Loss

I always thought KOTR had a ton of potential, but they never really used it to its fullest, so in that sense, it didn't make much difference when they scrapped it. I think back to 2000, and how with the talent involved in the tournament, it should have been one of the best single nights ever for the company, but they jobbed out all the talented guys in the first round. I'd love to see it come back, but only if they do it right.

I thought about picking up one or two of Naimark's comps at some point, actually, or at least referring to the match lists to get Lynch to make one for me personally, so the VQ would be as good as possible. I'm looking for a good introduction to the style, but I'm learning that "the style" doesn't really exist -- it's several promotions and several styles and they all have their own advantages. I think what I have in mind is maybe the matches that most identify what each group is about. Is there one match or a group of matches that pretty much sums up everything PRIDE stands for and showcases the style at its best? Ditto for UFC? I'm sure there's more than one, but you probably see what I'm saying. I asked you because I trust your opinion, and because I happen to love a man who isn't afraid to bold his text on a message board or tweak the details of Chris Masters' gay fireman gimmick.

Rudo, I might give you some homework sometime and ask you to come up with an 8-hour MMA "primer" comp one could make for those looking to get into it who are far too comfortable with the US pro style. Would you be up to it?

Again, I have to ask which people you're talking about? Chris Benoit is a shell of his former self. Anyone who purchased his DVD and saw the matches he was putting out a decade ago compared to what he is doing now should be able to see that quite clearly. He's even been referred to as "Fat Elvis" in some circles because he's slipped so much. So this has already happened. That said, anyone who attempts to look at everything objectively can acknowledge that he was one of the best in the world at one time and the way they see him now doesn't affect the way they remember him at all. Benoit is still good -- he's Chris Benoit and as long as he can do at least a fourth of what he was doing in the ring in his prime, he'll always be passable, but he's not the same Benoit he used to be. I still think he's one of the 10 or 20 greatest wrestlers of all time. I say that knowing he's regressed considerably. In Kurt Angle, you have someone who has spent the majority of the past few years injured because he tried to do too much too soon. You won't find nearly as many people going to bat for him in 2005 as you would have in 2002. I'm sure those who praised him then still think just as highly of that period of work for him (at least some of them), but they're not deluding themselves into thinking he's the same Kurt Angle. Even Dave Meltzer, Angle's biggest cheerleader, has acknowledged it. Look at how Shawn Michaels has been received by online fans since coming back. Look at how he was regarded before. The Undertaker wasn't really criticized all that much for his professionalism until he started doing things that were unprofessional. When it comes down to it, wrestlers are all going to be judged on their actions, and those of us watching on who have been watching for a long time and are level-headed about it will be able to appreciate the past without giving false praise to the present.

"What is a smart mark anyway? A mark with a high IQ?" -- Brian Pillman I don't know that I fully understand what a "smark" is. I sure hope I'm not one. I'm also glad I'm not part of anything as morbid sounding as an IWC. The fact that Duggan's work was criticized has nothing to do with him contracting cancer. I think it's possible to say "I was never a fan of Duggan and I don't think he was that good of a performer" in the same breath as "Duggan getting cancer sucks and I hope he beats it and is able to take care of his family." The second part of that is just being humane, but it doesn't have anything to do with him being criticized for having bad matches. I didn't see anyone throwing insults at Ray Traylor when he died. People chose to look back on his career and recall their fondest moments. John Tenta has been wished well on most boards I've visited. I know this has nothing to do with what you're saying really, but anyone who would call Duggan a bad worker for the entire duration of his career is either ignorant or stupid anyway. I've seen Duggan in great matches. Granted, by 1998, when he went under the knife, those matches hadn't happened in well over 10 years, but Duggan is a man, and like pretty much every wrestler that rose to stardom in the generation he did, he kept on going far longer than he should have. Look at Hogan. Flair. Savage. Piper. I was online that evening in a pro wrestling chatroom, actually, and I remember it well. People actually were classy and wished him the best. I remember this same point and same scenario, almost word-for-word, being written in an article called "Smart Is As Smart Does" in the first issue of the now-defunct WOW Magazine back in 1999. I think like anything else, you're going to find both good and bad online. You probably wouldn't have found anyone at a board where there were adults who conducted themselves as such making fun of his plight. You would find, however, a lot of teenagers, looking to blend in and be cool, saying what they think is the right thing to say to "get over", if you will. Agreed. I don't think anyone would call them smart. And they haven't done it for free, either. Flair, Undertaker and Michaels are all millionaires. Lord knows they've gotten plenty of my money over the years. They've been well-compensated for their efforts. Wrestling is about youth and it's a business. Taking someone like Ric Flair, who is my favorite wrestler ever, and giving him credit for the things he has accomplished in his career is nice. Being fair is pointing out that he is past the point of usefulness, is destroying his own legacy and should have left the business a long time ago. Wrestling is not about wrestlers so much as it is fans. We can say whatever we want to say. Wrestling is not a sport, either. When they do those sappy vignettes with Shawn Michaels talking about the goosebumps he gets at Wrestlemania or whatever, you have to realize that's a lie. Wrestling is all a lie, a fabrication, a dirty secret, a con artist's game. I think there are a lot of wrestlers who love performing and who enjoy what they do for a living, striving to do it as well as they can. I think that's admirable. I think any of them who live and breathe the business all the time are pathetic and they have my pity. It's a tough business. They usually aren't forced into the profession, but they are often forced out, because wrestlers are worse than just about anyone in terms of knowing when to quit. No offense, but your post made a lot of sweeping generalizations about the people who talk about pro wrestling online, and when you do it yourself, you're just as much a part of it as anyone else. There is no clear cut majority of a "type" of fan who goes online.

Precisely. That was the purpose of this thread. I don't even know that I'd prefer 80s NWA to any other wrestling to ever take place anymore, but that doesn't change the fact that I had so much fun watching it at the time.

I've always been of the opinion that the only reason pro wrestling is cyclical is because of the tendency for successful companies to rest on their laurels. I can't say I don't understand it, as common sense says that if a formula is working, you don't tweak it, but when WWE moved to Spike TV and saw their ratings start to slowly fall, and when they turned Austin heel and built around the Undertaker and Kane as top babyfaces, they saw things start falling apart and that was the time when they really needed to re-evaluate. They treaded along unsure of their identity during the inVasion and Rob Van Dam came in and got over immediately as a superstar. They pushed him briefly, before backing out because he couldn't work or whatever other excuse they could find. I'd say hindsight is 20/20, but even at the time, the argument was that you elevate Van Dam and make him the face of the company, and you build up other guys who are capable of working good matches with him as a strong supporting cast around him. Considering that most of the guys who he has had his best matches against are the same guys who have had the rug pulled out from under them at various points, had they all been elevated, it would have worked. With guys like Hogan, Nash, Hall, Page, Steiner and Goldberg in and out of the company over the last few years, along with the top guys they've had around constantly forever now anyway, there's no reason that generation couldn't have been given a rub. They may not have necessarily been an every man's hero like Steve Austin or a media darling like The Rock, but they could have bridged the gap between the HHH/HBK/Undertaker generation and the Orton/Cena/Batista generation. As it stands, they're trying to use the guys they never fully pushed to elevate the guys they want to push now, and it doesn't really work that way.

