No more brand exclusive ppv hurting product?

[Big Daddy Fool]

Not it has been about a year since the wwe has had a brand exclusive ppv. While i hated the brand exclusive ppv's because they werent worth paying for they did help the wwe with mid-card feuds.

Look at the IC and US titles they seem to be never defended on ppvs and they are only being defended now because there is a ppv that requires them to be defended. In case you have forgotten matt hardy is apparently US champion but you wouldve never known that because he hasnt been in a feud since winning it two months ago. chris jericho has the IC title and yet is having a stupid feud with michaels that currently isnt making any sense.

The tag title have taken the biggest beating as of late. Holly and Rhodes have lost a bunch of non title matches and they have had a handful of matches where the belts were on the line. and right now i dont remeber if they even have had a ppv match. While i like the MIZ/Morrison tag team it seems like they are pushing morrison as a singles wrestler even though he has the tag belts by putting him in the MITB and Singapore on a Pole match. Those two aren't even in a feud with any team it seems at least the raw belts have dibiase jr goin for them.

murdoch, cade couldve been a nice feud and a way to push cade further along but nothing is really going with that and the kofi shelton feud seems a bit stale already.

the benefit of having the brand exclusive ppv's were that it made the writers come up with feuds with wrestlers on their brand. now the only feuds that are important involves the championship belts. Is it time for the writers to step their game up?

 

[AnthonyMango/NoFate007]

I can't see how having brand exclusive ppvs would help at all. You could have a very successful midcard feud solely on TV - the problem is that they can't seem to write any of that recently at all. The feuds we even get to transcend ppvs are still pretty shoddy for the most part. Hell, for over a year we've basically had 6 people contending for both of the two major titles - HHH, Cena, Orton, Undertaker, Batista, Edge.

Brand exclusive ppvs would just mean that they'd expect people to spend 40 bucks for crap. Right now, for instance, Smackdown has the following feuds going on:

1. Edge vs Batista - Which we've seen 100 million times.
2. Matt Hardy vs. ??? - Yeah.
3. Finlay vs. Chuck Palumbo - Snooze. Bore. Yawn.
4. Cherry vs. Maryse - Give me a break.
5. Morrison & The Miz vs. ??? - They're not even officially on the Smackdown roster.

That's it. I wouldn't pay for that. I can barely stand watching it on Smackdown every week haha.


Its all up to managing the talent you have and doing the proper things with them. No quick fixes are going to cure anything. They need to either hire better writers or get the current writers to do better work, take a look at all the talent they have, figure out the best brands for them to be on, etc. For instance, they're going to make a big mistake with this new Divas Championship. That adds one more belt to have to deal with when they can't even figure out what to do with the ECW, US, IC, or World Tag Team, or WWE Tag Team titles. That's your problem, right there...spreading the product too thin. You get rid of ECW alone and merge their talent into Raw and Smackdown and you'll solve a lot of problems, like "lack of contenders for the midcard titles".

 

[DeadmanInc.]

I didn't mind brand exclusive PPV's because both brands could deliver, like back in 2003-2004. Smackdown was loaded with amazing wrestlers such as Kurt Angle, Eddie Guerrero, Benoit, Brock Lesnar, and Undertaker.

Nowadays the rosters are just recycling old feuds, especially Smackdown. I can't recall a Smackdown WHC PPV match that didn't have Edge/Undertaker/Batista in this past year. It would be a waste of money especially since the mid-card matches would suck and the main event matches are the same all year long.

I agree that brand exclusive PPV's would bring more credibility and prestige back to the mid-card titles. But the fact that these titles aren't being defended on PPVs isn't the only thing damaging their prestige. They are hardly defended on RAW or Smackdown. Jericho hardly defends his title, same with Hardcore/Rhodes. As a result, no feuds are even build up around these belts.

 

[Italian MVP]

Yeh i agree with NoFate, having the Brand exculsive PPV's will hurt the product even more than Tri branded PPV's. Look not many people are going to pay for a crap PPV for just Smackdown or ECW as they havent got the depth to fill a good PPV. There lacking for Main Eventers, Matt Hardy hasnt got any challengers as of yet, Miz and Morrison arent doing much and they have this new Womens Championship that i think no one gives a crap about.

If you went back to exclusive PPV's most of them would be disasters, only RAW would be able to book a proper PPV as most PPV's nowdays are dominated by RAW matches. I think the best way too sort the PPV's is put the matches that are not really important on RAW or Smackdown and put title matches on the PPV's like the US and IC. But see that creates another problem because Matt Hardy defending against Palumbo isnt good enough for a PPV and thats why its left out. See if you were to have just a Smackdown PPV that match would be on the card, but who would pay too see it? Not me thats for sure so i think the Tri Branded PPV's have to say as it allows for the maxium star power and the best matches. But it also leaves out US and IC title matches and thats why they need to sort out rosters properly in the upcoming draft IMO.

