3 Reasons Why The WWE Championship Is Currently Mediocre At Best
The WWE Championship is the most prestigious title to ever exist in sports entertainment. It is the biggest badge of honour and the highest accolade a superstar can earn in the largest professional wrestling company in the world today.
It's safe to say that the individual holding it is considered the most valuable player out of the roster and is positioned at the top of the card, right?
Well, that's not quite in the case for the current WWE Champion, AJ Styles. Despite being one of the top wrestling performers currently active in the world and wearing the WWE Championship around his waist for over 314 days, Styles' run as the WWE Champion feels as if something is badly missing with what could've been a genuine star-making title run.
For starters, it didn't help matters when he beat Jinder Mahal of all people to kick-start his second run atop the Smackdown mountain. It was already an uphill battle to bring back relevancy to the WWE Championship, a title which was previously held by an undercard talent who was in no way ready to carry the mantle before Styles.
The WWE title has been on a supremely better superstar since and to his credit, Styles has been able to do a lot for the title after Mahal, but one can't help but wonder why there's so much more to be desired.
In this article, we look at the three main reasons why Styles' run as the WWE Champion feels mediocre at best and how all that can be solved going forward. Make sure to leave your thoughts about this in the comments section down below to dive into the debate yourself.
3. Keeping it away from the real main event
Perhaps the biggest problem with Styles' current reign atop is his positioning on a PPV card and the lack of importance given to build his match even on Smackdown Live. The last time the WWE Champion closed out any show was at Fastlane back in March this year and that too was a 6-pack challenge (including John Cena).
Now it technically does make some sense as the company has gone back to dual branded PPVs since and logistically, only one match can main event a show, but the sad truth is that a lot of shows since then have not even had any Universal championship match at all.
Title-less bouts, an Intercontinental title match & gimmick matches have all taken precedence over the WWE Championship matches on these PPV cards for the most part.
It is abundantly clear that over on RAW, the main program opens the show every week, sets the stage for the broadcast and then ends it. The slot has been reserved for the main event scene very strictly as we're currently seeing The Shield, Braun Strowman and party regularly open and close the weekly broadcast.
On Smackdown Live though, the last time the WWE Champion was ever involved in the closing segment of the broadcast was back on May 15th when Styles went up against Shinsuke Nakamura to determine their match stipulation at Money in the Bank.
It is not necessarily a bad thing every now and then to base a broadcast on the tag teams or the women or whatever Daniel Bryan is doing, but when everything appears so evenly matched on the brand, there's ultimately no hierarchy to look up to and nothing gets over quite well.
It's high time the company starts treating the WWE Championship scene as the real main event at least on Smackdown Live and have Styles main event some PPVs going forward, but that leads us to our second problem...