AEW Star Thinks World Heavyweight Championship Should Be “Centrepiece” Of PPVs
Jeff Jarrett believes that a top title match should main event a pay-per-view more often than not.
Wrestling fans are in two camps about which match should close the big show. One side firmly believes that the top championship should always be the main event, while others believe it is whichever storyline the fans are the most behind. The most famous example is Wrestlemania 18, where many fans believe that Hulk Hogan vs. The Rock should have gone on last and not the WWE Championship match between Triple H and Chris Jericho.
Speaking on the My World podcast, Jarrett believes that if a company is using the old-school model of one event every 3 months like AEW did in the early days, then the World Championship should close the show. However, there can be some flexibility in what the main event will be:
“If you have quarterly pay-per-views, absolutely. Unless there’s a real, real hot personal issue and that can come up creative, subjective. But if you’re doing quarterly pay-per-views, the World Heavyweight Title is the centerpiece of any promotion. Nowadays, we’ve gotten into male and female, but for the lack of a better word, Yes. But when you start going into monthlies. And we’ve talked ad nauseam on this topic.
Conrad at TNA, were we a slave to weekly ratings on Spike, or were we a slave to our pay-per-view format, which was monthly, pulling the onion back even further? When you take a pay-per-view and make X amount of dollars in the United States, that same three-hour pay-per-view is sold at a premium, hence a premium live event internationally in that slot. So then you kind of get into the devil in the details that doing a monthly format pay-per-view can be very successful from a profit standpoint.
Jeff Jarrett continued, stating that it can be beneficial for the top title to occasionally take a back seat so that when it is the main event the rivalry is white hot:
But creatively, I believe having an important world title match every month is impossible. It’s just not enough time to build your antagonist and put your. Well, it depends on who’s got the belt and all that. But to build your story in four-week arcs, I think it was hard in 2008. And I think it’s even harder today because our audience, for the lack of a better word, is half on TNT, TBS and then half on digital. So super, super hard.”
The last two pay-per-views have not seen the AEW World Championship defended, as MJF was defending the Ring of Honor tag titles at AEW All Out and AEW WrestleDream.
AEW Elevates Secondary Championships
With MJF tied up in the ROH tag division, other champions got their chance to shine in the spotlight of the marquee pay-per-view match. The main event of All Out saw Orange Cassidy drop the International Championship to Jon Moxley, ending Cassidy’s lengthy run as champion. The main event of WrestleDream saw Christian Cage successfully defend the TNT Championship against Darby Allin, which was followed by the surprise debut of Adam Copeland.
H/t to Wrestling Headlines.