The Big Reason Jim Ross Wants Major AEW Change
Is there such a thing as too much wrestling? AEW announcer Jim Ross thinks there might just be.
Jim Ross was back on the call for the final matches at Forbidden Door after the WWE Hall of Famer had been dealt another blow in his ongoing health battles.
The cross-promoted show saw Swerve Strickland retain his AEW World Championship against Will Ospreay while NJPW’s Tetsuya Naito defeated Jon Moxley to capture the IWGP World Heavyweight Championship again.
Ospreay and Strickland’s match has been critically acclaimed but it was the 15th match of the show for those following along at home and in the arena meaning fans were in for a very long night as the show and the Zero Hour pre-show sailed past a five hour run time.
And that might be too much.
Jim Ross Not Happy With 5-Hour Pay-Per-Views
Speaking on his Grilling JR podcast, Jim Ross gave his thoughts on the much-discussed issue and said if your pay-per-views are running longer than 3 hours, then you need to have a serious re-think:
Somebody asked me that question on Sunday because the discussion was, are we serving too much barbecue? It’s hard for me to even equate that answer because I believe that…it’s a tough question. I believe that a pay-per-view should be three hours. Plenty of time. If you can’t conduct your business in three hours, you need to reevaluate your plan. At least, that’s my take on it.
Those four and five-hour pay-per-views are daunting, to say the least. Somebody said, ‘Well, when you guys were down at WCW back in the day, how long were your pay-per-views?’ I said, ‘They were two hours and 50 minutes long.’ That’s a fact. So I think somewhere more in the two-hour and 50-minute range is better, or just day three hours, for simplicity’s sake, is more my wheelhouse.
Now that I’m getting older, my attention span has been affected, so I think three hours is a nice starting point for a pay-per-view. That’s just me. You first gotta cater to your audience, and I think when you get past three, you’re gambling, and I don’t know if that’s a smart thing to do, gamble with your audience’s attention span.
Because no matter what we say, the heavy sh*t is at the end. It’s called a main event, and I think that’s something that’s very important. You gotta cater to that audience, make sure they’re covered, make sure they like the order, and it’s just hard. It’s hard to figure that out, but I think somewhere in that three-hour range would be my preference.