I thought it was very cool as well! Flair/HHH doing Braveheart and Benoit/Jericho/Christian/Stacy doing Basic Instinct is good stuff also.

It frustrated me to no end, actually, but I liked Ric Flair, even as a kid, and he was champ much of the time, and he was also the main reason I kept watching. It's amazing how many ways that era influenced me as a fan, many of which were horrible. I remember in 1997 during the NWO era when Luger won the title, and I kept waiting for someone to reverse it since that's what happened most of the time when a babyface won a major title on the wrestling I grew up on. As far as the WWF goes, there were a lot of people I liked, but I always felt like the referees and announcers were too biased toward Hulk Hogan, and I felt the NWA announcers tried to be impartial, so that was the main reason I had trouble getting into the WWF. I also was really into the magazines at the time, and almost all of them bashed Hogan and the company constantly, propping up Ric Flair as a true wrestler and true champion. I can't tell you how many times I read, "Could Hulk Hogan go 60 minutes?" in one of those things, and it just sunk in with me. The NWA was really bad about letting the heels run rampant without them ever getting their comeuppance, but I thought there were better matches. I could tell the difference between good and bad matches even then, probably because I watched wrestling like a sport. If Sting, for example, had an upcoming match against Ric Flair, I was thinking of strategies he should use to counter the figure four or whatever. Just how my mind worked.

AJPW 1990 (or so) to 1996 (or so) is probably the best time period ever for a wrestling company, and I won't dispute that, but having not seen every single episode of TV, having not ordered any PPVs, having not watched any of this stuff or followed any of it as it was happening, having not browsed the wrestling magazines at checkout stands looking for any information on the top stars of the group, I can't say that it was my "favorite" time period, even if it was easily the best. I'm sure had that product happened in the US, or even been broadcast in the US as it was happening, I probably would have been really into it. It's great to look back on it, as I've seen a lot and hope to see much more, but it's a completely different animal. Because as great as the wrestling from AJPW is, because we're watching it retroactively, we can't experience little things like being ecstatic when our favorites win, or eagerly awaiting the next show, because we already know what's going to happen next. It would be the modern-day equivalent of five years worth of Smackdown spoilers being put online tomorrow. That's why I can't call it my favorite. I say that not to cheapen anything AJPW ever accomplished, but rather to put it in perspective. It's also the reason I like to watch wrestling in chronological order when I can, because I like to watch it in the order it was intended to be watched, in as close to the proper context as I can artificially create. Picking up great matches on comps does have its advantages, and we're less likely to overrate something because we get caught up in the moment no doubt, but there's something missing from that experience in the end.

I think the Attitude era had long-term repercussions that we're still feeling today, and it's still too early to say for sure, but I tend to think so many crippling long-term events happened during that time period that it's going to take a total reinvention (and I do mean a TOTAL reinvention) of the product to move forward.

I think releasing Gail Kim was a big mistake, since she had the look and the work ethic, and was rapidly improving. She probably should have stayed a babyface, because by the time Trish turned heel, she would have been super over and they could have done a feud. Instead, they had to go back to Trish/Lita, which was admittedly well-booked and built up strongly in advance, but again, Lita needs a lot of pick-me-ups and feel good moments for a while. She's taken abuse a little too much. With Victoria, I think you pretty much summed it up. She had a character that worked and was over and she was half of what was probably the best in-ring feud of the division in this era. I guess they were trying to turn her babyface to even out the talent pool, but they ruined a good thing. Kim and Vicky really should have been in opposite roles.

It's sad that 1992 is when the bubble popped on the WWF financially, because the product was very good that year.

I'd have to say mine is WCW/NWA from about 1986 to 1993. There was a lot of crap amidst the good stuff, no doubt, but the peaks were better than anything happening in the US scene most of the time. When I think of the "golden age" of my fandom, I think of people like Ric Flair, Sting, Vader, Lex Luger, Barry Windham, Brian Pillman, the Steiners, Arn Anderson, Cactus Jack, a young Steve Austin, Tully Blanchard, the Midnight Express, the Rock & Roll Express, the Dangerous Alliance, the Road Warriors and even Dusty Rhodes. I remember how crucial it was that I tune into to TBS at 6:05 Eastern time every Saturday evening. It was a tradition, and even though I had long since stopped watching the show regularly, it saddened me when it was cancelled in April of 2000, since that time slot had been synonymous with wrestling for nearly three decades. Some of my favorite memories from this time period: * The Four Horsemen hiring a cameraman to watch them attack Dusty Rhodes in a parking lot and break his arm. Most people know this as the "Make It Good" angle * Jim Cornette hitting Baby Doll with his tennis racket in the stomach, and them implying that she'd never be able to have children as a result * The Four Horsemen attacking Ricky Morton and rubbing his face in the concrete backstage. That entire feud was fantastic -- Flair's promos holding up training bras in Morton's face to make fun of the age of his fans was priceless. * Nikita Koloff turning babyface and challenging Ric Flair * Ric Flair and Barry Windham and their classic feud * Jim Cornette throwing a fireball in Ron Garvin's face * Ole Anderson being kicked out of the Four Horsemen because he put his family first, leaving room for Lex Luger to join the group * Magnum TA returning to the NWA after his car accident, and how even the heels were so moved they were crying * WAR GAMES! All of them ... * Lex Luger being kicked out of the Horsemen for throwing JJ Dillon over the top rope at a Bunkhouse Stampede * Barry Windham turning on Luger and joining the Four Horsemen in what was probably my very favorite angle of all time * Sting showing up and creating so much excitement immediately by pushing Ric Flair to the limit * The Midnight Express/Fantastics feud, and the wild brawl they had at Clash I with the ringside area pretty much being destroyed * The Midnight Express holding the World and US tag titles at the same time * Barry Windham becoming the personification of cool, wearing the black leather, growing a beard, and wearing a black glove so he could start using the claw hold * How furious I was when Lex Luger was robbed of the World title ... all 756 times! * Ricky Steamboat coming back from nowhere and beating Ric Flair in a tag match where he was the mystery partner * Flair and Barry Windham breaking Eddie Gilbert's nose by Flair kneedropping him on the face on the concrete at ringside * Dusty Rhodes getting a spike in the eye from the Road Warriors (and losing his job for blading during primetime) * Chi-Town Rumble! The Chicago crowd was hot for every match, and Flair's entrance is the best I've ever seen for any wrestler * How exciting it was anytime a Clash of the Champions came on * Ric Flair getting piledriven on the table by Terry Funk * Terry Funk dressing up a jobber like Ric Flair and making fun of him * The Great Muta doing moves no one else was doing at the time in the US * Terry Funk suffocating Ric Flair with a plastic bag * The Midnights and Cornette setting up the Dynamic Dudes * Sting getting kicked out of the Horsemen * The Steiners doing cool tag moves I had never seen before * The Freebirds creating a weird story about how the Southern Boys were really from Wisconsin, and how they'd yell "I smell cheese" anytime they were announcing a match the team had. They also pretended they were huge rock stars selling tons of albums, and they'd occasionally go "on tour", leaving "Carlos and Leo" behind in their place. See, Lance Russell, host of NWA Pro, hired an investigative reporter to show that the whole Freebirds act was a total lie, and the Freebirds retaliated by saying they had hired two Cuban actors who looked exactly like them to play their part in the videos, and they felt so sorry for those guys being hoodwinked that they tried to get them a job. As goofy and fun as it sounds * The Midnights and Southern Boys tearing down the house at the 1990 Great American Bash * Teddy Long having to be Ric Flair's Chauffeur For A Day * The BAD backlash over Flair getting fired from WCW * The Dangerous Alliance! * Jushin "Thunder" Liger coming in and having a really good series with Brian Pillman * Jake Roberts showing up out of nowhere and injuring Sting * Cactus Jack and Abdullah the Butcher coming out of gift boxes and attacking Sting * Ron Simmons winning the World title and the Baltimore Arena crowd going insane * Vader beating the hell out of everyone * Vader powerbombing Cactus Jack on the concrete floor * The Heavenly Bodies and Jim Cornette invading WCW Saturday Night and Cornette shooting on pretty much everyone in the company There's probably tons more I am forgetting. Honorable mention goes to the NWO's early days (June-November 1996). I was less interested after Eric Bischoff joined the group, but the early days were just one great angle after another (Hall and Nash powerbombing Bischoff, Hogan turning heel, a fake Sting joining the NWO with everyone convinced it was the real one, Kevin Nash turning Rey Misterio into a human dart and he and Nash leaving the entire locker room laid out backstage). From the WWF, my two favorite time periods were late 1991 when Flair came in and Savage was feuding with Jake, and April-November of 1997, when Bret Hart turned heel and the US/Canada feud was at a fever pitch. What would you guys consider your favorite time period?

