WWE Payback Puts Deserved Spotlight on The Judgment Day as Bloodline Takes a Backseat

The 2023 edition of Payback from PPG Paints Arena in Pittsburgh on Saturday night was all about one WWE faction—just not the one most might expect.

The Judgment Day, not Roman Reigns and The Bloodline, dominated the show.

Exiting the event, one could argue it was the perfect play, swapping out a storyline and faction slightly wearing out its welcome with something more refreshing.

Refreshing, in the sense that WWE wasn't afraid to give the green light on the combination of Damian Priest and Finn Bálor stunningly taking down Sami Zayn and Kevin Owens to steal the undisputed WWE tag team titles.

More predictable—but still as fun as it gets—was Rhea Ripley, with Dominik Mysterio right there, of course, shoving aside Raquel Rodriguez to retain the women's world title.

Outside of a quick reveal that Jey Uso is back and now a member of the Raw roster (after Jimmy's confrontation with John Cena on the go-home SmackDown), The Bloodline was absent. No Reigns. No major story beats. Nothing.

And everyone in the main event orbit is better for it.

Truth be told, while Reigns and the saga of The Bloodline is one of the best pro wrestling stories ever, it needed some time to breathe. Fans know it won't see a resolution until the next WrestleMania anyway and, while the latest happenings were still amazing (Jimmy betraying Jey to prevent him from becoming like Reigns), it was understandable if fans felt some fatigue. No point in risking the complete souring of the story by watering it down.

To say The Judgment Day is better for it is slightly underselling things too. Now Bálor and Priest will have to work together as tag champions despite the awkward detail that is the latter holding the Money in the Bank briefcase and butting heads with the former about it at times. That tension is hardly over.

And Ripley, as we've written recently, is well on her way to becoming the Reigns of the women's division and in a good way. Her matches are few and far between, but she's must-see every time, plays critical roles in top stories and has started to transcend pro wrestling itself with major crossover appeal to the mainstream.

Her match against Rodriguez was, in a word, fantastic. For now, there continues to be a tense suspicion that perhaps sooner than later, she ascends from the stable, too, perhaps forming her own while taking Mysterio with her.

If there was a big complaint, it was the non-swerve that was Priest not cashing-in on Seth Rollins after the heavyweight champion survived a 26-minute slugfest with Shinsuke Nakamura. It felt like the story was making an overly big deal about The Visionary's hurt back to set up the lose-title-but-not-credibility angle when The Archer of Infamy sniped it as the show went to black.

Instead, fans merely got a comment from Bálor and Priest about going to celebrate the successes of their stable as justification, which will have some fans thinking the latter might just be a goofball.

But hey, there are worse complaints to have coming out of Payback. What is usually a rather mid-level event blatantly sandwiched as a space-filler between SummerSlam and WrestleMania season, The Judgement Day in the spotlight made it one of the better PLEs of the year.

Yes, most of this is working overtime to set up some sort of team-based Survivor Series angle too, but as long-term booking, it sure beats the days when WWE would randomly throw colored t-shirts at Superstars and tell them to get out there on short notice with no story.

For many fans, there was concern about how WWE would stretch The Bloodline to the next 'Mania. As it turns out, injecting The Judgment Day into the spotlight via a refreshing reembracing of factions is the perfect move.

While developments, especially around Mysterio and Ripley, continue to roll out by the week, the Uso brothers can do their separate thing, Reigns can make the sporadic appearance, and the likes of Paul Heyman can help position Solo Sikoa for a bigger role over the long term.

Flanked by other obvious high marks such as Rollins' title reign, LA Knight, Cody Rhodes and a deep women's division, WWE has an embarrassment of riches for fans to enjoy right now.

Saturday night was the perfect example, with a thin part of the schedule suddenly ballooning to must-see size. Call it a proof of concept—factions just work and The Judgement Day is here to stay for a long time as the possible successor to The Bloodline.