10 Observations From Attending WWE SummerSlam 2016 Live

All in all, SummerSlam was a middle-of-the-road show - there was a lot of disappointing stuff, but the few good matches were enough to keep it from being a solid thumbs down. It would be hard to tell that from the general reaction, though - fans in Barclays Center completely lost interest in the show, while those online were excoriating it verbally.

That reaction seems a little excessive, but it's not the fault of the fans - it's the fault of WWE. As good as Cena versus Styles was, it's hard to focus on it when it was followed by two-and-a-half largely disappointing hours. When a show is as long as SummerSlam was (and as WrestleMania was), it's only natural that fans will get harder to please as it goes along.

Someone at WWE seems to think that, since we're all spending $9.99 a month for the network anyway, extra content is just gravy - and it makes the deal more enticing to non-subscribers. It's just not true. None of the 1.5 million people who get the WWE Network are going to complain if a Pay-Per-View only runs three hours - and the truth is, none should ever run longer than that, except for WrestleMania, which can go four. A kickoff show can run 30 minutes and have one match.

In this era of six-hour shows, the good gets obscured and the bad gets magnified. Until WWE learns that less is more, expect similar misfires.