Oh, and Sek, I added an "i" to official, since it always bugs me when there's a word spelled wrong in a thread title.

The problem with women in wrestling is that it is a male-dominated business, and whenever one of the women starts standing out from the pack and becoming a draw, she's not going to get credit for it anyway. They tried to push Sable and Chyna in the mainstream, and they both got big heads and it backfired on the company, so now, they've come to the conclusion that all women are exactly like them and none of them are level-headed enough to handle a big push. I have no qualms about using women as wrestling characters on the show. Stephanie McMahon was a wrestling character. Trish Stratus is a wrestling character. The problem comes when they start using women who have no purpose outside of being eye candy. Their shelf lives are going to be limited, and they're going to get stale very quickly. Stacy Keibler is working her first storyline in nearly two years right now with Randy Orton. They had something special with her in 2002, but it seems like after Vince took her to Australia and (most likely) fucked her, the company seemed less interested in doing anything with her or trying to make her a star. Trish Stratus is still treated as a star, but she has withstood some horrid booking and maintained her appeal somehow. She deserves all the credit in the world for doing so. Someone like Sunny was able to get over in 1996 because aside from Sable, she was the only woman on the show, but more so, because she was a great interview and had a lot of natural charisma. Trish is the closest thing to the total package since then, and she's used and abused so much of the time that I don't know that she'll ever meet her full potential. She remained one of the hottest characters on the show after turning heel, and she's really too good to be feuding with other women at this point, when she could probably be more useful in storylines with men. Put her in an expensive evening gown, get her some jewelry and make her the Woman to HHH's Flair, and you're far more likely to get something useful out of her. Molly has a truly unique appeal, but they've turned her into the type of heel that isn't even an effective heel, but more the type that people groan when they see. She's a real woman with a real body and they've taken pride in humiliating her, calling her a fatass, shaving her head and portraying her as a prude since she's a virgin. How sweet. I don't know that she still has that same appeal unless they turn her babyface, and it would take a lot of doing to make the audience buy into it. They turned Victoria babyface without much logic or build and she hasn't ever really been able to get over in that role, when she stood out as the psycho chick feuding with Trish Stratus in 2002. Torrie Wilson they've actually done a decent job with. They've done vignettes (that probably should air on Smackdown instead of Confidential) talking about her having an eating disorder as a teenager before overcoming it and becoming comfortable with her body. That's the sort of thing they could use to draw in a teen female demographic. Her posing in Playboy has been treated with a certain level of class, and I don't think most of the audience sees her as a skank. Of course, I may be wrong. Lita, of all the women, had the most opportunity to really connect with young girls, primarily because of the risks she takes in the ring and her look, but Lita has been beaten down over and over in storylines and has only rarely stood up for herself. She has a habit of stumbling over her words and they make her look stupid constantly. I think she's salvageable, but they need to do more to protect her when she returns, meaning they should probably keep her out of the ring, since she can't really execute moves or take bumps without nearly killing herself. The eye candy just hanging out backstage needs to stop for good. All it's doing is frustrating the hardcore fan base without attracting anyone new.

It's my specialty. And yes, the PRIDE match counts, as long as it answers the question "What are you watching?" and it's some sort of pro wrestling, which Dave Meltzer swears that it is. Great review. I'll be honest and say I want to get into PRIDE/MMA/shoot style/whatever-word-best-describes-all-that-stuff, but I'm terrified of it.

