Loss

I should also add that WCW hyped the Omni cards so much on TBS because they could not get syndicated TV in the Atlanta market to promote local cards.

WCW, despite its missteps, probably should have been profitable long before it was. I don't know if it would have been under Scott, but consider that they did not get paid to continuously produce first-run content that drew great ratings until 1995. Turner Home Entertainment also pocketed all of the profits from what was a lucrative video rental market at the time. They were in the red every year and rarely drew big houses, but there were other revenue streams that are now taken for granted that were simply denied to them. Bischoff was the one smart enough to cut back on house shows and force Turner Home Entertainment to take on Hogan's salary when he came in, which led to them ending a fiscal year in the black for the first time in their existence at the end of 1995. As for Scott, early 1989 TV is not any good, but I don't know that I put that on him. Yes, he was the booker, but they had just been bought out and Jack Petrik and Jim Herd already had the edict that they weren't going to make any major changes for at least six months. They lost Barry Windham and JJ Dillon, Dennis Condrey left with no warning ... the great main events were the only thing that seemed to be going their way. In April, the Saturday Night show got a big facelift and moved out of Techwood Drive studios and they dramatically picked up the pace of weekly TV. Anyone coming up to bat first was just going to be in a holding pattern until they started making bigger changes.

All I really know about him is that he is the one who taught Flair to always bring a change of clothes to TV tapings and not to wear the same ring gear or suit if you come out to do promos on two consecutively taped shows. He was a booker for the WWF in 1984-1985 as well, but we never hear much about that either way. Dave says he had to be organized to do that job because of all the moving parts, but that was really more logistics planning than booking, since the big vision stuff was Vince. But who knows?

It's pretty clear in wrestling that having charisma just means looking like somebody instead of looking like nobody. I don't even mean physical appearance, I just mean the ability to convey that you're something more than the average person on the street.

I present this quote from Bill Dundee on USWA TV from August of 1992: "We do this for money. That's right, that's the main thing in your mind when you get into the wrestling business or any kind of professional sport -- it's for money. And sometimes you do it for belts, and sometimes you do it for titles, and sometimes you do it to settle something, and sometimes you just do it."

Thank you for clarifying. You can look at the most successful angle-driven companies in wrestling history like 1970s Florida, Mid South, 1979-80 Georgia, peak Memphis and mid-80s JCP, and they all still have plenty of wrestling for the sake of it to ground everything and make the stuff that's supposed to be red hot pop even more. If every match is personal, no match is personal. It makes the matches they're trying to make special even more special when they come up with a storyline hook for them. I think "storytelling" is often conflated to make two things into one. There is a difference between a match progressing in a logical and satisfying way based on the build and personalities and having a reason to happen (even if it's as simple as putting someone in hopeful title contention) and having to accuse your opponent of raping the dead corpse of Katie Vick. Of course the latter isn't needed the vast majority of the time

That Bryan is even headlining this WM just confirms his living legend status in my eyes. He didn't need this WM to get there I suppose, but this is a real accomplishment in his favor. The guy has somehow been a generally unwanted headliner in WWE for nearly a decade because fans love him so much. He's probably the most unlikely major star in the history of the company despite almost never being booked at that level. As it stands, he has been in the title match of four WMs over the course of 10 shows. I also think with wrestling shifting away from being an industry about creating shows to attract fans and toward an industry designed to just produce as much content as possible and sell distribution rights to the highest bidder, Bryan's 2013-14 ascension will probably be remembered over time as the last "classic" pro wrestling build on the national stage.

Lita was huge with teenage girls for a brief spell in 2000-2001, but it's hard to think of anyone specific who has done it since ... at least in a way that stands out.

Yes, The Challenge is the most popular show in the demo on Wednesday nights. However, AEW did lose more women with that main event than they gained men.

Her gloating wasn't the point wasn't the point of Storm's criticism as much as it was Tony Schiavone calling for people to give her a hand and people doing it. She's the heel.

WWE superficially cleaning up and being much nicer to the media opened the door for things like the MBS deal to even take place. There are far worse things about wrestling than blading, but that's the thing that seems to turn off more of the real world on a surface level than most other things they do, so it made sense to ditch it. I say that as a fan who likes blood in matches. Of course, then they started drawing blood hardaway, which is significantly worse, and somehow they created situations like that Lesnar-Orton match that should have gotten them far more blowback than blading.

If Baker is supposed to be the star, why is she losing to outside talent? In that case, she should have won and then the gloating would have been on point. I didn't think his point was without merit.

I liked parts of Powerrr, but it also felt like a parody of Georgia Championship Wrestling with the booing on cue and silly commercials. The best all-around wrestling presentation I've seen in the last 5-10 years was probably CWF Mid-Atlantic when it was at its best. It felt aligned with the past but was also fully modern.

The storytelling aspect of pro wrestling is overrated in the sense that it shouldn't be treated as an attraction in itself and it often has been. But you do need something to make people care about what they're watching in the ring and understand the stakes. I think it's usually overcomplicated and can be very simple and straightforward, but some context needs to be provided for the matches. Maybe I'm "romanticizing the past", but that's generally the way it worked most of the time outside of WWE. Nintendo Logic has now passive aggressively told me to stop watching wrestling twice since I returned to the board. I should start a running tally.

The latest WON points to some ratings trends that are hard to deny. When they up the violence and blood quotient, they do gain men, but they lose women at a bigger rate and it hurts them. AEW experiences declines with women every time they do juice or too many table spots or weapon shots. That's probably an argument to avoid doing it, at least on television, because it chases away women faster than it lures in men.

Wow! I had never seen that clip, and didn't realize that Worldwide aired until the bitter end.

It does, yes.

The key would have to be that either they are willing to learn from each other or you have someone refereeing who brokers compromises. But I do think there's something to that approach. No one is always right.

Who are they?

Without 1997 table setting, you don't have a red hot Austin, Rock and DX to keep building up. It was, yes. It took about a year to really start bearing fruit.

The lesson there is that Vince managing the creative tension between Cornette and Russo was a viable enough model to lay the foundation to spark a hugely successful period. Sometimes, Russo's vision was right and sometimes Cornette's was right. Sometimes, Vince took what he wanted from both. There is no newer generation of wrestling minds that I know of that has such sharp differences in philosophy that could be leveraged this way.

On the contrary, if good creative is less important to their bottom line than ever, it begs the question of why an already-stretched-thin CEO and Chairman spends so much time on it instead of leaving it entirely in the hands of someone he has delegated. It's unusual for someone in that role to be that hands-on in day-to-day operations. You could justify it when creative was the main driver of their business because Vince has a decades-long track record of success. When it's just filling time, why is he still involved and having to approve everything? If WWE is truly going to be judged on those terms, then that criticism should take hold because it's awfully inefficient.