50 Ups & 50 Downs For WWE's Decade: The 2010s

By Michael Hamflett / January 1, 2020

49. The 2-Out-Of-3 Falls Era

A vintage Vince McMahon ratings paranoia edict brought forth to a 2019 in which he was panicked enough to hire both of his business rivals at the same time to run his two biggest shows, the Chairman's sudden belief that matches shouldn't happen during commercials resulted in one of the strangest periods in Raw history.

Each week, writers weren't tasked with coming up with storylines for wrestlers, but excuses for why matches suddenly came to a stop or reset point right before commercials. For the first time since Michael Cole started smashing us to pieces with it a decade earlier, Raw actually stopped "rolling on".

The lifting of the ban actually made Raw better, presumably so McMahon could lie and say it was the plan all along.