Sometimes Less Is More

[klunderbunker]

I've been watching Raw from 2001 and a feud stood out to me.

Over the course of about 4-5 weeks, the Dudleys feuded with the Hollys. This feud never had a match on PPV and the tag titles were never involved. However, it's one of the best put together feuds I can remember in a long time. There's nothing groundbreaking about it: they had a match, then Spike and Molly got friendly towards each other, then Kurt Angle got involved by insulting Molly a few times, then the Hollys jumped the Dudleys after their second or third match and it looked like Molly set them up, then the Dudleys won a tables match. There were a few six man tags and then the angle ended with Spike breaking away from the Dudleys and siding with Molly as the Hollies stopped teaming.

Again, this all played out on TV and never had a PPV blowoff to it. The final match was on Raw. What I want to know is why don't we see more basic feuds like this? It certainly wasn't bad and the matches were ok. It brought a little bit of fresh blood to the tag division and gave the Dudleys a new teamto feud with, as well as giving us a new couple in Spike and Molly. Anymore, almost everything is paid off on PPV. Why do you think stuff like this never happens anymore?

 

[Little Jerry Lawler]

I think it mainly has to do with how many pay-per-views there are. Since there is only three or four weeks between pay-per-views, everyone expects the payoff to happen then. I believe if there were four or six pay-per-views now, you would get a lot more feuds that begin and end on Raw or Smackdown. I would even like to see it happen more even with the current system now. Take Orton and Barrett for example. I would like to see them feud without having a PPV match. The card is stacked for TLC so they could have done without having Orton or Barrett on the PPV but Cena doesn't have a match so they need a top face. If Cena had a match, I would have left Orton/Barrett off and have their final match somewhere near the Royal Rumble.

 

[Paralyzer Z]

A feud with the beginning and conclusion on TV? Seems like a fresh idea from all of the PPV ending feuds we have seen in recent years.

Like Little Jerry Lawler said, the PPV schedule does not allow this. People want to see the pay off happen at a show they pay for. If they enjoy the feud they will pay to see the ending of it on PPV. It's good business by WWE, why do you think many of Sin Cara's early feuds got excluded from PPVs? He was not over enough yet and the feuds were minor. The problem with this though is that the PPV card get's over stacked with matches that will cut the time and quality potential of others. Even if it is a mid-card feud that not many care about, it will get on the event since some people have to be emotionally invested, regardless if the majority is not hot for it. With the abundance of titles in the company there seems to be less and less room for non-title feuds that have the relevance to have the entire duration of it on television.

Until we see less PPVs or less titles then a majority of the feuds will end at PPVs and most of the matches will be title matches.