10 Forgotten WWE Experiments That Didn't Last

Back to we go to the merry old land of 2019.

Vince McMahon rolled out a puzzling edict that prevented wrestlers from wrestling during wrestling matches that had ad breaks laced throughout a wrestling show. Basically, in his infinite wisdom, he thought it’d reflect real-life sports that stopped gameplay mid-commercial, but it didn’t really work for the medium at all.

WWE booked a ton of '2-Out-Of-3 Falls' matches to make slotting in natural breaks easier. Those quickly became tedious, because they were far too samey, and it was easy for fans watching inside the arenas and at home to spot when workers were readying for those pesky ads. In a way, this only made the bouts seem less like a genuine athletic competition, if you can believe that.

This blew up in McMahon's face in a hurry. Typically, he was never going to stick to this new trope anyway. Restricting his roster to rest holds, double downs or outright pauses without any action bored the pants off those who had stumped up cash for tickets too. Why should they suffer just because they'd elected to actually leave the house and attend the event?! It made no logical sense to punish customers like that.

Thumbs were twiddled, awkward glances were exchanged and more and more people left their chairs to go visit the toilets or buy some snacks. Rumours that Muffy was waiting for them with a slap rather than a freshly poured coke are unsubstantiated.

Stopping the flow of a match completely to serve advertisers just didn't work. Trust wrestlers to work around it!