Loss

I'm just referring more to his cryptic Michelle McCool coverage in general, talking about her originally as someone involved in wrestling who was way, way too nice and naive to be involved in wrestling, eventually being lured in. He did refer to her once as "a favorite of the older men in the company" ...

Along those same lines, has Dave been trying to tell us that Vince especially enjoys having sex with Michelle McCool?

I like Magnum TA just fine, but like Bix on Backlund, tend to fall in the middle. He's often romanticized, just like almost everyone from the JCP era, because his career was cut short in a tragic accident. He was never going to be a superworker, but he would have been just fine. But I don't think he was ever as good as peak Sting or Lex. But he would have been a perfectly fine foil for Flair, and they probably would have had some really good matches on top. He was often physically awkward and seemed to struggle with what to do between his punches and suplexes, sometimes standing there and looking sort of wooden. (He got much better at that in 1985-1986 than he was in 1983-1984.) He was a grossly excessive bleeder, and because of that, his matches had a lot of drama because he created awesome camera visuals for his comebacks. The Tully match is a match I really like, and thought he was really good in. The Nikita matches really felt more like the praise should be heaped on the Ivan Koloff layout and Dusty Rhodes booking than the individual performances. Flair worked his formula with Magnum and I think Magnum played his role just fine. The DiBiase matches are DiBiase showcases, and I'm not even really crazy about them. I do think the cage match is largely Reed, Neidhart, and II, with Magnum filling a role and doing a fine job of it. I think selling was his strong point. The John Cena/DDP comparison is pretty spot on.

I think they could have gotten as over, yes. But realistically, with Gordy's Japanese commitments and drug problems, he wouldn't have been a threat to Flair's spot.

The fact that those fans hate Cena with a passion is a really good thing, unless they hate him so much that they refuse to buy a pay-per-view or see a house show that has him on it. Liking or disliking Cena isn't really the issue. People care enough about him to strongly react one way or the other. I still think they're a few years away from having to do the turn. It would be a mistake to do it right now, because there's no new babyface at that level that's gotten over big enough to replace him in that spot. But when it does happen, I suspect it will be pretty huge. Where the problems will start is when Cena starts acting more heelish after the turn. It's just going to motivate the fans who hate him now to start cheering him again because he comes across more cool. Scott Hall and Kevin Nash acting too cool for the room in 1996-1997 really fucked up the face/heel distinction and created all sorts of complexities -- permanently, it seems.

A lack of new material worth discussing, combined with the Benoit murders I think are the main culprits. I also think it's easier for more people to talk when there are more established consensus opinions. I can't really think of any subject involving wrestling these days that the majority of those who post seem to agree on, except for that when wrestlers die, it is unfortunate.

I don't agree with it, but you're definitely not the only one. People have been going pretty back and forth on those matches for a few weeks now. I just wish we could get to a point where there's more discussion on stuff like Doc/Gordy, and especially the Taylor/Adams matches, and some of the better stuff that exists later on the set. I could watch Ric Flair formula a million times and never get sick of it, but I do understand why some people are so tired of seeing it. Because the formula has been so overexposed, it's easy to forget how great of a formula it really is. Begging off is good. Getting slammed off the top rope is a huge bump and a great spot. The figure four setup moves (kneebreaker, dropping his weight on his opponent's leg while propped up on the ropes, kneedrop) are all great. His chops were always amazing. The matwork he did, while outclassed by many people in wrestling history, was very good at keeping things moving in a way where they didn't get boring. You can almost call the matches sometimes while watching admittedly, but I really like that Ric Flair just took the Ric Flair Show on tour as champion. Nearly everyone who had a match with him came out looking good, and he's only rivaled by a few at getting over the big picture. I also enjoy Flair matches as a way to compare two wrestlers, because you know what Flair is going to bring, so the differences between whatever two wrestlers you choose are pretty apparent. When people criticize the Flair formula, I can understand it, even when I don't agree with it. It's overexposed as hell, not only by Flair, but by nearly every new heel who has come along since him being some type of ripoff -- Taylor, Hennig, Michaels, HHH, pre-WWF Austin, etc. It's made the heels who don't attempt to emulate him -- Bret Hart, Vader, Rick Rude (to an extent), WWF Austin, Undertaker, Eddy Guerrero -- look much more fresh. Fresher versus better is kinda the key to Flair debates.

Also, they're promoting this pretty aggressively and I think I read that they've increased the PPV price again, so yeah, whether this has a higher number of buys than previous years, it will probably be a bigger money show.

The average fan thinks everything that happened before they started watching is "gay" and thinks DX skits are funny. I'm not saying that to talk down about anyone, I'm just pointing out that's the average fan. I don't know that You Tube comments are necessary to see that. You also have a lot of non-fan "You know that's fake, right?" types still hanging around.

