What, if anything, do very real standings tell us about a wholly made-up sport?
by Sam Everett, @readsameverett
A pay-per-view headlined by Ronda Rousey facing Ruby Riott for the Raw Women's Championship, and completely omitting the likes of former Universal Champions Finn Balor and Kevin Owens and current number one contender to the WWE Championship Samoa Joe? Shows might look a bit different if WWE booked them by win/loss records rather than its amorphous criteria of star popularity (it could be said a match featuring The Miz, with his .285 winning percentage since April's WrestleMania, was one of the main draws of last month's SummerSlam), attempts to push new or newly returned acts (Randy Orton, with just six matches under his belt, sitting on his .500 record since WrestleMania, and only recently returning from one of his trademark sabbaticals, will go face-to-painted-face with Jeff Hardy at next month's Hell in a Cell event) and seemingly obligatory pay-per-view title defenses (Samoa Joe will challenge WWE Champion AJ Styles, despite a 5 - 6 record since WrestleMania, and TSDW's aversion to unnecessary title appearances).
Check out a standings-based card below, which only includes performers with records of .500 or better since the Raw After Mania (the unofficial start of WWE's "season"), and who have wrestled to a finish in at least an average of two matches per month (unless he or she currently holds a title; got all that? Good!):
Check out a standings-based card below, which only includes performers with records of .500 or better since the Raw After Mania (the unofficial start of WWE's "season"), and who have wrestled to a finish in at least an average of two matches per month (unless he or she currently holds a title; got all that? Good!):
- RONDA ROUSEY (1.000) vs RUBY RIOTT (.769) for the Raw Women's Championship
- ROMAN REIGNS (.750) vs BOBBY LASHLEY (.733) vs BRAUN STROWMAN (.714) for the Universal Championship
- BECKY LYNCH (.692) vs CHARLOTTE FLAIR (.692) for the SmackDown Women's Championship
- AJ STYLES (.666) vs ANDRADE "CIEN" ALMAS (.700) for the WWE Championship
- SETH ROLLINS (.695) vs BRAY WYATT (.666) for the Intercontinental Championship
- DANIEL BRYAN (.611) vs JEFF HARDY (.611) vs SHINSUKE NAKAMURA (.636) for the United States Championship
- EMBER MOON (.562) vs NATALYA (.571) vs SARAH LOGAN (.636)
- THE B-TEAM (.636) vs DOLPH ZIGGLER (.529) & DREW MCINTYRE (.500) for the Raw Tag Team Championship
- MATT HARDY (.533) vs ELIAS (.500)
Below are the full standings for WWE's main show roster since WrestleMania, for the curious and anyone who likes very basic tables.
Some things that stand out from these standings:
WWE is often accused of 50/50 booking, wherein wrestlers trade wins and losses until no one comes out looking particularly good or bad. And indeed, the standings bear this out as 51 of the 96 performers listed have won between forty and seventy percent of their matches. This may not be ideal for making world conquering stars, but it does serve to emphasize the sport in these sports-entertainment proceedings. Twenty-six of Major League Baseball's 30 clubs have winning percentages within these same parameters. Ditto eighteen of the National Basketball Association's thirty teams during its 2017-2018 season. For all the Red Sox and Rockets and Roman Reignses, we need a few Nationals and Nuggets and Naomis to keep things interesting.
Kevin Owens and The Miz, two of WWE's most incendiary figures, have won a combined nine matches since WrestleMania. Roman Reigns and Bobby Lashley, two performers being urged into the WWE Universe's collective consciousness like bodies into a wood chipper, have won 29 matches between them. But based on crowd reaction, one gets the sense that if WWE offered fans a WrestleMania main event of Owens vs The Miz or Reigns vs Lashley, the former matchup would not trail the latter by twenty points.
Finally, WWE was almost too successful portraying the Bludgeon Brothers as dominant monsters; now that Erick Rowan is injured for the foreseeable future, necessitating a rare loss for them in order to off-load the SmackDown Tag Team Championship to New Day, there are no credible challengers to the titles. At least not by win/loss record. But once The Bar or The Usos or Rusev Day win a number one contenders' match, they need only take a page out of sub-.500 Samoa Joe's playbook and taunt the New Day's family or borrow from 3 - 3 Randy Orton and try to maim Big E. After all, this isn't a sport. It's sports-entertainment.
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