If you’ve been watching WWE this year, you know that Bron Breakker is kind of a big deal.
Dubbed by Paul Heyman and Seth Rollins as a sure-fire future WrestleMania main-eventer, Breakker is a genetic freak like his uncle and dear old dad. He can hit the ropes at 23 mph and leap from the apron to the announce table without breaking a sweat.
But for all that athleticism, Bron Breakker can’t throw a working punch to save his life.
On SmackDown Friday night, Breakker teamed with Bronson Reed against Randy
Orton and Undisputed Champion Cody Rhodes. After mocking a “Cody” chant, he backed Rhodes into a corner and started throwing hands.
At least, that was the idea.
What followed looked more like a toddler swinging at a tee-ball. Breakker took four wild shots at Rhodes’ head and missed by a mile.
Every. Single. Time.
This is pro wrestling in 2025: wrestlers can land backflips to the floor, but not a single one can “land” a punch to the face.
And frankly, there’s no excuse for it — especially not in WWE, where Breakker was built in-house at the Performance Center. If this is what the PC is turning out, someone should be embarrassed. Those punches were so bad, Breakker would have done less damage to kayfabe if he grabbed a mic and said wrestling is fake.
And as I watched this, all I could think about was Ric Flair.
In 2017, ESPN premiered its 30 for 30 documentary about Flair, titled The Nature Boy. Then, Flair revealed how he learned to throw one of the most realistic punches in the game.
“I hung a string in the doorway and I hit that string as hard as I could for three years, until it didn’t move,” said Flair.
That WWE’s Chief Content Officer, Paul Levesque, hasn’t invited his old mentor to teach Punching 101 is a crime against the industry. While sports entertainment leans harder than ever into entertainment, at its core, it’s still a simulated conflict.
Yes, Spanish Flies and 360-Flippy-Whatevers are fun. But at the end of the day, it comes down to fighting. And the most basic, universal expression of a fight is a punch. It’s the one move every person understands — whether they’re a fan or not.
And yet, in modern wrestling, hardly anyone can do it right.
Thankfully, Bron Breakker isn’t poised to headline next year’s WrestleMania, because if WWE genuinely sees him as their next cleanup hitter, then it’s time to stop talking about Breakker’s potential and start fixing his fundamentals — starting with his swing.
