10 Recent Mistakes That WWE MUST Learn From
8. Booking Cena Vs. Nakamura Too Early
WWE's propensity for wasting potentially huge pay-per-view matches on weekly television is an unfortunate byproduct of their current episodic format. The company have five hours of main roster television to fill, and only so many ways to do it. This leaves them with little choice but to occasionally burn major bouts on Raw or SmackDown, but doesn't justify every single instance.
John Cena vs. Shinsuke Nakamura was a match fans had been waiting years to see. The version we received on the 1 August episode of SD was fine, but it could've been so much more had they been given 20-25 minutes of pay-per-view time instead. WWE are inevitably going to have to waste a few first-time contests on television every once in a while, but this one was too big to burn, and WWE's lack of patience shouldn't be excused.
If the company had booked the Cena vs. Nak number one contender's bout for SummerSlam instead, we wouldn't have had to sit through their turgid bouts with Baron Corbin and Jinder Mahal respectively. That alone would've made waiting worthwhile, but the company decided to pollute the year's second biggest PPV with nonsense instead.