Hacked from HTQ at TSM, who I've asked to post here, but hasn't surfaced yet. This is a great read. The World Wrestling Federation needs to, now, commission a study of why they and wrestling in general are losing the over-30 audience so rapidly. This goes against the company thought process, because despite what may be said publicly, the company's target age group and strongest demo per capita is Males 12-24. However, the age group that is losing interest in wrestling the fastest is those over the age of 30, who make up the vast majority television viewership for most programs (average viewership age of most network hit shows is early 40s), and are traditionally the most loyal fans. When wrestling peaked in late 1998 and early 1999, there were just under six million viewers over the age of 30 watching every Monday night. At that point, WWF was winning the ratings, but within that age group, WCW had a slight lead and it was still a dogfight for that group as late as 2000. WCW always skewed older (the average WCW viewer for Nitro and Thunder ranged between 35 and 39, older for the more traditional WCW Saturday night until it was left for dead) than WWF (average viewer was usually about 25). Perhaps its version of pro wrestling (at least pre-Nash and Russo) was closer to what the older audience was comfortable with and the stars were people they were more familiar with. Currently, that number on Monday's is closer to two million. To lose that many viewers in an age group that would be the most loyal so quickly is the single biggest problem facing pro wrestling today, particularly long-term. And it is one that has largely been ignored because of who the WWF sees its target audience as. It is also a large part of why ratings have declined as well as overall wrestling interest for all products that would appeal to long-time fans. About the time WCW went into a similar decline, it commissioned a study, where it studied the audience that was no longer watching the product, as well as those who still watched, and what they liked and didnt like about the product. At that point, and this was done two years ago, fans wanted more emphasis on the wrestling, less on the silly angles, interviews and skits. The results were 180 degrees different to what the people in charge (Russo at the time) thought wrestling should be. As people remember, the people in charge got the study, rejected it, and the guy who did the study quit, and the company went in its blind and merry way out of business. The most powerful people when it comes to constructing a television wrestling show these days are the writers. Writers write shows to show the value of the writers over the wrestlers. Often they make themselves central characters even though they aren?t wrestlers, and, with the occasional exception (Vince McMahon), in 80% or more of the cases, its the kiss of death. This business is in its worst shape in modern memory because of people in charge of WCW having no clue as to what their audience wanted. WWF, in appealing to a younger audience, there is a far greater divergence in what they want, and fixing problems is actually far more difficult than it would have been for WCW at the same stage of the decline. WWF have polarized audiences that want exactly what many others don?t want, unlike the older WCW audience that largely had similar opinions of what they wanted the product to be, and weren?t getting. WWF is huge in studying fan response. Vince McMahon makes changes literally every week based on crowd reactions at TV tapings. Unfortunately, all the time spent analysing their current audience and doing the monstrous job of producing so much television every week made them skip out on studying the last few years of WCW and all the lessons learned, because they are repeating so many of the same mistakes. It was sad that as WCW?s numbers declined, they started throwing blame everywhere but where it belonged, as a way to not have to address the real problems, which never did get addressed. Also sad to see WWF starting to do the same thing. Blaming outside forces for people not buying tickets. Blaming critics for the fact their product is starting to get negative criticism despite declining ratings showing that something is wrong. This is what WWF needs to do. Find out the audience leaving wrestling the fastest, probably ages 30-45, mostly male. Contact cable companies for names of people that purchased wrestling PPVs in 1998 in all three companies. I know the data exists, because our local cable company sent out mailers and had phone calls made to former UFC fans, the last local broadcast being four years ago, to remind them of the last show. Start making calls and, in particular, do a study, not of people who purchased the last PPV, in fact, ignore them. But have a lot of questions to ask among those who stopped buying PPV, what is missing and why and what would interest you to come back. If they give an answer such as the return of 1980s wrestling or 80s stars, ignore them. Some people have left the product for reasons that cant be avoided and you aren?t going to get them back. But the majority of long-time fans, I'd suggest, want to be fans today, still have a very casual interest and would be fans if there were storylines and characters that they could identify with without feeling screwed and stupid, ironically by the company presenting them, for caring. Do the same for people on the expired list of WWF and WCW Magazine subscriptions. Go to the gyms, or sporting events, and hire people to ask around about wrestling and see what the masses are saying, and aren't The current fan base isn?t the answer to the problems. They are still watching. The Internet isn?t the answer, because on the internet, you are getting a different type of fan who is going to give different answers. Often the people who aren?t watching will give you the same answers as the people who are. During the decline of WCW, the same things people were saying on our internet show for a totally specialized audience or in letters here were the same things I heard from my friends who had a very casual interest, or from people at the gym who were constantly telling me how Vince Russo was killing the product, and they meant the television character and the nature of the writing. They had no inside info and didn?t care about the backstage political atmosphere. But they knew what they didn?t like and they knew why they stopped watching. One of the biggest problems many companies have had on the way down the drain is listening to the wrong audience, which is the audience that has remained after you've run the casual fans off. I can specifically remember going to a WCW event at the Nassau Coliseum on February 14, 2000, when the company was taking on water badly. Hulk Hogan and Ric Flair got far bigger reactions than everyone else on the show. I realized right there, that being in the building, was the worst thing for the people making decisions. The veterans were experts at working the crowd. The paid attendance for that show (headlined by an advertised Hogan vs. Flair match) was terrible, but if you were there, you would come to the conclusion they were the only guys the fans cared about And you'd be right, but since they weren?t pulling fans in, they couldn?t be built around either. But for years, Bischoff was in those arenas (it was funny, but at the end, before his failed attempt to buy the company, he started staying away from the arenas on purpose to watch on TV and see how the masses saw things) and saw how the crowd reacted to Hogan and Sting, not realizing he was going with a pat hand far too long and planting the seeds for what happened. Generally speaking, the guys on top, because they have the most TV time and are portrayed on top, are going to get the best pops among those that pay, kind of inherently, but if nobody is paying, those pops mean zilch. This creates a redundancy, because then they continue to be featured. However, while they may get the best pops, they are only human and will get stale. New acts have to be put on top to create new match-ups to get people to continually spend money for tickets to see something different Deciding next month's card by listening to this month's audience response means the audience, and not the promoter, is the manipulator The audience doesn?t understand its responsibility to keep the main events fresh, but the promoter doesn?t know exactly where he's going, which kills the long-term storylines which are the foundation of turning around business. The older audience can make a bigger difference in overall ratings if they were given a product they like. But catering your product to regaining them has its risks. They may be gone for good, sans the occasional tuning in for nostalgia purposes, and nostalgia only works very short-term in entertainment and in wrestling. You don't want to alienate a younger audience that wants something different. But a good product should be able to attract both, witness the growth of both Nitro and Raw at about the same time with divergent products. In television, when an audience loses interest in a TV show because of whatever reason, bad writing, stale characters, over a season, it is next to impossible to get them hack even with new writers and an improved product. They've moved on. Maybe they'll come back for a wedding special or a farewell show. Everyone's idea of what they want out of wrestling is different and you can never please everyone. In 1995-96. when the Monday night phenomenon started, teenagers increased but much of the new audience was 35+, not so much drawn by YVWF Raw fans switching to WCW, but WCW creating a new audience of older fans interested in the stars they grew up with mixed in with new stars in a new format that looked state-of-the-art Ultimately, it was the inability (with the notable exception of Bill Goldberg and maybe Paul Wight, both of whom were squandered anyway, and DDP to a far lesser extent) to use the old names create new stars, and the old names holding onto their position as they got stale, that killed it. The lessons of 1996 tells us fans from every age group can be brought back if the product re-invents itself, and perhaps there is real competition and more of an unpredictable feel to the show leading to a cant miss feeling. But the contract situation in wrestling is different. There is no movement from territory-to-territory or super North American workers making a living in Japan and Mexico to revolutionize the in-ring product to allow constantly bringing in new faces to rise to the top. You cant recreate Nitro, or for that matter, 1997 Raw. They tried to recreate 1997 Raw with Angle as Austin, and it