MR. TITO: LESS is MORE Should Be the Philosophy of Pro Wrestling

Right now, there has been a back and forth discussion on whether WWE Smackdown will morph into a 3-hour show for the start of 2025 once RAW officially leaves USA Network and begins on Netflix. Then, there’s consideration on whether RAW will remain a 3-hour show on Netflix or not. This follows Monday Night RAW morphing back into 2-hour show on USA Network before it goes to Netflix.

With RAW and Smackdown being 2 hours each at the moment, that’s 4 hours of wrestling for WWE fans to watch and if we have a Premium Live Event during the weekend, that’s an additional 3-4 hours to consider. However, NXT is 2 hours each week, too, and they have their occasional PLEs too that are 2-4 hours each.

That’s a ton of WWE wrestling.

AEW commands its fans to watch 2 hours for AEW Dynamite, 1 hour for Rampage on Friday Nights, and 2 hours for AEW Collision on Saturday Nights. Their Pay Per Views tend to run longer than most, pushing 4-6 hours to cover a long card with many matches going long.

That’s a ton of AEW wrestling to watch, too.

If you follow TNA wrestling, more time… If you follow whatever is tried with Ring of Honor, more time there. Local Indy fans have their in-person promotions to follow, too.

It’s too much.

For 2024, one area that I’ve PRAISED the WWE and Triple H was reducing the timeframe and number of matches for PLEs. I’m 100% OK with a PLE having 5-6 matches and being, at most, as 3 hours long. It was a necessary change and the entire roster doesn’t need represented. Furthermore, it keeps things fresh for PLEs and wrestlers rested by not exhausting them to work every single PLE.

I am 100% AGAINST either WWE RAW or Smackdown being 3 hours long for 2025 or anytime in the future. I don’t care how large your roster may or may not be. “Time is a luxury we do not have”, as Khan says… No, not Nick or Tony Khan, but Khan from Star Trek 2: Wrath of Khan. Demanding ANY wrestling fan to need to watch 3 hours of wrestling on a school or work night is ridiculous. Hell, I think that 2 shows per week at 2 hours each is a bit much. I agree with my buddies Aaron Rift and Virtue that WWE’s best days were when they had RAW on Mondays at 2 hours and Sunday Night Heat for 1 hour on Sundays. Then, when Smackdown arrived, Heat was suddenly the weaker show.

Sorry, but AEW is wasting time on Saturday Nights. I don’t care if CM Punk was still there and still being featured on that show, it would still be a tired show. AEW just doesn’t have a strong roster overall to command a roster split to work 2 shows. Without Punk, Collision has been a complete joke of a time and is just a placeholder by Warner Bros. Discovery so that they don’t have to overpay to place an expensive movie in that timeslot.

I don’t care if you’re the most dedicated pro wrestling fan, watching all of this wrestling will wear on you.

In economics, there exists a Law of Diminishing Marginal Utility which states as consumption of the same good or service increases, its additional level of satisfaction per unit consumed declines. This is mostly taught in Microeconomics courses in colleges and it’s speaks to the consumer being worn out from repeat consumption of a good/service. Take, for example, eating a large pizza by yourself… First piece is satisfying and conquers your hunger, but second piece, while good, wasn’t as amazing as the first piece of pizza. Then, the 3rd piece is still good, but not as satisfying as the first or second piece. By the 4th, you start feeling full and the 5th piece is really pushing it. You might actually start getting sick or have raging heartburn by the 6th piece.

Let me get extreme… Say, for example, Pamela Anderson in her prime arrives (she’s still beautiful to me now, for the record) and offers to “entertain” you for as many times as you’d like. Even with Pam Anderson in her prime, you’ll get burned out by her… First time is amazing and any time you’re making love to her, or any female for that matter, is fun… But nothing beats the first few times laying wood to that beautiful woman. Also keep in mind, your stamina and ability to perform will decline with additional times with Pam and then you’ll have to figure out what to do or talk about in between “sessions”.

Point being, too much of ANY good/service will wear a consumer out… So why try to overwhelm them?

And I realize what the financial game is for the WWE and AEW… Get these dying Cable/Satellite companies to give you more money out of their bank accounts (or credit lines) and more into WWE/AEW’s deposit accounts. WWE is making a killing off of Netflix and USA Network and reportedly, AEW is about to maybe make upwards to $170 million per year with WBD. I respect the game…

But I’m going to tell WWE, AEW, and my audience right now… I’m not watching all of your shows. I quickly scan your shows and watch pieces of it, if not just relying on the YouTube clips or reading results. I’d rather save my personal time for PLEs and PPVs because time = money to me. I’d rather spend my evenings with my wife and my kids, both of whom are NOT wrestling fans. Sorry, but I don’t want to spend my Fridays or Saturdays watching wrestling UNLESS it’s a PLE or PPV event of importance. I’d rather spend time with my wife and family.

Now, if you love to consume wrestling in higher volumes, I’m not going to knock you. And I can’t knock you because of the amount of wrestling that I’ve watched for decades now and the thousands upon thousands of columns that I’ve written as Mr. Tito. Keep doing YOU if you like to watch lots of wrestling.

But if WWE and AEW want to grow, bombarding everyone with more hours of television isn’t the way. It reduces the value of wrestling being special and discourages NEW consumers to participate.

I’d argue that even MONTHLY PLEs or PPVs is too much… LESS IS MORE.

