Plenty of old timers have said for years that the business is cyclical, as one of the reasons that the business has been down since the days of The Attitude Era. If that’s true then we just spent the last decade of so, reliving The Hogan/Expansion Era. John Cena was the perennial good guy and the WWE expanded its business to include online and two developmental centers. Thankfully, the industry as a whole expanded as well.
Currently, with this generation's Hogan (John Cena) gone, the WWE has entered a rebuilding and rebranding phase. Then, Now, And Forever added “Together” to the tag line. Inside of the ring, two stalwart veterans, Bobby Lashley and Roman Reigns are their respective brand’s main champions while several more veterans like McIntyre, Styles, Orton, Mysterio, Sheamus, Miz and several others bounce around the midcard getting the next generation ready. They’re going to need to, because at the moment, The Almighty and The Head Of The Table don’t have too many brand new challengers that are believable, credible threats.
The New New Generation
If the business does run in cycles then we’re currently in a time analogous to The New Generation. As aforementioned, the era had several veterans just about to hit their strides and several rookies just coming into their own as well. Right now, there are superstars like Riddle and Damien Priest on Raw, Big E breaking through as a singles competitor and Baron Corbin’s new pauper gimmick can perhaps turn him babyface. Long-time grinders like Shinsuke Nakamura are all getting mini pushes here and there, but unless the machine actually gets behind any particular star the way it once got behind a certain Showstopper or Ringmaster, they’ll stay in the yo-yo position and seldom be seen as a credible top guy.
Who Will WWE Strap The Rocket To?
Hopefully, if recent Raws and Smackdowns are indicators, the aforementioned Riddle and Priest are getting over with the fans and so far are being well protected. Riddle is hysterical outside the ring and an awesome performer inside of it. Priest is a rockstar and hasn’t been defeated since coming to the Red brand. Should the machine light enough of a match, they’ll have those two as monster babyfaces by Royal Rumble time. For the blue team, the fans are dying to scream for Kevin Owens every single week.
Big E has the briefcase and certainly can cash in at any moment, but what is he were to head to Raw and challenge Bobby Lashley, and reunite The New Day - WWE will easily have a Big E-Mania moment on their hands. Rick Boogs and Nakamura have Pat McAfee marking out every single week and Finn Balor is owed a title shot (seems to be the story of his main roster career). All the WWE needs to do is get behind any one of these babyfaces and get them strong.
Will There Be Real Competition?
During The New Generation Era, one of the reasons the WWE was able to build new stars is that they had to. Thankfully this current era doesn’t have silly occupational gimmicks. But both eras do have some stiff competition growing. Cultivating great and memorable babyfaces does take some time, but thanks to stiff competition, WWE had Austin, Foley, and The Rock cooking on all cylinders while HHH was a top heel and Undertaker was the stalwart veteran. While no one during this time is going to try and compete (Tony Kahn doesn’t seem to have an interest in putting WWE out of business the way Turner did), the leveling up of AEW, Impact and several others will cause competition at least amongst the boys, helping nearly every undercard babyface to push through to the top tier.
With all of the hemming, hawing, and bemoaning a section of the audience likes to do about the product, the WWE are still sitting pretty as the number one company. It is highly unlikely that that will ever change in the wrestling business. But if they’re not careful about cultivating several top babyfaces, there could be a situation where mega heels like Bobby Lashley and Roman Reigns are champions for a very long time or even worse, lose to a guy the audience likes isn't fully invested in yet (which is exactly what happened to Roman Reigns in 2015).