failed. Even the lessons of July tell us the right angle and right comeback, the lost audience will test the waters. But they wont stay more than a few weeks if they don?t like what they get The lesson of 10/8 says the opposite, that a lot of damage has been done over the last two months that isn?t so easy to turn around even by promising the greatest show of all-time and pushing a match as PPV quality for free. The decline among teenagers can be explained because that audience is into the latest fad. Wrestling isn?t nearly as hot in high schools as a few years ago, and some of that decline was inevitable. The Male 12- 29 audience is also more important for overall business, as that audience is far more likely to attend house shows and buy merchandise. The teenage audience is tough to reach for everyone, which is why Vince McMahon was considered a promotional genius by so many when he got them. The over-30 audience is totally different, especially when it comes to sports. While most sports have had ratings declines, a lot of the decline is because they are losing so much ground with younger viewers, as well as the inevitable decline ratings will have when there are so many different stations to choose from as compared with even a few years ago. When it comes to the major sports, even with rising ticket prices, attendance has not shown a significant decline. With pro wrestling, live attendance has never been lower in modem history, largely because there is only one major league product and the amount of people willing to support a perceived minor league product is very small. But non-wrestling changes can not even start to address a decline of around 65 percent in what should be the steadiest and most loyal audience demographic, since the older people are, the more their habits are long-term patterned based. Wrestling being presented so much as entertainment, with no realism (it was really telling a few weeks ago when Kurt Angle was wheeled out on a stretcher and everyone laughed, or when fans visible on TV were leaving in droves during the Smackdown main event with Rock involved), its fake sports trappings such as emphasis on results and title changes being dropped, a lot of what may have attracted and kept that audience through the years is no longer an important part of the current product To say you had to sacrifice some of the older audience to capture the newer audience is logical, and also true (something similar happened when Vince McMahon changed wrestling in 1984 and the result was a stronger audience base of new fans, and while many older fans complained about wrestling changing, they stuck around for most of that decade and eventually either got into the new product or the competing major league companies doing a different style). Wrestling has to constantly evolve or it becomes stagnant. It's an unfortunate fact of life for people who enjoy and are comfortable with a certain version of a wrestling product, because the reality is a pat hand in wrestling is quickly a losing hand. But change that doesn?t work is even worse than not changing, because if you alienate the existing audience without creating an equal or larger new audience, the result is. well. WCW A lot of the older audience left during the period WCW imploded its halt A lot more left when WCW disappeared. WWF picked up some of the disenfranchised WCW audience during its last few years of decline, hut now has lost more that it picked up over the past year, and in particular, since WCW folded and the Invasion was botched. It needs to be noted that this audience did not turn off the current style or product mix. Most were still watching one year ago. The lengthy interviews and shorter matches were the product that existed at its peak, and were a larger audience than existed during romantic glory days of Jim Crockett in the mid-80?s. which was already dying, not so much as a product form, but because of stale talent and too many turns and bad finishes, as early as 1987 and was dead the next year except for the TBS life support which kept it alive until it was finally profitable in 1996 for a three-year strong run. The audience turned oft" what it perceived was a bad product, more so in WCW, but now with WWF. This is where the current decline differs from previous down periods. When wrestling constricted in the early 90s, the loyal fans stuck with the product. A lot of Johnny-come-latelys left, and were gone until 1996, when the business got hot again. This decline has been more among loyal fans, many of whom were fans for 15 years or longer. They are the hardest audience to run off, because it's a patterned and in many cases important part of their life. As we saw with WCW, and now with WWF as late as two months ago, many will come back at the slightest sign of hope things are turning around. But after a while, they wont be fooled and teased any longer. WCW was able to hype occasional big events and get noticeably larger audiences based on the promise things would turn around. If you check back, after a few weeks, that audience decided the direction wasn?t to their liking, and the decline got worse. WWF had a similar situation with the WCW invasion, then the ECW invasion and the Rock return, only to lose that audience through weak storylines and the biggest problem of all. Probably the single biggest cause of the decline and deaths of wrestling companies is the failure to constantly make new stars. WCW lost its audience when the old stars faded, and there was no more hope they could create new ones. When they had established their mid-card as people who weren't going to be elevated, fans gave up their emotional attachment to watching the young guys rise. The company was dead, even though it didn?t know it at the time. Today's ratings patterns differ from a year ago in one major way. A year ago, the mid-card was over. The Edge, Christian, Hardy Boys, Benoit, Jericho, Guerrero core were hot midcarders on their way up. Fans were teased by their holding their own with the big names, frustrated by their false starts, and eventually, stopped caring once they figured out there was a glass ceiling. A second problem, again based on those same names, is there needs to be a constant influx of new people throughout the card. WWF is paying the price today for having such a great product and giving the fans too much. Fans saw these guys when they were willing to take risks to get over. Now they are, "better workers," and "smarter workers," but they aren't fresh talent. Fresh talent cant get in because they don?t have the talent of the guys who are in. But by not getting in, the product in inherently stale. We've seen that in the 90s in Japan, where the product got so ridiculously good, that few could compete at the top level and fan expectation of a main event grew to where few guys could do it. Those guys did it, but eventually, their matches had been done and there was nothing new. No dream matches left. No mega-business left. After having written all this, I threw up, as a question, on the internet, that if you were past 30, had been a fan forever, and your interest was declining or not there anymore when it came to the current WWF product, let me know why. The response was ridiculous. I'll throw up questions all the time and get a few dozen responses. This was getting a dozen or more responses every half hour. Literally, enough material to write at least one full book on the subject. This question hit a nerve like no question I've ever asked. I will say right now that these results may say something, but this is by no means a sub for what I'm suggesting WWF needs to do. The specialized fans may be more into aspects like match quality. Bottom line is that a good match is better than a bad match, but the most important aspect to the masses are constant creation of new superstars and thus new main event matches, gripping storylines (as opposed to lots of bad storylines that blend in together so that nobody cares about them) and wrestlers who combine both a solid style in the ring with a lot of fan interaction, the decline in the latter, like the sing along with Rock interviews and the "suck it" and the "five second pose" parts of the show that have disappeared have coincided with a loss in at least the younger audience Any response I got is based on a very narrow audience?people who came to a specialized web site on a Wednesday, and should be taken accordingly, just as WWF and WCW both made huge mistakes in recent years in thinking its majority audience goes to web sites when it is a tiny percentage, which shows why "inside references" on interviews usually get Hat responses from arena crowds The tact that so many aren?t watching the product itself, but are still interested enough in the news to click on, on a day without a substantive news story, was shocking. Even with this newsletter, over the last few months I've been floored with letters saying how they are re-subscribing, but don?t watch wrestling anymore. I've been doing this for 20 years, and never got letters like that Now I get them on almost a daily basis. There is something really wrong when a monopoly promotion is losing interest among people who wrestling is a major part of their life and has been for years. Some of this is inevitable, because change is going to leave people behind that want things as they were but cant be anymore. Time does move on. There are probably a lot of similarities in these results to what the problems are. but the real problem is not in running off Observer readers or web site junkies, but in running off the millions?and millions of no longer Rock fans whose only connection to the business is watching television and buying an important PPV or paying to see the stars coming to their city. After going through several hundred letters, here are the items mentioned most often by people who categorized themselves as disenfranchised long-term fans over the age of 30. Should mention that the top five on the list all had significant responses (mentioned prominently in 60-80 letters), while starting with No. 6, there was a significant difference: 1: Botched Invasion angle: It's a current subject, and it does coincide with a recent decline in ratings. The complaints were that the WCW and ECW forces were portrayed as jobbers, the McMahon?s never should were looking forward to like no other in recent years, because of all the possibilities. Everyone figured this could be the biggest money feud in wrestling history. The first PPV was a huge success. And then it died. People were left flat by its execution, and the signs were in neon that ego got in the way of huge business. As far as an angle with unbelievable potential