WWE’s Superstar Shake-up sucks

It isn’t the concept. In fact, the concept is good.

It isn’t the roster of talent. In fact, the roster of talent is good.

It’s the execution. In fact, the execution is horrendous to the point of completely ruining the experience.

One need only look at the various sports leagues to see just how easy it is to capitalize on the interest generated by both a player draft, and free agency. WWE fails massively at both, for reasons I cannot even begin to tell you, because they are not immediately clear. Actually, they’ll never be clear, because I, and anyone else with a brain that functions properly, will simply never comprehend how these decisions come to be made.

This year’s Superstar Shake-up, which is an incredibly dumb name, and already makes it kind of lame, got off on the wrong foot because the McMahon family did away with General Managers for each show and then acted like each show had some sort of representation for said Shake-up. You should not ever punish your audience for using simple logic, for if your stories cannot hold up to that, your stories should be thrown out and rewritten.

Once we got to the actual programs the Shake-up was executed on, WWE did next to nothing to clear up the confusion the creative forces behind the company created. Wrestlers just sort of showed up, and other wrestlers didn’t. Graphics were shown to indicate who had moved to a new show, and a bunch of wrestlers who moved weren’t included in those graphics, and later added to lists on the company’s website without explanation. Those lists were later edited to include extra names who didn’t previously appear, again without explanation. Lars Sullivan showed up on Raw, was listed as a Raw star, then showed up on SmackDown the next night and was subsequently listed as a SmackDown star. Entire teams were broken up when names appeared on these lists, and nary a word was spoken on television about any of it.

This is all very bad!

But, hey, I’m not really telling you anything you don’t already know, considering how many viewers these shows are getting anymore.