That's really not that important these days, Al. WWE has a monopoly, marketing rights, and tape libraries, and therefore owns the majority of wrestling history. They said a few years ago they wanted to make the HOF more inclusive, because it was their responsibility to maintain history.

We haven't done this in a while, so I thought it could be fun. Michael Hayes Dean Malenko Masa Fuchi Tommy Rich Magnum TA Jerry Estrada Marty Jannetty Kuniaki Kobayashi

Not to beat a dead horse, but Savage not being in the WWE HOF when someone like Bob Orton or Paul Orndorff is there is really stupid. Vince apparently gets mad when anyone even brings up his name, and there's a perception that he's psychotic, but they deal with plenty of people who are psychotic. What makes it even weirder is that he left on good terms. Hennig screwed them over so many times, no-showing several house shows and Survivor Series after the HHH/Mero angle in '96, negotiating with WCW while doing so; walking out when an angle with Luger had been set up for him in '94; and the whole Plane Ride From Hell thing. He was also nowhere near the star Savage was for the company, yet he's in the HOF. It just further proves that Vince, for whatever reason, often develops a soft spot and loves to give second chances to people who screw him over the most, Lex Luger excluded. No, I don't think there's anything to the Stephanie McMahon rumor, considering that it was made up by some guy in a DVDVR thread and grew in legend from there. But there has to be more to the relationship they have with Savage than we know, because it just doesn't make any sense. On another topic, I'm surprised they haven't inducted The Road Warriors.

More than the rest of ROH to be sure. More than most of the wrestling world? That's a bit of a stretch. I'd say over 67% which is pretty good. From what I've seen of them, they're not forcing their charisma which is good. Gallup has it at 63%. WO.com feedback has it at 61%. I'm not sure which to believe.

I know Backlund turned down an invite a few years ago because he still thinks deep down he has one more big run in him. I do think even at his age, showing up old and insane and putting the crossface chickenwing on John Cena to launch a feud would be pretty amazing. I like the idea of a Mr. McMahon, Mr. Bob Backlund heel duo quite a bit.

I don't even know how WWE would feel about a Stan Hansen induction, but that would be the year to do it, and they've surprised me before. I think it would also be cool to see Barry Windham (not a HOF-er under normal standards, but if Pete Rose is in, Windham should be also) and Dick Murdoch go in as well.

You're mistaken, as the Elimination Chamber matches at New Year's Revolution 2005 and 2006 both drew huge buyrates for a non big 4 PPV. Key words being a non-big 4 PPV. I was overstating my case (to a point where it made what I said wrong) in saying it had yet to pop a decent buyrate, but it shows that the Elimination Chamber is not over enough as a concept to carry a show. Or more accurately, it's not as over as the Royal Rumble, as an example. Exactly. The question I have is -- what is it that determines the overall hotness of the company?

To their credit, Flair/Michaels seems to be the big draw, but more among the hardcores than casual fans who make the difference in buys regarding whether the show will set records. But 2000 was a huge show without Steve Austin or the Undertaker. 2007 was a huge show without HHH. And all the shows sold the majority - or all - of their tickets before the card was even partially announced. To me, if any individual wrestlers were major draws in the past few years (not in terms of merchandise), the shows would suffer without them. I don't think anyone's absence in WWE has that type of bottom line impact, except maybe specific demo draws like Rey Misterio or Jeff Hardy. Even then, the company is capable of being successful without them.

I think one reason Wrestlemania XXI did better than the two previous WMs is that the focus was scattered all over the place and there was no clear main event for the two previous years. Shows with one match bigger than all the rest tend to do better than shows with several equally big matches. That's a point I'll concede. It sounds like a stupid WWE defense to say it, but I really do think the fact that we were about to go into a war affected this buyrate. Lots of young males (and women, but I emphasize males because they're a bigger part of the WWE audience) were being shipped overseas, and priorities are going to be different for fans. Most of the time, I don't really buy excuses like that when WWE presents them, but I really do think that defense for that show is valid. Definitely helps, but it isn't make or break. The Wrestlemania X-7 build featured some really distracting and ill-conceived skits involving Debra, and still delivered. Hogan/Rock featured a phenomenal interview segment and heel beatdown, followed by an incredibly ridiculous parking lot skit with Hogan running over an ambulance with a semi. Rock was back within three weeks with a band-aid. The other big matches for that show were feuds built around murdered house pets, cinderblocks, and Japanese shampoo commercials. The show was still a success.

