10 WWE Experiments That Completely Failed

Anyone who runs a successful business enterprise will tell you that they've had to take one or two risks to get where they are today. It's a fact of life that you have to spend money to make money, and whenever you spend it, there's always a chance you won't get it back.

Risk is arguably even more prevalent in the world of professional wrestling, an industry where a company's fortune is determined by fans who are often drawn to the bizarre and the unfamiliar, where things that look ridiculous on paper can bring in buckets of cash.

It's in this context that WWE, led by mad scientist Vince McMahon, have over the years carried out a series of hare-brained experiments, hoping that if they throw enough random ideas at the wall, one or two of them - by the law of averages - are bound to stick.

And, to give them their due, a lot of them have. The Royal Rumble, WrestleMania, D-Generation X, Elimination Chamber; all of these were once ideas floating around the brains of WWE's decision-makers, and it's only by trying them out for real that they could realise their potential.

And then there are the experiments that weren't so successful...

Subsequent to the collapse of WCW in 2001, many industry insiders went on to suggest that the decision to expand Nitro to an unprecedented three-hour broadcast was part of the reason for its demise.

The logic here is that, while some movies can get away with going 180 minutes (including The Lord of the Rings, which clocked in at a combined one month and 11 days), it's kind of difficult for a wrestling show to hold the viewer's gaze that long.

So it has also proved in WWE, who in 2012 added an extra 60 on the end of Monday Night Raw, a move many fans have since come to lament on account how badly it dilutes the quality of what was already a patience-testing show.

In their defence, the driving force behind this decision was said to have been the network, rather than Vince McMahon himself. And they have undoubtedly profited from the additional commercial revenue that a longer show (and more ad revenue) entails. But in terms of show quality? It's been a big miss. No two ways about it.