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WWE is a sports entertainment company. It is the biggest professional wrestling company and will remain at the top for years to come. In professional wrestling, most of the outcomes are booked before-hand or pre-planned. New story-lines are continuously being written to follow the ongoing story-lines.
WWE has a talented creative department which handles the story-lines and outcomes but sometimes the WWE Universe doesn’t see eye to eye with WWE’s creative department. Some outcomes disappoint fans while some straight up makes them angry.
There have been several instances where fans’ booking of a particular scenario looked more promising than what we actually ended up getting. There’s no denying that WWE’s creative department is responsible for some entertaining story-lines and works hard to put on an entertaining product on a weekly basis, but sometimes, the fans may just have the perfect story in mind.
Here we will discuss 6 such instances where the fans booked a better story-line or angle than the creative department.
#6 Elias is Braun Strowman’s Tag Team Partner:
Braun Strowman single-handedly defeated every team on the Raw roster to challenge The Bar for the Raw Tag Team Championships at Wrestlemania 34. However, he was informed that he needed a partner to challenge The Bar which led to him introducing the WWE Universe to his tag team partner and nerdy alter-ego Brains Strowman in an entertaining segment. Braun was then asked to find a real partner by Wrestlemania if he wished to compete on the Grandest Stage. Braun ended up selecting a kid from the crowd, Nicholas, to be his tag team partner. Together, they defeated The Bar to win the Raw Tag Team Championships.
The entire story-line of Braun Strowman chasing the Tag Team Titles on his own was entertaining and his selection of Nicholas as a partner will be remembered as a sweet Wrestlemania moment. But, many fans predicted that Braun’s partner would be Elias, who wasn’t booked for Wrestlemania. Braun and Elias were involved in some funny segments during the early part of 2018 and a team featuring both of them would have easily succeeded. Even WrestlingInc claimed that it was speculated that Elias would be revealed as Braun's partner. Both superstars were quite over with the WWE Universe then. Even a short-lasting team could have sufficed. But still, the actual angle wasn’t bad except for the fact that Braun won the titles and buried the entire Raw Tag Team Division, only to vacate the titles next night on Raw.
#5 Bobby Roode vs. Dolph Ziggler for the United States Championship at Wrestlemania 34:
Dolph Ziggler won the United States Championship at Clash of Champions 2017 and vacated the title on the following episode of Smackdown pretending to leave WWE. This led to a tournament taking place, which would crown the new US Champion which was won by Bobby Roode. Fans thought that this would lead to Dolph Ziggler coming back to WWE to claim that he never lost the championship. This could then lead to a match at Wrestlemania 34 to settle the dispute and crown the rightful champion, much like the Michaels/Ramon rivalry in 1994.
What we ended up getting was Roode losing his championship to Randy Orton, while Ziggler silently made his return at Royal Rumble and got eliminated after a forgetful performance. The whole story-line of Ziggler winning and vacating the US title was forgotten and wasn’t even mentioned ever again. At Wrestlemania, Roode had a match with Orton and Jinder for the US title while Ziggler participated in the Andre the Giant memorial battle royal.
#4: Teasing the highly anticipated Phenom vs. Icon match:
Sting shocked the world when he finally made his WWE debut at Survivor Series 2014 to help Team Cena against the Authority. Sting and the Authority had a feud which ended at Wrestlemania 31 when Triple H defeated Sting after an amazing match. Sting’s WWE arrival re-ignited the hope of seeing a dream match pitting Sting against The Undertaker. Many fans predicted that on the Raw after Wrestlemania, Sting would come down to deliver a promo appreciating the fans for their support, but he would be interrupted by simply a “Gong” or even by The Undertaker himself. The Phenom could then tombstone him to set up the dream match for the following year’s Mania. This angle would have been simply amazing. Cagesideseats also claimed that there were rumors of setting up the iconic match on the Post-Mania Raw.
