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2017 is just about over and done with, which means it's time for us to look back on the past 12 months and assess the positives and the negatives of WWE's programming from the year.
As always, it's best to start off with the bad news first with a breakdown of some of the absolute worst mistakes Vince McMahon, the creative team and the performers themselves unfortunately made.
Generally speaking, professional wrestling fans tend to focus on the negatives quite a bit, finding it easier to complain about the problems rather than praise anything great.
Sometimes, that is completely justified, while other times, it just reeks of being unable to be pleased.
Before we get started, keep in mind that there were plenty of other choices that could have made this list and everything is subjective, so while you might think something else was more deserving of a spot here, feel free to light up the comments section with your thoughts to explain why.
Without further ado, here are my top five picks for 2017's biggest blunders in WWE, in no particular order.
#5 The United Kingdom division
Right at the start of this year on January 14th and 15th, we saw a tournament that would crown the first ever WWE United Kingdom champion.
From a personal perspective, I wasn't as impressed with this tournament as the Cruiserweight Classic, but it certainly created some buzz from people who were either very supportive of the idea of the UK getting more representation as well as those who just wanted to see more wrestlers added to the roster.
There were some very solid matches that took place during this event, too, with Pete Dunne and Tyler Bate starting off a series of great matches they would have throughout the year.
Bate would come out on top to win the title and promptly do absolutely nothing else for months.
None of these men even made an appearance in the Royal Rumble or Andre the Giant Memorial Battle Royal, which could have been an easy thing to manage.
For this whole year, there have been reports of a television show, but nothing substantial ever happened, including even a name for that program.
Nearly an entire year has gone by and all that there is to show for it is a handful of matches on sporadic NXT shows with the same five people: Bate, Dunne, Trent Seven, Wolfgang and Mark Andrews, as pretty much nobody else has been brought into the fold.
In a way, it's almost as if the tournament didn't happen, as it's made so little impact in such a long time, so 2018 is going to have to change that.
#4 Championship hot potato
There was a running theme this year of WWE putting a title on someone just for the sake of a temporary change to the current atmosphere, only to change it back to the status quo relatively soon after.
Other times, it was even worse, with the belts going back and forth as if that was the only way to keep the title situation interesting or perhaps to meet some kind of quota.
In 2016, there were 36 title changes in WWE. In 2017, there were 51.
The United States Championship alone contributes 8 of those, going from Roman Reigns to Chris Jericho, to Kevin Owens, back to Jericho, back to Owens, over to AJ Styles, back to Owens, back to Styles and finally at Baron Corbin.
The Cruiserweight Championship was another that bounced around, going from Rich Swann to Neville, who held it for quite a bit before momentarily dropping it to Akira Tozawa and immediately winning it back, only to drop it to Enzo Amore who would do the same quick turnaround with Kalisto and end up with the belt again.
This is most often indicative of lazy writing as relying on surprising title changes to spark interest in the product is a quick and easy way to get fans excited without having to put in more effort, particularly if that former champion wins the belt back because that's the person WWE really wanted to hold it, to begin with.
It's interesting to look at how The Bar kept winning the Raw Tag Team Championship or how Alexa Bliss switched from SmackDown to Raw and somehow spent most of the year as a champion with four reigns to her name, rather than just holding one of those titles for a longer stint or two.
Clearly, that means the creative team wanted Bliss and The Bar to be focal points, but couldn't think of enough interesting things for them to do other than temporarily drop the titles just so they could win them back and eat up a few weeks or months of time.
Hopefully, in 2018, the writers find some better ways to get around this issue and stop trading belts back and forth for cheap pops.
#3 Speed round: poor handling of talent
This list could have had 30 examples purely revolving around the generic concept of a Superstar being mishandled, but I felt it would be better to just highlight some examples in one lump section.
The Good Brothers have completely fallen by the wayside, accomplishing absolutely nothing this year, feuding with virtually nobody and going from top prospects to barely ever even on the show.
Rusev's switch to SmackDown was supposed to start with a Money in the Bank title opportunity, but instead, resulted in a tired rehash of his anti-American feud with John Cena, followed up by a horrible string of squashes with Randy Orton. His crowning achievement has been the catchphrase Rusev Day and teaming up with Aiden English of all people.
