I was chatting with some of my bros about Jey Uso’s long-awaited singles championship when he won the Intercontinental blet from Bron Breakker, and my first remark was along the lines of, well I hope they don’t give the blet right back to him in 3-4 weeks, because this has basically been the exact recipe that the WWE has been doing with Bron Breakker since he debuted back in 2021.
For whatever reason, Bron Breakker always has two matches with a guy when there’s a title involved, and by the time the second match is over, Breakker is the one coming out with the title. 50/50 booking in professional wrestling is when two sides trade wins, with the goal of each party getting an opportunity to look like the stronger side once, but in the end the benefit is minimal if at all, because both parties will have taken an L. It is often criticized by the fan community and I can’t say that I disagree with the notion, and I’d rather a guy be used sparingly and sell a feud on character work and promos as opposed to there being a series of matches where both guys come out no better than which they started.
Like, here’s a list of Bron Breakker’s championship 50/50s since emerging in the WWE ecosystem:
- Tommaso Ciampa: Loses on 10/26/21. Wins NXT Championship on 01/04/22
- Dolph Ziggler: Loses NXT Championship on 03/08/22. Wins NXT Championship on 04/02/22
- Sami Zayn: Loses on 07/06/24. Wins Intercontinental Championship on 08/03/24
- Jey Uso: Loses Intercontinental Championship on 09/23/24. Wins Intercontinental Championship on 10/21/24
Like, I’m not pulling this pattern out of my ass, since Bron Breakker has emerged onto the scene, this has been precisely how he’s been booked, and I don’t know why. After three years, he’s proven himself to be a tremendous talent, very much the genetic heir to his family lineage from his dad Rick Steiner and uncle Scotty. He’s demonstrated the ability to work with all sorts of styles of workers, from all-around talents like Ciampa and Ziggler, small technicians like Carmelo Hayes, to bruisers like Gunther.
50/50 booking should be reserved for guys greener than Breakker, but I feel like they’re doing it anyways, because of his general age. Pro-wrestling has this archaic philosophy that everyone should pay their dues and apparently for a very long time. Furthermore, a guy like Breakker has to always be weary of being accused of succeeding on account of nepotism, so I have to assume that all this 50/50 booking is being done to help him pay his dues, despite the fact that I think it’s doing more harm than it is good to have him eat so many losses, when he’s clearly set up to be one of the torch bearers for the company in future years.
So I guess writing things out, I kind of answered my own question to why Bron Breakker is being 50/50 booked so much. I don’t necessarily agree with it, but as long as some old philosophies remain, even the most talented of guys will have to learn to eat some shit sandwiches because all their predecessors did too.
That being said, the tease of Bron Breakker vs. Jacob Fatu will be interesting. I would’ve said that the new Bloodline would be beginning an amassing of titles with Jacob getting his first taste of singles gold, but that would be problematic when it would come time for Solo to try and nab one of the World titles, and I think we all know nobody’s dethroning Cody or Gunther. But let’s not pretend like the ol’ E won’t 50/50 Bron against Jacob Fatu as well for a fairly meaningless title change just to help advance the Bloodline storyline which is in my opinion starting to border on becoming dragged out too long and with too many players in place.
But hopefully, the E will just stop booking him like this inexperienced rookie, and just let him have a monster run with the gold, because I genuinely believe he’s the future, and it’s important for him to be established as such, when the time comes for him to start being the man.
Even if when he is in performance mode, he’s the color of Hulk Hogan mixed with a Costco rotisserie chicken.