In professional wrestling, factions are a staple of the business. Over the years, fans have seen groups such as the nWo, The Hart Foundation, The Nation of Domination, Evolution, and more dominate the industry. Factions are a great tool for a variety of different reasons. They can help put over new stars and give names a renewal on their career. However, it feels like WWE and AEW have been really struggling when it comes to booking a lot of their factions recently.
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Many of the WWE and AEW factions are suffering from the same issue. Stories surrounding their top groups are going on for far too long. Fans are getting fatigued and something needs to change in each respective company.
The Bloodline And Judgment Day Have Lost Momentum In WWE
Fans Are Losing Interest In WWE’s Top Factions
- Storylines with WWE factions have become boring and predictable.
- The Judgment Day break-up has been teased for months with no payoff.
- The Bloodline has lost all of its power on SmackDown.
When it comes to WWE, to be fair, the last couple of years saw the emergence of some truly great and strong factions. The Bloodline and The Judgment Day ran WWE. Stars such as Roman Reigns, Rhea Ripley, Jey Uso, and more reached their biggest points of popularity. Triple H was giving these groups long-term stories that fans really got invested in. But recent months have seen these groups, and more, fall in terms of interest from fans. Things felt very stale and predictable.
The Bloodline, which was WWE’s top group, has faded into the midcard. Their story ended with a whimper instead of a bang. The Judgment Day’s break-up has been teased for months. Instead of sticking to it, WWE just finds ways to delay it more and more. There are also run-ins in virtually every match they have. Damage CTRL is all but irrelevant as a group at this point. LWO, The Green Regime, and Legado Del Fantasma all feel like they have no major place in WWE right now. But this is not a problem exclusive to WWE.
AEW Fans Are Sick Of The Death Riders
Tony Khan Loses Focus With Factions In AEW
- Jon Moxley’s AEW World Title reign has been too repetitive.
- Every Death Riders match seems to end with a run-in.
- It’s beyond time for the Death Riders to come to an end.
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A hallmark of AEW, since the beginning, has been the prominence of factions in the company. Over the years, a lot of groups have really succeeded in the company. However, it feels like for every group that does well, about three or four get left behind in the shuffle. Tony Khan, like Triple H, has focused on long-term stories. But, again, the stories that these groups have feel like they are just holding on for the sake of holding on.
The biggest example of this is The Death Riders story in AEW. Fans have been waiting for it to end for months. They are sick and tired of the same repetitive run-ins from the faction in every match. With rare exceptions, fans know what to expect from The Death Riders. It feels like AEW will start something strong and then once it ends, they lose focus on what is next. This has been the story of various different groups in AEW. They start off hot, but then end unceremoniously with no major payoff.
AEW And WWE Need To Listen To Their Fans
Too Many Factions Are Being Lost In The Shuffle
- Long-term stories need to have solid payoffs with direction.
- Some groups are being booked well, like the Hurt Syndicate and Seth Rollins’ new faction.
- Poor booking hurts every member of a faction.
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None of this is to say that AEW and WWE should not do long-term booking. In fact, that can lead to some truly great stories, and has in the past on more than one occasion, for both Khan and Triple H. To be fair, WWE and AEW do have some factions that are being presented strongly. AEW has seen MJF join The Hurt Syndicate and The Opps work well as a group. WWE has seen Seth Rollins’ new group grow. In addition, there are also a lot of NXT factions that have been building a ton of momentum as well.
In order to fix this issue, AEW and WWE need to book their factions with direct goals and paths that make sense for everyone in the group. Why are these wrestlers teaming up and for what purpose? The booking of these stories needs to make sense and keep fans intrigued.
If these stories cannot keep fans intrigued and if they are expressing that they are getting tired, the respective company needs to listen to the fans. They have shown time and time again that there are stories that they are tired of seeing. They do not want the same formulaic thing for every faction in every episode. That is not on the wrestlers within the groups either. They are doing their best with the material they are given, but there needs to be an element of unpredictability for these groups. Factions can do a ton of good to help out the wrestlers within them. Poor booking just causes everyone to lose momentum.
