The Post's Joseph Staszewski covers the world of professional wrestling in his weekly column, “Post Match Angle.”
Watching three consecutive weeks of wrestling pay-per-views has left me pondering and exploring the best way to put together a card.
Is there a pay-per-view sweet spot, and are there risks if it isn't reached?
WWE and AEW appear to be taking different approaches to their biggest shows, depending on how many they produce and how they distribute them.
WWE is airing 12 shows this year, but they're part of a $7.99 per month or $80 per year Peacock subscription so fans don't have to pay for each one; AEW is airing nine and viewers will pay $49.99 each, so it makes sense for them to try to bulk their shows up to increase value.
AEW has had 49 matches across the main cards of its first five PPVs this year, which typically run for about four hours with an average of 9.8 matches per event.
Meanwhile, WWE is running 50 matches across nine shows, or 5.5 matches per night, as cards outside of Wrestlemania and SummerSlam are limited to five matches per night and three hours.
By comparison, TNA's pay-per-view main cards this year consisted of seven to nine matches spread across three hours.
Both WWE and AEW have hosted roughly the same percentage of multi-person matches, with Tony Khan's company having 33 (67%) and Triple H and company having 30 (60%). WWE's figures also include the regularly scheduled Royal Rumble, Elimination Chamber, and six Money in the Bank matches.
However, upon further digging, we found that WWE's format has led to some interesting trends.
The Men's Tag Team Championship has only been defended once in a traditional match at a premium live event (the Royal Rumble) and twice overall. Four of the five 2-on-2 matches at the PLE have involved some form of Judgment Day or Bloodline, with the exception of the six-man tag match at Money in the Bank and the mixed tag match at Bash in Berlin. The Women's Tag Team Championship has appeared five times at the PLE, three of which have been traditional tag matches, all but one between Bianca Belair and Jade Cargill.
Cody Rhodes, Randy Orton and Damian Priest have each competed in seven PLE matches this year, not including the Royal Rumble, Drew McIntyre and Kevin Owens have six, Logan Paul and Gunther have five each, and Belair is the only women to compete in five.
It turns out that to get on PLE you have to be in the top 5 stories on two shows.
Of even more concern is that in WWE's past five Plenipotentiaries, 21 of the 27 matches (77%) have been singles matches.
The five-match format allows WWE to fit its second-tier shows outside of the Royal Rumble, WrestleMania and SummerSlam into a digestible three hours, and the company frequently features one of its unsold championships in the main event of the previous day's SmackDown or on the post-show Raw to bolster its television lineup.
But with this format, with six singles championships on the show regularly, there's little chance of side stories or tag teams becoming PLE, as previous WWE “In Your House” shows featured six or seven matches over two hours, which is possible.
It's a quality over quantity approach that gives wrestlers the time to tell proper stories, and it usually works well, with Sami Zayn and The Miz praising it in interviews. Zayn speaks to Fightful He still has “mixed feelings” about the decline in opportunities overall.
But how sustainable is it when such a small number of talented people are regularly selected?
Still, WWE's lengthy entrances, advertisements and video packages eat up a lot of time in the three-hour format and some matches go on too long — the nearly 35-minute main event between Randy Orton and Gunther at Bash in Berlin could have been done in 25 minutes.
AEW on the other hand usually features their biggest stars on their PPVs and gives fans tag, trios and battle royals, but to add to the tension they can also have either trios matches or subtitles on Dynamite or Collision if they want, and sometimes the crowd can get a bit tired heading into the final three matches, especially if they watched the hour long pre-show.
So where is the sweet spot?
I think we'll have 7-8 matches over the course of 3.5 hours. Maybe 1-2 matches in the last 30 minutes of the pre-show. If we allow 25 minutes for each match, including entrances, video packages, and wrestling, that leaves 35 minutes for advertising. Then we'll cut some matches to 10-12 minutes to save time.
This should give publicists enough time to include major storylines and so on into the show without boring the audience and making them want more.
Revitalizing partnerships
NXT No Mercy showed just how well the partnership with TNA has worked for WWE's developmental brand, with the two most emotional matches on the card feeling like TNA talent on display.
First, Zachary Wentz, with the help of Trey Miguel, defeated Wes Lee and took the chair from Lee. The Rascals storyline continues to grow and we may see Lee challenge Wentz for the X Division Championship at the next big TNA show.
