Loss

He watched them out of chronological order, but you'll get to a lot of them in future years.

It wasn't so much that he only *wanted* to work so many dates per year. It's that the terms of his contract were that he worked x number of dates and if he exceeded it, they had to pay him more. Because WCW was poorly managed, they ran through most of those dates way before the year was up, then didn't want to pay him to work extra dates. The same thing happened to Sting in 1996, which is why they ad-libbed the angle that took him out of the ring for over a year.

There wasn't a better option.

He didn't turn out to be much of anything. My comment was about how the vignette was produced, not really about Gravedigger as a talent at all. WWE horror is sometimes too saccharine.

I think Hogan's best year was in WCW and was in the $6-8 million range.

It's true. Daniel Bryan took down a burglar and led a huge "Yes!" chant at a Giants game. Neither did anything to enhance his image in WWE because they were never mentioned or played up. Booking.

Whatever his best year was during this time, he pulled down $13 million.

The reason I asked that is because I think the reason it was successful was because Ryback was undefeated going in. The buys for that show proved that he did have some legs as a top guy -- even if he wasn't the next Goldberg -- but he still hasn't recovered from this loss three years later. They could have rebuilt him, but quickly lost interest. There was buzz at the time that maybe Brock would show up and cost Ryback the match to set up a feud, but Dave talked about how WWE would see that as a "wasted" appearance, which explains their problems in a nutshell. When Brock does walk away, I will be shocked if they have anything to show for his time there in the form of a new star who really got the rub from beating him. As for the Luger question, not beating Flair is what kept him from reaching the level predicted for him. I don't know if he would have been Hogan or not, but he would have been a successful top draw. I don't doubt that for a second.

Do you really think ending the streak helped him that much? The match itself might have been the worst of his comeback. But I guess WWE pushing it as a huge moment mitigated that for non-hardcores. Not arguing the point; I just hadn't thought of it as key to his aura. I think of how he worked his match with Punk at Summerslam. He was dominant but very giving by his standards, and he was even relying on Heyman interference. He didn't work that way a year later opposite Cena at Summerslam and was going to have the same squash match against Daniel Bryan. It seemed to me like he had been almost completely devalued by trading wins with HHH and losing to Cena until the streak ended. Then it was like he was a brand new guy.

Can I ask what you think was the key in the CM Punk-Ryback HIAC match being so successful on PPV?

The primary reason Brock has the aura he has now is that he beat Undertaker. The HHH feud really made him lose his luster because of the bad matches and Even Stephen booking, and the Undertaker win wiped the slate clean to allow him a fresh start. As far as HHH in 2002-2003, was his win-loss record the problem? He did TV jobs in tag matches for guys like Booker T, Rob Van Dam and Kane just as he traded PPV wins with Shawn and Goldberg. Or was the problem more that he was overexposed with too much TV time and long, boring promos? He was smart and certainly presented as a Winning Winner, which at least benefitted them in the sense that he had the occasional successful program when it was promoted properly. You could argue that the Batista program was better than anything the company has done since, which was sort of the blowoff to that period of HHH's career. I would argue that in the case of RVD and Booker, their losses were the reason they never made it past a certain level. I'm not saying RVD would have been the next top babyface who would have carried the company with a clean title win over HHH, but I do think he could have at the very least had a short, hot run. The same would be true for Booker T. Anyway, I don't want to argue this much with a poster I like. I'll concede that it's not the only factor and that part I overstated. But I won't concede that it's the most important factor.

To me, it was creepier because it was less glossy. The low-budget nature of it made it a lot freakier to me.

