The Problem With Naming Wrestling’s Next Big Star

Professional wrestling is one of the most unique sports in the world, as there are only so many spots to go around at the top level. That makes for some interesting situations, as you will see wrestlers moving up and down the card, possibly to be retooled into something else and see what the promotions can find in the. However, there are only a handful of wrestlers who have ever made it to the very top of the biggest wrestling companies in the world. Occasionally you will see WWE and AEW trying to pick these people in advance and that makes for some odd situations, which is what we’ll be looking at today.

One of the more intriguing stories on Monday Night Raw at the moment is Bron Breakker being obsessed with Oba Femi being labeled as the new future of WWE. Femi was dubbed this after defeating Brock Lesnar in the Cell at Summerslam, but that doesn’t work for Breakker, who has also been called the future. It seems this is setting up a big clash between the two of them, and that might not exactly be wise.

When Wrestling Promotions Pick Their Future Stars

IMG credit: WWE

A wrestling promotion announcing a star as the future of the company, or even the industry as a whole, is nothing new. This has been done for decades, likely most notably with Rocky Maivia in his debut at Survivor Series 1996, where he was basically debuted with the gimmick of “he’s going to be a big star”. He hadn’t wrestled one match yet, but the WWF was basically telling you what he was going to be in the next few years.

So how did it go? Well Maivia did indeed go on to become one of the biggest stars in the history of wrestling and the future of the WWF. All it took was the fans completely rejecting him, Maivia totally reinventing himself, and basically doing everything the opposite of his original presentation. See how easy it is to make something like this work? All WWE had to do to succeed was fail miserably.

Now, on some (albeit rare) occasions, you will see this plan succeed. Sting eventually became the face of WCW and its big breakout star, which was pretty much years in the making. Roman Reigns was pushed to some success but it took the right tweaks to really make him a megastar. Finally though, you have what is likely the biggest “this is the future” success story of them all, with the WWF bringing back Hulk Hogan in 1984 and pushing him to the moon less than a month later, kicking off of the most successful runs of all time.

AEW's Four Pillars Show How Hard It Can Be

While complicated, this is indeed something that can be done. The problem is the success rate is rather hit or miss. WWE is far from the only promotion to try this, with AEW dubbing four of its stars the company’s pillars. Named after a concept from All Japan Pro Wrestling, AEW named Maxwell Jacob Friedman, Darby Allin, Jack Perry and Sammy Guevara as its pillars, meaning the four people the company was built upon or around. So how did that play out?

Well, the group faced off in a four way match at Double Or Nothing 2023 for Friedman’s World Title, which he retained. That was a little over three years ago and since then, here’s how the four of them have gone:

• Friedman: multiple time World Champion, one of the biggest stars in AEW’s history.

• Allin: World Champion, Tag Team Champion, certainly a success in AEW

• Perry: Won a few titles, not a disaster, but never a top star

• Guevara: Never won another AEW singles title, had some success in Ring Of Honor

So as far as main event success, Friedman is an absolute yes (keeping in mind that he was already World Champion when he was given the pillar moniker), Allin is pretty much a yes, Perry hasn’t gotten there yet and Guevara barely exists in AEW at this point (having wrestled three matches tin the first seven and a half months of the year). That gives you about a 50/50 success rate three plus years in and that’s….not exactly great? It kind of makes you wonder about something, and that’s where we’re going here.

The Pressure Of Being Called Wrestling's Future

IMG credit: WWE

Simply put, it can be quite the mistake to put this much pressure on someone. While there are people who have risen to the occasion, look at how far some of them had to go in order to reach their success. Maivia took a huge course correction, Drew McIntyre went from The Chosen One to a very different version of himself after a years long trip around the world, and Guevara seems completely unlikely to ever reach the point where AEW seemed to want him to be.

Putting this kind of a moniker on someone can absolutely wreck their future, especially if they are simply not ready for this kind of success. The same is true with putting top titles on them too early. If nothing else, look at Jack Swagger and Jinder Mahal in WWE. Without those World Title wins, how much better does their time in WWE look by comparison? With the titles, they’re seen as some of the worst World Champions of all time. Take those away and they’re just names on a long list of stars who were ok at times before mostly being forgotten without the embarrassing side.

The whole point of this comes down to a promotion not being able to know what is going to happen with a wrestler in the future. They might get off to the hottest start imaginable, but if they are deemed the future, it has to go somewhere else. Where should that be? Well, if there isn’t a good answer to that, all they have is a moniker that they can’t live up to and a lot of hype that can’t be earned.

Can Oba Femi & Bron Breakker Live Up To The Hype?

Getting back to Femi vs. Breakker, they’re gearing up for what feels like a clash over who can live up to the hype this much. That’s a fine idea, but the question then becomes where do they go next. It kind of has to be something big, with Femi having little more to do than winning the World Title. He’s won a feud against Brock Lesnar and could get a big win over Breakker to go with his King Of The Ring. What is left for him other than going after (likely) Reigns? Well, if that’s what you’re going to do, you better have it planned out or it could be a disaster.

Now, maybe WWE has a big plan for Femi. It’s clear that they’re ready to make him into a top star, but is he the biggest star for WWE going forward? Well, he might be, but he also might be another guy who was called the next big thing and then never got over to that level. Femi has definitely come a long way, but we’ll have to see if that enthusiasm is going to continue if he’s turned into “this guy is going to be the biggest thing in the company one day so get ready”.

And it could still work just as WWE is hyping up. Femi (and Breakker for that matter) check a lot of boxes and have been doing rather well in their time in WWE. There have been successes there, but there have also been failures. It can make for some great successes, but putting that pressure on stars can also drag them down. That hasn’t stopped it from happening though (Tony Khan named the second set of AEW pillars back in June, with Mercedes Mone, Thekla, Kevin Knight and Kyle Fletcher) and it is likely to continue. That is the future, even if that future might not be the brightest idea.