Last week, Cageside reported ESPN employee Gus Ramsey was touting a 1.9 million buyrate for WrestleMania 28.
Had this number been true, I'm sure WWE would have jumped for joy. Nearly two million people shelling out over 60 bucks for a wrestling show? That's a success no matter how you slice it.
The number was not without skepticism, however. The figure is insanely high and came out only a couple of days after WrestleMania 28 closed its curtain in Miami on April 1. That kind of information usually takes a week or even longer to begint to emerge.
Ramsey himself began backpedaling immediately and states the figure wasn't official or even came from any kind of reputable source but instead came from what amounted to water cooler talk in the ESPN offices.
Turns out he was right to backtrack.
The Wrestling Observer is reporting WrestleMania 28's pay-per-view (PPV) buyrate is closer to 1.1 million, nearly half of what was originally thought. Losing 800,000 buys is bad enough but when you combined with the fact WrestleMania 27 did 1,059,000 buys, you have to assume the extra 41,000 buys The Rock brought in weren't really worth it.
An entire year's worth of build for about 40,000 extra buys certainly seems like a failure, right? With all the hype surrounding the match with Flo Rida introducing The Rock and whoever did so for Cena -- I know, I know it was Machine Gun Kelly but seriously, who cares? -- and the mainstream exposure they attempted to get with Extra host Maria Menounos, the fact they couldn't sell an obscene amount more than they did last year doesn't bode well.
Perhaps this is why they're rushing Cena's match with Brock Lesar. As opposed to keeping the two apart like the did with Cena and The Rock, they are choosing to strike while the iron's hot to keep interesting from waning.
What do you think, Cagesiders?