This is not a board that hates on WWE nearly as consistently as you defend WWE. It's great that he's a self-made man. He's not a likable person and his attitude is a turn-off. I could acknowledge that he's special and deserves his spot if I was a wrestler while still resenting the hell out of him for it. Those ideas are not in conflict with each other. I think where we differ is that I truly believe that 90% of what makes a guy a star is not whatever talents or qualities he possesses as much as it is being presented as a winning winner who wins. That's obviously a very surface description of it, and winning at the right times against the right opponents matters too. Just as there are some cases where a loss is good for a guy. Still, the point is, booking matters far, far more than whatever talents or traits a guy has. If other guys were booked like Brock, Austin and Undertaker, wrestling would have a bunch of full-time Brocks, Austins and Undertakers. I'm not a consistent WWE defender, but I am a glass half full kind of person. I will criticize the bad booking/writing/use of guys etc. as much as anyone, overall the product is not good right now and they've dropped the ball on numerous guys who could have been big stars for them, but I like to generally be positive about things I post, especially here where weekly WWE threads are full of bitching and complaining And, I happen to like and respect Brock, both as a performer and a person. Lots of people like him. You don't like him and don't find him likeable, and that's fine, but don't project your opinion on others. Also, that whole "anybody can be a huge star with good booking and if they win all the time" argument is horseshit, and you know it's horseshit. Let's not name the laundry list of guys that that was tried and failed with and it didn't work because either they weren't any good or they didn't connect with the crowd, or the push felt forced and the fans resented it being forced upon them. This happens all the time, in every promotion of every size, all over the world, past present and future. So give a fucking break. As far as the "home town promotion" thing goes. yeah, WWF/E is my home town promotion. I grew up in the North East in the 80's. That's what was on tv, that's what ran house shows, and that was my brand of wrestling. I obviously have a much larger frame of reference now, but it wasn't like AWA and JCP were even an option for me then, other than the magazines and reading about guys in other promotions. When I finally started getting WCW on TV in the early 90's I became a big fan of that promotion. I was a big ECW fan since around 94. Criticizing somebody for that is just stupid . Everybody has a "home town promotion" mine just happens to be the one that put all the territories out of business, outlasted WCW, and is "the world leader in sports entertainment", for better or worse How am I "projecting" my opinion on others by merely stating it? Do I need to put a disclaimer in my signature? And it's not horseshit. There is more to it than that and as I said, it's a simplified way to say it and it's not quite that straightforward, but it's still generally speaking the case. We could name guys where they forced the issue too much for sure, but I'd call most of those cases either beating the wrong guys or getting the timing or specifics of it wrong. People like winners, and if you were to list every guy on the roster right now and point to their peak in popularity and when it started to fade, in nearly every case, it would be that they lost a match at the wrong time and it began a downward spiral. Generally speaking, a guy gets big pops without a push, then he's given a sustained push and he becomes a big star. Even in the case of someone like Diesel where it seems like that would be the case because they stuck with him so long, he was put opposite a more over babyface (who he couldn't beat) on his first encounter and put opposite a heel on the verge of a babyface turn who upstaged him in his second big feud as champ. WCW presented him as a Winning Winner and didn't place him in those no-win situations and what do you know, he became a bigger and far more effective star. And that's Kevin Nash, a guy who most of the current roster could work circles around. If that doesn't show that it's mostly booking, I'm not sure what does.

I don't see WWE as my team at all, nor do I make it a priority to watch regularly. But it's nationally televised, major league wrestling, and for people who just want to continue that tradition, that's all they have. Yes, ROH, TNA and Lucha Underground are nationally televised too, but they don't play to big buildings. Also, the reason to keep watching is that at a moment's notice, it could become good. If WWE had a couple of great ideas pop into their heads tomorrow, Raw could be a great show Monday. The problem is that we don't really get those sustained periods of great shows at all anymore. They are isolated and fleeting. And those out-of-nowhere strong shows are fewer and farther between than they've ever been too. So I keep up to a degree and always will because it's Hotel California where I can check out, but never leave. But I don't have it in me to watch every show in full every week, although I admire those that do even though it's not fun. People who bitch all the time and keep watching are often demonized, but I think there's something cool about them being unwilling to give up. WWE should be so lucky to have more fans like that.

A better way for Scott Keith to present his point would have been that if you protect Benoit and present him in a way that best suits him in the same way Undertaker was protected and presented in a way that best suited him, Benoit would be just as over. And I do think he's right on that point.

The sad thing is that while I think most fans still viewed Starrcade as the Wrestlemania, I don't think anyone running the company after buying from Crockett ever really did.

