WWE should use main roster enhacement matches more often

This week’s WWE episodes of RAW and SmackDown Live featured quick jobber matches for some of their star wrestlers. It was a refreshing change of pace.

Aside from the erratic storytelling and questionable pushes, the primary issue plaguing WWE’s main roster programming at the moment is the repetition and lack of importance of the matches.

Like many of the company’s other problems, this is one of their own creation. WWE’s decision to flood the airwaves with – at the very least – five hours of original content per week has forced them to fill that time with countless matches that company CEO/head booker Vince McMahon and the rest of his creative team could build pay-per-views (PPV) around.

Unfortunately, WWE’s apparent indifference to wins and losses has stripped many of those bouts of their primary kayfabe function: to determine which wrestler is the better competitor and to move the winner closer to a championship match.

This, of course, has led to encounters that should feel momentous to come across as an ancillary part of the show; it’s window dressing to buttress the silly angles that McMahon seems more interested in.

This week, however, WWE gave fans a bit of a break from that monotonous format in the form of squash matches.

On last Monday’s RAW, WWE Women’s Tag Team Champions Billie Kay and Peyton Royce, collectively known as The IIconics, made quick work of a pair of local talents. Prospective SmackDown Tag Team Title challengers Heavy Machinery (Otis and Tucker) followed the same template when they dispatched of the “Yolo County Tag Team Champions” in short order on SmackDown Live the next night.

These matches were one-sided, brief, and to the point. WWE should consider scheduling more of them.

Now, this isn’t to suggest that WWE should fill the majority of their shows with these sort of bouts. You could also quibble with how effective these matches were, particularly for the IIconics, who have yet to score a win of any kind over a full-time roster member since winning the tag titles at WrestleMania. For the most part, they have been pigeonholed as jokes since their promotion from NXT last year.

But sprinkling in a handful of contests pitting main roster stars against hapless jobbers would be a long-term net positive from a storytelling standpoint.

The obvious benefit to squash matches lies in the primary objective behind them: they allow a wrestler the get their moveset over with the audience without overexposing them or damaging the credibility of another member of the roster.

For instance, instead of having Ricochet and Cesaro trade wins in a hamster wheel feud that defines both of them down as midcarders, WWE could build to a number one contender’s match between them using pre-recorded promos and respective squash matches showcasing what they do best.

That goes for the rest of the roster too; rather than having the likes of the Viking Raiders, Shinsuke Nakamura, Ember Moon and Buddy Murphy (way to capitalize on his Cruiserweight Title run, WWE) collect dust backstage, why not give them two or three minutes to show off their skills? It beats giving that time to Shane McMahon and his awful punches and lazily-applied submission holds.

Most importantly, booking more enhancement matches would help WWE avoid burning through the few fresh matches that they have over the span of a few months. Who knows, it could even keep them from using this silly “wild card” rule to run their top stars into the ground twice a week, meaning fewer chances for injuries.

With ratings as low as they’ve ever been, WWE could stand to change up their formula. Adding more squash matches to RAW and SmackDown wouldn’t heal all of what ails them, but it’s better than presenting the same pointless matches over and over again.