Loss

I agree that WWE didn't have a master plan to stop doing traditional grudge matches and instead focus more on novelty matches, but that is the reality of wrestling right now. Also, I'm not implying that Panda is patient or that strong TV rights income is on the way. I'm just saying that much like WCW before the Nitro era, if Panda is willing to continue losing money on TNA, then TNA won't go anywhere. TNA house show business isn't going to make or break them even if it is strong because they don't run enough shows to pull a profit. Maybe if TNA switched to a more traditional approach of emphasizing house shows, even pulling occasional title changes on non-televised matches, it would make a difference, but house shows will never be emphasized in a company where Vince Russo and Eric Bischoff have any influence. In fact, mid-90s WCW's de-emphasizing of house shows ended up bleeding over to the WWF and gave us the situation we have now where it's more of a "come to see the stars" thing than anything else. That in turn has bled over to the entire business model. The two people that actually have drawing potential in that capacity (and it would die off after their first appearance in each market, if not sooner) are Hogan and Flair, and they're way too old to go on the road full time.

I should also mention that the name of the company is a stupid double entendre that probably hurts them as much as anything.

People thinking that the reason TNA isn't doing better business is because of their booking or because the Hogan/Flair ship has sailed are really, really too far inside the wrestling bubble. TNA could be delivering great angles with the right people and a big marketing push from Spike behind them, and it wouldn't make much difference. The only wrestling fans left are ones who watch out of habit. While it's been nine years since WCW folded, it's been about 12 since the Monday Night Wars actually mattered. Lots of fans have left and come along during that time. Most of us grew up with more than one option for wrestling. I'm not sure new fans even think about wrestling in those terms. WWE is wrestling, period. WWE has even restructured where event names mean more than grudge matches, and gimmick matches mean more than blowoffs to feuds, so star power and booking are pretty much irrelevant in 2010. TNA will stay in business if Panda is patient and willing to lose a lot of money and if they can secure some strong TV rights income. Increased PPV and house show business won't hurt, obviously, but that's not really how wrestling works anymore. If TNA did a kid-friendly product marketed to children, they *might* do okay, but the twenty and thirty-something fan watches UFC, if anything, so why would they switch back to wrestling? Doing blood and more adult-themed storylines in this era is dumb because there's not really an audience for it.

Just out of curiosity, did Dave have an opinion one way or the other when Matt Hardy said in his promo that he hoped Edge would die in a car accident?

I'm surprised it took this long for Helms, but really, I've heard worse ideas than him doing a lot of indy shows.

And just think, no one has done the complete Ric Flair career set yet, which would probably be at least 120 discs if it spanned the 70s through Mania in '08.

Unclear from reading this if Ric was the victim of the assault ...

I think it's a few things (and I agree that the practice is silly): (1) All the wrestlers you listed were using gimmick names instead of their real names (which probably explains CM Punk) (2) Despite ECW also being niche wrestling, they were known enough nationally that they were getting crowd chants by name upon their debuts (3) This was mentioned in the WON within the last year or so, so I think it's something that's just taken effect recently (4) Wrestling is filled with double standards WWE has always been sort of opposed to letting guys use the name they used to get over in other places. However, I think this is a case not of not wanting to use gimmick names from the indies (although there are many times they don't), but more that they don't want wrestlers using their real names, because they can't copyright someone's real name.

I know they've been opposed to anyone coming in using their real names the past few years, because if they leave, they don't want them using the name they used in WWE on the indy circuit.

If this is how they're going to build the angle, this is going to be really awesome, and it's actually a great way to get Danielson over. Miz annoys him until he inevitably destroys him. http://fans.wwe.com/themiz/blog/?pref_tab=blog

I would love for that "horrible beyond belief" Flair/Kerry match to surface at some point for comedic value.

Japanese wrestling is SOOOO bad now. Even the matches that are probably good just don't do anything for me because they all feel like re-runs. One of the great things about 90s Japanese wrestling was the variety. Yes, you had the heavyweight epics in All Japan that went long, but there were also plenty of good 20 minute matches mixed in, and the juniors matches were wrestled in a different style and went a shorter amount of time. Even singles matches with the same players felt different. The Kawada/Taue bloody brawl in January '91 is not at all like their excellent draw in March '96, but they're still both great. Then, there was Joshi, which on its own had so much variety in terms of singles matches, gimmicks, multi-person tags, etc. I guess that variety still does exist in some ways -- NOAH, Muga, Big Japan, and what's left of Joshi are pretty different from each other, but they're not doing anything that wasn't done better years before. You could say that about wrestling pretty much everywhere come to think of it. But I think what killed my interest in Japanese wrestling more than anything is all the no-selling. I really, really hate wrestlers just trading stiff forearms without selling the impact, and that seems to be the one thing that transcends setting or style in modern wrestling in Japan. It's even bled over the U.S. indies a little too. Expanding that, I think something that could get me more into modern wrestling again would be more matwork, and not just going through the motions because it's what happens at the beginning of the match. I miss early matwork actually having consequences later in the match. Moves are teased in the opening minutes that are finally delivered near the end of a match and get a big pop. Another thing would be less clean finishes. I know that sounds weird, but whereas there were too many cheap finishes in the past, now wrestling has gone to the opposite extreme. There are times when a DQ finish (or even better, a draw!) building to a finish would be appropriate, and they rarely happen. I loved Orton/Cena at No Way Out '08 with the DQ finish because it was so awesomely done, but that's rare now. It's hard to build interest in rematches when the first matches are usually won and lost so decisively. I realize that's not a blanket statement, and WWE does this well sometimes, but I'd like to see more of it. I'd also like to see the return of more flash pins: quick inside cradles, rollups, and pinning combos. It's another good way to build to rematches because it's not such a decisive finish, and the match could have gone either way. Anyway, I think I'm taking this off-topic.