that seems to have gone unrealised, this was huge, and even would agree it's No. 1 as to why recent audiences have lost interest, but cant buy it's turned more people off than many things WCW did from 1998 on. 2: Shane and Stephanie: It's funny, because ratings patterns seem to say the opposite, but people seem to really resent the amount of television time these two have. They resent Stephanie's interview time and that the top stars sell for Shane like he's a main event wrestler. Their ownership of WCW and ECW was a booking disaster, that hasn?t been rectified, which shows yet another problem even more serious. But I still think this is more a problem for the internet audience. To the casual audience, the problem is there are a handful of stars who get the bulk of the TV focus and the serious interview time, Shane and Stephanie being two of them, and everyone else has been portrayed as not being on that level nor will they get to that level which is the key point, and people lake them as unimportant, and people aren?t devoting as much time to watching what they perceive as unimportant parts of the show. 3: No Flair, Goldberg, Sting, Hall, Nash, Hogan: Those were the names mentioned most often with the pattern that wrestling isn?t interesting because their favorite or longstanding wrestlers aren?t on the scene. Virtually nobody mentioned Savage, Piper or anyone else. Of those, by far, Flair's name was mentioned the most followed by Goldberg and then Sting, although the feeling in letters, as it should be, is that Goldberg was the most valuable to the WWF of the group, but for older fans, there is more of an emotional tie to Flair. I think there would be some casual interest return if these names were on television, but only if they were portrayed strongly, and this is a hell of an argument to bring Hall, Nash and Flair in with a few other faces next year if possible, even with the potential downsides Hall & Nash could bring. I think it would be beneficial to not call them Razor Ramon and Diesel. 4: Disenfranchised WCW fan: This was a group that seemed to either start out as a fan of WCW, in most cases dating back to the Jim Crockett days on the Superstation in the 80s, and some starting out with Ole Anderson's Georgia Championship Wrestling at 6:05 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays, or start out in the 70s and 80s as a fan of another promotion, often WWF, and migrate to the WCW TV show on the Superstation because of the superior workrate and drama and less frills version of wrestling When the show was cancelled in March, that was it for their interest in wrestling. This group was pretty strong that they never liked Vince McMahon?s version of wrestling, or at least hadn?t since the 80s, and their interest in wrestling died when McMahon appeared on the final Nitro. If McMahon had been able to get WCW, with most of the same names, influx a few of his names and outside names, promote it smarter, kept a different style, he probably could have maintained most of the 2.5 million Nitro exclusive viewers that were there at the end. Their TV soap opera was cancelled and it won?t be revived. Buffy changed networks and became even more popular. The failure of WCW wasn?t a failure of the style as much as a failure of the leadership. Those fans aren't coming back unless something spectacular happens to bring them back. Many people who fit into this category were fans of WCW specifically because it was the Southern brand, or because it wasn?t the Vince McMahon brand, and many of those people indicated they aren?t coming back. No matter what the poll says, the audience departure suits say this is reason No. 1. There is one thing also to consider on this. In 1984, Vince McMahon bought Georgia Championship Wrestling and for one year had the traditional time slot on TBS. When he and Ted Turner had their falling out, McMahon sold the time slot to Jim Crockett in the spring of 1985. The companies had entirely different styles and none of the same stars, but once getting the slot, immediately did big ratings (bigger than McMahon?s) and their promotion had its hottest year in its history, as the new time slot created a whole slew of new national stars like Rock & Roll Express, Magnum T.A., Tully Blanchard, Am Anderson, Nikita Koloff, Midnight Express and later Sting while using previously established stars on the station like Ric Hair, Dusty Rhodes and Ole Anderson as the backbone. Of course they were an established hot promotion with a style fans watching wrestling on that station were used to and built around Rhodes, who was the biggest draw on the station before McMahon got the slot. It's really too bad that politically and contractually McMahon wasn?t able to keep WCW on the air on TNT because of his Viacom exclusive (five years from now, that Viacom deal is going to be an interesting thing to look back on in many ways) and that Viacom wouldn?t give him a prime time slot quickly for his new acquisition. It may have failed anyway, but I'd like everyone's chances a whole lot better. Like we've written before, when the overview of this industry is written in a few years, the major historical events are not the good and bad bookers and good or bad champions, but decisions made by television executives that change the course of history irrevocably. 5: 20 minute interviews: This was cited as the main tumoff of Raw and Smackdown. There was a lot of consistency in response that people didn?t mind three to five minute promos from top people, and most fans love interviews, but the lengthy promos at the start of the show were mentioned by too many people as the specific reason they no longer watch the show. 6: Legs cut from under midcarders: Somewhere along the way, they gave up hope that midcarders were ever going to advance. They've been teased with false starts too many times and no longer watch. This hurt WCW and led to its decline, and the same thing is happening in WWF. This one is big. 7: No suspension of disbelief: Or product mix. This is a group that wanted their wrestling product to be believable and characters consistent, and felt that was no longer the case. Characters doing things inconsistent with their character. Steve Austin's name frequently thrown in, often mentioned his alignment with Vince McMahon?people came to WWF based on the strength of that program and there was no logical storyline explanation for their uniting, basically the WWF was giving its fans that supported Austin the finger. This, along with a less than serious product and less dramatic product were all mentioned. I think there is something to this, but in the current environment, it's going to be hard to recreate it New Japan is the company trying with its usage of shootfighters, and I think most would say it isn?t working. 8: Can?t get emotionally involved in characters: This seems to be a mix between points six and seven. Basically people aren?t fans of specific wrestlers because they cant get into the logic of how they are written, or have been burned too many times wanting and being teased they are climbing the ladder, only to get nowhere. Once again, illogical turns (Austin once again) and storylines that aren?t consistent were mentioned. This one I think is very valid, and points to writers who haven?t watched the shows long enough as casual fans, although names like Heyman, Hayes and Prichard have been around the business their entire lives so that shouldn?t be the situation. 9: Lack of competition: I thought this would finish much higher. Some of this would figure into the folding of WCW and ECW and it was mentioned often. Wrestling is less interesting because there is only one major league group on television in the U.S. Once again points to almost a necessity of making a second company and making it a strong rebellious company with shots taken back-and-forth. but it's also something seemingly simple that has been such a disappointment already 10: Vince Russo: The period he was writing for WCW led to people stopping being wrestling fans. This was again a group of long-term WCW fans who weren't going to be WWF fans anyway. The Russo era ended their fandom of WCW even before the company closed its doors. He destroyed the product base of WCW. which led to a lot of audience turned off during the Nash era to give up hope completely. In hindsight, this period can't be underestimated. 11: Lack of emphasis on titles: Pretty much self explanatory. Also, too many titles on WWF broadcasts so titles, which used to be the holy grail when it came to their quest was the key in building business, have no meaning and thus most programs have no meaning. I see this as similar to reason No. 8, again because some of the writers didn't grow up as or around a lot of wrestling fans or studied the business long-term to see that the biggest gates usually came from long storylines based on chasing titles. It's a chicken and egg thing now, as fans don?t care about any title but the WWF belt, and care less about that than they have in the past, so putting more emphasis is scary if fans don?t buy it. 12: Too much T & A: A surprising answer finishing this high. A lot of women responded that this, and the overall portrayal of women on WWF broadcasts, with the reason they gave up watching Raw and Smackdown, but there were men who didn?t like it either and stopped watching. In most cases, the explanation from men who stopped watching and listed this as the reason isn?t that they hated it in and of itself, but that they felt they weren't good parents to have the show on because they had children in the house, which led to them not watching for parental responsibility, and thus losing interest in the product overall. Also listed (and not counted but perhaps should have been) was too many women and too many matches involving women who cant wrestle. While this does turn some people off and others on, the T&A increase led to an increase in popularity across the board early. Like everything in wrestling, when a little bit of something works, it's shoved down your throat until it doesn?t At this point it's considered part of the product and I think they'd lose more of an audience totally eliminating it, but overdoing it is also a negative. One relatively short segment on Raw a week is probably enough. 