WWE Royal Rumble 2012: PPV Buys Hurt by Not Advertising All Matches in Advance?

Over the past year or so, the WWE has been seemingly putting together pay-per-views at the last minute.

Overall, they get most of the main events advertised in advance, but it's those undercard matches that really could put the WWE in a better spot. One of the biggest issues is not giving a feud enough time to breathe. More often than not, the WWE will barely give their undercard matches a back-story.

I feel part of the problem is having way too many pay-per-views in a year. I am not a fan of the 12-a-year format and especially despise when they do 14-15. Lets face it, the average wrestling fan gets their fix from the weekly TV shows, which is essentially the outlet used for promoting the pay-per-views.

At one time, the WWE could sustain having them once a month. However, it now seems like they really don't even try to give the fans much reason to buy monthly events.

On Sunday, we have one of "The Big Four" PPVs and the WWE just added a world heavyweight championship match last week.

This really doesn't make much sense, considering it's your No. 2 title, considering there was enough of a story-line behind it weeks ago.

It almost seemed as if they weren't sure if Mark Henry or The Big Show would be Bryan's opponent. In the end, they gave us a triple threat match in a steel cage, which could have been named weeks ago. They could have continued to build it up the same way by having Bryan get out of his matches in the same fashion.

Ultimately, the Royal Rumble books itself, as it is the precursor to WrestleMania. To me, creating three matches outside of the Rumble should not have taken so long. We can only hope that, as 2012 continues, the WWE learns from the mistakes of 2011 and starts to build up their pay-per-views in a timely fashion.

It already seems like they are taking a step in the right direction by going back to the 12 pay-per-view format. However, they may want to reevaluate for 2013 and drop down to eight in order to give creative more time to be, well, creative.