The amount of commitment, time, and money required to be a halfway-informed wrestling fan has honestly made me much less of a wrestling fan than I've ever been over the past few years. My personality type is not one that leans toward just casually liking anything -- I either love it or hate it. So I feel like I'm in this weird place with wrestling right now, because real life and career responsibilities make it hard to justify investing so much energy in wrestling. I'll always be a fan to some degree and like what I like, but it's way too overwhelming.

They did? The Observers of '88 paint the picture of a company coming up with great angles and doing so much right and just none of it working.

Hogan/Gordy with Hayes taking bumps on the outside would have been awesome.

Well, there is the whole breaking Paul Heyman's jaw and claiming it was an accident thing.

Comedy is really terrible in general unless it's funny.

Probably because it seemed too unrealistic to be true, even though it was. There are still people who think we don't know for sure that Benoit killed his family.

Helms has had quite a few violations now, hasn't he?

It's interesting to me that they never gave Michaels a long run with the title. They gave him the cup of coffee in 2002, but I don't think he truly got over as more than a part-time act until he got the win over Jericho at Wrestlemania XIX. It was also around that time they had heels stop talking to him like an old guy whose time had passed, and they instead started treating him more like a current star. If you recall, Jericho and HHH both did interviews in his first two programs back about he was washed up, old, sad and pathetic, etc., but no one really did them much after that.

Rock is a master at hype, and making something seem special.

It's sad how anytime they do segments that feature the entire roster, they all look like a bunch of nobodies instead of a roster full of stars. It's a far cry from 2000 when they did that segment on Raw where the Rock led the entire locker room down to the ring to protest the McMahon/Helmsley facgime, and it really looked like a roster full of popular guys.

Who: My grandpa watched every group that ran a show on TV, which was quite a few in the mid 80s, but I hated it when he watched it. My mom and stepdad loved the NWA in 1986-1987, but it took me a little longer to come on board. I had friends who liked the WWF, and I thought it was the stupidest thing in the world. What: It was about a year before I watched anything aside from the NWA more than occasionally. I started reading the Apter mags pretty much right away, and they were negative on the WWF, which made me negative on the WWF. I really liked Sting and Lex Luger, and even liked Ric Flair, despite that I wasn't supposed to like him. I thought he was cooler than Steamboat. I got more into the WWF around the time of the Hulk Hogan/Ultimate Warrior buildup for Wrestlemania VI, but remember being caught by certain things in the months before, like the Hogan/Genius match on SNME, and the angle on Superstars where Rick Rude threw mouthwash in Roddy Piper's eyes on the Brother Love show. When: I started watching regularly in probably 1988 when I was 8 years old, but had watched occasionally before that. I absolutely hated wrestling the first few times I saw it, and would get annoyed when my grandpa would watch it. My earliest wrestling memory is of Cyndi Lauper -- who I liked a lot as a kid -- being on WWF TV. I also remember the Rock & Wrestling stuff on Saturday mornings, and how they would always show the "Rock and Roll Hoochie Coo" video with Gene Okerlund. I was annoyed by this, because I was waiting on Smurfs to start. I watched the first Clash of the Champions with my mom and stepdad on TBS on a Sunday afternoon and liked it, but still wasn't really a regular fan, because I remember being upset when they wanted to watch Clash III instead of the VMAs -- which aired the same night -- later that year. But sometime around that point, I saw an Arn Anderson promo on TV and something clicked for some reason, and I told my stepdad I wanted to start watching. And I did from that point forward. So knowing the timeline of when Arn and Tully left, I'm guessing I saw a promo he had in the can before jumping to the WWF that aired in syndication right after the VMAs. There was an NWA house show coming to Little Rock that October that I really wanted to see, with Ric Flair vs Lex Luger in the main event. I couldn't go because I was being punished for breaking the glass on our living room table and lying about it when asked, so my first house show ended up being six months later, and was headlined by Flair/Hayes vs Steamboat/Luger. Where: I may have already answered this, so I'll go for something different. I remember my weekends well. I had to do my chores before I was allowed to watch TV on Saturday mornings, so I would get up at like 7:00 and clean my room and bathroom so I could watch all the wrestling. NWA Pro came on at 10:00 on the local Fox affiliate, and Superstars was right after, which is when I started watching the WWF. Before either show started, there was a short-lived local group called IPW -- headlined by some guy named Motley Cruz -- but I didn't watch that very often. The Saturday night show on TBS was a staple. I hated WWF TV because I felt like there were too many squashes and they did too much "Let Us Take You Back To Last Week" stuff, but I always stayed up for SNME when it aired and watched All American Wrestling and Prime Time Wrestling on Sundays and Mondays. I always watched NWA Main Event on Sunday evenings as well. A few months later, I got really, really into the Eric Embry vs Akbar feud that aired daily on ESPN, and thought it was much better than even the NWA. I also liked the '88 WCCW footage they showed a little while later, even though I remember figuring out that wrestling was fake when Michael Hayes acted so different as a babyface at that time than he did in 1990 WCW. In my early teens, probably from 1993-1994, I was more interested in school activities and friends and it was less of an obsession, but I got back into it big time around the time of the first Nitro. I still watched during that time, but didn't really care if I missed a show. There was also a local video store with a huge collection of stuff, and I rented them all at some point, which caught me up on all the pre-'88 stuff I missed. I probably rented Bash '87 a good 20-25 times, it was my favorite because of War Games, and also because it was surreal seeing that Luger was once a Horseman, considering they beat him up all the time. Why: I think I liked it at first because it was something I could do with my family, but then I ended up getting way more into it than they ever were, and they stopped watching when WCW became WWF-lite. I could say all the stuff everyone can say about how it captured my imagination blah blah blah, but another reason I liked it was, and this may be weird, because I've always been a task-oriented person with slight collector's impulses, and keeping up with WCW, WWF, the magazines, and the new arrivals at the video store was a big commitment. It was something I could delve into in a way that was unique to my other interests at the time. I've always thought even being a casual wresting fan I think is a pretty big commitment, just because there's so much wrestling on TV. 98% of TV shows only require you to watch 30 minutes to an hour per week.