Secondly, no one seemed to garner as much crowd reaction or support as TNA star Joe Hendry, and the main event showed that WWE audiences, or at least the more dedicated NXT fans, definitely follow products outside of WWE.
With Hendry's loss paving the way for Trik Williams and Ethan Page to resume their storylines, it looks like Hendry is finally done with NXT, but he certainly left an impression and helped boost the ratings.
Wildcards
Whatever Jon Moxley is up to, it may be what AEW is missing: a big storyline to carry the entirety of a single show or programming.
The King of Chaos is back with new music, a new edge and a new partner in Marina Shafir who loves violence as much as he does, and it looks like he's sounding the alarm about the current state of AEW.
He told Tony Schiavone that this isn't your company anymore, and immediately speculation swirled that this was how AEW was going to bring in Shane McMahon, which certainly seems like a good enough gimmick to do so, but we need to wait and see before we say it has to be McMahon or fans will be disappointed.
This could be a new faction for Moxley, who could be joined by his good friend Sami Callihan and Bobby Lashley, who has a mixed martial arts background, and bring a level of danger and violence that the New Elite or even Blackpool Combat Club could never match.
10 counts
So far, AEW has done nothing to make Ricochet feel important or different from what we've seen in WWE, and Wednesday marks the start of his run against Will Ospreay, where I hope they team up first and then Ricochet beats him to win the International Championship.
MJF felt a little too much like “The Hangman” Adam Page, obsessing over Swerve Strickland, telling him he was going to lurk whenever Ospreay tried to win the World Championship.
Donovan Dijak had something of a '90s movie villain vibe in his last persona in NXT. He can really compete in the ring, and after his debut in MLW's Summer of the Beasts, I'm excited to see what he can do considering the way the company tells stories and its horrible presentation.
Carmelo Hayes and Andrade have had four sensational bouts so far, with Hayes' win on Friday leaving them tied at 2-2, and a potential deciding fifth match is needed to either spice things up for a SmackDown main event or make it a best-of-seven series to advance to Bad Blood in October.
How conflicted Tiffany Stratton is about using her Money in the Bank contract to take Nia Jax's WWE Women's World Championship adds a fresh twist to the briefcase.
Chase U continues to be NXT's biggest rollercoaster, but the highs, especially championship wins, seem to last much shorter than the lows. Ridge Holland turned heel less than a month after winning the tag belts with Andre Chase and isn't about to destroy the school. How many more times can NXT sustain such a good run?
The best thing Joe Tessitore did in his Raw debut was make it seem like he'd been there for weeks. He seemed knowledgeable about the product and gave the show a smooth real-sports feel. Capturing the emotional high that comes with professional wrestling will be the next step.
JBL's appearance in AAA and then finishing last week's TNA Emergence show by whispering something in heavyweight champion Nick Nemeth's ear has suddenly made him the most interesting man in wrestling and an intriguing addition to the top of the card.
Kudos to Anna Jay for stepping out of her comfort zone on the road with Stardom. It's experiences like these that allow performers to truly grow and evolve. I'm intrigued to see how she handles her return to AEW.
Drew McIntyre and CM Punk will head to a Hell in a Cell match for the friendship bracelet in the final trilogy, and hopefully WWE will settle it on a big Raw and not use up precious PLE spots for the third consecutive year on this feud.
Social Media Post of the Week
Wrestler of the Week
Gunther, WWE
“The main event at Bash in Berlin was a bit boring, but it didn't take away from the power Gunter showed in the match until Orton passed the torch to victory. Gunter needed this match to establish himself as a true main eventer. Gunter's whole character is to overpower his opponents and beat them cleanly in some way, and he did exactly that in Berlin.”
Matches to watch
Bryan Danielson (center) vs. Jack Perry, All In for the AEW World Championship (Saturday, 8 p.m., Bleacher Report, Triller)
This probably won't be the end of Danielson's full-time career, but it's the biggest match of Jack Perry's career. Perry seems to have made his own with his scapegoat character. Now it'll be interesting to see if he can hang on in the main event and put on the quality matches that Danielson and everyone else have. If he does, it will leave a solid impression that he can be trusted with these opportunities in the future when the time finally comes for him to move up.
