Why WWE's Ratings Desperation Is A GOOD Thing

Away from The Revival's plight, McMahon's pathetic efforts to explain away the slow death of the latest roster split and the Universal Champion falling to the Deep Six in a laborious 18:56, a particularly putrid Raw also featured Sami Zayn getting thrown in the bin by Braun Strowman in a fate not too dissimilar from the one that befell his bestie Kevin Owens one year earlier.

Is Braun Vince's guy or what? One week, he's this massive muscular monster humiliating smaller folk exactly as the boss would love to do himself if he had twenty less years on the clock. The rest, he's relegated to Battle Royal wins and banter programmes. He's not an avatar for McMahon himself, but the product itself. Nothing matters until it does, then it doesn't again. This Raw also offered two major rematches as hooks to stick around even though the aforementioned McMahon December address promised to do away with the treadmill effect this had on all your faves.

AJ Styles and Seth Rollins' Money In The Bank meeting will be that gimmick's acid test, but neither Braun nor anybody else is pitched up on Raw to challenge Rollins because this machine is crushing the "momentum" it forcibly thrusts upon the poor men and women every week. This is 1984 before the old heads realised Hulk Hogan probably was going to transform the industry. 1995 before The Ringmaster became Stone Cold Steve Austin.

This is the darkness, but - as WrestleMania weekend all-too-literally proved - WWE are so monied that they can afford to blind their loyalest audiences with the lights and get away with it.