• Aleister Black Says WWE Made The Right Call With New PLE Format
WWE Premium Live Events used to regularly feature 7 or 8 matches under Vince McMahon’s creative direction. But since Triple H took over as Chief Content Officer, the company has shifted to a tighter format, typically 5 matches per PLE.
According to WWE SmackDown’s Aleister Black, that change is necessary. Speaking with WrestleRant, he explained why shorter match cards make for a better show.
“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.”
While acknowledging that some fans enjoy longer events, Black stressed that oversized cards ultimately hurt the overall show.
“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.”
• Claudio Castagnoli Wins World Heavyweight Championship (Video)
AEW star Claudio Castagnoli (fka Cesaro in WWE) defeated Gran Guerrero to become the new CMLL World Heavyweight Champion tonight at Arena Mexico. You can watch the finish below:
— WrestleFeed (@WrestleFeedApp) November 29, 2025
Claudio ended Gran’s 3-year title reign to become champion. AEW President Tony Khan tweeted the following about it:
“Congratulations to @ClaudioCSRO, the NEW @CMLL_OFICIAL World Heavyweight Champion!
On behalf of AEW, we’re very proud to have an @AEW star, especially one of Claudio’s immense stature, as Champion in CMLL!
Congratulations to CMLL, I think that Claudio will be a great Champion!”
Speaking of Claudio, he will face fellow Death Riders member Jon Moxley in the Continental Classic this coming Wednesday on Dynamite.
• Another Top WWE Star Almost Slipped On RAW
During an interview on the No-Contest Wrestling Podcast, Bronson Reed recalled Brock Lesnar slipping on this week’s RAW. Reed also revealed that Drew McIntyre almost slipped as well.
Here’s what The Vision member said:
“So knowing Brock Lesnar as I do. I’ve known him for a short amount of time. He is a very intense individual. He is The Beast, that is him. And I saw him slip, and somehow backroll, gets back to his feet.
In my mind, I’m like, ‘He’s either going to laugh this off.’ Which he seemed to do, he laughed it off and got to business, or ‘he’s going to be very angry, and all the guys in the ring are going to pay for it.’ So I did see it. But I just let it slide, and made sure to get back to business.
I think Brock himself said it (backstage). He walked through the curtain, and he had slipped on something. So I think… I don’t know who wrestled beforehand. Because Drew said in his entrance he almost slipped. So I don’t know if someone wet their hair or oil, or something was on the entranceway.
I don’t think it fazed him too much. He’s the sort of individual – you know, if that was someone else and they were to slip, they’d probably fall on their a$$ and that would be it. And people wouldn’t engage anymore from there, it’d be hard to get people back.
But because it’s Brock Lesnar, he almost backrolled, got straight back to his feet. Took his cowboy hat off and you knew he was still going to beat the hell out of people. So if it was going to happen to anyone, at least it was him.”
On ESPN First Take, Paul Heyman said the following about Lesnar falling down on RAW:
“The reason why I think it is a G.O.A.T move is because we all fumble at some point in the game. We all do. There’s no such thing as someone that doesn’t fumble in life.
Brock Lesnar turned a fumble into a touchdown just like that. He is The Beast. There’s no one like him. He’s one of one. Look at that boom, there was water on the entrance way, slips, falls, rolls through, comes up and there he is, smiling and just coming down to the ring for war.
Who else could do that but Brock Lesnar?”