One thing I've noticed reading Todd Martin's Raw review this week is that he isn't a huge fan of staples or formula. He gets angry when heels keep their backs turned to an opponent because a babyface shows up at ringside. He gets angry that the Royal Rumble is overhyped each year, because every year, they call it the most star-studded ever, whether it actually is or not. I think Dave has always done this to a degree also, and I'm sure plenty of other people have too, so this isn't just limited to criticism of Todd Martin. But I don't understand people who seem to think that wrestling should contain as much truth as possible. It's a work, there is zero obligation or connection with reality. As long as the reality that exists within the WWE universe (not to be confused with the WWE Universe) is logically consistent, who cares if it's really true or not? The job of the announcer or promoter isn't to give factually accurate information about their upcoming shows -- their job is to make them seem as eventful and must-see as possible. Why Todd would criticize WWE for talking about the Royal Rumble's star-studded line-up is beyond me. What should they say? "Folks, it's not the same cast from the boom period, but we have 30 moderately talented guys competing in a match that only comes along once a year. Some of them are still developing as stars and some of them are way past their peak, and honestly, only 2-3 of them stand a chance of winning, so most of the match is a pointless exercise. Either way, the winner will be in the main event of Wrestlemania, even though we may tease the winner not keeping his title shot a few times in the build to the big show to keep things interesting." I also think it's an incredibly simplistic way of watching wrestling to call every segment where someone does a job or gets insulted a burial. Sometimes, a wrestler losing a match is good for him. While WWE is admittedly a petty company, they aren't "sending a message" to the losing guy in every single conceivable segment on every single show. They are "sometimes", and at times, "sometimes" is "much of the time". But it's ridiculous and over the top to suggest that every time a wrestler does a job or has someone cut a promo on them, they are out of political favor. And regarding the overconfident heel being distracted by the babyface at ringside, this is wrestling. I love strong heels, but it's bogus to suggest that wrestlers should always make the same decisions that viewers would make in terms of having their backs turned, falling for tricks, etc. I think where WWE has fallen short over time, and this is a valid criticism, is at establishing clear behavioral norms and sticking to them. Whatever wrestling you want to pull from the past as the gold standard (I'll use Mid South) likely wasn't "realistic", but it was consistent in how wrestlers acted toward and reacted to each other. But there's a difference between criticizing actions not making sense within that universe, and criticizing WWE for portraying a heel as overconfident and leaving them susceptible to a loss. Whatever, I'm on a tangent, and who knows if this post makes sense. I'll stop.

The idea that no one will know who anyone is unless they're a star at this very moment is bogus. I know it's wrestling, but if that's a legitimate concern with your audience, why not aim higher in the audience you're trying to attract? The 80s/retro fad right now is way bigger than the wrestling fad. Kids way too young to remember the 80s wear vintage t-shirts of things from the 80s. When I was a teenager, potheads quoted Jim Morrison and listened to the Grateful Dead, and other people wore ironic John Travolta Saturday Night Fever t-shirts and the like, and I'm only 30 years old. Hendrix was popular, the Beatles were popular, Pink Floyd was popular. People loved The Godfather and Molly Ringwald movies, all of which were from a previous generation. Michael Jackson died this year and little kids who weren't alive for any of his peak were mourning him. I realize there's a difference between the most famous pop star in history and Mr. T, but people in all forms of entertainment make references to things that aren't popular anymore all the time. I've always thought this is a worthless criticism.