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Their strategy now seems to be "low risk, low reward" by splitting the production costs with partners like Warner Bros. or picking up movies already made and acting as the distributor. It seems to be working as the big money losses of a year ago seem to be a thing of the past.

Not all their movies lost money. The Marine made $15 million in profits. That early success explains why they invested further in their movie division. If it wasn't for The Call turning a nice profit more recently, they'd likely be out of the game by now.

I think there's been times when both WWE and TNA used women pretty well, but they never built on that initial success. I'm not sure it's all sexism (although that definitely plays a part), but also politics, as people will inevitably want to tear down other people's success. I mean both WWE and TNA have women in key power positions.

I wouldn't bank on Ishii being around for the long haul. He's well on the way to his shoulder being seriously messed up and having to take over a year out.

Yeah, I'm not sure why we're supposed to be angry he was savvy? Meanwhile, is it just me or is it possible he decided to be more clear/emphatic in part 2 about how willing he would've been to go back to WWE if they just let him rest and didn't treat him like he quit forever? Like he was walking back the health issues enough that it wouldn't clash with him becoming a prize fighter. I think anytime someone gets one over on WWE, we should be happy for them, given how they routinely mishandle and mistreat talent. That said, I do believe that Punk's Wellness complaints against WWE have been watered down by immediately signing for the meatgrinder that is UFC, which pretty much eliminates the possibility that anything will change now. It will be interesting to see how the ACs handle this. I didn't realise this until I started searching for info about the Illinois commission, whose jurisdiction Punk will be under if his debut is in Chicago, they recently denied boxer Pawel Wolak a pro MMA license because he hadn't had any amateur MMA fights under his belt.

What I meant was "as it has been publicly announced". Are we to believe that Punk is getting UFC jobber levels of sponsorship money?

The distinction for me isn't whether its pushed as a title match (highly unlikely) or as the near equivalent as a co-main event (highly likely), but rather him grabbing what I imagine is a pretty large chunk of change from the pool available to talent on the shows he'll work. If he's going in with the same type of contract that someone middle of the road on TUF or another relatively unknown fighter is getting that's great. But I'll believe it when I see those details reported. Listening to Punk's interview with Ariel Helwani, it was pretty clear he was getting paid what he thought he was worth (even though he kept insisting it wasn't about the money). I imagine he'll have pay-per-view points, which no "middle of the road on TUF" would get (with the possible exception of Kimbo Slice). It remains to be seen whether the Reebok deal applies to Punk.

He also complained about how WWE should have paid him ten f***ing million dollars period and given him a spot in the WrestleMania main event. The dude's a pro wrestler. We should never be surprised at their capacity to continue to beat up their body further if the cash, creative and hype is correct.

Antonio Inoki is probably worth considering given the mess his interference made of New Japan in the mid 00's.

Two people have been hurt by it, and it's been performed by Styles and others thousands of times. The problem in this case is with the two people who didn't take the move correctly. They are professionals and they messed up. I know that Tatsu has taken responsibility, but I believe Lionheart places the blame on AJ. It's not just two people who have been hurt by it, as Roderick Strong injured his neck from taking the move incorrectly earlier this year. Moreover, there's been four other videotaped occasions where the move was botched by people tucking their heads and probably more we're not even aware about.

I agree with Will that it was the wrong platform to go down the medical route. Austin's not a journalist, he wasn't there to press Vince too hard on anything controversial. If Austin is concerned about Punk's medical claims, then that should be done in a private conversation between the two, which is how a lot of this will play out. I don't have any issue with that. Now, if the wrestling media doesn't bring up the hypocrisy of WWE being honoured by the Sports Legacy Institute and Triple H being on the board of directors for the SLI, while a WWE doctor pressured CM Punk to work a European tour with a concussion, on the next NXT conference call he holds (presuming there is one next week before NXT Takeover: R Evolution), then that's worth complaining about.

How many wrestlers have to be treated like crap before you can start blaming the system?

Interesting. I'd imagine WWE ran significantly more shows than New Japan, though? But given the size of the country I'd assume New Japan would be forced to run the same buildings much more frequently than the WWF... Yes, WWE would have run more shows due to regularly running two tours simultaneously until mid October 1995 when they scrapped the second tour for cost cutting reasons.

From old observers: In 1995, New Japan drew 1,084,066 fans in 164 shows (that's including shows that are really New Japan shows but weren't New Japan in name such as Anton Promotions, Heisei Ishingun and a few late year UWFI shows) for an average of 6,610 fans per show which is probably the highest average per year for any promotion that runs a regular (as opposed to once monthly) schedule in at least the recent history of wrestling. It's a whopping 42.9% increase over averaging 4,627 in 1994. The company averaged about 5,000 in 1993. By comparison, the WWF in 1995 averaged 3,039 fans per house show, at much lower ticket prices.