Despite bringing him into the main roster, there was no spot for Samoa Joe at WrestleMania. What a massive oversight!
WrestleMania also saw a problem with the pre-show matches not being included on the DVD for some reason, but at least fans were in the crowd, unlike what happened with the debacle at SummerSlam with the empty arena.
Remember when Goldust was going to do something at SummerSlam, but didn't follow through with it at all? Remember that build to Emmalina that went nowhere from October of 2016 to February of 2017?
Baron Corbin started off the year as a mid-carder on the rise when it seemed like he would finally get a push after his Andre the Giant Memorial Battle Royal win in 2016 resulted in nothing. Sadly, this continued, where he perpetually lost all momentum over and over, including his Money in the Bank cash-in. Now as the United States champion, he has less clout than he would have if he had just won the Intercontinental Championship from Dean Ambrose at WrestleMania. A rumoured backstage altercation with John Cena was said to be the reason why WWE pulled the plug on his push.
Mike and Maria Kanellis were brought onto SmackDown, bypassing a stint in NXT, only to poorly feud with Sami Zayn and fade away into the background. They didn't even hit the ground running, and now that Maria is out with her pregnancy, Mike has nothing to do and no credibility to bank on.
Can you even tell the difference between Absolution and The Riott Squad, seeing as they keep copying each other?
Lastly, we can't ignore how utterly pointless the pairing of Lana and Tamina has been, which has accomplished nothing for either of them.
#4 Bayley: This is Your Life
Speaking of poor booking decisions, this needed an entire segment dedicated to itself as it was clearly one of the worst things WWE did the entire year.
Inspired by the famous and beloved original This is Your Life segment from the '90s between The Rock and Mick Foley, this was the wrestling promo equivalent of a music cover done by someone who can't sing.
Alexa Bliss has proven that she is undoubtedly one of the best as far as character work for the women's division in years, but she and Bayley stunk up the joint to epic levels with this horrendous promo.
There weren't even any real jokes in this, let alone substance to those "comedic" elements!
What was the point of the teacher, Mrs Flapper? Why should I care that Tracy Avalina and Phil Johnson are making out?
The shoddy writing of this was reminiscent of watching a bad standup comedian at a local bar, sweating on stage and mumbling through what the audience can decipher are supposed to be jokes, but simply aren't humorous enough to evoke even a mild chuckle.
What's worse is how great this feud could have been with the simple idea of Alexa being a catty, mean bully to the blissfully ignorant and sweet Bayley, but this segment killed the program before it ever got much of a start.
#1 Budget cuts
For these mistakes and more, WWE must have run into a money problem this year as one of the major themes has been that they have looked to cut costs all over the place.
It's reasonable for a business to have this happen from time to time, but it's never, ever a good thing when you're forced to nix material for budget concerns rather than creative choices.
What's weirder is how WWE cut something like Bring it to the Table and Unfiltered only to set up a new show, Straight to the Source, which is effectively a toned down hybrid of the two that is much less interesting.
Talking Smack went from a highlight to watch after SmackDown and a place where people could showcase their personalities to a generic pay-per-view post-show that nobody in their right mind would bother sitting through as it's just as useless as the pre-show panel analysis.
With fewer pay-per-view events this year, it feels weird not to have a Raw event in December, and it seems like that trend will continue in 2018.
Then, there's the lack of signing the talent from the United Kingdom division and how the majority of the supremely talented women in the Mae Young Classic haven't been brought on board.
Mercedes Martinez, Toni Storm, Tessa Blanchard, Candice LeRae, Mia Yim, Santana Garrett and Jazzy Gabert should have been surefire signings, but nothing of the sort has happened, all most likely due to WWE not feeling like they have the proper funds to give them contracts.
WWE needs to figure out a way to increase their revenue to offset some of these problems in order for 2018 to not run into the same issues, all the meanwhile working on the creative team's flaws and trying to fix those, too.
Those are my picks, but what do you feel are the top five blunders of 2017? Tell us your thoughts in the comments section below!
