WWE: Erick Rowan had a star-making performance on SmackDown

Erick Rowan might have done just enough on SmackDown to warrant giving WWE another chance with the Roman Reigns attacker storyline.

I have to admit that I had lost about all faith in WWE to create a compelling storyline around the Roman Reigns mystery attacker by SmackDown.

After two consecutive weeks of intelligence insulting angles, combined with already having to endure the questionable segments this storyline began with,  I was ready to throw in the towel. No matter how hot this whole story seemed like it could have been, I was convinced there was no saving it.

Boy was I wrong.

Erick Rowan, of all people, was able to pull this story from the ashes and turn it into something compelling and exciting once again.

In the course of one segment, Rowan went from getting “What?” chants to sending the crowd into a frenzy by seemingly turning on Daniel Bryan and hurdling him through the announce table after cutting a rather entertaining promo.

Honestly, it was such a great segment that, for a moment, I forgot all the wrongs that WWE had inflicted on fans to get to this point. Rowan’s furious demands for Bryan to hit him felt like a trip back to WrestleMania season with Batista’s masterful, “Give me what I want!” promo.

The fact that he ended the show standing tall, with two of the most recognizable stars in the company beaten and battered around him, was the kind of star-making moment I had initially expected this whole storyline would be able to deliver.

Going forward, as long as WWE continues to stay out of it’s own way, it now leaves a multitude of intriguing questions left be answered too.

Is Erick Rowan working alone, or was he ordered by someone else to attack Roman Reigns? Could Daniel Bryan still be in on this whole scheme, and just be willing to go to the utmost extreme lengths to prove his innocence? Do we get an actual Erick Rowan singles push, and should we honestly be hoping for that outcome after how brilliant he was on SmackDown?

All of those questions and more remain, and WWE has the perfect set-up to go about doing answering them. It’s just a shame that it will be so hard to trust that they can actually pull it off this time given their track record thus far.

That terrible reveal from Bryan and Rowan, along with all of the other past inconsistencies, are going to hang over whatever story they tell like a dark cloud.

Critics will continue to point to the seemingly dropped Rowan lookalike, all of the illogical camera angle drama, and potentially even Buddy Murphy’s lack of involvement recently, as reasons why this storyline will never be able to be fully pulled out of the proverbial gutter.

To an extent, I get that. This story has given everyone a terrible look these past two weeks. It’s just that now there’s so much fun that can be had with all of the potential angles in the upcoming weeks that it would almost be nice if we could just forgive and forget all of that.

I mean this story could be giving us the Erick Rowan push we never knew we wanted, but really sort of need after seeing what he’s capable of.

For me, that honestly might be enough in of itself to make me give WWE one last chance to see where they take this story. I just hope they have a plan to convert even the most ardent doubters back as well, because it would truly be disappointing to see WWE drop the ball again after such a spectacular outing on SmackDown.