Email increases speculation WWE is moving to dual-brand PPVs

[cero2k]

Source: f4wonline.com

An email to ticketholders of May's WWE Backlash has increased speculation that the company will soon move back to dual-branded monthly PPV events.

On Monday, New Jersey's Prudential Center sent out an email to ticketholders mentioning that the show is a dual branded event and not just Raw only.

In discussing the situation on last night's Wrestling Observer Radio, Dave Meltzer reported he was told that an announcement was forthcoming. When contacted for official comment, WWE said they have nothing to announce at this time.

Dave and Bryan Alvarez discussed some of the logistics of a potential move on WOR including whether the shows would need to be extended due to the amount of championships.

WWE currently has four dual branded PPVs: WrestleMania, Royal Rumble, Survivor Series, and SummerSlam. Additionally, this year's Money In The Bank event was also to include both brands.

The company relaunched their split brand approach in the summer of 2016, moving to the split brand PPVs soon after.

[Serujuunin]

I’m kind of mixed on this. If they extend the times to account for more matches, thats fine, but my concern is that they’ll try to pack them all into the existing time, so we’ll get shorter matches.

However, I think having blow-offs for feuds every month, instead of every other month potentially, will help to keep stories from dragging unnecessarily long and getting stale. Hopefully.

[cero2k]

it's a lose-lose situation, they either make all shows 4 hrs + pre show OR they reduce the amount of time for all matches and spots for wrestlers.

[Big Red Machine]

I’m kind of mixed on this. If they extend the times to account for more matches, thats fine, but my concern is that they’ll try to pack them all into the existing time, so we’ll get shorter matches.

However, I think having blow-offs for feuds every month, instead of every other month potentially, will help to keep stories from dragging unnecessarily long and getting stale. Hopefully.

I disagree. They are essentially having blow-offs every month under the current schedule. It might feel a little worse than usual right no, but that's because of the way WWE structures their yearly schedule. It's rare for there to be a month (especially if you look at it as four/five weeks after the PPV rather than the calendar month) that doesn't have either two PPVs or a cross-branded PPV, but the ones that do almost all fall in the late fall and winter, where they are surrounded by the Rumble (where very little blows off because most of the roster is in the Rumble) and Survivor Series, which their stupid, forced Raw vs. SD format makes it next to impossible to blow anything off from either show, so Raw has basically gone from late October to late February without any chances to really blow things off (on a PPV, that is. They could have blown things off on Raw, but WWE is way too patterned and/or stupid to do that). Even when each show was getting their own months PPVs in the spring and summer, we still had Hardys vs. Cesarmus, New Day vs. Usos, Cesarmus vs. Rollins & Ambrose, Orton vs. Jinder, AJ vs. Owens, and Charlotte, Becky, & Naomi vs. The Welcoming Committee stretching on for month after month after month (and Alexa vs. Bayley would have, too, if Bayley hadn't gotten injured).
The real problem is the booking philosophy. They don't know how to tell stories that aren't about a direct conflict between two people/groups, which then results in them not understanding how to keep an idea strong while putting the physical conflict on the back-burner until they're ready to go back to it (in other words, you never get a break from the feud). This combines with the fact that they've lost sight of the basic underlying tenets of what they are supposed to be, which is a wrestling show; in other words, a professional combat league. This has built into it the mechanism of results mattering. If a guy loses a title match, one of two things happens: 1) he got screwed, so the person in charge should sign a rematch with a stipulation in place to prevent the previous screwiness (i.e. the story progresses) or 2) he lost clean and thus needs to win more matches before he has earned another title shot, while the champion moves on to someone else (in other words, he and the champion stop feuding for the moment. Without these, they're just mostly picking pairings and then beating that horse until they decide to switch to another one, which is a decision that they make with no regard for whether the horse is alive or not.

[Big Red Machine]

it's a lose-lose situation, they either make all shows 4 hrs + pre show OR they reduce the amount of time for all matches and spots for wrestlers.

This. I remember when they went back to dual (or even tri)-branded PPVs, it was immediately apparently just how much it hurt the midcarders. It's a big reason why most of the midcarders of that era (Kofi, Anderson, Shelton, MVP, Swagger, JoMo, Cody, Dibiase Jr.) never got a chance to grow into potential main eventers for them. The only ones who did were Punk and Miz.