10 worst WWE feuds of 2017
Compelling rivalries are the glue which binds a wrestling program together. Done properly, a feud provides entertaining content every week, builds up to a payoff in a huge match, and makes every participant involved look good in the process as they play a pivotal role. Done wrongly, a feud drags the content down and makes everyone involved worse off. These feuds were of the latter kind.
The year 2017 produced a lot of stinkers that drove WWE programming down, far more than should be acceptable for a supposedly premier organization. This has been a long-running problem and while the best was very good this year, the worst arguably scraped a bottom that hasn't been reached before.
The following 10 feuds were horrible for us and for the performers unfortunate enough to be involved in them.
#10 Roman Reigns vs. John Cena
This sounds like an absurd thing to say when you see the names on paper, but the Reigns/Cena program that spanned from the RAW after SummerSlam to No Mercy was executed very poorly.
The match itself was a letdown, as it was designed to be a manufactured "passing of the torch" moment, essentially by showing that Cena was all washed up in the face of the new guy on the block. The build to the match was also flat, consisting of various worked shoot promos that were much like junk food - satisfying in the moment, but containing no long-term nutritional value.
What the series of worked shoots accomplished was precisely the opposite of what WWE was looking for. They badly exposed Roman Reigns' biggest weakness in his mic skills, which couldn't measure up even a little to his predecessor as "the guy."
Worst of all was how forced and rushed the whole thing was. It was a waste of a WrestleMania main event in the making, one which would have been far more compelling and meaningful than Roman Reigns vs. Brock Lesnar II, and in fact, could well have been the biggest WWE match since John Cena's "Once in a Lifetime" clash with The Rock at WrestleMania 28.
While it's likely that the two will lock horns again, maybe even in a WrestleMania main event, such a match will now never be what it could have been. Unfortunately, WWE creative is very skilled indeed at preventing something from reaching its full potential, which is what we saw here.