Edge’s Judgement Day faction isn’t off to a great start
Wrestling fans love a good faction, which probably explains why you see so many of them throughout several wrestling promotions. It makes sense why so many promoters rely on them; factions allow them to streamline their stories while getting more wrestlers on shows, giving those wrestlers more chances to get over. This is the thesis behind Edge’s Judgement Day group.
On the surface, The Judgement Day has all the ingredients necessary to become a terrific faction: The members — Edge, Damian Priest, Rhea Ripley, and another rumored addition — are all talented individuals and most of the brooding aesthetics help them stand out from the rest of the Raw roster. Those ingredients, however, haven’t mixed together to create any compelling matches or segments.
It hasn’t quite de-escalated the high hopes that many fans have for this stable, but it’s not an ideal launching point given those expectations.
The jury is still out on The Judgement Day
The promos are the main issue that stands out. While they aren’t the worst promos of all time, the constant griping about the fans has already become tiresome, and it’s not just because blaming the fans is the go-to tactic for almost every heel in WWE after they turn. For a faction that seems so centered on embracing darkness and brooding, harping on how the fans made them “weak” feels too safe, like someone’s
Yes, these promos generate the boos that WWE is looking for, but it’s the sort of reaction that anyone (well, not “anyone”, but it certainly isn’t all-time great material) can garner; there’s a reason why it’s called “cheap heat”. It doesn’t take much imagination for someone to go “This is why (insert city here) sucks!”.
Worse yet, these promos illustrate how lacking in danger this group is. Even with all the mood lighting, gloomy music, and grittier attire, there’s never a point where you feel that this group is a threat to do anything outside of the confines of typical WWE heat angles, and whatever heat they get quickly dissipates once the wrestling matches happen (matches against popular babyfaces like AJ Styles and Finn Balor, by the way).
It’s the same boilerplate WWE content coated with a macabre veneer, and like a lot of WWE storylines, it’s relying on fans’ outsized fantasy booking hopes to maintain the enthusiasm for it.
It would be one thing if Edge decided to cut all of these boring, I-just-bought-a-thesaurus-sounding promos and re-enact all of the hocus pocus sleights of hand that would’ve felt too cheesy for early-’90s Undertaker — which WWE has wisely de-emphasized over the last two weeks — as a solo act. But this also being the vehicle that’s supposed to take Priest and Ripley to the main event scene makes this even more disappointing.
Is standing around while Edge rants at the audience and has disappointing matches with AJ Styles really going to do more for Priest than having good matches for the United States Championship? Is berating the fans over asking for autographs really going to turn Ripley into a top heel? Seems unlikely.
dark. Next. Legado del Fantasma is the faction the WWE main roster needs immediately
Now, this doesn’t mean that Edge and the rest of Judgement Day can’t fix this. After all, this is a good trio that has made worse gimmicks and stories work. All it takes is one good match and a couple of hot angles to set things right, and you never know which matches or angles will resonate with the audience. But that reparation will require a far more focused creative direction than what we’ve seen so far.