Rising through the ranks
By Scott Keith on 24 September 2018
Hey Scott,
Why doesn’t WWE have anyone rise through the ranks anymore to the main event? None of the current main eventers rose from lower card/tag team to midcard champ to world champ; in the past, you had guys like edge, miz, jeff hardy, ziggler, hbk, cena (to an extent), hhh, etc. All the current main eventers start at upper midcard or main event on the main roster; examples: all shield members, braun, aj. Even when a guy goes from jobber to main event, they rush it like mahal
.It's a combination of wins and losses not mattering and WWE segregating their developmental system so that they're not really training up-and-comers on the main roster any longer. When everyone is trading 50/50 victories, everyone is at the same level and it's nearly impossible to tell the kind of story you're talking about. For example, Bayley and Sasha were both exactly that sort of storyline in NXT, but they already did the "rising through the ranks" story for both of them in NXT and then just assumed everyone watching the main TV shows knew that.