WWE: Are Wins and Losses Completely Meaningless Now?

Photo Credit: WWE.com

We’ve heard the narrative before. “Wins and losses don’t matter, it’s about character.” When did WWE start having this mentality? And how bad is it when wins and losses truly don’t matter?

In my Five Takeaways From WWE Extreme Rules piece, one of my takeaways was that Roman Reigns would not be the one to defeat Brock Lesnar. It made sense at the time, being that Reigns had just lost what seemed to be a high profile, PPV match against Bobby Lashley. That was simply my mistake though. I should have known better than to think a big loss would directly affect the trajectory of someone’s path in WWE.

This past Monday on Raw, we saw Roman Reigns defeat Bobby Lashley for the opportunity to face Brock Lesnar for the Universal Title at SummerSlam. The only problem with that? Eight days earlier, Bobby Lashley was the one who was victorious against Roman Reigns in what is now rendered as a meaningless match.

What makes this a meaningless match? Just listen to the commentary during the Lashley vs. Reigns match in the Raw main event. Coach would say, “This is the biggest moment for Bobby Lashley in 10 years.” And Michael Cole would echo that, saying it may be “the biggest moment in Lashley’s career.”

Corey Graves was forced to jump in, saying, “I thought Extreme Rules was the biggest night in Lashley’s career. He beat Roman Reigns on pay per view!” And Coach’s reply: “Ok, but did he have a chance to go to SummerSlam with a win?”

That exchange in and of itself tells me, as a viewer, that the match that Reigns and Lashley had at Extreme Rules was completely pointless. Winning a match with “no stakes” means less than nothing in today’s WWE.

We can also take a look back to the previous week on Raw to see that wins and losses actually do matter, but only when it’s convenient for WWE’s plans. Kurt Angle had announced two triple threat matches for the show, with Roman Reigns vs. Finn Balor vs. Drew McIntyre, and Bobby Lashley vs. Seth Rollins vs. Elias.

Angle would later be confronted by a frustrated Constable Baron Corbin, asking why he himself wasn’t added to either of the matches. Kurt responded by saying “Well, you lost your match against Finn Balor at Extreme Rules last night.” Mixed signals!

It’s good to know that at least wins and losses sometimes matter, but not always and only when convenient for the authority figures. But if I’m Baron Corbin there, I’m saying, “Well, Roman Reigns lost last night, but he’s still in there. Seth Rollins, too.”

To put it simply, wrestling is a simulation of a combat sport. Just like in any other combat sport, there is a winner, and there is a loser. If we were to watch a boxing match, by the end, we would have a winner and a loser. We, as the audience, would be able to look at the winner and say “he was the better fighter.” Simple, right?

Photo Credit: WWE.com

Other Examples

This is where things take a turn in the WWE mentality. We’ve seen it before where someone doesn’t have to string together wins to get a title match. We can look no further than last year with Jinder Mahal on SmackDown Live. Jinder hardly had a win to his name, but within a month he went from losing TV matches to Mojo Rawley to being WWE Champion.

Isolating that, Jinder loses to Mojo, but instead of Mojo being the one to move up the card, Jinder, the loser, moves up. There’s no other sporting event where the loser makes out better than the winner. Why is WWE/pro wrestling different?

Photo Credit: WWE.com

Another example: if we go back to Battleground 2016, we saw the blow-off match to one of the better feuds in WWE of late with Sami Zayn defeating Kevin Owens. So surely after winning such a great rivalry, Sami’s stock would begin to rise, right? Nope. Instead we would see Sami barely featured, not even being booked on multiple PPVs, and most of the time when he was on TV, he was losing.

Kevin Owens, the loser of that feud, became Universal Champion shortly after.

With these sort of things happening, it gets difficult as a viewer to take matches seriously. I’m sure a lot of people, when Bobby Lashley beat Roman Reigns at Extreme Rules, immediately thought “It doesn’t matter, Roman is still probably going to beat Brock for the title.”

That’s a problem. When Lashley won that match, it should have been able to help further him up the card. Instead, he’s essentially in the same spot he was before that match. Maybe even worse, depending on what the plans are for him at SummerSlam.

50/50 Booking

This brings me into my next point: Another reason why wins and losses don’t matter is an over-reliance on 50/50 booking. We don’t have to look any further than Reigns and Lashley for this one. In a featured match on Extreme Rules, Bobby gets the win over Roman.

On Raw eight days later, Roman gets his win back by defeating Lashley and now will go onto face Brock Lesnar for the Universal Title. So Bobby and Roman are 1-1 against each other, yet Roman is the one getting the title shot. Tie goes to the chosen one, I guess.

How Can the Problem Be Fixed?

The frustrating thing is this is easy to work around. You can either have Roman beat Lashley in one match — and only the one match — to be the number one contender. Or, if you really wanted Lashley to win that much, instead of having Roman beat Lashley eight days later, put someone else in that spot.

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Have Seth Rollins win the triple threat match by pinning Elias, so then you set up Roman vs. Seth for the #1 Contendership. Lashley is protected for the future because he wouldn’t be pinned, and if Roman wins the Universal Title, Bob has a win over him in his back pocket as a reason for him to be next in line for a title shot.

Of course, this is just a short term solution to a much larger problem. The biggest fix for this comes from consistent, long-term booking. Look at a promotion like New Japan Pro Wrestling to see how big of a difference it makes. If you know you have big plans for someone, you don’t often have them lose.

You build them up by stringing wins together, so that when they do get to the point of challenging for the title, they have momentum. Ideally, the champion has also built up a long string of victories, so then you have two guys, who both look seemingly unbeatable, clashing together with the title on the line.

Does that sound so difficult? Why doesn’t WWE play the long game more often?