10 Terrible Decisions That Led To WWE Raw’s Lowest Ever Rating
3. "Good Wrestling"
When WWE tried to move away from the Vince Russo-inspired 'Crash TV' format in the early-2000s, it was legitimately jarring to see long matches taking place on television again.
Honest-to-god wrestling matches had become a treat for wrestling fans after the physicality took such a prominent back-step - so much so that post-WCW North American rivals TNA and Ring Of Honor attempted to put forth the actual bell-to-bell action as a reason to take a chance on them instead of sticking with Vince McMahon's confused post-Attitude Era product.
When Raw extended its runtime by an hour in 2012, longer contests became a necessity just to fill the bloated Monday Night slot, but this in turn weakened the tangible divide between the flagship and the monthly pay-per-views. The advent of the WWE Network made any other differences almost impossible to discern. Coupled with the fact that wrestling fans have more access to the exact type of product they want both in person and via a variety of streaming service, the prospect of a 'good match' is no longer the bait it may once have been.
Not least when the inclusion of one actively damages the product. Seth Rollins and Dolph Ziggler went 32 minutes on Monday as a way to build them going 30 on a pay-per-view Sunday. If there wasn't so much content for the company to produce, the pair could have just made that dreaded third hour slightly more dramatic and wrapped it all up in one night.