1. Isn't guaranteed to go 30 minutes 2. Has some built in heat in that Rusev winning the WWE Title is at least kinda exciting, whereas no one cares a lick who actually is IC Champion
I must stress how much it being a match that is guaranteed to go 30 minutes hurts it when it has no heat though. Hurts it way more than if it was a singles match that just happened to go 30 minutes
This would be important if they didn't start doing it 3 minutes into the match.
Considering the previous PPV had a 30 minute match between Styles and Nakamura that the crowd got more and more into despite the feud dragging on, there's really no excuse other than Pittsburgh sucks. I guarantee you they would have done it in the opening, too.
Can I please ask you to compare the MITB PPV to Extreme Rules?
Because you had Daniel Bryan having a legit singles match and winning, two ladder matches, a Seth Rollins match, the aforementioned AJ vs Nakamura, Ronda Rousey, and a MITB cash-in.
On Extreme Rules, the best thing you had was maybe KO taking the cage bump and I can't think of a single other entertaining thing on that. There was literally nothing keeping this crowd from trying to survive from dying of boredom. And Styles vs Nakamura was maybe 2.5 hours into this PPV that had excitement before and plenty to look forward to later, whereas this PPV had nothing else to look forward to until a finish in 30 minutes so they could go home, and nothing exciting before, and this was 3.5 hours into it.
It's terrible positioning and a crappy show.
Yet the match before they had no problems putting together "A-J Sty-les/Rusev Day" dueling chants despite supposedly being burnt-out from the PPV not being any good and Styles/Rusev being a feud as underwhelming as Rollins/Ziggler.
I see a million excuses for the behavior but it falls apart under any level of scrutiny. "We can pop for a Ronda run-in but we can't not act like assholes when we see a clock! Can you fault us?" You may as well be excusing CM Punk chants in 2018 or 1-2-SWEEEEEEEET. ---
TheRock ~ I had a name, my father called me Blues.