13: Kurt Angle/HHH/Stephanie storyline ending: More than any other angle, by far, this was named. Generally people liked the angle, some loved it, but the conclusion was in many people's minds, the beginning of the end. There was only one possible conclusion for long-term business, which was Stephanie ending up with Angle and HHH being the jilted babyface going for revenge. It's a storyline that almost everyone could relate to, which is why the build-up was such a huge success and got Angle over as a major heel. Instead, Stephanie sided with HHH, who beat Angle in their climactic match, and the feud ended flat just before it should have just started to draw money. This was the first example of where the egos of the people involved killed the most interesting angle in the company, not to mention that if Angle wasn?t such a great performer, he'd have ended up just like the Hardy?s positioning wise after his run with HHH. The company has yet to run another long-term angle anywhere close to as good as this, and this one was squandered before the payoff, and again, a lot of people trace the ending of their emotional bond with WWF angles to this. 14: Bad WWF television writing: Pretty much self explanatory. 15: WCW misusing Ric Flair: This came from long-time WCW fans who didn?t last until the end. The turnoff was the portrayal of Ric Flair, both as a heel when people didn?t want to boo him, but more as never getting his revenge against the top guys when he was the biggest ratings draw and most popular talent to the masses in the company. Am Anderson's name was also mentioned a lot, as were the frequent Horsemen revivals and quick destructions. This was the beginning of the end of the NWO era when NWO vs. Horseman, a feud that should have been strong, was botched because the powers at the time wouldn?t allow the Horsemen to be competitive. Since much of the adult audience was with WCW even in late 1999 and early 2000, and Flair was the company's biggest ratings draw until he was abused and turned heel to the point nobody cared (kiss of death probably the spring of 2000 turn) and ratings dropped, this is probably pretty significant. I think more than a lot of things listed above it 16: Stale WWF product: Same guys on top Same style of show, short matches, lengthy interview. No new matches. Rehashed angles. Many things went into this complaint 17: No character consistency: This was a complaint both from the dying days of WCW as well as WWF. It wasn't so much the frequent turns, although that complaint was there, hut the lack of storyline to explain changes. Steve Austin's name and heel turn, particularly joining with Vince McMahon and HHH was frequently mentioned. Fans surrogately lived through Austin in hating HHH and Vince, and suddenly Austin didn?t care. It was like they had invested all this emotion in a fake storyline and felt jilted. Make no mistake about it, the Austin heel role, and teased face turn, coincided with all the downs and ups of ratings since Mania. 18: Life got busier: This was a point that wrestling itself and its product had no control over. People who simply said as they got older, usually got a family and children and the amount of time left over for watching Wrestling wasn?t there. Different priorities caused interest to wane. The fact this was not in the top ten means that while it is a factor, wrestling factors were far more important. But there is always an audience of wrestling fans whose lives change when they get married and have children. Some do drop out of fandom, but when wrestling is hot, the fan base in all age groups increase. This is a very valid reason for some people, but not a valid reason for a decline in the wrestling viewing audience or the adult audience would have, throughout history, always declined. 19: Too much bad comedy: Self explanatory. People said if they wanted to watch comedy on Monday, they'd watch "Everybody Loves Raymond." They wanted to watch wrestling on Monday and weren't getting enough of it. 20: Rehashed storylines: Kurt Angle was doing all the same things that Steve Austin did to get over in 1997-98. People are watching repeats of what they had already seen. Part of the problem is during the 1997-2000 war period, so much was thrown out so fast that there is nothing new fans haven?t seen. Fans saw more angles and title changes in that four-year period than people who were fans from 1980-96 saw in 17 years, so everything started to look the same. It's not so much a lack of creativity, but paying for the excesses of the boom period. 21 Too many run-ins: Self explanatory. People have seen run-ins so often they became numbing. There is a reason for run-ins; to get heat. When you do it so often it becomes a regular occurrence, there is no heat. Now it's such an established part of wrestling that they are done in almost every match, and nobody probably ever stands back, gets away from the product, thinks about how the fan is taking this, and recognizes a pattern in some form needs changing. And there is a fear of change, so where if there is no run-in during the main events, there is no way to book a finish. To a lesser extent, too many referee bumps was also mentioned. 22: Lack of surprises: Things are too predictable. This isn?t the illogical swerves that make no sense from character consistency, but the surprises such as newcomers arriving and jumps like in the heyday. 23:Not enough wrestling: There is always the balance of how much time during a show should be wrestling time. Bottom line is a lot of these complaints are from people who romanticize about wrestling and what it was in the past, which, in reality, it more often that not wasn?t. Most wrestling TV shows since the early 80s consisted of 3-5 minute television matches. At one point, WCW Saturday Night under Dusty Rhodes, during a period where ratings declined greatly, was doing a 30 second squash match/90 second interview format. The long matches were always saved for the arenas, and bottom line, on PPV you get 10 minute matches on the undercard, and 20 minute main events that more often than not are great. But there are people not watching because not enough time is spent in the ring. There is also a newer audience weaned on skits that considers the time in the ring as boring unless it's with one of the five or six main guys. You can?t satisfy both audiences. 24: WCW and ECW getting buried in losses: More on the Botched Invasion. These are fans who have stopped watching because they were sick of their favorites getting buried in results. This is very similar to watching WCW in this city with the Mexican audience. Konnan and company came to San Jose for AAA and drew 4,500+. A few years later, they came back with WCW, as midcarders with all the so-called huge stars of WCW added to the mix, and drew 2,000, with virtually no Mexican fans coming to the show. The Mexicans, huge wrestling fans in this market, were not going to pay money to watch their superstars portrayed as midcarders nor care about seeing the people they relate to as non-stars. I can remember going to a Japanese video store the day after Chigusa Nagayo appeared as Zero on Nitro, and talking to the people working there who were fans, and how furious they were and wouldn't watch WCW afterwards for destroying their memory of their childhood hero. One of the biggest lures of wrestling, and everyone seems to have forgotten it is identifying with a hero who may stumble, but if he does, immediately gets back up and goes for it. When your hero loses cleanly and it doesn?t lead to them at least trying to rectify it, or they ignore it, you will lose faith. Why would the disenfranchised WCW fans pay to watch WCW wrestlers on WWF shows when they know they are bit players to be humiliated? It's the reason ethnic superheroes in the past drew, but having ethnics on the undercard just based on their ethnicity were a waste of a promoters' time. 25: Ruining Steve Austin: Once again, a character consistency issue as well as portraying someone as a heel that the fans want to cheer for. What?s frustrating about this one is we wrote about this the day he turned and it turned out exactly as we figured, only worse. Its Ric Flair in the Carolinas all over again, except on a national basis. Austin was great in the ring as a heel, and out of the ring. Problem is, fans liked him. They weren't going to pay money to boo him although to those there, he could manipulate the crowd every night with his actions to get the desired response. In wrestling, people see the desired response (hey, the crowd, even in Texas, is booing Austin, we manipulated them) and miss the real desired response (Austin no longer selling tickets and spiking ratings like he used to). Many have mentioned the Austin turn as the beginning of WWF problems, but I also think the botched, and I mean badly botched return of Rock has hurt them more of late. He came back huge, and then did illogical jobs on TV for Rhyno (which didn't even elevate Rhyno, just took Rock down) and was pinned by Stephanie, which actually I thought was cool because it led to a situation where he needed to get revenge on her. But when Rock didn?t even care, never acknowledged the losses or looked for revenge from them, never did an interview regarding Austin, HHH and Vince, who knocked him out of action, his story that the fans knew and wanted him to get revenge for was dropped. If he didn?t care about getting screwed and wasn?t going to get even, the fans aren?t going to care much about what he does. He became a character you pop for as part of a show, and he's still a huge star, but the extra drawing power and identification with his every move is now missing. This is part of the Angle problem. Fans are not going to get emotionally behind as their hero a guy who so recently was wearing an undersized cowboy hat and a gold badge portraying the most uncool geek of a character. Other items mentioned at least ten times in letters: Favorite wrestlers got old (unavoidable); The 9/11 Smackdown show (I was shocked by this, but a lot of people specifically pointed to WWF doing this show and also the interviews Vince and Stephanie did on the show as their last straw and they no longer watch): Bill Goldberg's winning streak ended by Kevin Nash; Portrayal of women on WWF and WCW broadcasts; Kevin Nash booking regime (if you go back, this is where WCW really started losing its TV audience); Fans were given too much during the hot period and now nothing in or out of the ring seems new or exciting; Lack of old school style slow building matches based around holds (again, some changes in style are unavoidable and it to me fits into the same unavoidable category because you cant slow it down when the believability aspect has gone out the window and the lack of believability aspect has changed the product to something I don?t think it can easily return to and if that's the kind of wrestling you want and grew up with, well, I can see the problem); Same people on top for too long so no new main events; and too much television product over the past few years burned out people on wrestling.

