On Friday’s show, it was stated several times that Big E. “is officially back on SmackDown” and was repeated during a backstage interview conducted by Megan Morant with Big E. and Kofi Kingston.
New Day was drafted to different shows in 2020 with Big E. staying on SmackDown while Kingston and Xavier Woods moved to Raw.
In September 2021, Big E. moved to Raw after cashing into the Money in the Bank briefcase on Bobby Lashley and winning the WWE championship. One month later, Kingston and Woods were drafted to SmackDown.
The New Day is now reunited on SmackDown with Big E. being moved back to the brand as stated on this week’s episode.
Big E. and Kofi Kingston are both entered in the Royal Rumble match on Saturday night in St. Louis, Missouri.
The Big E singles experiment is officially a failure. He’ll probably turn heel in a few months. They had a chance to make a main event face with him but failed big time. Throw him in the trash heap with Balor, Cesaro, etc
A little bit, but the bigger problem is WWE doesn’t know how to book main event baby faces. Just look at the rumble title matches - they’re all heels.
Seth, Roman, Brock, Lashley, Becky and Doudrop. Who am I supposed to be cheering for in those matches?
The other thing that needs to end is a babyface cashing in MITB and winning in a cheap way. It does nothing for anyone and cheapens moments. Big E’s first title win was a joke.
I actually thought he was fine as champion but like most baby faces he was given shitty material.
Either him or Brock has to drop the title to set up their main your match unless they want to do title versus title which would kind of be weird with the royal rumble winner. The other option is that Roman loses to Seth and then enters the rumble and wins or something
It’s WWE so it’s going to be the lamest and non-sensical route. Rollins will beat Reigns probably because of Lesnar distraction and Reigns will enter the Rumble and win.
Then Rollins and Lesnar will trade titles because they’re essentially children playing with toys in WWE world.
Big shock, another one bites the dust before a major “premium live event.” They can make a million more touching tributes to MLK and wipe their behinds with them. I feel like throwing up the pancakes I made my daughters this morning. They also like rainbows and unicorns and still believe in the American dream. NOD4life
Deflating. With Woods out with an injury, they felt the need to have a New Day tag team rather than let Kofi and Big E go on separately. Granted, they need tag teams, but they largely don’t care about tag teams, and I was hopeful Big E’s singles run would have lasted longer.
I admit this doesn’t look good based on past precedent, but at the same time I’m not ready to go scorched earth just yet. Fingers crossed that they surprise us and he remains in the main event scene for the most part.
100% agree with MITB for a baby face. For a baby face the money is in the chase to the title. Like the Kofi reign or not him winning the title was a big moment. MITB doesn’t allow that unless it is used like the Rumble or similar to pre-book a one-on-one match. However doing that also makes the baby face look kind of dumb for not taking the easy title win, especially if he doesn’t win the match.
IMO WWE rarely does what it takes to get a baby face over. Things like holding a tournament to crown a #1 contender, long term stories where the baby face challenges the champion more than once, gutsy underdog title runs, etc.
Basically if they watched the plots to any sports movie, super hero movie/show, comic book/Shonen manga… and stole from those they would be much better off.
Vince’s idea of a babyface has always been the 80’s style super human babyface that can destroy anything. When you go back and look at Hogan, Austin, and Cena, all three pretty much won every match that had with a few exceptions. Austin was probably the one who was the closest to what you described as he had well booked foils in Hunter, Rock, Foley, and Taker…but the other two were made to look super human. Worked with Hogan in the 80’s, stopped working with Cena to anyone older then 12.
You can do that as well but it is limited to a single character at a time so it make it hard to have multiple baby faces, it also requires good heels, and lots of them. The issue with that in modern wrestling is the schedule. If your top champion only defends his title 4 times a year it is much easier to have the invincible champ who never loses. For most stories you are better off with a champ who people believe might lose, or does lose and need to win the belt back
For me, what kills the WWE booking of babyface Champions is the inevitable feud with Dolph Ziggler or Shramus. Sure, they’re great in ring; but nobody is thinking that they are a threat to win. That’s barely worthy of being a random Raw match, nevermind headlining a PPV/PLE. And then, the babyfaces get presented as fodder for the “real campions” whenever Brock or Goldberg comes back. So, of course nobody is gonna buy into Kofi, Drew, Big E, etc.