Select Answers: Referees, Brand Specific PLEs, Gaps between US shows

Welcome to Select Answers, a feature that provides some of the answers to questions that were posed to Sean Ross Sapp in the most recent Fightful Weekly Q&A Podcast. The show drops every week on Fightful Select for subscribers.

When aggregating these posts please refer to it as "Fightful Select Answers Q&A" and tag Fightful, noting that it was in the Q&A format to avoid confusion.

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Why did they stop acknowledging the name of the referee, at least for main events/ big matches? Always seemed to add to that big match feel.

It's just a thing that comes and goes, like a lot of tendencies in wrestling. They'll decide that it's best to not acknowledge the referee whatsoever, then someone watches a big boxing or UFC PPV and they see the referee complimented, criticized or featured and change their minds. I haven't heard that refs are to be ignored on a personal level like in the late Vince McMahon era, though.

Is there any chance WWE brings back brand specific PLEs? There’s so much talent not getting used these days. In the age of streaming it seems like they could easily go back to “B level shows” between the bigger events.

There's always a chance, but here's a few reasons I don't expect it. The ESPN PLE deal mandates a certain number of PLEs per year. Unless WWE is paid extra for additional events, it doesn't serve them well to do it, unless the potential gate justifies it. Also, ESPN didn't pay for brand-specific PLE events. I would imagine they wouldn't be cool with WWE just arbitrarily making that change.

WWE certainly could do them much easier now than back in 2004. Let me tell ya, there were some STINKERS then. Kurt Angle vs. Santa was an actual PPV match. Miss Jackie vs. Dawn Marie. The Bashams vs. Hardcore Holly and Charlie Haas. This was all on the same show. Just some brutal cards. But if they're doing 5 match PLE events these days, it would be easier. But it isn't happening.

With Rumble being in Saudi, is 11/30 - 2/28 the longest gap between US PPVs in WWE in a very long time??

Nope. Not even in a very long time. Since you're excluding Saturday Night's Main Event and NXT, I will too. That's about a 91 day gap. However, just last year, WWE had Bad Blood on October 5, then did Crown Jewel in Saudi, Survivor Series in Canada, and didn't have the Royal Rumble until February 1. That's over 115 days between United States PLE events. But even before that, earlier that year WWE did WrestleMania on April 7, and then went to France, Saudi, Scotland and Canada before coming back for Summerslam. That was a similar gap. It was also intentional. It helped drive up ticket demand for US PLEs because they were more rare.