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Remember when WWE spent a bunch of time trying to convince you that SmackDown Live is the "land of opportunity," that they're better than Monday Night Raw because the focus is on the wrestling and not the authority figures and their various abuses of power?
Consider what the show has become: WWE Champion AJ Styles is currently feuding with both Kevin Owens and Sami Zayn, which sounds like a hardcore wrestling fan's dream because those are three amazing wrestlers who can do actually amazing things if given the opportunity. Sadly, they are being overshadowed by Commissioner Shane McMahon, who has spent the better part of six months making the blue brand all about him and whatever issue he's having that particular week, and General Manager Daniel Bryan, who still hasn't been cleared to wrestle.
They are, then, overshadowing three incredibly talented wrestlers, including the champion, for the sake of pushing a feud between two authority figures they cannot pay off with an actual wrestling match.
Sure, Bryan could find someone to wrestle in his place but that's impossibly lame and would also mean yet another high profile WrestleMania match for McMahon, a 47-year-old Executive. This completely goes against the mission statement they've pushed so hard for so long, and is emblematic of WWE's larger problem: they no longer create stars, they just rely on stars of yesterday to continue being stars today while signing stars from other promotions just to relegate them to working underneath said stars of yesterday without giving them a chance to become bigger stars today.
WWE is doing just fine financially but this is a piss poor strategy for the future. Eventually they're going to have to live up to their word and, you know, actually give some potential stars the ability to become just that. Right now, the "land of "opportunity" is really just the "land of opportunity to share the stage with authority figures."
It's tired to the point of exhaustion.
It’s more Raw than Raw.
It’s time for a change.