Heading into Monday night's episode of RAW, WWE was promoting a huge six-man tag team match featuring The Bloodline against The New Day. The match opened the show, but was quickly interrupted by former WWE Champion Bobby Lashley, setting the stage for a huge Triple Threat main event pitting him against Big E and Roman Reigns.
We heard on Monday that RAW doing strong ratings could lead to more crossovers with RAW and SmackDown Superstars appearing on both shows (ratings actually increased by 7% with the Head of the Table making his presence felt, so we'll see what happens from here).
Now, Dave Meltzer has confirmed that the decision to add this Triple Threat bout to the card came relatively late in the day and was done in a bid to drive up RAW's ratings.
"Obviously, the six-man tag was going to be the main event of the show, originally. What happened on the weekend shows in North Charleston and Augusta, they did a three-way between Roman Reigns, Bobby Lashley, and Big E, and Vince [McMahon] got the word that the matches were very good," he explains. "So at noon the day of the show, he did an about-face and moved the six-man tag to basically set up this match as the main event, figuring this would be the strongest ratings possible by putting that match on television. That’s why it wasn’t advertised and that’s why it was a last-minute thing."
This is another example of hotshot booking on WWE's part, and chances are it didn't really pay off. The third hour was still the lowest-rated, and while the match itself was a draw, fans had already seen Roman, Big E, and Bobby at the start of the show so arguably didn't need to stick around to see them again.
Regardless, this was the go-home show for Extreme Rules, so it will be interesting seeing how things play out on SmackDown tomorrow and whether the crossovers continue next week.