10 Best WWE Pay-Per-View Cliffhangers

Generating repeat viewership has sometimes proved to be a difficult challenge for WWE. While it's relatively easy to seduce fans once a year with a WrestleMania mega-card, getting them to keep their eyes on the product for the remaining 364 days is another matter entirely.

Needless to say, producing a genuinely compelling TV show replete with action and drama is totally out of the question. They don't have time for that (no, seriously, they don't: do you have any idea how long it took for AMC to produce an episode of Breaking Bad?).

Instead, the company occasionally tries to drum up interest in its show by ending a pay-per-view on a cliffhanger. You see this in other works of fiction all the time, but it's not always possible - or desirable - in professional wrestling, where fans very often demand closure.

Sometimes, however, it really works - if not in the long-term, then at least the short. You go to bed later that same night eager to watch the next episode of Raw or SmackDown, desperate for answers to all the questions floating around your head.

Not everyone enjoyed the ending of WrestleMania XXVII. Not even most of us did, actually, although it's probably fair to say that The Miz - along with the two or three people who called themselves Miz fans in 2011 - went home happy.

Everyone else walked out of the arena feeling underwhelmed, but perhaps also with a pathological need to tune into Raw the following night - partly out of tradition, but also to see what was going on with The Rock and John Cena.

You see, at 'Mania, it was The People's Champion who helped hand Miz the keys to the WWE kingdom by sharing a heated in-ring confrontation with John Cena. Since he didn't get a chance to explain himself on the night, we were still waiting for a resolution when the show went off the air.

Sure enough, Rocky and Cena came face to face again 24 hours later, both of them ready to layeth the SmackDown... and politely agreed to face each other at WrestleMania XXVIII, a full year later. If nothing else, nobody could accuse WWE of short-term booking.