I don't know that Edge would have ever became an insanely over top heel, but he might have, and it was worth giving him a shot. I'd SO much rather see them try and fail with new guys than not try at all, and when Edge first turned, he was hot, but now that he's done so many jobs and lost in a World title match, he's not so hot anymore. As far as Batista goes, this is exactly why any long-term babyface is doomed to fail, at least on RAW. There simply aren't enough top heels in line to allow Batista a long run. I'm sure they'll save HHH getting a rematch for two months down the line or something, just to stretch it out, but the end result will still be the same. I can't see them turning Benoit and Michaels, which is probably what it would take. Batista's big win will get a huge pop and the match with HHH has been built up very well, but there's nothing for him to do after he puts Hunter in his place. His story is over. It doesn't help that Kane was turned recently as well, considering that Batista/Kane, with the right hype, would be a big match that I think the fans would want to see.

I wouldn't be surprised if he ended up there as Buddy Rose, if he's on good terms with the company. Seems like a "blowaway" choice to me. Yuk yuk yuk yuk.

Well, I'm just surprised that they haven't at least sent invitations out to Bruno, Austin, Rock, Hogan and Bret. Can you have a credible company HOF without them?

I absolutely think you're right. The HOF is not about honoring people who deserve it -- it's more about going on a hunt for whatever old-timers you can find that are still in good graces with the company. A true HOF should be for legends, but WWE's definition of legend seems to be "Retired wrestlers that we like". Hardly.

DX was just a ripoff of the NWO, though. The crotch chops, the attitude, the edgy entrance ... it was all very similar. They were very popular, no doubt, but I'm not sure if they were the reason people came to the shows.

Well, you sure know how to make a guy feel shitty, Bruiser. I know HHH is going to cut the legs off of anyone who's a threat to him, but do you think the company will die before he is physically unable to wrestle? The point is that even if you're not grooming every single wrestler to come in for the main event, HHH can't wrestle in every match, and he can't be the only guy around. I'm not even talking about this as a way to develop great wrestlers as much as I am a way to develop new talent, to teach them how to work a crowd and teach them how to do interviews. The main reason I suggested LA for a training facility is that they're likely to attract more of the bodybuilder types they tend to mark for by putting a facility there. Creating new stars in wrestling isn't an experiment, it's a way of life, and it has to be done constantly to ensure that there are always fresh faces around and that there are always new people you can bring in. When I say stars, I don't just mean main eventers, I mean new midcarders, new tag teams, new women -- everything. Wrestlers get injured, retire, die and get stale all the time. Even if they don't all get over at the magnitude of Hogan or Austin or Rock, the system may produce another Undertaker or Bret Hart or Shawn Michaels or Ric Flair or Randy Savage. Even if they aren't pushed in main events after working hard and getting that good, because of whatever biases WWE may have, they're still going to be able to positively contribute to the final product in one way or another, and that's what's important in the end.

As you know, WWE has had a shortage of new stars over the last five years, which one could partially attribute to everyone who gets over having their legs cut out from under them, but the truth is that the system just isn't producing the amount of talent it should be. It's amazing to me that WWE has ONE training facility in OVW. They've talked about opening one more, but really, there should be training facilities all over the US. I do worry about wrestling's future in the US, if only because there are few guys today that made their name by starting out in territories and going to Japan and Mexico before coming to WWE and working their way to the top. I see the quality of work slipping because the guys will only have the know-how to work whatever the WWE style is, and I can't see the current system producing another Chris Benoit. On the flip side, you could argue that WWE is in the business of creating Hogans and Rocks, not Benoits, and you'd have a point, but they've even done a bad job there. In the past 20 years, we've had three huge stars to usher in new eras -- Hogan, Austin and Rock. There have been other names to get established along the way that do well when business is good and poor when business is bad, but those are the three that have truly changed the face of wrestling. My suggestion? I'm of the mindset they should have 10-12 training facilities scattered all over the US. Set up small territories in those areas, run them on the cheap and let the guys hone their skills. Too many guys are brought up too soon and given huge pushes before they're ready for them, and they end up falling back down the card. Here are the cities I'd suggest: Los Angeles Tampa Atlanta Detroit Minneapolis St. Louis Charlotte/Greensboro Houston/Dallas/Ft Worth Philadelphia Memphis Portland That's 11 cities they have to develop talent, which makes getting noticed by the company tougher, which means the motivation to work harder will be there, because there are no guarantees you'll be called up. Cycle the talent in from city-to-city so they can learn under as many different trainers as possible and to keep them from getting stale in one area, and if it takes 5-10 years for someone to be called up, I don't see how that's a problem. If WWE is really serious about developing a relationship with NOAH, that's wonderful news. Send the guys over there to hone their talent and give them experience working in a different setting. Allow them to adjust to a grueling schedule. The idea is that the performers who get called up are as seasoned and experienced as they can be while still being young and healthy. If WWE continues under their current model, they will eventually run out of new talent, and the talent the system does manage to produce will be incredibly limited. When I say talent, I not only mean wrestlers, but I also mean announcers, referees and even writers. Hiring writers fresh out of high school or college who are wrestling fans and want to learn about the product would produce huge dividends, sending them to all the territories, making them study wrestling history and teaching them to respect the talent. If you have someone booking in one of your towns and all of the sudden, their house shows start booming, that's a good sign that he should be called up to the big stage as well. That doesn't even get into the profit the territories would eventually run if they occasionally sent a top guy from WWE there for a well-hyped title defense. There are too many advantages, and it's possible to do it and keep overhead relatively low. This is the sort of thing WWE should probably be investing in more so than WWE Films.