>>13090163lmao that lost me.
Obvious booking is good sometimes. Not in a mystery angle. In a mystery angle, the obvious answer being the answer makes all the characters look dumb. The unexpected answer can be a bad or stupid answer but it's the whole point of a mystery, the surprise. If you can build 3 or 4 obvious answers then you're fine because there's no outright obvious answer. Here there were 2 obvious answers - Jack Perry or Adam Cole, and soon as Perry showed up in NJPW they cut that to 1 (which would ironically have made picking Perry work, because suddenly it is unexpected again).
The Royal Rumble is a mystery angle- who will win the Rumble out of 30 men but really there's 2-3 suspects each year. If the Rumble comes down to a final 4 of obvious possible winners- Cody, Punk, Gunther, and then someone like Rock (if he enters it), Brock (if he enters), any of the guys in the Roman match if they weren't already booked (but really LA Knight the best candidate), that's good booking, because any of them are believable which makes none of them actually obvious.
But straightforward ABC obvious booking only works when obvious is what the fans want and isn't a mystery:
Redoing Punk's AEW run but disingenuous to turn heel is obvious booking, but good.
When WWE had Sting, booking his Mania debut against Taker was obvious, should have done it.
Taker's retirement match being against Kane was obvious, should have done it.
Danielson going to AEW and winning the World Title from Omega the year he main evented WM was obvious, should have done it.
The Bloodline collapsing last Mania, KO/Sami and Cody each winning, was obvious, would have moved this story on, should have done it BUT if they put Cody over this year, it works in hindsight as a Rocky story.
