I can’t take it anymore. I’ve been trying to stay optimistic and give Seth Rollins’ new faction some time to find itself before jumping to negative conclusions, but my patience has officially run out. Yesterday’s Night Of Champions was the last straw. The WWE writers are making the most common mistake in the history of faction-related mistakes, and if something doesn’t change, it’s going to do long-term damage to Bronson Reed and Bron Breakker.
Both Bronson Reed and Bron Breakker have been superstars on the rise for the past few years. Breakker has already had multiple Intercontinental Championship reigns, and Reed, prior to an injury during the main event at War Games, was clearly an ascending character and starting to get huge reactions from the crowd. On paper, the two aligning with Seth Rollins and Hall of Fame manager Paul Heyman would seem to be an exciting next step in their individual developments, but unfortunately, it’s been the exact opposite so far.
The problem is one of motivation or more specifically, a lack of motivation. By partnering with Rollins, both Breakker and Reed are now involved in main event storylines. That’s not a place either has really been, apart from the occasional short run, in the past. In theory, that sounds like a huge step forward, but the problem is they’ve lost all drive and motivation as characters, beyond serving Seth Rollins. They’re merely henchmen, there to do his agenda.
Over the last year or two, both Reed and Breakker have steadily moved up on the card and gotten fans more invested in them as characters. They’ve done this by having goals and feuds and plotlines in which they were the main character. Bronson Reed had a fantastic feud with Braun Strowman, among others. Breakker went after and ultimately won the Intercontinental Championship twice. These stories weren’t main event level programs, but they were a small corner of weekly television that fans invested in and got excited about.
Unfortunately, they don’t have their own stories anymore. They’ve been sucked into Seth Rollins’ storyline. Yes, they sometimes get their own matches, but everything is to serve the agenda of Rollins’ storyline. Yeah, Breakker still gets to do his barking thing and Reed still has the Tsunami, but their personalities have largely been lost. They’re just there to try and often fail at beating people up for Seth Rollins.
The getting beaten up part drives me absolutely crazy. Until this faction started. WWE wanted us to see Breakker and Reed as two of the most unstoppable and vicious monsters in WWE, but now, on an almost weekly basis, we see Rollins tell them to attack someone, only to run in the ring and get beat up. Yes, eventually they play the numbers game, usually with Rollins’ help, and win whatever skirmish they’re in, but they look like stooges during that process. Neither one of them should need help to at least go toe-to-toe with CM Punk or whoever else.
If you look back at the history of stables and factions in WWE, they can be divided into two groups. The ones in the first group exist merely to advocate for and elevate whoever the main character is. Everyone else is there to advance that one story, which inevitably makes them look weak. The ones in the second group exist in a more complicated world in which the characters have their own specific motivations. Yes, the side characters might be there to offer support and back-up for the main character, but the individual participants are given time to do something else, to do something for themselves.
Triple H was in plenty of notable factions over the years including DX, Evolution, the Corporation and the Authority. When those factions worked best, it was because the group’s individual members were doing different things. Road Dogg and Billy Gunn were a lot more interesting as Triple H’s back-up guys when they had their own entrance and were winning tag team championships. Evolution was a lot more interesting when Batista won The Royal Rumble.
Bronson Reed and Bron Breakker need stuff to do. It’s not enough to give them matches in which they beat one of Seth Rollins’ enemies up. They need a goal. They need space to have personalities and go on their own side missions, and they need to stop being used as stooges to get punched in the face by whoever Rollins is feuding with.
I am sure the plan is to eventually give Reed and Breakker interesting things to do, but it’s time we started speeding those plans up.
