By James Caldwell, PWTorch assistant editor

About the finish of Battleground on Sunday. Pick your adjective. It was not good. It felt like something from the Dying Days of WCW Playbook, which is not where you want to draw your inspiration from.

So, what's going on here? What was going through the minds of the WWE Braintrust to book this PPV finish three weeks after PPV customers successfully obtained refunds following WWE's last PPV main event debacle?

There was a sense of WWE management wanting to re-establish the company as the Masters of the WWE Universe as part of the weird games WWE plays. To borrow from heel Dixie Carter, the audience is playing in WWE's House and they need to learn a lesson on who is in control before WWE unveils some sort of "master plan" storyline.

Beyond the "control" aspect, what I see is WWE has lost faith/interest in Daniel Bryan at this top-level position, which I wrote about earlier this week, they're now shifting the focus to Big Show, and they were willing to sacrifice a poorly-promoted PPV that not a lot of people were watching in order to advance this McMahon Power Trip storyline on TV.

Of course, WWE could come out on Raw tomorrow and put the focus back on Bryan-Orton as part of whatever the "master plan" storyline turns out to be, but interest has been damaged after WWE found a new way to pull the rug out from under Bryan for the third straight PPV.

Since Night of Champions, Raw's TV ratings and social media buzz have fallen way off. Monday's Raw should get the usual post-PPV interest and viewers will be willing to tune in with arms folded, waiting to see what direction WWE goes coming out of Battleground, but the anger and frustration over this PPV finish will linger over the follow-up on Raw.

WWE tried to "soften the blow" of the main event finish by having a big, feel-good moment for the Rhodes Family after weeks of being belittled by the top on-air villains. But, it would be like going into Halftime with a comfortable lead after playing a solid First Half, then blowing the lead and the game in the Second Half. No one is going to walk away from the game focusing on how good that First Half felt.

Overall, the events that have occurred since Summerslam have put WWE on the wrong track this fall season. The roster has been emasculated, wrestlers who used to be marketed as the biggest stars in the world have been reduced to people with mortgages and financial problems, and Triple H and Stephanie McMahon have sucked the life out of the product.

It's only a matter of time before Vince McMahon returns to Raw and "babyfaces the promotion" to try to erase all of those bad feelings coming out of the PPV. It will also be funny to watch WWE try to spin anger over the PPV finish as "heat on heel authority figures Triple H and Stephanie," who will then pass the buck to Brad Maddox, who was "in-charge of the PPV."

Mainly, WWE will bank on their fans having short-term memories and quickly forgetting about this PPV finish in favor of focusing on the next Big Show-Orton-Bryan storyline developments. But, on this night, it was transparently obvious that this McMahon Power Trip storyline is bad for business.

We suggest these recent related articles...

CALDWELL'S WWE "NXT: HOUSTON" LIVE RESULTS 9/17: Complete "virtual-time" coverage of Balor, Joe, Bayley, more from debut show in Texas

CALDWELL'S LIVE REPORT - 7/12 Lone Star in Houston, Tex.: Alberto El Patron no-shows, Dreamer vs. Hoyt new main event; plus Duggan, Snitsky, Cabana vs. Mahal, Joey Ryan, Rowe vs. Hernandez, Ivellise, Catrina, Houston Carson, one title change, more

CALDWELL: A Top 10 for 10 Years - Hall of Fame, George, Sweet Tea, Studio B, Duke, Three-Pack, and you!