WWE's obsession with protecting wrestlers against losses is hurting the product

On the face of it, it should seem ludicrous: Jey Uso being expected to beat Oba Femi in the King of the Ring final this weekend. But that's where we are: the man who crushed Brock Lesnar in only his seventh main-roster match is currently tipped to lose to … well, Jey Uso.

>Of course, that's being a little disingenuous when I say it like that. While Uso is the Vegas favorite to win, the expectation among wrestling pundits (always enjoyed with a good pinch of salt) is that there may be some "unexpected" interference at play. In other words, either The Bloodline or Brock Lesnar will appear to tip the scales away from Femi.

>We'll find out the truth on that tomorrow afternoon, when Night of Champions kicks off Saturday from Saudi Arabia. But I mention that particular fixture not just because it's timely, but because it's also a perfect example of something that has been going on in WWE for a while: the idea that upper-card wrestlers need to be protected, to the extent that they can never lose clean.

>I call them "asterisk results" — i.e. they're technically a win/loss result, but usually because some unexpected event played out that takes the sting out of the loss. That might be because a third party shows up when the ref is incapacitated, or because the losing wrestler only falters due to a storyline injury, or because the referee doesn't notice foul play. Either way, the end result is the same: the defeated talent's reputation is protected.

You're telling me Jey Uso is going to beat this guy?WWE via Getty ImagesLook, I'm not saying I want Uso to beat Femi clean here. But I have gotten a bit tired recently of how many supposedly big matches end up with an asterisk finish.

>Obviously I get why they do these things — at least some of the time. Presumably WWE fears that if we saw guys like Femi and Bron Breakker losing matches over the years, they'd lose some of their aura by the time they become world champions. And there's some truth in that — but there needs to be a balance.

>Take the finish to Cody Rhodes vs. Gunther back at Crown Jewel 2024. Going into that show, most of us assumed the match was on a knife's edge, not least since neither man had been pinned on their current WWE runs more than a handful of times.

>In the end, WWE came up with a smart finish that let Cody win while protecting Gunther's reputation. "The American Nightmare" semi-reversed one of Gunther's famous sleeper holds, thus ensuring that the latter's shoulders were on the canvas. It was the sort of finish that tells a story — the more experienced wrestler outwitting his upstart rival.

>The problem is, though, that if you keep running those kinds of finishes, you risk having Gunther just look a bit … silly? Look at the recent finish to Rhodes vs. Gunther at Clash in Italy, for example. Gunther now says he knew his leg was under the rope. But if that was the case, why not just raise it and force the rope break? It doesn't really make sense.

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>Gunther is far from the only star to receive the protection racket treatment. On last week's "Raw," we had Je'Von Evans losing his King of the Ring semifinal due to a worked rib injury. The "Young OG" might be a future star, but he only came up from NXT about five minutes ago. Are we really saying he needs to be protected from a loss to Jey Uso?

>It wasn't just Evans on that occasion. Uncrowned’s reviewer Drake Riggs flagged at the time that there were two separate King of the Ring semifinals that revolved around worked injuries that night — the second being Charlotte Flair hobbling around in pain like an extra in a hospital drama before her eventual defeat to Liv Morgan. Why not just let Morgan, the actual WWE women's world champion, get a proper win for her résumé?

>The asterisk results are very similar to the whole "too many DQ finishes" issue that we exposed last year, when it felt like every second "Raw" or "SmackDown" main event was ending in a disqualification or no-contest. And it probably comes from the same place: a widespread overcautiousness with the weekly shows and a desire to avoid doing anything with the big stars outside of PLEs.

>We know how it works by now. Big matches are kept on the burner for years on end. Potential future champions are protected in the meantime, either through silly finishes or being put into multi-person matches where they don't have to take the pin. The focus is always to play it safe and avoid mistakes, rather than take creative risks.

Of course, that isn't to say there aren't still pockets of brilliance in the current WWE product. And obviously there would be risks if they were having their future champions go out there every week taking pinfalls and bumps with abandon. But protecting half the roster at all times isn't that much better either.

>Surely we wrestling fans can handle a bit of nuance every now and then. Wrestlers should win and lose, like in any other sport, and we can still form our conclusions over who has the edge in the long run and who we want to root for. But the occasional surprise shouldn't be that much of a problem, even if it means seeing a future world champion take an L.

>That said, I'd probably still draw the line at Uso beating Femi. If that really does have to happen this weekend, then a protection racket result is infinitely better than a clean upset.