A trend that you may have noticed at WWE PPV events is AJ Styles’ matches taking place in the middle of the card. AJ usually defends the WWE Championship at about the halfway point of the show, instead of closer to the end. Bubba Ray Dudley spoke about this topic on Busted Open Radio. Bubba made some interesting points about why AJ’s matches are placed where they are, based on his own experience with WWE.
Here is what Bubba said:
“When they know there’s a match that will steal the show but they don’t want that match to overshadow any other match, they put it in the middle of the show. I can tell you that from personal experience. I went through this battle years ago – me, D-Von, Edge, Christian, Matt and Jeff. We were always in the middle of the show.”
Bubba was also asked if WWE doesn’t think that AJ is a big enough star to main event a PPV. Bubba’s response was:
“He’s a big enough star to put on the cover of the video game…They do have faith in AJ, but with the matches you know he’s gonna blow everyone else away.”
Bubba says that they don’t want to put an AJ match near what WWE thinks is the main event. This is because it will likely blow the main event match out of the water. As a result, you put it in the middle of the card so it doesn’t overshadow the final match.
You can check out his full comments here:
“When they know there is a match that will steal the show, but they don’t want that match to overshadow any other match, they put it in the middle of the show.”
– @bullyray5150 explains why AJ Styles is consistently placed on the middle of the PPV card. pic.twitter.com/yGc3zr7STn
— SiriusXM Busted Open (@BustedOpenRadio) October 10, 2018
On a related note, here is Bubba’s theory on why AJ Styles vs Daniel Bryan is happening at Crown Jewel.