WWE star Bobby Lashley has helped carry Monday Night Raw during the Covid-19 pandemic. (Credit: AMER ... [+]
WWE fans have been taking the company to task for its lackluster buildup to WrestleMania 36—which comes as no surprise—but now, even if its own superstars are questioning Vince McMahon’s creative decisions.
According to a report from Fightful Select (h/t WrestlingInc), Monday Night Raw stars MVP and current WWE Champion Bobby Lashley pleaded with McMahon not to disband their popular stable The Hurt Business prior to their implosion on this week’s Raw: “WWE Chairman & CEO Vince McMahon reportedly made the decision to split the group, and Vince only...This decision was made much to the chagrin of the members of the group. Lashley and MVP were reportedly vocal about not supporting the decision, but Vince was not budging. Lashley and MVP met with Vince at RAW about the idea to fracture the group, but word is that Vince ‘dug his heels in even more’ at that meeting.”
All it takes is a quick look at WWE’s banned words list to see that McMahon’s micromanagement of the company’s booking process has been a huge detriment to the quality of its TV programming on both Raw and SmackDown, particularly in recent months during the lead-in to WrestleMania 37. Although WrestleMania is supposed to be WWE’s biggest and most important pay-per-view each year, the flagship event has been widely criticized this year despite still being a week away. Among the litany of issues with the upcoming show are the poor booking of top feuds, the lack of women’s division matches and the failure to create worthy rivalries for numerous major stars, with longtime top-level performer Bayley standing out as perhaps the most glaring omission from the card this year.
Despite all that’s gone wrong on the road to WrestleMania 37—like the comically bad feud between Braun Strowman and Shane McMahon or the bizarre turns in the seemingly never-ending saga involving Randy Orton, Bray Wyatt and Alexa Bliss—the stellar booking of Lashley and The Hurt Business has been championed by critics and fans alike. That is, until the latest edition of Raw when the group unexpectedly and inexplicably split up just before the biggest pay-per-view of the year.
No surprise here: That questionable decision isn’t sitting well with many in WWE beyond Lashley and MVP. Fightful Select (h/t WrestlingInc) adds, “It was noted by several locker room sources that the decision, and how Vince insisted on splitting the group up, was a blow to morale backstage.”
Both Cedric Alexander and Shelton Benjamin, who were ousted from the group, took to Twitter to seemingly express their own frustrations with that decision:
The reasoning for the sudden ending of The Hurt Business, easily Raw’s most entertaining act over the past six-plus months, isn’t exactly clear, beyond McMahon’s reported insistence that the group disband. While it’s possible—and some fans are likely holding out hope that—this is a swerve that will see the now-former Hurt Business members Alexander and Benjamin rejoin the group at or after WrestleMania 37, it’s become apparent that, for now, this is simply the latest creative head-scratcher by the WWE Chairman and CEO.
It wasn’t even a month ago that McMahon reportedly made the call to throw his first major wrench into WrestleMania 37, deciding to “blow up” much of the show’s card when he realized he wasn’t satisfied with its direction in route to “The Show of Shows.” Instead of McMahon’s late changes resulting in a significantly better card, however, the build to WrestleMania—particularly on the lackluster red brand—has only gotten worse, particularly for high-profile feuds like the aforementioned Strowman vs. Shane and Orton vs. Wyatt rivalries.
As expected, Raw’s viewership has plunged along with its quality, too.
According to ShowBuzz Daily (h/t WrestlingInc), Raw averaged 2.128 million viewers for its first episode of 2021 on January 4 but bottomed out to a 2021 low of just 1.701 million for this week’s episode, a concerning sign for the show just 12 days out from pro wrestling’s equivalent to the Super Bowl. Raw has been plagued by a plethora of problems on the creative end, but perhaps its biggest saving grace has been Lashley and his association with The Hurt Business, which has been a well-booked faction that helped catapult Lashley to his first-ever WWE title win last month.
Prior to the group’s formation, most of its stars had floundered on Raw, which makes it all the stranger that WWE would end the group, especially at the height of its run. Alexander and Benjamin are already sliding down the card as they’ve both been announced for this year’s Andre the Giant Memorial Battle Royal, which won’t even happen at WrestleMania as it typically does and instead will take place on the go-home edition of SmackDown next week.
That reality makes it easy to see why fans and those within WWE alike have been left both frustrated and dumbfounded by McMahon’s latest creative mishap, which pulled the plug on one of the few good things about Raw in 2021 and could very well leave Alexander and Benjamin out in the cold.
