March’s WrestleMania.
It’s also hard to imagine that WWE programming could be more tiresome. Since the end of October 2014 there have been 12 episodes of Monday Night RAW and three PPVs. Across those 15 events, the Miz has been involved in 12 matches with the Uso brothers. At Sunday’s Royal Rumble, Brock Lesnar, John Cena and Seth Rollins put on the sort of incredible match that reminds fans just how exciting wrestling can be at its best. And it probably would have been even better had Cena and Rollins not already fought each other at least eight times over the previous three months. Other recent rivalries have been similarly redundant.
Those repetitive matches haven’t been rewarding, either. Of the 52 weekly RAW telecasts in 2014, just 18 of them, or 35%, had a main event with a decisive finish. Just as many episodes featured a main event that ended in a no contest or disqualification. A quick look at the eight RAW cards since the end of November reveals 62 total matches. Just 32 of them, or 52%, were won by a clean, non-roll-up pinfall or submission, with the rest ending in some combination of distraction, disqualification or otherwise dirty finish. Those sorts of non-finishes aren’t always bad, but it’s absurd that just about half of WWE’s matches rely on them.
These trends have been ongoing for much of 2014 and yet, by most accounts, the company is as strong as ever.
On television, WWE’s weekly Monday Night RAW telecast is a juggernaut, regularly topping four million viewers throughout its lengthy three-hour run time, making it one of the most-viewed weekly shows on cable TV. Despite being a pay-per-view event, Sunday’s Royal Rumble was the week’s fifth-most viewed TV event, and Monday’s non-episode of RAW – the live event was cancelled by inclement weather – ranked seventh despite not carrying a single live match.
WWE’s stock price took a huge dive in the spring, falling from an all-time high of $31 to under $12 in just two months, a reaction to the WWE Network’s slow start and an underwhelming renewal of the promotion’s cable broadcast contract. But news broke earlier this week that the WWE Network has reached one million subscribers, the projected break-even point for making up revenue lost by cannibalizing its PPV buyers. On Tuesday the company’s stock price jumped almost 20% to $12.50 per share.
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