WWE: 5 most overused booking tropes employed by the company

2. Contract signings in WWE

When used once or twice a year for a big-money match, televised contract signings in wrestling can add some gravitas to an already-anticipated showdown, hence why most North American promotions use the trope. It becomes a problem, though, when you book these segments once or twice a month, as WWE does.

For the largest wrestling company in the world with a robust creative team and a supposed “creative genius” having the final say, that’s unacceptable. It’s gotten to the point where WWE has, among other things, scripted wrestlers to withhold signing the contracts for various amounts of time and positioned wrestlers in different parts of the arena to spice these things up.

And let’s not start on how silly it is that, in-storyline, the company promotes a match for weeks before any of the participants sign the document that makes the match official (though WWE hyping up a match before all the particulars are in order is very on-brand for them).

Again, this is something that can work in moderation, but it’s time for WWE to find new ways to promote matches (or rediscover old things that worked).