RADICAN’S TAKE: Paul “Triple H’ Levesque is slowly chipping away at WWE’s audience with his misguided booking philosophy

WWE’s booking has been excessively frustrating this year. It seems like matches exist just to lead to other matches. Whether or not characters are good or bad doesn’t matter. Whether or not a match leads to a satisfying conclusion to a story being told doesn’t matter. Multiple matches on the same show feature heels (I think) cheating to win.

Nothing seems to matter other than ensuring that shows exist to create viral moments that make influencers go bug-eyed and drive views on YouTube to get people talking. There’s no voice of reason in the creative room headed up by CCO Paul “Triple H” Levesque to counterbalance things seemingly and if there is a voice or voices trying to help balance things out, they’re being ignored.

WWE is far too comfortable given their lucrative deals for their programming on ESPN, Netflix, USA, and The CW. They can’t boast about doing record breaking numbers anymore after every PLE as they had previously given the decline of their live event audience. Triple H no longer appears after each PLE to thank the sponsors and push the numbers the show did.

The problem is the lazy booking is constantly chipping away at the interest people have in the product, but not to a degree where Levesque has to tighten the reins and work with his creative team to produce a coherent show that builds logical storylines around big stars that people want to see play out.

How many people are going to get title shots for no reason at all? It happens all the time on WWE TV. People get title shots without earning them and it’s not just happening with the secondary titles anymore. It’s happening with the top titles in the company as well. That in and of itself can be tolerated in small doses, but it is happening to a large degree lately.

Did Seth Rollins earn a title shot against Roman Reigns at SummerSlam? No. In his promos building the match, he pointed out that he hadn’t earned it. Did C.M. Punk earn a title shot against Sami Zayn? No. He just showed up, a door opened, and he walked to the ring and beat Zayn to end his title reign.

There’s other examples of wrestlers not earning title shots, but it got really bad this week when Johnny Gargano, who has been lying comatose on a crate backstage for months most of the time was given a title shot by C.M. Punk presumably because creative wanted to create a viral moment in Gargano’s hometown in Cleveland. It’s like Oprah Winfrey is the G.M. of both brands granting title shots instead of prizes to her live audience.

If WWE used main event matches to build to other matches every so often, that would be fine, but now instead of only undercard matches being used as vehicles to bridge to other matches between other wrestlers, the practice has made its way all the way to the most important matches and main events and that’s a problem on a regular basis.

Oba Femi won The King of the Ring for a shot at one of WWE’s top prizes, but instead he forfeited his title shot to wrestle Brock Lesnar at SummerSlam. A shot at WWE’s top prize should be the most important thing any wrestler on the roster can secure, but Femi decided a match against Lesnar was more important than a title shot and that’s something that should never occur in any wrestling promotion. All wrestlers should believe that the top prize should take priority over everything else.

WWE also recently built up two big matches for C.M. Punk that were used to bridge to other feuds. At SummerSlam, Punk’s match against Cody Rhodes didn’t have a satisfying conclusion because it was used to bridge Rhodes into a feud with Randy Orton.

With no PLE’s on the calendar, Punk was also given a spotlight build that led to a title defense against Kevin Owens on Smackdown on Aug. 21. In similar fashion to the Punk vs. Rhodes build, the Punk vs. Owens match was also given a strong build on TV. Fans invested in the promos building up the lengthy history of tension going back decades to when Punk and Owens crossed paths on the independent scene.

Sami Zayn ended up getting involved in the Punk vs. Owens match on Smackdown and hit Owens with the belt after he refused to use it on Punk to cost him the match. Once again, the match wasn’t about setting the feud between Punk and Owens or even building to another match between them, but instead it was designed to get Zayn’s heel character over. He currently seems to be positioning himself for a title shot by constantly ruining number 1 contender matches or title matches.

ARTICLE CONTINUED BELOW…

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Sunday Night’s Main Event today, if you include the pre-show match, featured 4 of 6 matches that had outside interference. It doesn’t get much more personal than things have been between Cody Rhodes and Randy Orton on TV lately. If WWE booked their shows better overall, an argument made that the Rhodes vs.Orton match was really well done.

However, with so many WWE matches featuring ref bumps that lead to the finish, it is hard to accept that there were two ref bumps and a double low blow from Orton to the ref and Rhodes at the same time after Rhodes seemed to be moments away from winning the match.

So many WWE matches on PLEs and TV have this exact style of finish. Levesque and his creative team need to find other ways to bridge the gap from one match to another without relying on these finishes up and down the card for them to have any meaningful impact.

Sami Zayn is interfering in matches he’s not involved in and cheating in matches that he is involved in and there are no consequences. He’s simply granted more opportunities to plot and interfere on what appears to be the road to a 1 on 1 match against C.M. Punk for the WWE Undisputed Championship.

The facts are the details matter and WWE creative is casting a wide net over their programming with bad finishes, interference, and ref bumps that diminish any meaning the matches have that people are watching on TV and PLEs. This need to change or WWE is going to continue to slowly erode their live event attendance and TV viewership until the TKO brass decides that just having big money deals in place for WWE programming is enough to be satisfied with as the quality and credibility of the product erodes.

(Sean Radican has been Pro Wrestling Torch for over 23 years. He has covered the independents, ROH, and NJPW in-depth over the years in addition to also watching all the major promotions in the U.S. PWTorch VIP members get access to his weekly Radican Worldwide podcast looking at a variety of news topics from the past week and then an in-depth Go-Home segment with a guest on a big topic of the week. You can contact him at pwtorchsean@gmail.com. You can follow him on X @SR_Torch and on Bluesky @SeanRadican.)