[Mr. Nerfect]

Originally Posted by Tom Guycott Because they already ran him into the ground and established him as an also-ran. Goes back to the difference between main roster and NXT. He's less important because they've established that he's less important. In NXT, his matches were a big deal, and demon appearances were "HOLY SHIT!" On main roster, he's been distilled down to "jobber unless wearing paint" Not saying keeping everyone off TV will solve all their problems. What I'm saying is they could use that time to make Finn Balor important again instead of consentrating on Brock Lesnar, Seth Rollins, Roman Reigns, and the second coming of the HHH Reign of Terror in Shane "Best In The Wooooooorld" McMahon all the time. They have such a breadth of talent, but so few of them feel in any way important. They may even start out with so much hype and spotlight, and that fades so quickly due to indifference (any tag team callup), mishandling (Asuka going from a handicap match multi-woman murder machine to barely getting a win against Emma), overexposure (I like Rousey, and I get getting your money's worth, but she wasn't a neccessary evil weekly). And one thing they could do - they could really do - to fill up all that time? Have more matches. Yeah, not everything has to be backstage skits or multiple promos be they live or canned. Have more televised lower stakes matches and save some of those main events. 3 Hours of RAW (which, let's be honest, isn't 3 hours without all the commercial padding). There could be more matches with more guys who aren't doing shit but standing around in catering every week. Start planting seeds for them to become future stars later, and not hotshot them to the top of the card randomly one day because their ethnicity plays into travel plans. Your main event could be a tag team title match. You don't have to trot out the WHC and midcard champ. Now, granted, Brock Lesnar is at the polar end of that spectrum, but I don't really want to count him because there are other things at play with him in particular. Like, remember when we all shit on Jinder going from jobber to "main event threat" in like 3 weeks? Now, imagine if they took the time and care to build him up from then to now with baby steps and feuds and storylines and reasons to care about seeing him succeed or fail. With better writing and progression, he wouldn't be pinning R-Truth on a plane runway for a comedy angle championship; people could be looking at him like they're looking at Drew McIntyre (mostly... this whole lackey shit is diminishing him at the moment, but you get my point) and he would be a "somebody" up near the higher end of the card- maybe even a WHC contender depending on how things turned out. But that's too much like work, so when the rocket up his ass failed spectacularly, that must have been because he didn't have "it" or somesuch, and now he's back to comedy angles and rare appearances. Dammit. I had a point to sum this up with, and I got sidetracked by something else and forgot what I was going to write.

I think there's truth in the statement that WWE and NXT are different animals, but I think NXT can afford to be a different animal. Balor got to be presented as special in NXT (to be honest, this is about the period I got bored with NXT and stopped watching the weeklies), but that's because he didn't need to be on each week wrestling. When he's part of a main roster presentation, sure, they could take more care with how they thread him through things, but they've also got 5 hours to fill and if he's not wrestling on a show (to keep that special) then you've got to fill that time with something else. This means that you've got the spotlight on something other than him, which means he's no longer going to be special. But if you put the spotlight on him all the time, then you're going to get sick of him anyway.

Now, that's not to say there aren't problems with how the present people on the main roster. There absolutely are. And these things might even change if Vince McMahon and Kevin Dunn are ousted. But you're still going to have this persisting problem of guys being on TV too much, because there's just simply too much TV.

And Triple H is going to get so fatigued if he gets the book and he tries to put such intricate care into 5 hours of television. He might divvy it up, but it's still a lot of commitment from viewers, who are supposed to care about all of it. When you realize that you don't need to watch all of it because it doesn't matter, that becomes the habit. This is why AEW is so smart coming along now. There is money in TV and WWE needs that money. They are going to be stretched out and exposing themselves for 3-5 years (or however long those deals are). They're going to be running too much content for a long time. Plus they're pricey. Those two things together are going to be where AEW can really hit them.