WWE Pay Per View Schedule Needs Major Adjustment To Best Serve Talent

Recent rumors have surfaced that WWE may be scrapping brand specific pay per views following WrestleMania. But the supposed new model may be even worse for talent lower on the card.

As a company, WWE loves to tinker with things. Not major things like storylines, unless injury forces their hands. But from things like production tricks, pyro, story content, and integrating technology, the worldwide leader in sports entertainment has never stayed stagnant for too long.

However, in recent weeks, rumors popped up regarding a potential change that may not be a great idea. Wrestling Inc. reported that Backlash was no longer a Raw-exclusive pay per view. Instead, the first major show following WrestleMania was going to be a co-branded event.

The news was somewhat surprising, but as it was unconfirmed, it didn’t really register. Maybe things were changing so a potential Superstar Shake Up didn’t mess things up for a pay per view like last year, when a SmackDown superstar who was challenging for the WWE Championship got sent to the Raw brand, killing all momentum for the match. (That it was the House of Horrors debacle also didn’t help.)

But the speculation kept coming. WrestleZone reported that not only would Backlash feature both brands, but that WWE would hold a draft at the event. The draft, according to WrestleZone’s sources, would help to jumpstart the dual-branded pay per view schedule. And WON chimed in by saying that not only would the pay per views all be co-branded moving forward – they’d be five hours long, including pre-show.

Whew. That’s a lot of unconfirmed reports. Let’s say that everything is true – the brand split exists for television only, but everyone shows up on pay per view. Well, not everyone – and that’s the problem with this potential change.

As it stands now, there are some storylines that never get a proper conclusion at a pay per view event. And that’s with brand exclusive shows. Remember the weeks spent building up Goldust and R-Truth having their big brawl after the Golden Truth broke up? There was a year and a half long story about the pair coming together as a team, having limited success, and breaking up – but the actual feud lasted three bouts on various episodes of Raw.

I’m not suggesting they should have gotten 15 minutes at WrestleMania, but two accomplished veterans low on the card can’t even get 8 minutes on the Great Balls of Fire pre-show? If guys with a combined 125 years on in-ring experience (I’m guesstimating) get shut out, what chance do other, younger, less experienced superstars lower on the card have to make it on the pay per views.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, four pay per views a year worked because the roster was much smaller. Today, there are literally over a hundred active wrestlers between the various brand. Even leaving NXT out of the equation, how does WWE expect to squeeze all that talent into a single four hour show? When the brand split happened, the exclusivity of the pay per views meant the entire main roster had six hours to work with each month – eight counting pre-shows.

Getting rid of three hours of airtime a month is going to prove detrimental to acts like Heath Slater and Rhyno, Zack Ryder, Mojo Rawley, and all the way up to even Matt Hardy, Bray Wyatt, and possibly a guy like Finn Balor.

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Why? Two world championship feuds, two midcard title matches, two women’s championship matches, two tag team championship feuds, and a Cruiserweight Championship match. That’s already nine matches. Where’s the room for non-title, character-driven material?

Unless every title match is going to be a triple threat, fatal four way (or more), or a battle royal, things will get real repetitive every month. Two pay per views every month may not be the right idea, but co-branding everything is no better. Alternating months would work, despite the argument that it slows down storytelling – WWE owns its own network, so more shows can still happen. What about a Network-exclusive “episode” of SmackDown on a Saturday night or something when it’s Raw’s turn for a “traditional” pay per view?

Next: 25 Greatest Pay Per Views in WWE History

What do you think about this potential change to WWE pay per views?

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