Following disappointing results for WWE Money in the Bank, a very weak buyrate for WWE Summerslam effectively seals the deal on the CM Punk storyline’s failure to renew interest in the WWE product.
WWE’s latest KPIs chart indicates the show did only slightly more than 300,000 buys, a big decline from the 350,000 figure for the 2010 Summerslam, which was viewed as a big letdown at the time.
Since the CM Punk storyline appeared hotter than it actually was, WWE rushed a resolution to the CM Punk contract storyline in order to assure he could logically wrestle at the Summerslam pay-per-view. Unfortunately, the Money in the Bank buyrate ultimately revealed his “worked-shoot” storyline was not a major business driver, and the storyline decision to “rehire” Punk killed the tiny bit of momentum it did have.
Punk vs. John Cena and Randy Orton vs. Christian headlined the show, which notoriously only had four matches announced prior to the day of broadcast.
There is nothing wrong with the CM Punk/Cena storyline (note I didn’t include Nash in that). The reason the buyrate was bad that there were only 4 matches announced, and if you want to degrade it by saying one was a Divas match, that’s a personal opinion. The fact is, I can’t remember there only be 4 matches announced for a PPV, even WM 12 that had an hour long match had more announced. As much as people love Cena/Punk, you can’t feel like you’re wasting your money if you are only getting 4 matches for your $45 (that’s the rate now right? – I haven’t bought a non-WM/Rumble PPV in years).