 

[TheOneBigWill]

The best thing the W.W.E. did was combine the brands on Pay Per View. It was like this in the very beginning anyways, and they got tricky and felt it could work if they ran "brand only" p.p.v.'s.. cause E.C.W.'s December to Dismember was definately a cash cow.

Honestly, I get upset if they don't promote Tag Team and Intercontinental Championship matches, when they truly should. But I'd rather see the three World Heavyweight Championships, as well as the occasional single's midcard Championship match.. than sit through a p.p.v. the likes of what NoFate007 mentioned. I'm not thrilled about the thought of paying $50.00 for HD to see Cherry v. Maryse in a p.p.v. match, or Hornswoggle v. Miz.

All in all, this is just one step closer to the assumed in theory thought of all three brands ending up one whole brand again. This time next year, I wouldn't be a bit surprised if they still "had" the brand extention, but anyone was free to come and go as the please and challenge anyone without proper storyline as to why they went to the alternate show. Thats practically how it is now anyways. (Think H.B.K./Batista)

 

[unknown!!]

I agree with DeadmanInc. There are only 3 people that are in the main event for the past year. They should be building up younger guys futures with main event shots at ppvs like Mr Kennedy, MVP, John Morrison, Kofi Kingston, Shelton Benjamin, Elijah Burke etc
ECW has alot of great wrestlers but nothing is being done with them for the past 5 ppvs the only ecw match at the ppv was Kane vs Chavo Guerrero or CM Punk vs Chavo Guerrero bring Kofi, Morrison, Burke and Benjamin all in the title hunt
What ever happened to defending a title within 5 weeks
At least with brand exclusive ppv you get to see all titles from the brand being defended now the only titles that seem to be defended at the ppvs are the 3 world titles and the womens Title

 

[Sparky]

its bad becouse they dont have enough time to build interesting fueds in the short four weeks sometimes shorter between ppv's they now have to have the fued last two ppv's wich means if the first match is crap we have to sit through the exact same thing the next time.and not every wrestler that deserves to be there is. but its good becouse that way we dont have to watch the crap pointless matches they used to have to just to fill the card up. i used to think that they should go back to the old way but now i dont want to go back to having to watch the really boring matches that belong on heat.

 

[Unrated Superstar]

Bottom line, I prefer the tri-branded PPVs.

And if we're talking about whether or not the tri-branded style of PPVs is hurting the quality of the product itself, I would say that while I have my own opinion stated above, it's debatable. If we're talking about whether it's hurting the mass appeal of PPVs, I would say absolutely not.

The way I see it, most fans, especially more casual ones, would prefer to see multiple world championship matches than a bunch of midcard matches, myself included (and I'm way more than a casual fan).

Some argue that both brands being on PPV every month doesn't give feuds enough time to build up, but if it meant we could move on to some new world title feuds that we haven't seen before, I would say we should have tri-branded PPVs twice every month. Anything to get Batista, John Cena, and Triple H out of the way. Honestly Randy Orton is alright in my opinion, and I'm a big fan of Edge and Taker so I don't mind them being consistently in the title picture. But think about it, you take away the first three I just mentioned and PPVs could be fun again. I mean sure, you may be a fan of any or all all three of them, but you have to admit that Batista and Cena have absolutely dominated their respective world title scenes for way too long, and Triple H as world champion got way old a long time ago. Besides, there have certainly been more than 6 world title contenders in the past year.

If you really want to go through the past year and everyone who's challenged for and/or held one of the titles, there's been Kane, Batista, The Great Khali, John Cena, Bobby Lashley, Edge, Randy Orton, Rey Mysterio, Triple H, Umaga, The Undertaker, Shawn Michaels, Chris Jericho, Jeff Hardy, and JBL.

Now granted, the WH title picture has been even more repetitive than the WWE title picture, as DeadmanInc. was correct in saying that every WHC PPV match in the past year has involved Edge, Batista, or Undertaker. Hell, it's actually been like that for almost two years if you think about it, mainly because of Batista. But what I'm saying is that even if you didn't come up with new contenders, you could still utilize some of the contenders I just mentioned and create some new feuds. So it's not like the possibilities aren't there.

I think all the WWE has to do to make the PPVs good is include some new feuds where the outcome of the match isn't a foregone conclusion. Think about it...when's the last time there was a PPV where most people who know something about wrestling didn't at least know what the outcome would be of one of the world title matches? Maybe last year's Summerslam? And that was almost a year ago! Since then, the outcome of one or both of the world title matches on every PPV has been very predictable.

Besides, I don't think the tri-brand style is to blame for the lack of midcard title matches on PPVs. I think it's just filling the card up with too much non-title crap and not having enough good feuds for other titles that are to blame. Look at One Night Stand. Two title matches out of seven matches total. You could have easily fit another title match in there, but there were really no good title feuds going on.

Simply put, add new feuds and more of the element of surprise, and that would definitely make for some better PPVs.