For real. There's been too much of the "I know, but I'm not saying" schtick happening on the board lately. This. If you can't tell the whole story don't tell any of it. Pretty sure I've mentioned all of this in a thread here before, but it may have been on another board. In any event, I'm pretty sure Dave was fed wrong info by Flair. This probably wouldn't be the first time. Remember how Dave reported that the backstage fight between Batista and Booker T was a work?

Regarding the sponsored ring gear idea, it would never have been a big money spinner for the boys, because WWE, like UFC, would have asked for a huge cut of the deal.

To add to what Loss said, about discentives to getting heat, which Dylan also alluded to, I can't see WWE ever allowing a dark bullying angle like the one Parv proposed somewhat tongue in cheek due to all their corporate sponsors and anti-bullying allies.

I think you're wrong grouping Meltzer with those hardcore fans of the time who irrationally hated everything WWE did with a passion, even though it was effective. He would always give Vince props for his business success and saw that Vince would win the war quicker than most business insiders did at the time. Even today, I'm sure he'd agree that McMahon has better promotional instincts than almost anyone in the profession today.

But there's no need to stereotype other online wrestling communities when you can just critique the generic views. Many of the posters on PWO have ties to other sites, so although it's true that members don't owe shit to the rest of the internet, it would be a nice gesture if they didn't insult those places.

Parv's idea probably wouldn't work in WWE, as most of the WWE audience aren't nerds, aren't using social media much, don't have a twitter account and don't play video games. It could work on the indy scene I suppose.

Regarding the new rule, it perhaps should apply more generally when talking about any message board or heterogeneous group, not just to PWO alone.

Meltzer seems to be in his own bubble regarding Edge. He called Edge a Hall Of Fame worker without a doubt in the Observer. But if that's the case, then why isn't he getting more votes from his peers like Dick Murdoch and Yuji Nagata got?

I believe it's people who don't vote lucha, but have heard Cien Caras is a slam dunk and don't want him to fall off. So, they vote for him in the lucha category only and no one else. I guess to see that is see how many total voters there were this year in lucha compared to last year. Some rough calculations: There were 98 Mexico voters this year and 331 votes for Mexican candidates, giving an average of 3.38 Mexican candidate votes per ballot. Last year, there were 92 Mexico voters and 420 votes for Mexican candidates, giving an average of 4.57 Mexican candidate votes per ballot. That's a significant drop, but 120 of the votes last year went to Atlantis and Dr. Wagner Sr, so it seems that many people who voted for those two candidates last year didn't use their free slot to vote for a different Mexican candidate this year. This could be affected by the 15 year rule, as people who vote strategically may have decided to use their free vote (or drop one of their Mexican votes from last year) to save people up for the chopping block in other regions. The drops for L.A. Park and Dr. Wagner Jr. can also partially be explained by being out of the major leagues for much of the year. Like most candidates who have recently died, Garza's support dropped off one year removed from his death. Cien Caras moved from 41 to 53 votes, so the 15 year rule bump only led to 12 new votes. Caras did very well with historians this year, so maybe they were swayed by his well known record crowds, while other candidates drawing power isn't as well researched. But still, I think the hypothesis that lots of new people voted for Caras alone doesn't seem to be that well supported from the data available to us. However, I'm sure a handful did and in a region with as few voters as Mexico that could make a difference. Obviously this is a bigger issue in the rest of the world region where there's sole Carlos Colon voters and sole Killer Karl Kox voters hurting the other candidates.

People who cite headlining modern WrestleMania's as a major feather in a candidates drawing cap. The Rock has won Best Box Office Draw in the Observer Awards, essentially based solely on Mania. Even in a year he didn't actually wrestle. The problem is Brock Lesnar hasn't headlined WrestleMania in his current run yet. At WrestleMania 29, his match with Triple H was clearly positioned behind Rock vs. Cena II. On the night, Undertaker vs. Punk had a bigger reaction too. It should be noted that the show drew less than the prior year's WM, despite having Lesnar on the card. This year, Brock had the deadest Undertaker match since at least 2006. Without the end of the Streak, it would have been totally overshadowed by Daniel Bryan's WWE title victory. In one sense, this show did bomb at the box office, as it was available for a $9.99 subscription to the WWE Network and they didn't get significantly more people watching than they had done for their biggest past WrestleManias on pay-per-view alone. Next year, Brock should be in the world title match, but it remains to be seen whether it will be the real main event.

Would cable execs really even differentiate between the two though? To them, they're both just a non-WWF rasslin show. I don't think TNA's reputation would grant them much over a Jarrett start-up. Let's say they both walk in to pitch. Dixie: "We've been losing millions despite being on national TV for years". Jarrett: "I used to be a big star in the WWF and this is my friend Toby Keith". I disagree. TNA can point to nine years of drawing a 1.0 rating for Spike TV and having much bigger ex-WWE stars than Jeff Jarrett under contract. That track record counts for something.