New Vince McMahon Edict: No More Wrestling During Commercials

Vince McMahon issued a new rule this past Monday before Raw that there will no longer be wrestling taking place during commercials, according to several sources.

Vince’s idea, according to Dave Meltzer and Bryan Alvarez, is that real sports don’t have action during commercial breaks, so WWE won’t either.

So matches will either have to be short enough to fit between commercials or, as WWE did on Raw on Monday, they will have to figure out other ways to follow the rule for longer matches. That would explain why there was a two out of three falls match on Monday’s Raw, an elimination match, and the restarted match with Daniel Bryan and Seth Rollins. With so many loopholes being used to get around the rule, it seems pretty arbitrary and will probably just end up making things needlessly complicated as the show runners try more and more “creative” workarounds.

But according to Dave Meltzer, this is “one of those rules that a lot of people expect will be forgotten about soon.”

According to PWInsider, one idea that has been thrown around is for some matches to have multiple rounds, with PWInsider saying that it would be similar to a “European rounds” system. Under those rules, there would typically be six rounds of about five minutes each, and the first wrestler to score two falls or knock their opponent out would be the winner. There’s no word on if this will actually happen or if it was just a pitch.