WWE Survivor Series 2011 pay-per-view buys come in at 280,000 in preliminary estimates

For everyone counting on The Rock to pull a Chris Jericho and "save us," sorry, but he let us down, at least as far as pay-per-view (PPV) buys go.

That's because WWE has released its preliminary estimates for the Survivor Series event that he headlined alongside John Cena, The Miz and R-Truth and the show drew 280,000 buys, which is up 36,000 from last year's show, which drew 244,000.

The 2010 information is concrete, while the 2011 numbers will grow. Again, these are just the preliminary numbers.

Still, 280,000 is lower than expected. If you had told me The Rock would come back to WWE and his first match in seven years would be on one of the "Big Four" PPV's and it would include John Cena, I would have told you it would crack 300,000 ... at least.

Sadly, it's entirely possible it doesn't make it there.

There are a number of things we can blame this on, lack of proper promotion chief among them. WWE knew it was a risk to bring Rock back sooner than WrestleMania 28 for an actual match and when they went ahead and did it anyway, they did so without going all out. Not only does that show a shocking lack of competence as far as marketing goes, which is surprising considering the company we're talking about will shove something down your throat if they believe in it enough.

The other problem here is how they've mishandled every Survivor Series show for the past five years. Realistically, the concept of the "Big Four" is dead. Royal Rumble, WrestleMania and SummerSlam are still highly regarded and even SummerSlam has been under heavy fire these past few years, with buyrates steadily declining.

There's certainly something to be said about the idea of using Rock to bolster a show that would have done paltry numbers otherwise but again, if you're going to go that route, don't half-step. There's really no need to bring up the way they booked The Miz and R-Truth heading into the event. We all know how laughable that was but it's doubtful it affected the buyrate either way.

Really, we're to the point that WWE has two shows a year that will do well no matter what and the rest of them aren't going to do much of anything. And that's why the idea of moving every "B show" to the Network when it launches is an idea being kicked around. Revenue may be lost at first but when The Rock can come back for his first match in nearly a decade and barely make a dent, it's time to accept how low the ceiling is these days.