WWE has progressed past the need for cinematic matches

As Sunday night proved, WWE’s continued use of cinematic matches is providing only diminishing returns.

Sunday night, WWE aired its latest “cinematic” match, the Wyatt Swamp Fight, at The Horror Show at Extreme Rules PPV. WWE has resorted to this style of match (defined as “cinematic” due to being shot and structured more like a movie or TV show than a traditional wrestling match) frequently during quarantine, with this being the sixth match in the cinematic style over the past three-and-a-half months.

This run of matches started off strong, with both nights of Wrestlemania featuring a cinematic match. Night One was main-evented by the Boneyard Match between AJ Styles and Undertaker, which hid the flaws of Taker and gave him a great send-off, if he truly is done. Night Two’s semi-main, meanwhile, was the Firefly Funhouse Match, which, while not really a match, was entertaining, unpredictable and probably a vast improvement over having the Fiend actually wrestle.

However, there have been largely diminishing returns since then. NXT’s One Final Beat featured maybe the most overdone rivalry in professional wrestling today, Johnny Gargano versus Tommaso Ciampa, and much like the last two matches of their initial Takeover trilogy, the action was good, but the story was so garbage and the feud so overwrought that it utterly ruined the match. Somehow, this match was even worse and more melodramatic.

Corporate Money in the Bank was fun, in my opinion, and crowned two great winners in Asuka and Otis (although I understand the criticisms). It felt like a welcome upgrade over doing two ladder matches in front of no fans, and the match worked.

The same can’t be said for when WWE did a surprise cinematic match at Backlash, with the company choosing not to do the scheduled Viking Raiders v. Street Profits match, instead having the teams brawl before Akira Tozawa and a gang of ninjas confronted the two teams, forcing them to form the Viking Profits to fight them off. This match was unnecessary, didn’t benefit either team and has led to the title not being defended in months.

Finally, we come to Sunday night, and the Wyatt Swamp Fight. Wyatt already proved in The Ultimate Deletion and The Firefly Funhouse that he could handle these types of matches, but Braun did not possess the right character or skill-set to pull off being hounded by Wyatt. The visuals were dark and unclear, including during the finish, and the match ended abruptly. Overall, this match benefitted nobody, there were no stakes (Braun’s Universal Championship wasn’t on the line), and the action nor the dialogue could manage to be engaging.

It certainly makes sense why WWE has been so eager to utilize the format as a mainstay of its bigger shows. Wrestling shows overall — and WWE’s shows at the start of quarantine, especially — have suffered greatly due to the absence of fans during the quarantine. With the cinematic match, you’re not using the traditional format that relies heavily on crowd interaction, and instead something that doesn’t need one at all.

However, it has become clear that the cinematic match has lost its novelty, along with the sense of it being anything special, due to overuse. As the rest of the matches proved on Sunday, WWE has utilized a mix of changing styles and wrestlers in the crowd to make their product much more watchable over the past couple months.

While the cinematic match is fine on occasion, that occasion should be much rarer and on bigger stages, and only done with wrestlers who can pull off the performances necessary, and stories that call for this kind of match. The company no longer needs that crutch, and instead should stand on the performances that made the rest of the night so enjoyable.