Ten Sentences: So Many Stipulations

Last Man Standing and Six-Man Elimination No Holds Barred were the gimmick matches from the main card of last Sunday's Payback event in Chicago.

I don't see anything wrong with those choices except for the fact that the company was just coming off an Extreme Rules show traditionally built on a fleet of gimmicked bouts.

Last week, Stephanie McMahon announced Daniel Bryan and Kane in a stretcher match and I found myself thinking the idea felt incredibly mundane after all the stipulations of the past few months.

Maybe I remember it wrong, but wasn't there a time when multiple consecutive wrestling super cards featured no gimmick matches past a no disqualification or the occasional tornado tag or triple threat stipulation?

Since mid-April, WWE has booked Wee-LC, Hair vs Mask, Extreme Rules, a proposed Buried Alive match, a Last Man Standing match, a cage match, a proposed stretcher match, and an elimination match.

Do you find anything inherently desperate in the over-gimmicked feeling of WWE's recent product?

I like a good gimmick match as much as anyone else but I also like two workers tearing the house down in a singles match with no stipulations and within the generally accepted historical framework.

The problem with using special stipulations so often is it greatly dilutes the effect of the actual important gimmick matches and makes them stand out much less.

The briefcase makes the Money in the Bank match very important but we've all seen the ladders, chairs and tables plenty of times over the past 60 days.

Am I wrong to hope that we get a main event sometime soon without any kind of added bell or whistle?