This is not a board that hates on WWE nearly as consistently as you defend WWE. It's great that he's a self-made man. He's not a likable person and his attitude is a turn-off. I could acknowledge that he's special and deserves his spot if I was a wrestler while still resenting the hell out of him for it. Those ideas are not in conflict with each other. I think where we differ is that I truly believe that 90% of what makes a guy a star is not whatever talents or qualities he possesses as much as it is being presented as a winning winner who wins. That's obviously a very surface description of it, and winning at the right times against the right opponents matters too. Just as there are some cases where a loss is good for a guy. Still, the point is, booking matters far, far more than whatever talents or traits a guy has. If other guys were booked like Brock, Austin and Undertaker, wrestling would have a bunch of full-time Brocks, Austins and Undertakers.

He has clearly worked hard in life. But he's not someone who has devoted himself to his craft in wrestling like a Steve Austin or Bryan Danielson. He has never been anything less than a top guy at any point in his career, to a point that I don't think he has any grasp of the effort it takes others to get to that level. The sacrifices and amount of proving naysayers that guys like Austin and Bryan had to make in order to make big money is just on a level beyond anything Brock has ever had to do. That's not something to begrudge him for, but I do think it reflects on him that he didn't seem particularly gracious about how much money he's making to do so little compared to other guys who have sacrificed so much and will never make that sort of income.

Part of it is just how life works, not just in WWE, but everywhere. But that doesn't make it any less of a downer.

I felt bad for every other wrestler in WWE watching Brock on Austin's podcast last night. Despite being an awesome performer with great aura, he is just there to collect a check, which is his prerogative. But he's also been given opportunities and pay that most of them will never get, even the ones who have sacrificed far more and worked far harder to get where they are. So he says that if you look around, there's no one else credible enough to end the Undertaker's streak, which is kind of an insult to everyone else that is around. It also goes against his earlier point that "everyone knows it's entertainment" -- if everyone knows it's entertainment, why didn't Fandango end the streak? This isn't limited to him, but there is this really annoying double standard in wrestling where when they feel like doing something stupid "everyone knows it's a work" and when they won't push smaller guys, suddenly credibility and coming across as a tough guy is paramount. It's just a way for them to justify doing whatever they want to do at every moment, and they flip back and forth between mindsets as is convenient for them. Brock's legit background only matters because they want it to matter. If Ryback goes a year without selling for anyone or losing while dominating everyone he encounters, he's just as credible as Brock with or without the legit background, but they don't want Ryback (or anyone getting their first superstar push after 2005) to be seen at that level. He came across anti-social, entitled and dismissive of everyone else in the company in the way not a single other person in the company could ever get away with. On top of that, he's got the personality of a box of hair. It also touched on a bigger issue with WWE, and that's their current kayfabe standards, which are all over the place. Soft-spoken Brock who could sit next to a would-be rival that long without going for the kill chipped away at his aura some. I don't think they need to be trying to fool anyone in 2015 into thinking wrestling is real, but I do think there should be consistency in how they present guys, and I think that's possible to achieve even if they are out-of-character in certain settings. Right now, we can have one person who is presented in conflicting ways on regular TV, the Network, Total Divas, in puff piece videos highlighting their charity work and on social media. So then you have a company that wants Brock to have a real conversation after Raw while Lana gets heat for showing off her engagement ring to Rusev. I understand why wrestlers are confused about this, because I definitely am.

Caring about body type in such an obviously fake sport is what kills wrestlers. I wish we could just stop doing it.

I do think regardless of how strong or weak his numbers are, his civil rights accomplishments are the key to his case. Someone would have done it whether Monroe forced the issue or not, but he's the one who did.

I think his MMA experience is relevant in the sense that he was able to use it for credibility in the worked world of pro wrestling, which added a dynamic to his matches that may not be there otherwise. I think it would be interesting to compare all the wrestlers that were seen as the "real deal" and see who leveraged that and got the most out of it.

Lita was around at a time when most people had the idea of a good worker as one that could do moonsaults and huracanranas. So she fit the times.