3 Ups & 4 Downs From WWE Saturday Night's Main Event (Results & Review)
2. A Disappointing Pivot
Clearly, WWE was not planning on Seth Rollins landing on the injured list just a couple of months after winning the World Heavyweight Championship. Rollins’ banged-up shoulder very likely has changed booking plans dramatically. But that doesn’t excuse what has been a pretty disappointing journey to arrive at the next World Heavyweight Champion at Saturday Night’s Main Event.
The booking to get to this point has been questionable at best. CM Punk already had a guaranteed world title match after winning a triple threat before Rollins’ injury. But WWE then went the quickest and laziest route by booking a battle royal to name the other challenger, effectively giving a one-week build to Saturday’s match. It produced no drama, no intrigue, and minimal interest.
If anything, the sudden move toward a title match spurred very reasonable speculation that the SNME title match would end in a shmozz (perhaps with The Vision interfering) because everything came together so quickly.
Would it have killed them to book a small tournament and hold the title match at Survivor Series, or possibly on Raw in a couple of weeks? For example, they could have had three singles matches during the past two episodes of Raw and then run a triple threat (WWE loves their triple threats) Saturday night to tap Punk’s opponent. Then you’ve got a solid four weeks to build a match, or run it mid-November after a couple of weeks.
What we got instead felt like a rush job, and it showed.