Oh my goodness, another one of these silly threads? When are people going to learn. It's to the point where I have to take an old post of mind...and add on top of it.
I actually want MORE PPVs like Elimination Chamber and more Supercards like Beast In The East.
To me, Monday Night Raw can suffer some doldrums periods, because sometimes it can suffer from house show levels of workrate and playing it safe.
Since, NO MATTER WHAT Raw will be Raw, if there's more Network PPVs or Supercards like Beast In The East, we'll get more PPV-level matches, instead of having to wait, every 4 weeks for them, especially during horrible waits, like Battleground (arguably the worst PPV brand of the Reality Era with the laziest build since the writers just really want to get to SummerSlam already).
Being that they also perform some stellar house show work and do have things like Madison Square Garden shows coming up, it'll be great to see those high level performances and side-builds, while we wait for the other PPVs.
Even in the 80s/Early 90s, business always took severe nosedives between Wrestlemania and SummerSlam, especially often if a babyface was champion during that period winning it from Wrestlemania. (Since you already had what you want when you watched it)
So, no, don't cut the PPVs now in the Reality Era when we have the WWE Network to sell. The whole point of the Network was to be able to support 12 PPVs a year for a modern day over-the-top concept format, in pricing and delivery.
The writers said they felt smoother writing ppvs with some specials thrown in every 2 weeks. You can hate Payback, Elimination Chamber and MITB all you want, but instead, you'd be complaining about the long wait between Payback and Money In The Bank. The stakes of TV matches would actually worsen over time, for viewers who want snippets of WWE history, anything monumental gets lost in a bunch of numbered Raws.
At least with what they added, you got MORE great matches, with no commercials. They also rotated the talent better when they did Payback and Chamber, Roman Reigns was already building up for MITB before Chamber even started, meanwhile, Ambrose was trying to hype up Chamber. It rotated very smoothly.
More specials, let you do things off to the side that you couldn't do normally. That's what Chamber did.
Also, you would BARELY see mid-card talent get their time on PPVs, you'd see the same people get to wrestle long big-feel matches.
For those that complain about the B-ppv feel, well it would be way worse if you got rid of them, then you'd be complaining about someones WWE Championship match getting lost in the fold on a Raw.
We still need the PPVs, because we need a time that tells the audience:
- You are watching an event with more wrestling on it.
- You are probably a more hardcore fan for ordering this event so you don't need more mainstream presentation of promos and plugs to get you to invest in it. You're probably here for the wrestling matches, an apex of a feud.
- You are less likely to be screwed over by a non-finish at a PPV. (Note, less likely)
- Even if you do get a non-finish, you're probably still going to get a PPV-quality match out of it anyways.
- Because you are a paying customer, you get to watch gimmick matches that don't normally happen on Raw or even if you are watching matches you've seen before, wrestlers will pull out arsenal that they only use on PPVs.
There's just so much to the business you guys aren't getting and you would be cheating yourself to more doldrums Raws where they dilly dally for 3 hours. Ratings would go down and they'd only start watching again around when the PPVs start. Now people want more big-feeling matches in general in this new Reality Era.
You have to accommodate that.