WWE Needs Less PPVs to Improve the Product

The next WWE Pay-Per-View is scheduled for July 20th, 2014 at the Tampa Bay Times Forum in Tampa, Florida. It will be the second installment of the “Battleground” event after the forgettable debut of the show last October.

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If you can remember, this was the fateful night that Daniel Bryan and Randy Orton fought to a no contest for the vacant WWE title, CM Punk defeated Ryback (with Paul Heyman), Bray Wyatt conquered Kofi Kingston, and oh yeah I almost forgot – The Real Americans were victorious over the vaunted tag team of Santino Marella and The Great Khali.

When I said the event was forgettable, I was far from kidding. It generated 114,000 buys worldwide (second lowest since December to Dismember 2006) and felt like an average episode of Monday Night Raw at best. The reason that PPV bombed was that it was the “catch-up” event from WrestleMania season.

Now that WrestleMania is in the first weekend of April instead of the middle of March, the WWE has to fill in that March event they miss with another PPV in a shorter amount of time. Battleground seems to be the whipping boy for them to get 12 events a year.

The 2013 Battleground event was three weeks after Night of Champions, just like this year’s event will be three weeks after Money in the Bank. Typically the night after a pay-per-view, that episode of Raw is the fallout from whatever happened the night before.

Now, if we look at last weeks Raw that statement will seem like I’m off my rocker. Between AJ Lee-Paige, Miz-Jericho-Wyatt, and Rusev-Swagger we have four potential matches or feuds that I would want to see. However, I would rather see them at an event like SummerSlam, an event I know the company is going to put some real effort into.

*Disclaimer* I do understand that WWE is all about making money and even though Battleground was horrendous last year, they probably still made money off ticket sales and merchandise.

The reason I write this article is because the quality of the product suffers so much when you have to force feed a feud into three weeks. I personally love the long WrestleMania build which makes the whole event seem bigger. It would help all of the events for the rest of the year improve if they each had 4-5 weeks to build their feuds and angles.

If they didn’t want to lose that date as a “live event” they could even bring back something like “Saturday Night’s Main Event” or something to air on TV for free to keep the money they get at the gate.

My other fantasy booking idea would be to use that date on something like what we got with NXT Takeover. However, instead of the NXT arena, let those guys go to a legitimate arena in front of the bigger audiences of 15,000 or more. It could be treated like the WrestleMania for NXT and save the WWE creative team from wasting time on re-matches or forced feuds to fill out a PPV card.

So aside from the “money, money, money” take on this topic, what do you loyal readers think about this? Would you like to see WWE drop one PPV a year to allow their overall product to improve? Do you think events like Battleground are a waste of time? Let me know your opinions in the comments below.

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