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I think he brings it up more often with the heavyweights, but I think the point still stands with the junior heavyweights when they do their title matches.

To be fair Meltzer has criticised the NOAH style on several occasions for their title matches always going at least 20 minutes and usually longer, which means that the fans are conditioned to believe that a title match can't end early, so they don't react much until the final few minutes of the match. I enjoyed this match a lot too when I saw it a few months ago, though I also felt at the time it would have been better if they worked a shorter, tighter match and that the match at times came off a bit artificial and overly choreographed, rather than spontaneous and real.

This came up when Larry Matysik was on Wrestling Observer Live a couple of weeks ago (ironically Matysik brought it up after Meltzer started talking about how people who are children now will grow up to think Batista was a great worker). Meltzer paraphrasing said if you asked anyone who worked at the time he was right at the top. His matches were awesome for the time based on what the standards were then. He didn't do a "Bret Hart" match and if that's the standard for a great match, no, absolutely not, that's not what his role was and he could have fantastic matches with Kamala that only went 3 minutes. Matysik then told a story about how Brody thought babyfaces were so dumb as workers, they don't watch what's going on around them, so when an average sized babyface worker called for a backdrop, he would run the ropes and then kick their teeth in, because they should know better. Meltzer then said there was no one better at getting people into their match as if it was a fight. Matysik agreeing said that's the key to professional wrestling, if you can make them suspend disbelief. He then went on to say how he and Brody talked about how at certain points of his career he could give a little bit more than he would normally give to an opponent, because it would help make him and won't hurt me now, but you have to get to that point in your career. Matysik then talked about how working is about getting heat and making the fans believe, not doing 25 bumps in a row, that's just choreographed gymnastics.

Yeah, WWE lucked into using Tyson at the perfect time, as he was all over the news just before that angle happened due to his acrimonious split with Don King. Most of the articles that talked about the split also mentioned briefly his upcoming appearance at Wrestlemania. The tone was sometimes derogatory and mocking, but you can't have everything.

Is it really that surprising? PPV business has been down across the board for the last year or so. Neither of the title matches were as hot as the Cena vs Edge feud was this time last year. Nobody in the Rumble was as hot as Batista was two years ago.

You're not on your own Jose. I've watched a lot of UWF matches recently through the best of the 80s DVDVR project and though I wouldn't say I hated the style, I did find the first half of a lot of matches really dull and soulless, as they just tentatively threw kicks and grappled to a stalemate on the ground. The early work was often meaningless, as they often just blew off whatever they had done for the first 5 to 10 minutes and started punting the hell out of each other when it was time to go to the finish.

Erm, why would you need anabolic steroids to treat a broken neck?

Actually I don't think he will, as he thinks MMA is pro wrestling, unless worked wrestling dies out in North America, which isn't happening any time soon.

Maybe Dave could give Steve Yohe a column reviewing movies. WWE does make movies after all and The Rock stars in them.

I would suspect he would headline the Hispanic brand with the likes of Rey Mysterio and Carlito *if* that idea ever gets off the drawing board. At least I hope WWE would be sensible enough to do that.

I think the original plan for Survivor Series was for Vader to beat Shawn Michaels for the WWF title and make his first major title defense on this show. I think part of the problem was Shawn insisting on dropping the title to Sid instead of Vader, but Vince McMahon was also rapidly losing faith in Vader by this time, particularly as the SummerSlam buyrate that year was very disappointing.

Kurt Angle telling stories of giving Shane McMahon the number for China, doesn't fill me with the greatest of confidence.

I'd say the appeal of working for WWE for Mistico is the potential to make more money for doing less than he would working in Mexico. His current schedule is insane, working almost every day, regularly wrestling two or even three matches a night. Such a schedule is going to take an awful toll on his body, particularly working such a high risk style. And for all that effort he probably is still making less than an average WWE midcarder.

This is a big red herring, as during the last boom period they were just as bad, if not worse, at running the same match on PPV and TV for months on end, but PPV business was still great. Just look at the amount of times they did Austin vs Undertaker and Rock vs Triple H on PPV and TV during that period, for example.

I'd say all those crazy gimmick matches don't help. Liger never did anything as nutty as taking bumps and doing diving headbutts or moonsaults off the top of cages or ladders. And though his style was very impactful, he never went into suplex overkill mode like Angle and the others did.

Sek, I really don't think price is a problem. They recently increased the price of PPVs by $5 in America and any drop in business (which was probably due to weaker line ups compared with last year) was more than offset by the increased price tag. Their core audience is willing to pay that price, so the problem is getting the people who rarely buy PPVs nowadays to buy more. Loss, I'd argue that in 1999 and 2000 they would have easily topped 5.7 million buys if they were able to sell PPVs all over the world like they do now in those years. Almost 40% of those 5.7 million buys came from outside North America. I can't see the argument that 12 PPVs are too many. Doing monthly PPVs has been highly profitable for WWE ever since September 1997 when they extended their In Your House PPVs to 3 hours and upped their price tags. And that was at a time when their B shows weren't drawing well and WCW was also producing 12 PPVs shows a year, not to mention ECW doing quarterly PPVs as well.

