Whether you are a girl who loves pro wrestling – or a guy who loves wrestling (and beer) – then it is hard to have disliked anything that Triple H has done since taking over from Vice McMahon earlier this year. The product (finally) feels fresh and exciting. The subtle differences in the language used by announcers – and the fun they are having – across all brands. The returns of stars who should never have been shown the door in the first place. It is all good stuff.
It looks like this shakeup is about to continue, too, with Triple H hinting at major changes to the WWE PPV schedule moving forwards.
Stale WWE PPV Product
Whether you see them as WWE PPVs or – as Vince would have liked – as Premium Live Events, there is no doubt that something has needed to happen to the major WWE event schedule for years. News broke this week that WWE Day 1 – the event that was supposed to happen on New Year’s Day in 2023 after debuting last year – has been canceled, and there is no word of any date to make it up.
Ironically, WWE Day 1 isn’t one of the events that was troubling compared to other PPVs we will get to later. The New Year’s Day show had some promise as a reset vehicle before the Royal Rumble in the same way New Japan resets with New Year’s Dash immediately after Wrestle Kingdom. As it stands, however, there will be no PPV/Premium Live Event between Survivor Series on November 26th and the Rumble on January 28th.
If this stands, that gap would be the longest that the company has gone without a PPV-style event since the debut of the In our House concept in 1995.
There were outside reasons for WWE Day 1 to have some issues getting over. New Year’s Day is traditionally a college football day in America, with multiple Bowl Games steeped in history and tradition played morning until night on January 1st. Perhaps this was the major reason for the change, but as a fan of WWE, the hope is that the switch was made for deeper reasons.
WWE PPV Future
The In Your House PPVs were fine. They were very clearly B shows, but they were a great way to drive more income to the company and get more wrestlers’ PPV paydays. WWE soon realized that in touring the entire country, there was room on the calendar to spike revenue with more PPVs than there were months in the year. While this was good for the bottom line, it has been a drain on the product.
The major guilty party here is gimmick PPVs. The likes of Extreme Rules and (especially) Hell in a Cell have completely killed certain match types. Hell in a Cell was a feared concept, one brought out only for the nastiest in blood feuds and often used in the blowoff match of a trilogy when nothing could separate the wrestlers involved. When it became a year concept, that disappeared. The matches were no longer story-driven, they were just thrown in to meet a gimmick quota.
The hope is that these will now go away. Keep the big four, bring back King of the Ring, and keep the Elimination Chamber. Use that extra time to build feuds over a longer stretch, making them mean more. It is not rocket science, and it seems like the company is (to some degree) headed in this exciting direction.
Always remember, folks. Pro Wrestling is Real.
