Last month, for the second time in three years, WrestleMania closed on a Triple Threat Match. From there, WrestleMania Backlash saw not just one, but two of Raw’s top titles contested in three-way matches—Bobby Lashley vs. Drew McIntyre vs. Braun Strowman and Rhea Ripley vs. Charlotte Flair vs. Asuka. Triple Threats have their time and place, but particularly in headlining scenarios, WWE has been relying too heavily on the gimmick.
Vince McMahon Needs To Make Up His Mind On Booking
WWE consistently tries to sell the story that Triple Threat Matches are more exciting for the number of participants. The company suggests the match set up makes champions more vulnerable because they not only fight two challengers at once, but can lose their titles without getting pinned or submitted.
However, longtime fans have also come to recognize that Triple Threat booking is also a mechanism for avoiding making a decision, or even stalling. After having two challengers means WWE doesn’t have to pick just one Superstar to get behind at a time. Moreover, both losing parties can emerge from the match with complaints that they weren’t the one to get pinned, or else they only lost because another wrestler got in the way.
Pro wrestling tends to operate best when it's kept simple. While Triple Threats can occasionally add a fun bit of chaos, when fans see them monthly—or especially twice on the same PPV—it really underscores that they’re usually a way for WWE management to keep changing its mind or not make a decision.
They Can't Protect Every Superstar
One of the benefits of the Triple Threat format is that, as opposed to a big match having one winner and one loser, it can introduce scenarios with a winner, a loser, and a bystander who, in theory, stays strong for not winning, but also not taking the fall. This dynamic was abundantly clear in the WWE Championship Triple Threat at WrestleMania Backlash. Drew McIntyre had a legitimate claim to challenging for the title again, and WWE wanted to keep him strong. However, the company also wanted to keep the title on Bobby Lashley. The answer? Add in Braun Strowman, largely for the purpose of him eating the pin so the two real stars WWE was pushing were protected.
Used sparingly, this strategy is fine. However, it was also clear enough earlier at WrestleMania Backlash, that Asuka was in the Raw Women’s Championship match mostly so neither Charlotte Flair nor Rhea Ripley had to take the pin. Yes, the match was among the greatest women's Triple Threats in WWE history, but it was nonetheless hindered by this approach to the booking. Despite both matches delivering bell to bell, the creative layout was uninspired, truly relegating WrestleMania Backlash to feel like a B-level PPV that fans could have skipped.
Triple Threat Spots Get Tired
There was a key moment in the WrestleMania Backlash Raw Women’s Championship match when two women were set up for a superplex, only for a third to interject herself. Fans who watch regularly were geared up for the Tower of Doom spot in which someone would powerbomb the other two performers into the superplex, leaving everyone incapacitated while WWE piped in “This is awesome!” chants. The Tower of Doom is a cool spot, but it’s a testament to the volume of matches featuring three or more competitors these days that it now feels positively contrived and cliché.
Mercifully, in the women’s title match, we saw a double superplex instead, which, while not entirely original, at least felt surprising (even if it gave way to another Triple Threat trope of one competitor staying down for an unusually long time so the other two can work one-on-one). Not so dissimilarly, powerhouses Drew McIntyre and Bobby Lashley combined forces to execute a suplex on Braun Strowman in their Triple Threat. If we only saw PPV Triple Threats a couple times a year, these moves might transition from marginally interesting spots to the kind of genuinely breath-taking moments they were back when Triple Threats were a relatively new, or sparingly used concept. For now, they're something wrestling fans are simply tired of.
Triple Threat Matches are part of the fabric of WWE at this point, and it’s not realistic, nor even desirable to think they’ll go away completely. Hopefully WWE won’t lean into them as such a crutch for very long, though, instead keeping storylines moving and perhaps offering more title opportunities to fresh contenders, rather than stalling with three-way scenarios as much as the company has in its recent history.