I think that had Cena, DX, Undertaker, or Vince McMahon had a match on D2D, the buyrate would have been about the same as the other non-big five shows that aren't as over as Summerslam or the Royal Rumble. It goes back to this sentence: ECW itself is also a concept that isn't over, and the Elimination Chamber has yet to draw a decent buyrate as a gimmick, whether it involved big names or not. Even though D2D was definitely a failure, it's a weekly TV show that averages slightly higher ratings than Impact, and obliterates any TNA buyrate. TNA would kill for the D2D buyrate.

I was referring to the amount of time wrestlers have typically been in a main event position in WWE more than I was referring to how long they've actually been wrestling. Lots of those guys wrestled way past their primes, but didn't stay in a main event position forever past their primes. Bret, Austin, and Rock had a five-year run. Not counting Hogan's extra three months in 1993, he was on top from 1984 to 1991. That's what I meant by that. I just wanted to clarify.

- Todd Martin Oh Todd. I'm seriously shocked that anyone at this point thinks that the Wrestlemania buyrate has anything to do with how the matches are built. Maybe other WWE pay-per-views still do, but I'm even doubting that. WWE has never been about the storyline, they've been about the stars. People buy shows that have the stars on them and don't buy shows without the stars. Wrestlemania gets a strong buyrate because the stars are facing the stars. Whatever type of build they do for those matches doesn't really matter. Does anyone really think if the main event was HHH vs Orton, or HHH vs Cena, or Orton vs Cena, that it would make a noticeable difference in the buyrate? Mayweather admittedly probably has an affect in the same way Trump did, but just saying "Floyd Mayweather will wrestle the Big Show at Wrestlemania" without any altercations between them to build it up probably would have had the exact same affect on the buys. Considering even the non-big five typically do the same numbers regardless of what's on them, mainly because WWE has educated their audience that they can afford to miss most pay-per-views, I think WWE's only way of affecting buyrates is to bury the Wrestlemania name itself. Yes, the card does make somewhat of a difference in the show, but Wrestlemania is about dream matches, not grudges. They make dumb booking decisions every year in the build and it never adversely affects the buyrate. Remember how everyone thought Hogan running over the Rock with a semi was going to kill that show? It didn't. I know it sounds weird to say, but with Wrestlemania, I really think it's all about fan whims once the card is finalized. There's little WWE can do to make people more or less likely to buy it, in terms of typical wrestling stuff like building grudge matches. Every year, the WM build feels arbitrary anyway. I just really think these days, looking to PPV numbers to prove which wrestlers are and are not draws is a really outdated approach. Merchandise is the only barometer you have. House shows business is primarily based on how often WWE enters markets, and the hook is seeing WWE in YOUR town, not seeing the main event. Concept shows like Survivor Series and the Royal Rumble draw because the concepts are over, not because of who's involved. Cyber Sunday isn't as over as a concept, so it doesn't draw as strong, regardless of what's on the show. The exception to that is returns. Wrestlers returning after a long absence usually makes a difference in buys. But even there, it's because they're returning, not because of the specific grudge. I don't know where to congratulate WWE for creating a model for business where their ability to book effectively doesn't matter all that much, or be discouraged by it as a wrestling fan. But it's pretty unavoidable at this point. Because of having no competition, they're pretty much at a point now where they're more content to maintain their current level than create another boom, and they can maintain their current level probably forever, as long as they can find new guys to plug into main events every few years or so. Of course even then, that aspect is overrated, because HHH, Undertaker and Michaels have all been on top for 10 years or more, and none of them look to be retiring anytime soon. They'll probably all wrestle until they're Flair's age, so the turnaround time for headliners, which used to be maybe 5-7 years under good circumstances (Austin, Hogan, Rock, Bret) is now much longer, and Cena and Orton have 20 years of main eventing ahead of them, barring any type of freakish accident or drug overdose. And if they don't last that long, it doesn't really do significant damage to WWE anyway.

People have for the most part just been really stuck on mid 1985 and those Flair/Taylor matches for weeks and weeks. I'm hoping people actually get to the other side of them and get into 1986 and 1987 soon so the same points aren't being repeated so much, and there can be some fresh talk. I've watched it, but felt it was kinda pointless to talk about it since everyone seems stuck on Flair/Taylor matches.

So I read a little while back in Sex, Lies & Headlocks that Andy Warhol at one time wanted to paint Hulk Hogan, and that wrestling for a very brief spell was popular among the art crowd in Soho. Does anyone have any other information about this, or is that pretty much all there is to it? Seeing WWE Divas having their outfits designed by high-fashion hopefuls on Project Runway, and also reading that Madonna is wearing a wrestling championship belt on her latest CD cover, made me curious about any other tie-ins to two worlds that seem to have nothing else in common.

The Great Muta's entrance music in 1989 was pretty great. Also, I'm still amazed that an American promotion booked a Japanese guy as well as WCW did Muta did that year.