To be fair, 2025 hasn’t been a particularly classic year for WWE. But will 2026 be better?
If Triple H and TKO are looking for some ideas to make the product less stale in the new year, here are a few that might help get things rolling.
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Get your creativity back
Take away the cornerstone of John Cena, and it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that most of WWE’s PLE programming in 2025 is on autopilot, with plenty of boilerplate matches, predictable conclusions and a lack of interesting competition.
My favorite theory is that this was an unintentional result of Triple H’s more athletic performance. We’ve seen time and time again how the current leadership has opted for a more ESPN-friendly feel, relying on the big games to do the talking. But it also means stripping “entertainment” from Vinnie Mac’s famous “sports entertainment” formula.
You can see this especially in the weekly shows. How often do Raw and SmackDown promo segments devolve into trash talk, and the only question is when will there be a break? What happened to all the copious behind-the-scenes drama we used to see during the Bloodlines era?
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Not only do these narrative scenes bring a bit of visual variety to the show, but they sometimes make for great television in their own right. For example, remember Sami Zayn’s tribal court sequence?
Maybe actually hire some writers now and then instead of just leaving the game to tell the story.
Make better use of mid-card
Another sign of the Triple H era was the streamlining of the match card. The impact on PLE is more dramatic, but it also affects weekly programming. It’s not uncommon for “Raw” to feature four matches in three hours.
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Welcome quality over quantity. But this also resulted in a lack of mid-card opportunities. At PLE, the secondary belts were rarely defended, and the much-hyped midcarders (Rusev, Aleister Black, Giulia) ended up being booked intermittently, making it harder for the live crowd to keep up with them.
The fact that the majority of mid-card events now take place within WWE’s partner promotions further streamlines mid-card events. For example, look at the way Legado del Fantasma and the LWO were essentially loaned out to AAA, or look at the exhausting work Chelsea Green did in NXT and TNA alongside Ethan Page.
As someone who cheered for WWE’s new co-op model, I have to hold up my hands: I didn’t expect it to result in some emerging talent essentially disappearing from the weekly programming. My bad.
Stop repeated completion
At Uncrown, we don’t always agree on everything. But in 2025, our wrestling columnists and critics alike came to one conclusion: far away There are too many DQ endings in WWE’s main events – especially on “Raw.”
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To be honest, the problem hasn’t completely gone away. Granted, the DQ ratio has gone down a bit since our survey, but we still seem to have too many back-to-back finales that involve members of The Vision or their allies disrupting each other’s matches – usually leading to some sort of tag team brawl involving CM Punk, LA Knight, or The Usos.
In theory, these scenes are meant to establish Vision as a bad guy who can do as he pleases. But in practice, they just feel like creatives are treading water until a bigger show comes along.
We get it, guys. Trust me, we get it.
(WWE via Getty Images)
Change PLE schedule
WWE’s success depends on its flagship monthly show. After a period of turmoil and changes on this front, now Triple H appears to have settled on his preferred timeline for which PLEs we get and when. But did he make the right choice?
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It’s obvious that some PLEs don’t work as well as others. War Games, for example, often feels contrived due to the rush to form alliances that often disappear immediately afterwards. The Women’s War Games competition felt like wearing the Harry Potter Sorting Hat.
Elimination Chamber is another one. It was a great gimmick match, but the fact that it was always going to be used to decide the rest of the WrestleMania main event made it even more predictable than before. Why not go back and put the title directly in the cage (like a US title) and give it a fresher feel?
Committed to character building
I call it the curse of character reboots. How many times have we seen a WWE wrestler come back with a flashy vignette and a new mystique, only to find the whole idea was abandoned within a few weeks?
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White, the graveyard of failed relaunches goes way back (Giovanni Finch, Giovanni Finch, Will Mahan…), and the most infamous example of 2025 has to be the entire Ron Kills relaunch. Although it caused quite a stir at the time, it has since completely disappeared.
I know creatives need to push ideas up the flagpole and see what works. But what does it mean when something is thrown away before it has any impact?
There is so much promise in this…
(WWE via Getty Images)
No more non-title matches against champions
A simple question: What exactly was the reason for the WWE Women’s Champion to have a non-title match with Michin on the most recent episode of “SmackDown”? Don’t get me wrong – I have no problem with the game itself. But what’s the reason for Jed Cargill not risking his title?
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We see this a lot in WWE in 2025. Cargill’s predecessor, Tiffany Stratton, had no fewer than five non-title singles matches on SmackDown. This happens on the men’s side as well. Standout examples include Cody Rhodes vs. Aleister Black in November, and John Cena vs. R-Truth on the Saturday Night Main Event in May.
In each case, there was no exact explanation as to why they were non-title matches. Most of the time, the champion ends up winning cleanly, leaving the question of why this couldn’t have been a standard title fight.
It’s time to take a more rigorous approach. Non-title matches should be reserved for cases where exceptions are justified – such as champions vs. champions – rather than used for the sake of it.
stop swearing slogan
This is a personal annoyance, and a much smaller one at that. But hey, if you can’t use these moments to solve some problems, when will you?
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Will the wrestling crowd finally stop cursing in 2026? We get it: people think it’s funny to chant things like “Fuck you, Gunther.” The problem is that WWE’s television shows are still a PG product, and ultimately the production team censors the audio in a way that makes the show much less enjoyable to watch.
Is it really that troublesome not to say bad words? I know, I know – here I am shouting into the wind. After all, this is the same fanbase that insists on doing “What?!” Shouting slogans after every second promotion.