7 Worst Wrestling Moments Of The Week (June 4)
2. Extremely Redundant
Pay-per-views used to mean something (*sits in rocking chair and yells out the window*)!
Years ago they were a chance to get together with friends, order pizza, drink alcohol and see matches you’d never seen before. Now it’s a night by yourself on the couch in dirty sweatpants, munching on frozen pizza, and drinking some Mountain Dew S.A. because the show isn’t even special enough to buy a regular Dew for.
Pay-per-views are no longer the culmination of hot angles, they exist to show you versions of matches you just saw on Raw the past week and will see on Raw the following night.
On the day of Extreme Rules, there are six matches officially announced for the show. We saw some variation of FIVE of them on Raw. This is absolutely killing any sort of anticipation for the big events.
We got Miz, Cesaro and Sheamus vs. Dean Ambrose, Jeff Hardy and Matt Hardy. Samoa Joe vs. Finn Balor vs. Bray Wyatt. Noam Dar vs. Rich Swann. Austin Aries and Jack Gallagher vs. Neville and TJ Perkins (the third time they’ve delivered that EXACT SAME MATCH since Apr. 24). The night was then topped off with Roman Reigns vs. Seth Rollins. It was entertaining, but again, it’s an overdone preview.
In this brand split era I feel I have gone from “Wait. There’s a pay-per-view this weekend?” To “Oh no...there’s a pay-per-view this weekend…” Judging by the recent ratings for Raw and SmackDown, I don’t think I’m alone.
The only upcoming match we were saved from pre-watching in some form was Bayley vs. Alexa Bliss and...well, that didn’t go so well either.