WWE: Younger names getting the “rub” in a loss is an antiquated model

There are many opportunities to complain about the WWE product. But one gripe that stands out among the others is the need to build new stars across all the promotion’s brands. WWE Monday Night Raw and WWE SmackDown are carried heavily by performers in their late 30s and early 40s, but what does this say about the future of the company? It is hard-to-find examples of the WWE building new names for fans to latch on to and part of that can be seen within the strategy that they use to introduce new performers.

This past week on WWE NXT, Carmelo Hayes stepped up to challenge Adam Cole at the start of the night. Using John Cena’s famous “Ruthless Aggression” tagline, he slapped the taste out of Cole’s mouth and kicked off what was a good match. The result was obvious from the start, as Cole has a big match with Kyle O’Reilly in the coming weeks. Hayes took his second straight loss on WWE television since debuting a few weeks earlier against Kushida.

Now, two losses do not immediately break anyone, but how does it help? The answer is that it does not. WWE frequently puts young or new talent in these matches against big names, where they have great showings just to come up short. The more established figure shows some sort of respect to the new name, which is supposed to give them the proverbial rub. But does that work? That does not seem to be the case any longer.

Take Zoey Stark for example. She had an impressive debut against Valentina Feroz, then proceeds to go on a losing streak, dropping matches to Io Shirai, Dakota Kai, Raquel Gonzalez, and Sarray. This also includes 50-50 booking against Toni Storm. Stark was expected to be another name that could be immediately inserted into the top of the NXT women’s division, but this booking has made her an afterthought in recent weeks and months.

There are examples where the WWE goes the more important route of getting wrestlers a consistent string of wins as they are pushed up the ladder. Franky Monet and Karrion Kross are two such examples. While more people are interested in Monet than Kross, that is due to other reasons. But the WWE still should know the value of a victory in helping build up a name.

Look at what All Elite Wrestling has done with Darby Allin. His run-up to the TNT title and as a champion not only established him but also helped elevate many of the people he was in the ring with, culminating in the transition to Miro winning the title. This came on the back of winning match after match, on a weekly basis. WWE needs to begin to do the same with their talent if they are going to position these performers as men and women viewers should care about. If wins do not matter, and a wrestler going on a string of losses or victories do not matter, why are we watching?

The WWE needs to start building more young stars by getting them valuable wins on television. The idea that they earn some type of rub from taking losses to established stars is an antiquated model that is not working and there are multiple examples to point to that reasoning.