It’s the end of 2021, and you know what that means!

It’s time for us to take a look back at what we thought would be the main stories of the year, and decide whether they actually mattered or not. Some internet experts like to act like they always knew what would happen. I don’t, since it’s not like anybody thinks I know anything.

So now we’re going to re-visit what I thought would matter in WWE in 2021, and what actually happened.

5. Will The Man Come Around?

There were a lot of things missing from WWE in 2020. One that probably doesn’t get enough talk is Becky Lynch, who left in May on maternity leave. Lynch had become one of the top stars in WWE and was a focal point of the women’s division. Things didn’t fall off much there, as Bayley & Sasha Banks took advantage of Lynch & Charlotte Flair’s time off to shine as the division’s brightest stars. WWE could definitely use Becky, though. There’s been rumors that she’ll return early in the year, and there’s been rumors that Ronda Rousey will return early in the year.

Just rumors for now. Could be something big.

What Happened: Big Time Becks made her return at SummerSlam. She beat Bianca Belair pretty quickly to become SmackDown Women’s Champion, and turned heel. This eventually led to Becky & Charlotte Flair exchanging title belts when they switched brands, which I’m told was a big deal and generated a lot of interest in their match. After all that, Becky worked with Liv Morgan in a program that people tell me will make Liv a star. I hope they’re right because Liv seems nice. At least Becky is back competing, which is a positive even if they’re trying to make her a heel for some reason.

Ronda Rousey has been nowhere to be seen and I wouldn’t count on that changing anytime soon.

4. Contracts!

Around this time last year, it was looking like the best time to make a living as a pro wrestler since the early 2000s. WWE was offering big contracts to mid-carders to keep them around. AEW was looking to fill their roster. New Japan was looking for more talent to appeal to an American audience. Once the coronavirus hit, that all changed. WWE started releasing talent that had signed big contracts to stick around. AEW’s spots for ex-WWE talent started filling up, and they were more interested in finding younger talent to fill lower positions on the card. New Japan’s expansion slowed down a bit. Ring of Honor wasn’t taking in new people until just recently. Impact Wrestling had some space for a few folks.

There’s been rumor & innuendo recently about WWE making lower contract offers & talent holding off on signing. What happens when it gets closer to the time where contracts expire? Will things get better, or worse? Will talent stick around? I think they will, for the most part, but it’ll be interesting to see if there’s more turnover on the roster than usual.

What Happened: WWE fired a ton of people. They are still trying to keep people that are actually important. Vince McMahon kind of hinted at this on one of WWE’s financial calls, and as much as people wanted to doubt it at the time, it seems true to life. They are flooding the market with free agents. At the same time, they are re-signing people they actually care about, like Kevin Owens & Sami Zayn. They’re trimming the fat in some ways, while adding some fat we probably won’t ever care about.

3. Will The Rock Come Back?

We’ve been talking about a potential match between Rock & Roman Reigns for a few years now. Story wise, 2021 would be a great time for it to happen. Roman claiming to be the Head of the Table and the leader of the Anoa’i family seems like the perfect reason for Rock to come back and claim that he’s the true leader & Roman needs to check himself. There’s little doubt that Rock’s return would generate more mainstream buzz than anything else WWE could probably come up with.

Is it likely? Depends who you ask on which day of the week. It’s something Rock wants to do, but we know he has quite the packed schedule. Also, that’s the kind of thing you really need live fans for.

What Happened: LOL, dude didn’t even come back for his 25th anniversary party. Survivor Series was built as the 25th anniversary of the Rock’s debut. They never said he would be there, but a lot of people jumped to that conclusion. I don’t know why they did, but it was a thing. Then The Rock posted something on Instagram right after the show not even mentioning the show. It was funny, then got even funnier a couple of weeks later when The Rock posted a picture on Instagram with WWE President Nick Khan & Nahnatchka, Nick’s sister who is a writer & executive producer of Young Rock, a sitcom that covers Rock’s childhood and pitches him as a future Presidential candidate.

I don’t know what to make of any of this. Some tried to tell me that Rock was pushing Triple H & Shawn Michaels out of the picture due to heat back in the day. I don’t deny there was heat, I just wonder if Rock cares at this point since he’s done so much better than they have. Maybe I underestimate the pettiness of uber-successful people.

2. Can NXT Overtake AEW?

Some might be wondering if NXT stays on Wednesdays. I don’t, NXT does a perfectly fine number for USA and does its job of taking a dent out of AEW’s viewership. The question is if NXT can generate enough buzz to get more people watching and start challenging AEW in the key demos on a regular basis.

The talent’s there. Guys like Finn Balor, Kyle O’Reilly, Pete Dunne have been delivering big time in the ring. We know the women’s division is stacked. Can they present the talent in a way that the younger audience will find more interesting than AEW? There’s a certain coolness factor that NXT used to have that seems to be lacking right now. They need to get that back.

What Happened: The answer was no. I was surprised how much the answer was no. NXT got moved to Tuesday, then became NXT 2.0, and their TV rating fell off a cliff. WWE pretty much tapped out here and let AEW have whatever audience NXT had. Three-fourths of the Undisputed Era have made their way to AEW. That was NXT’s main act for quite awhile. Will AEW use them better? We will see. I really don’t fault WWE for taking this strategy, even if it results in lower quality wrestling in the short-term.

AEW won that battle. We can’t deny that. Whether they’ll win the war…we shall see.

1. Will WWE Go Back On Tour?

We’d like to think so. Hopefully, we’ll reach a point where enough people have been vaccinated & the coronavirus has died off enough that we can go back to having regular shows & TV tapings in places other than Florida. That isn’t a 100% certainty as I write this. One also wonders if WWE might consider keeping their TV show in-house in the future. The Thunderdome gets good reviews from critics, and the reaction of the crowd can be manipulated to what Vince McMahon wants.

Will there be the same number of house shows? What will the touring schedule look like? Same as before, or smaller? Hopefully WWE will get the chance to answer these questions in 2021.

What Happened: They went back on tour. It wasn’t as successful as in previous years for obvious reasons, but they pressed through. The ramifications of this have yet to play out.

We can only hope 2022 presents us with such stories. Join us soon when we look back at my non-WWE stories I tried to predict!