Opinion: The WWE and its dependence on part-time superstars

For the past 7 years, WWE has had a weird habit of depending on part-timers to sell their main shows. Part-timers include stars of The Ruthless Aggression era and Attitude era who like to make appearances or compete every now and then.

These superstars include The Undertaker, The Rock, Brock Lesnar, John Cena, Triple H, Chris Jericho, etc. There's no denying that these stars still have the star power, charisma and potential to put on excellent matches, deliver brilliant promos and sell out big shows like SummerSlam and WrestleMania, but these superstars pop up only a number of times in a year, causing the product to suffer.

But why does the product suffer? It's simple, because WWE's dependence on part-timers make them ignore some talented full-time performers like Cesaro and Dolph Ziggler. The problem arises after the WrestleMania season when most of the part-timers take time off until at least SummerSlam.

From April to July, WWE needs to depend on their full-time stars, but that doesn't work because if nobody has taken them seriously the entire year, why would they start caring all of a sudden?

The momentum of in-house superstars is halted time and again by the re-emergence of part-time superstars. For example, when The Miz was at the top of his game during 2010/2011 and main evented Wrestlemania, it was hardly about him and more about The Rock and John Cena.

One more factor that must be taken into consideration is the spotlight. Everyone knows that viewership is high during the WrestleMania season, and if the talented wrestlers of the present era are not given the spotlight during this season and are out-shined and overshadowed by part-timers, then it becomes difficult to take interest in them after that.

For example, Cesaro won the US Championship in August 2012 and put on some excellent matches after that, but he wasn't even on the WrestleMania card the following year. Cody Rhodes and Damien Sandow were also dropped from the card.

Cody's wife - Brandi tweeted this after Wrestlemania 29

But things seem to be changing for good. This year, WWE has hardly depended on any of the part-timers except Brock Lesnar (as he's the Universal Champion). This year at WrestleMania, WWE let the active roster steal the spotlight.

Stars like Seth Rollins, AJ Styles, Shinsuke Nakamura, Daniel Bryan, Braun Strowman etc, made full use of the chance they got this year and impressed the WWE Universe. The Undertaker and John Cena had a match too but that didn't steal the spotlight from any other competitor.

Moreover SummerSlam is also looking quite interesting this year, except Brock Lesnar, no other part-timer is booked to show up as at time of writing, and it looks like WWE is finally ready to rely on the stars who show up and put on amazing matches on a weekly basis.