Excalibur's Edge III: Gimmick Pay-Per-Views

Today WWE's official website was updated with the following Pay-Per-View Schedule:

March 28: Wrestlemania 26
April 25: Extreme Rules
May 23: WWE Wild Card
June 20: Fatal Four Way
July 18: Money in the Bank
August 15: Summer Slam
September 19: Night of Champions
October 3: Hell in a Cell

Some names dropped, (Backlash, Judgement Day, The Bash) And some were shifted around (Extreme Rules, Night of Champions) but also three were added in place of the three dropped (Fatal Four Way, Money in the Bank, and Wild Card) I have no Idea what this "Wild Card" Pay-Per-View event will be, but the other two are what concerns me. Last year, 2009, WWE held five ladder matches on pay-per-view over the course of the year. Four too many I believe, then to top it off they held a pay-per-view event centered around Ladder Matches. Why? This In My Opinion shows complete lack of faith in the talent and how it will end up hurting the company in the long term. Welcome to:

Excalibur's Edge III: Gimmick Pay-Per-Views


Vince McMahon is someone many will be quick to point the finger at and go "Wtf? really?" but I don't believe he is to blame. As of this moment he is acting CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment INC. Due to Lind McMahon and her political hopes of sitting at the senate. Vince McMahon is a busy man, especially more so now that he has to take over Linda's Job as CEO. And if you don't know what a CEO of a major corporation does, especially if that corporation is owned by a McMahon, basically the job is to keep track of the companies vision, handle external forces that either help or hurt said company, and keep everyone in line, basically. If your last name's McMahon that also means you probably don't get anymore than 3 hours of sleep, if you're lucky. Because the McMahon's are some of the most involved businessmen/women in their own company, there's no "Eh, Ill take care of it later" mentality in the office if your a McMahon. Vince Russo said in an interview once that Vince was always the first person at the office, and the last to leave. Now he probably dosen't leave.

And many say, Russo and Jim Cornette among them, that Vince surrounds himself with "Yes Men", people who tell him what he wants to hear, not what he needs to hear, but when he gets the chance to breathe from all the chaos his life might be right now he'll take a moment to realize that what he's hearing isnt what he needs, he's just waiting for someone to challenge that "Yes Man" mentality. So to combat sagging Pay-Per-View buy rates, in a down turned economy, the decision seems to have been made to put on Gimmick Pay-Per-Views. Which for the short term, like any hot-shotting, will work, but in the long term will not pay off. And here's why I believe so. WWE currently charges around 40 dollars for their Pay-per-view(PPV) events. They run one a month, sometimes two. If you're the type of person that loves wrestling period with a disposable income, you're spending around 80 dollars a month on the product, 110, if you buy TNA's and I wont go into how much you're spending if you buy UFC events when they have them.

So give or take a few dollars, you're spending on average 40 dollars or more a month on a wrestling PPV. Now this Extreme Rules PPV is coming up following Wrestlemania, one of the "extreme" matches that WWE usually promotes is a Ladder Match, so that's one you can mark down. Now, if two individuals get into an intense program, its 99.9 percent possible the final match between them will end with a ladder match, which you can mark as two. Not to mention the Money in The Bank match at Wrestlemania, and another one with a PPV dedicated soley to it, thats 4. Then at the end of the year, guess what? The Ladder Match PPV. Now, do you really want to pay 40 dollars for a match you've seen four times already? It would be like if you bought a DVD, 20 dollars, but everytime you watched it you had to pay 20 dollars. No one would do that unless they just had heaps of disposable income. Which most of us don't.

So, what it will end up doing is killing the match. Whose gonna pay that much money for a match you've seen 4 or more times already? Probably involving the same people. Not only that but it in my opinion, takes the excitement out of the storyline the two men are involved in. Take the recent Hell in a Cell pay-per-view. Now. The match of John Cena/Randy Orton I believe warranted one of those matches because the two had been feuding for a while, off and on over the course of a few years. But the other one? CM Punk and Undertaker. When did they ever had a match of any significance that warranted a Hell in a Cell match, aside from the only match they had together one month prior. The hell in a cell match, I believe, has always been the trump card that no one wants to use. But when something gets so intense, where two people hate each other one of two things seems to always happen. Either A: Someone like Vince, or Eric Bischoff, got tired of the two men having matches, and getting cheated, or ruining their show with the excessive brawling that they felt there was no other choice but to make it a hell in a cell. The other thing that would happen (B:) was that one of the wrestlers involved would do something so desperate, that the other would call hell in a cell. The ultimate evil. The Atomic Bomb of wrestling matches.

It made it exciting, it made it unpredictable. But guess what? Next October you already know whats gonna happen. If John Cena and Triple H are in a storyline together guess what? It's gonna be in a Hell in a Cell match. Wheres the excitement, wheres the build? wheres the damn story? WWE thinks it's some sort of entertainment company, which in truth they are, but they're wrestling. The people outside of the McMahons need to realize that you just cant do that shit in wrestling, because well, heres an analogy. Back in the day, like in the 50s, 60s, etc. Wrestling promoters would do a midget match once a year. This was something a lot of people hadn't seen before so when they did the matches, they'd get a huge turn out. Eventually someone got the bright idea to have a bunch more than usual. And what happened? Well, it killed that match. It wasnt a special attraction anymore. And that is what will happen with these gimmick pay-per-views. Even if there is a compelling story involved, in time itll just become over saturation. But I understand too, the branding they're trying to do.

The Royal Rumble, is the January tradition. It's what gets you excited for Wrestlemania. 30 men compete for the main event title shot at Wrestlemania. They're trying to do the same for "Elimination Chamber" This is the second year they've had two championship chamber matches on the same show, in a row. They're trying to build the February PPV up as the Champions last shot to headline Wrestlemania, almost as if its a tournament style program, where your challenger wins his big match, then the champion wins theirs so now you know for sure whose gonna be in the main event. That's what they're trying to do with these other events, as well as boost sales, is so Hell in a Cell, becomes a "Fall tradition", much like Survivor Series is WWE's Thanksgiving tradition, and so on and so forth. It's a commendable idea in reality, but over using gimmick matches just kills them. I think what? TNA's ran like 50 Ultimate X matches, and now I personally could care less about the match. They run like 10 a year. And Lockdown itself is just a reason to gimmick, a gimmick match if you get me.

This is, in my opinion, just like hot-shotting a title belt. Belts in wrestling don't mean anything anymore. With gaurenteed contracts and such, the Champion won't make anymore money with or without that belt, but to make things interesting you can't have everyone win it in the span of a month. It makes the title look too easy to win, and thus kills any heat between the two guys fighting for it because, most people would think "oh well, Edge is going to win the belt tonight, cause Randy won it last month, and Cena won it the month before. " It takes the fun out of, if someone will win it or not. I believe its ok for two guys to play hot-potatoe with the belt, if and only if they're the only ones trading it, because it just shows that those two guys are on an equal level.

Got off on a tanget. but you get the idea, or you should. Running a gimmick pay-per-view, more than one anyway, for me takes the fun out of the story. And well, I dont know many people who'd be willing to pay 40 dollars for the same thing they just saw a month ago.