Loss is right, the maths doesn't add up. If they reduced the number of PPVs from 16 to 6, they couldn't hope to recover all the lost revenue through increased buys from the remaining 6 PPVs. In 2006 WWE sold roughly 5,744,000 PPVs according to their corporate website or an average of 359,000 PPVs per event. With only 6 events, they would need to sell 957,333 PPVs per event, which is WrestleMania level numbers. I can see the argument to reduce the number of PPVs back down to 12 and getting rid of brand only PPVs, but cutting back any more that that is not economically feasible.

From the Observer website the dates of the "History of WWF" series are: March 24, 2003 (history of the WWWF title, inside behind the Sammartino, Backlund and Backlund era) April 21, 2003 (history of WWF continues with the expansion nationally, the death of the regional territories and the rise of Hulk Hogan) June 9, 2003 (Part 1 of history of WWF vs. WCW wars and what many say was the greatest year in U.S. wrestling; plus a look at Fred Blassie) July 28, 2003 (Part 2 of the history of the WWF vs. WCW war and the plans to make new superstars in the early 90s, what happened, and the night where the three biggest wrestling companies in the world combined for a joint show and what happened) September 15, 2003 (Part 3 of the history of the WWF vs WCW war with the seeds that caused the collapse of the industry in the 90s, Zahorian trial, Gulf War controversy, Flair leaves WCW while holding world title and much more) March 1, 2004 (History of WWF continues with the period that brought the company down in early 1992, the mistakes, the real stories and how the business changed) The dates of the "history of WCW" pieces are: November 15, 2006 (History of WCW part one, Eric Bischoff's book and how the industry was changed forever) November 20, 2006 (History of WCW part two, Why Jim Ross left WCW, How Bischoff changed the company, signing of Hulk Hogan, Beginning of Nitro, Jesse Ventura, Brian Pillman, Chris Jericho and signing Wrestlemania planned celebrity away) November 27, 2006 (History of WCW part three, When Bischoff challenged McMahon to fight; Truth and fiction around Bret Hart signing with WCW and why it didn't click) December 6, 2006 (details behind Pride's offers to sell promotion and Part four of History of WCW part four, Hogan-Goldberg match and why there was no rematch, WCW loses NBC network deal in 1999 and the real reasons the company fell apart) I wonder if Dave will return to the "history of WCW" piece and finish it off, because part 4 only gets up to early 1999 and it felt like there was more still to come.

Erm, how? I know WWE repeated that ad nauseum in 2000, but, if anything, Benoit ditched most of the matwork he used to do unless he was in with someone who could work that style and even then his matwork tended to be unfocussed and ultimately meaningless.

I don't think Cien Caras is even on the WON HOF ballot.

Even in this period there was a lot of long term booking going on; it was just that due to politics, injuries and fans reacting in a different way than expected, the plans had to be ripped up time and time again. In October 1996 the plan was clearly to do Bret vs Shawn as the main event of Mania, with Bret feuding with Austin and Shawn feuding with Sid in the meantime to keep them apart until after the Rumble. By February though all bets were off when Shawn being Shawn found a knee injury to get out of doing a job for Bret and they had to come up with a new last minute main event for Mania. So Vince came up with the Austin Bret double turn scenario realising that fans were itching to cheer Austin, while Bret's return got a more subdued reaction than expected.

Yeah, I read that tidbit by Dave Meltzer and it puzzled me because I don't see the company as being considerably hotter than this time last year or the year before that. Last year Edge's short run as champion drew stronger ratings than they are currently getting for Raw and he drew well at house shows with John Cena including selling out the Nassau Colliseum. The year before that they fluked into a hot storyline with Batista breaking away from Triple H and Ric Flair that did good PPV business. Neither of those hot patches lasted long, so I can't see this one being sustained either.

I wouldn't be surprised if at least part of the decision was motivated by the "Sorry for not being able to wrestle. On the way here I tripped over some bad booking." comment Joe made at an ROH show a few weeks ago.

From reading Bruce Mitchell's Raw report it seems that they've already scrapped two plans (Cena vs Orton [apparently Creative realized that he's still nuts] and Cena vs Michaels) and are now going with a four way match between Cena, Michaels, Edge and Orton for the WrestleMania main event. Of course, by next week plans could change yet again.

On the Observer website where Dave Meltzer previews the current issue he says this week's Bigelow story was part one of a two part series.