Why do we love the NFL so much? Because we only get it from September through early February, and even with that, mostly on Sundays. While Monday Night Football does reasonably well, the excessive Thursday game’s success is questionable. MLB, NHL, or NBA having 80-160 games per season and commanding your attention nightly is EXHAUSTING. Those leagues have ZERO concept of “LESS IS MORE”, but NFL doesn’t and they are growing while MLB/NHL/NBA and other sports like NASCAR are losing viewership and fans.

If both AEW and WWE wants to keep pounding us with 2-3 hour pairs of shows per week, then make them even more like infomercials while making PLEs and PPVs more special instead. I laugh when AEW makes some of their Wednesday shows as “special” because they are just burning money in the trash. HHH mostly understands where the money is, yet the WWE still wants to make RAW and/or Smackdown as 3 hour shows. Just brutal.

Now, if you have TWO great promotions who are pumping out great content due to COMPETITION like what we saw during 1996-1996 between WCW Nitro and WWE RAW, that’s different… If the QUALITY IS GREAT, consumption levels makes sense… However as history has proven, that quality doesn’t last. WCW went downhill through 1998, while WWE peaked through late 1999 and they really began declining during 2001 and kept declining through 2004. Even when you pump out great shows, as the WWE did during 2000, fans were getting worn out on watching RAW and Smackdown, the declining viewership numbers show.

As I mentioned in my LAST COLUMN, there isn’t competition between WWE and AEW. WWE has grown to new heights not seen since the Attitude Era while AEW has declined significantly since their possible peak of All In 2023. There’s a chance that maybe WWE’s efforts have peaked through Wrestlemania 40 and maybe they’ll begin to take it easy. Thus, giving us pairs of 2-3 hour shows per week to watch may be difficult. Spring and Summer 2024 were HARD TO WATCH following Wrestlemania 40 with Roman Reigns getting extended time off. THAT SAID, I’d rather keep Roman Reigns fresh, so hence the “less is more” works there as well.

In my view, Cody Rhodes is a tad over-exposed by seeing him weekly as WWE Champion. Kind of hard to rarely see the WWE Champion with Roman Reigns and then get too much of the WWE Champion with Cody.

It’s this issue of LESS IS MORE… Reason why Roman Reigns drew so strongly for 2022-2024 is because we saw LESS of him. Then, when he did wrestle, it was completely compelling because you didn’t see the WWE’s #1 guy perform that often. Brock Lesnar was strong since his 2012 return because they only featured him on PPV/PLEs for wrestling purposes and kept his TV appearances low (well, they had to contractually). Brock drew strongly because he wasn’t over-exposed.

The only time Brock Lesnar looked over-exposed was when an over-exposed wrestler defeated him, such as Roman Reigns and Seth Rollins who were working weekly and we saw way too much of each during the 2010s.

That brings up another point… Would a babyface Roman Reigns worked during the 2010s if we saw LESS of him? By shoving him down our throats weekly on RAW, it wore out fans and helped cause a massive decline of RAW viewers from 4 million during early 2015 to become under 2 million by 2019.

How about this as a point? John Cena was a workhorse babyface during the late 2000s and early 2010s. He was undeniable as the #1 draw, but could the WWE have been bigger if fans saw LESS of him during those timeframes? He wrestled nightly on RAW or Smackdown and was always on every Pay Per View. You couldn’t avoid John Cena and then the WWE tried to make a clone of him with Roman Reigns who wrestled weekly on every PPV/PLE.

If you boast about having a DEEP talent roster, then you don’t have to wrestle your top drawing guys nightly or even have them on every show.

I would be 100% fine if Roman Reigns just wrestled at the Rumble, Wrestlemania, and SummerSlam.

Didn’t we enjoy the annual Undertaker match at Wrestlemania? He didn’t work the rest of the year, but damn we loved him when he came back for 1 more match each time at Wrestlemania. Hence why Brock Lesnar’s win over him at Wrestlemania 30 meant so much and why Brock had years of momentum afterward. Beating an under-exposed wrestler, like the Undertaker, MATTERED, but the problem years later was that Roman and Seth were over-exposed and thus it didn’t matter when either guy wrestled Brock. It just didn’t matter, as neither wrestler felt “special” enough to beat that monster. Hence why Roman Reigns’s BEST match with Brock Lesnar was at SummerSlam 2022, when it was a LESS exposed Roman defeating Brock Lesnar and finally Roman had a Brock win that actually mattered.

Personally, I like what Triple H is doing with his PLE events and giving us fewer matches while ending earlier. We’re not getting any LESS of a product, as those fewer matches are giving us MORE QUALITY. Tony Khan, however, doesn’t realize that he’s over-exposed a weaker roster and has to push his top guys to do much more, thus over-exposing them. Hence why EXPERIENCE MATTERS, as Triple H is taking knowledge of 10+ years as a backstage manager and implementing GOOD changes to the WWE product. Tony lacks the experience and thus doesn’t realize what could improve with his product.

And I’ll be honest here, as the WWE provides a great product, I don’t have much criticisms or ideas to provide them. Personally, I’m tired of providing critiques of the over-exposed AEW promotion. Hence why you’ve seen fewer columns from yours truly, which may help to reduce any over-exposure that you may have from me.

Hope you enjoy the rest of 2024’s wrasslin’… I’m looking forward to Rumble to Wrestlemania season to see what the WWE has as a follow-up to last year’s start to 2024. I have nothing but disappointment with the AEW product right now, hence why I don’t feel the need to waste my time complaining about them. The declining viewership and attendance speaks for me on AEW.

So just chill… Till the next episode.

CLICK HERE for the Mr. Tito Column Archive @ NoDQ