What we ended up getting was Sting actually coming down to the ring after Raw went off the air to thank the fans but instead of The Phenom, he was interrupted by Bo Dallas. Sting ended the segment by laying Bo Dallas with a Scorpion Deathdrop. Although, this angle was a little disappointing it was a blessing in disguise as Sting got severely injured during his match with Seth Rollins a few months later and that injury forced him to retire. Had we gotten a tease for an Undertaker/Sting match only for the match to be scrapped 6 months earlier would have disappointed many fans.
#3 Finn Balor turns heel to destroy Seth Rollins:
Finn Balor was pushed to the moon as soon as he got called up to the main roster in July 2016. He became the first-ever Universal Champion by defeating Seth Rollins at Summerslam. During the match, however, Finn got injured. This forced him to relinquish his title the following night on Raw, and undergo a surgery which would cause him to miss 6-8 months of in-ring action. Finn Balor returned in April 2017 as Seth’s mystery partner. Finn continued to team up with Seth for some weeks. Fans thought that it was Finn’s strategy to get close to Seth so he could eventually hurt him and take his revenge for injuring him during the most important time of his wrestling career. This would have turned Balor heel and Raw lacked great heels in 2017 so a Balor heel turn would have worked then.
What ended up happening was quite disappointing. It appeared that WWE lost hope in Balor and considered him injury prone. He ended up participating in random matches and losing all the ones that mattered. He slowly turned into a glorified jobber and hasn’t recovered since. He hasn’t been involved in any meaningful feuds since his return. His Demon gimmick is rarely used nowadays and has lost all the momentum which he gained during his NXT and early Raw run.
#2 Roman Reigns/Braun Strowman Double Turn:
Roman Reigns and Braun Strowman had one of the most intense rivalries of the PG era during 2017. All of their matches were highly entertaining and brutal. Their feud peaked with an Ambulance match at The Great Balls of Fire where Strowman was victorious. After the match, however, Reigns didn’t take his loss as a true sportsman and ended up attacking Braun Strowman brutally and even went as far as putting him in an ambulance and crashing that ambulance into a production truck. Fans thought that this was done to turn Roman heel and Strowman face. This angle would have worked for that story-line. Braun was getting very popular with the WWE Universe at that time while Reigns was receiving boos on a weekly basis.
But the following night on Raw, Reigns came out, still as a babyface, bragging about injuring Strowman while Strowman returned as a heel on the next episode of Raw. Braun ended up turning face in October when he was betrayed by his team during their match against The Shield at TLC while Reigns still shows up every week as the top face of the company. The ambulance crashing angle was a perfect way to turn Reigns heel and Strowman a face but maybe WWE has bigger or no plans of turning Reigns a heel.
#1 CM Punk vs. The Rock at Wrestlemania 29:
The Rock announced on Raw 1000 that he would challenge the WWE Champion for the Championship at Royal Rumble 2013. The Rock and then WWE Champion CM Punk even had an interesting promo battle and CM Punk also attacked him before the end of the episode as he thought that The Rock was making everything about himself. It started becoming evident that The Rock would be facing CM Punk at Royal Rumble but some fans had a better theory in mind. According to this theory, John Cena would take the WWE title from CM Punk at some point before Royal Rumble which would result in The Rock winning the title from John Cena while Punk would go on to win the Rumble. Thus, a CM Punk vs. The Rock match would have taken place on the Grandest Stage of them all, Wrestlemania. The promo exchange between Punk and Rock at Raw 1000 had been quite impressive and a feud leading to a Wrestlemania match would have been a good idea. The hype around the fight and the build-up with epic promos between two of the best talkers of WWE would have surely been huge.
The actual story-line was quite predictable. CM Punk held on to the title till Royal Rumble. He lost it to The Rock at Royal Rumble and The Rock dropped the title to the Royal Rumble 2013 match winner, John Cena to give Cena back his win from the previous year’s Wrestlemania. This storyline was good too and it worked in the sense that we wouldn’t have gotten a 434-day reign for CM Punk as the champ if he had lost the title to Cena before the Royal Rumble. It would have been difficult for John Cena too to agree to lose to The Great One for the second year in a row and we still got to witness some electrifying Punk/Rock promos during their feud in January and February.
