Scott's Blog of Doom

The SmarK Legacy Rant for Monday Night RAW - April 19 1993

- Taped from New York.

- Your hosts are Vince, Randy, and for the last time, Rob Bartlett. Thanks to Rob for taking the time to comment on last week's RAW rant and acknowledging how terrible an announcer he was.

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Before we get to our regularly scheduled mailbag question, I just wanted to take a minute to thank the fabulous Princess for all her hard work in providing the blog with regular Smackdown coverage.  It’s much appreciated!

Onto the question…

Do you think making every brand participating in the PPV is hurting the product? I believe it has hurt the product because this increased the PPV title defenses and subsequently made the title changes out of control. I honestly can't tell you all the title changes in the past 6 months. I believed when the branded PPVs were around that it gave additional exposure to more individuals and made for at least longer length programs. Keeping in mind the revenue produced by every PPV, what would you do with the current PPV yearly format (cut them down to less, brand specialize them, specialize each event with a certain match etc)?

I think it’s way too late to put the genie back in the bottle again, as asking them to cut out the monthly revenue stream wouldn’t be accepted by investors or board members without a huge fight. 

I definitely think that from a quality standpoint, having all three brands on each show is starting to hurt the product because you have to make time for three “main events” and there’s no chance for a DH Smith or Evan Bourne to get any kind of big match experience or build up their issues outside of the TV shows.  It’s not helped by having to sit through Batista v. Orton months on end because they don’t have the desire to book anything new.  I would absolutely cut it down to 12 PPVs a year, firm, though, because this shit with two weeks between shows just makes too hard to build anything or care as a fan.  The gimmick stuff is pretty silly as well – booking a whole show of submission matches might sell an episode of RAW, but I’m not dropping $50 on a PPV for something like that. 

As always, I should point out that I’m 100% not the target audience any longer and have no idea what the 12 year old John Cena fans want out of the product.