WWE should bring back more midcarders for short runs

Doing so would keep WWE from expending some PPV-worthy matches on free television and move them away from the parity booking that neuters the roster.

Wasn’t it fun seeing “Half Man, Half Amazing” himself (not this guy), Montel Vontavious Porter (MVP) return at the Royal Rumble and on the following night’s Monday Night RAW? 

Sure, it probably wasn’t fun seeing him get flicked aside along with many other POC’s like a paper football in service of making WWE Champion Brock Lesnar look dominant and watching him do the honors for Rey Mysterio roughly 24 hours later was probably met with some disappointment over his long-term prospects as in in-ring performer, but it was still great to see him come out to the one Silkk Da Shocker song people can tolerate and ply his craft one more time in the promotion where he became an upper midcard star.

While this was likely the swan song for the Miami native’s 18-year in-ring career, WWE should use his most recent run as the starting point to a booking pathway that leads to a more fruitful long term direction: bringing in midcard stars from the past to put over the full-time talent.

We’ve seen WWE do this before; in 2016, they brought back the Headbangers for a few weeks and transfer some of their equity as former tag team champions over to the likes of The Usos and Beauty and the Man-Beast (Heath Slater & Rhyno). And NXT has explored this as well with former stars of the brand who moved on to the main roster (not to mention other promotions that apply this regularly), giving us proof that this can work in practice. So if WWE wants to put their considerable resources behind such a measure, the advantages would significantly outweigh the negatives.

Assuming they’re available and can still bring it in the ring, briefly resigning wrestlers from the past would break them out of some of the monotonous booking habits that have become a crutch for them over the last two decades, specifically their proclivity to lean on the same matches every week and their tendency to prolong those feuds with parity booking.

Look, putting together at least five hours of weekly wrestling television is a challenge, but it’s one that WWE makes harder with their weird adherence to this promotional strategy that dilutes at least 80 percent of the roster and emphasizes the brand over everything else. It places everyone at the same level, which means no one feels special, unless, of course, you’re a part-time main eventer.

And that’s what makes WWE’s brand-first strategy so ironic: it was built off the backs of the very legends and part-timers that are still a significant part of their marketing today. Most of those stars — guys like The Rock, “Stone Cold” Steve Austin, The Undertaker, Ric Flair, and Lesnar — were a part of rosters that you could argue housed approximately 6-8 headline attractions.

Eventually, WWE won’t be able to count on those names to gin up excitement and this idea of keeping almost everyone at the same level will come back to bite them. Before that day comes, they will need to identify which wrestlers they can center the company around and go out of their way to protect them.

Obviously, that means giving those wrestlers a healthy dose of wins, but with the brand split slicing the roster in half, how do you go about that without running through a bunch of big matches or repeating the same ones? Squash matches can stave that problem off for a while, but as we saw with the War Raiders, fans grow tired of them quickly, especially if you do them every week. At some point, fans want to see the next chapter.

That’s where the returning mid-carders would step in. Imagine if, for instance, WWE wanted to maintain Aleister Black’s momentum and didn’t want to sacrifice someone on the full-time roster to do so. Instead of doing a repetitive jobber match or putting him on the 50/50 Ferris Wheel, they could, say, bring in Carlito or Chavo Guerrero, prepare a nice video package to reintroduce them to the audience, and have them wrestle a 6-9 minute match before ultimately putting Black over.

Implementing this does two things: it reinvigorates that “anything could happen” feel that RAW and SmackDown have missed for a while and it gives your current stars a quality win to boost their stock. Plus, it eliminates the eerieness of subjecting the full-timers to an unknown commodity.

This goes for the women’s and tag team divisions as well. Because those respective ranks are much smaller — even though it doesn’t really have to be — the odds of seeing the same opponents face off over and over again are much higher; it’s aking to having a roulette wheel with the same four numbers on a loop. Having some midcarders on retainer would freshen things up and keep WWE from going back to the same old, same old.

For the last few years, WWE has relied on special appearances from the superstars of the past to give their product a boost. But using key returns from midcard alumni could be the key to lifting up a full-time roster that desperately needs it.