WWE Survivor Series pay-per-view buys 20K lower than initially reported

Last week Geno wrote of the abysmal buyrate that last month's Survivor Series pay-per-view (PPV) had done. Not only was it headlined by WrestleMania 28 opponents The Rock and John Cena teaming up against the team of The Miz and R-Truth but it was also the first time "The Great One" had stepped inside the squared circle in a wrestling capacity since WrestleMania XX.

Cena plus The Rock plus the Survivor Series name should have equaled monster buyrates, right? I've double checked my math -- even triple checked -- and I keep coming up with that answer. So when it was reported that the event only managed a measly 280,000 buys --- 180,000 of those being from the United States -- I thought surely that someone at the PPV company forgot to carry a one or add a decimal. That number couldn't possibly be right.

Well, it wasn't. It was worse.

Dave Meltzer of The Wrestling Observer said on his Dec. 24 radio show that the estimates of 180K domestic buys were a bit premature and inflated. The more recent figure drops the prediction by 20,000 buys to 160K. If you thought the old number would have Vince McMahon clenching his fists in anger, the new number is sure to have his loved ones -- and by that I mean Kevin Dunn -- making sure all the guns in the house are unloaded.

While the newer, lower number still outperformed last year's buyrate, it was only by 16,000. Apparently that's the amount of people who either A) wanted to see if The Rock still had it inside the ring -- he does -- or B) bought the laughable excuse as to why two men who had decided a year in advance that they would settle their beef at WrestleMania 28 would form a tag team.

And in case you forgot the excuse -- and I wouldn't blame you on not wanting to waste brainpower retaining that sort of information -- it was because the millions -- AND MILLIONS -- of The Rock's Twitter followers demanded it. No, they didn't. People who like "The Brahma Bull" enough to follow him on Twitter are exactly the type of fans who are responsible for the new anti-John Cena shirt selling out only days after it became available online.

They don't want to see The Rock teaming up with Cena, they want to see "Fruity Pebbles" on the receiving end of a smackdown on the corner of Know Your Role Boulevard and Jabroni Drive. It doesn't take The Genius to figure that one out but a team up is what we got and fans responded in kind by not tuning in.

It's simply another example of the writing team being creatively bankrupt. They had to get Johnson on the event so they did so in the most groan-inducing way possible. If things remain as they are, the WWE will continue to languish and fall further and further out of relevance. The Rock was supposed to solve all of the WWE's problems.

But a band-aid -- even a Great One -- can't help a hatchet wound.