Listen, Sparky, here's the deal, see? You wanna get the big numbers -you gotta play the big race, see?   Here we are at Night of Champions, see? It's everything a PPV should be: good storylines, decent characters, a fair number of questions  to be answered, some tempting matches on the card.  Makes you wanna plunk down the dough, see?

So, it makes me wonder: why can't WWE pull this off all the time?  Technically, the PPV's should be the main events, the featured race, the ones you know you just can't miss.  Yet, a fair number of them turn out to be forgettable.  Even the ones that everyone knows are the A-listers.  Take this year's Wrestlemania, for example.  It came very close to being a squander, when it ought to have been the night that outshone all others.  One match, and you can thank two guys for it, delivered absolutely everything that a headliner match at a PPV anniversary should be, delivered so much that people are still talking about it now and will be for years to come, delivered so much that people who aren't fans started to see what the guts and the glory of pro wrestling are all about.  The good part of this story is the Tip of Stetson those two guys get for making the PPV price worthwhile (and so much more).  The sad theme is that there should be more chapters to this story. And not just at Wrestlemania.  There should be a chapter, or at least a few solid paragraphs, at every PPV. That is the point of them, right?

Why, then, are they lacking? My theory is there's just too dang many of them.  What are we up to - nineteen? Twenty? Alright, its about fourteen...but the same premise applies.  Its a lot to ask of Creative to keep putting out winners twelve times a year, to stay scintillating that often, on top of what they have to do every week.  Its an easy bet that they're going to fall off the pace a bit (NPI) and start recycling material or using cheesy schmaltz to get by.  A lot of times, the weekly stuff doesn't have enough time to advance, titles aren't ready to change hands, so you end up w/  lightly raced storylines that are still weaving around the track being paraded out in front of the viewing public.  Its not always pretty.  Often the company gets trashed for it and rightly so.  In addition, its a lot to ask of the talent to keep delivering that often.  Its like coming to the top of the stretch two or three times in a race.  How often can these guys and gals keep on firing? Their performance suffers and that's not fair to them or to the fans.

On the flip side of the equation, one must suppose the buy rates are still decent. Granted, there has to be a core of die hards that never leave the track and never will.  They sleep in a box on the backstretch and will buy every PPV there is until Belmont closes.  But there has to also be a number of swing voters, who'll only buy if the PPV looks promising.  I'd love to see their race stats! And I wonder if their numbers couldn't be increased by doing two or three fewer PPV's (Goodness! Can we really go SIX whole weeks between PPV's without the world stopping in its tracks? Quick - run outside and make sure the sun's still circling Earth! Oh, the withdrawal!) and focusing on quality over quantity.  Who knows - there might just be a few more Mine that Bird's out there who, with the proper handling, can bring in the big money. I'd be willing to plunk down a Jackson or two on it. See?

(c) 2009 B.E.