Aleister Black supports less matches on WWE PLEs.
Particularly since Paul ‘Triple H’ Levesque took the reigns of WWE’s booking, fans have noticed a decline in the amount of matches at Premium Live Events. Typically, viewers can expect around five matches per PLE, with some shows featuring Royal Rumble or War Games matches even having four. While the response to fewer matches have been mixed, one SmackDown talent seems to agree with the change.
In a new interview with WrestleRant, Aleister Black explained his view that five or six matches is ideal for Premium Live Event, saying anything more could be detrimental.
“I think having less matches on PLEs—especially because they’re a lot more frequent—makes a lot more sense. Even back when I worked in Japan a lot, that was kind of like the given. Five, six matches a night because it keeps everything a lot more special. The second you go above—in my personal opinion—the level of seven or eight matches, you’re going to wear out the crowd a lot. And we live in an age where attention spans are very limited. Everything is a lot of gratification, so the longer you let something go for the sake of having people on the card, that might be at the detriment of the product or the perceived experience by fans. I’m not saying that it’s a bad thing because there will always be people that are absolutely enjoying it from start to finish. But, I think that I can say that having match cards that are excessively big will eventually work in the detriment of the experience itself. I think that WWE made the right call with limiting the matches a little bit because it just makes it easier to digest. Gives you more time to divide your attention on the things that you want to pay attention to in terms of storytelling and match quality.”
-Aleister Black
Black is yet to feature on a PLE since returning to WWE earlier this year, with his last pay-per-view appearance for the company coming at Money in the Bank 2020. His most recent match came against Cody Rhodes on the November 7 edition of Friday Night SmackDown and the star has competed exclusively on the blue brand since re-entering the fold in April.
As always, we’ll aim to provide any further updates on Aleister Black as soon as we hear more.
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