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Hmm, I'm sure we've pondered those questions before Bix. I really doubt though that he would have had a problem with that particular column, as Joe is just badly parroting some of Dave's talking points (like Brock is taking UFC mainstream and UFC does pro wrestling better than pro wrestling itself does). Who cares if Joe screws up wrestling history if he comes to the same conclusion as Dave and Bryan? Over at the F4W/WO boards, Bryan has been latching on to some ridiculous strawman arguments (like Eric Cantona kung fu kicking a fan in the stands didn't kill English soccer and showed the same real raw emotion as Brock Lesnar did in his promo) to combat any suggestion that in the long run Brock Lesnar cutting cheesy wrestling promos may be bad for the image of the sport.

Joe Babinsack thinks Brock Lesnar is the modern day version of Frank Gotch or something...

Dave and Bryan are back in the mainstream thanks to Brock Lesnar:

I always thought Black Scorpion era WCW from a booking standpoint got crapped on more than WCW in 1993.

Personally I think it was a good thing that Vince knew when to keep quiet and let the action speak for itself. Do we really need an announcer to blabber on continuously even if they have nothing informative to say?

I found the analogy amusing because he started covering Japanese MMA because they promoted it as professional wrestling even though it really wasn't. That isn't the same as deciding to stop covering WWE because they pretend it isn't professional wrestling when it really is. Speaking of Dave and his talking point of "UFC does wrestling better than wrestling", he went on an interesting rant about the reaction to UFC 100 (see below), particularly Brock Lesnar's post match promo after defeating Frank Mir. Not that I disagreed with most of it, but man did it come across as a bit overly defensive, because he's friends with Brock and Dana. I mean Vince McMahon was once thought of as a marketing genius with a Midas touch by the mainstream media and we all know how that story ended up.

Was this another one of those situations where Baba bought an AWA World title reign for his talent like he did with Jumbo Tsuruta?

Maybe Michael Hayes is still pissed off at Mark Henry?

An amusing analogy by Dave:

The problem isn't advertisers pulling out, the problem is being able to attract new, more upmarket, better paying advertisers. Advertisers already know Vince is crazy and runs a sleazy product. They've known that for almost two decades. That's why most companies avoid advertising on WWE programming and those that do pay poorly for the opportunity. It's hard enough to repackage yourself as advertiser friendly if you've got WWE's PR track record, that I'm not surprised WWE's corporate wing are sensitive to a toadie trying to score brownie points with the boss by cutting wrestling promos on the President via Twitter.

End result: his planned lengthy title run lasted just one month due to suffering a serious muscle tear. Hmm, funny that.

Yeah, that's a horrible thing to say and not remotely funny. I read that news tidbit as the corporate side were actually worried that advertisers would come to realize how batshit crazy their boss really is.

Instead of the petty name calling, he could have easily cleared up any inaccurate portrayals of laziness a lot earlier by letting Wade know that he was working hurt. Unfortunately, Matt's right, it is hard to care for someone who is so whacked out delusional that instead of taking time off to heal his nagging abdominal muscle tear when he broke his hand, he kept going until his intestines exploded out through his abdominal wall, risking death. Here's Wade's apology. I'm not surprised Wade used his apology to get on his soapbox about mandatory time off for workers to prevent such injuries, but he's right. Unfortunately, he'll probably have to keep getting on that soapbox until the day he retires from wrestling journalism.

Yeah, this is a veiled shot at Wade Keller who noted that he was getting out of shape. Obviously Matt's taken it a bit personally that Wade didn't completely ignore his flaws after giving him an exclusive shoot interview where he unabashedly put himself over and told the world how mean and nasty Edge and Lita were to him. Matt always comes across to me as someone who has Bret Hart's ego with much less to warrant such an ego.

It doesn't sound like the problem is what TNA did at the last set of tapings, but what they plan to do in the future. Maybe Russo is planning another fake pregnancy angle or something similar with Lauren?

Interesting that this wasn't mentioned in the Observer:

To be fair, in their most recent round of cost cutting they laid off staff in all their divisions, so this isn't wholly true. Also, most of the top executives could easily find alternative employment for similar pay elsewhere, which isn't the case with most of the wrestlers.

I really don't think those 10 year deals for Henry and Show were that bad. Henry's contract was fat by 1996 standards, but 2 years later most midcarders would get similar downside guarantees. Show, as a guy they kept going back to as a headliner, wasn't badly overpaid when the big stars were earning well in excess of $1,000,000 per annum. Ken Shamrock earned a similar amount two years earlier and was a bigger waste, as he never got to Show's level of stardom, but even then I'd say it was worth a punt at a time they desperately needed to create new stars to compete with WCW. Really I think WCW owns this thread from the fat contracts for guys who were career midcarders like Stevie Ray and Scott Norton, to Eric Bischoff's friends like Rick Steiner and DDP, to the locker room cancers with favored nations clauses in their contracts like Scott Hall and Kevin Nash, to the political victim who was buried despite being the second highest paid wrestler in the company in Bret Hart, and finally to all the failed celebrity stunts like Jay Leno, Master P, Megadeth and the KISS Demon. EDIT: Actually on second thought, McMahon's millions giveaway last year probably beats out all the individual acts of WCW incompetence I mentioned.

As long as Roddy Piper doesn't go to a dark place mentally and becomes bitter and twisted enough to blame his recent bout of "sickness" on the wrestling business, the old drunk is just swell in Good Ol' JR's eyes.

To be fair to WWE, she probably received DVD and PPV royalties that supplemented her per appearance pay, so it sounds worse than it actually is. However, the fact that they gave her such a low guarantee suggests that they were unlikely to be overly generous with these bonuses. It sounds like she was grossly underpaid, given that most former GMs like Ric Flair, Eric Bischoff, Steve Austin, Paul Heyman, etc, wouldn't even get out of bed for such a small amount.

House show business turned around in late '95/early '96, off Bret Hart regaining the title, strong challengers in The Undertaker and the repackaged cooler tweener Diesel, and Shawn returning from the powerful in ring collapse angle and retirement tease. So Shawn's reign got off to a hot start, though it was far from the smash hit most expected at the time. House show business remained pretty good (though it tailed off towards the end of his run), but both PPV business and TV ratings were pretty poor, which is why they made such a big play to re-sign Bret Hart in the autumn of '96. Really the WWF wasn't out of hot water until they switched from two hour In Your House PPVs to three hour monthly PPVs and raised the price accordingly in the autumn of '97.

Awesome post, Loss. It really matches up with my feelings at the time, as I was always very high on Jericho in WWE as a worker once he got going, even when he wasn't being pushed very hard and his role was more to put people over to groom them for something bigger. Even when he was burnt out in 2005, I still think he was better than 80-90% of the roster.

I hope this pithy figure being leaked will finally stop people from harping on about how generous and benevolent WWE were to give her a job as a TV performer in the first place. Not surprised that no-one was outraged enough to say anything about Vickie's treatment on the way out of the door. These are the same guys that twiddled their thumbs when they had a heel wrestler say the highly religious Eddie ended up in hell to get cheap heat and spoofed Owen's and Eddie's ten bell salutes and tribute shows in the Vince goes boom angle.

I don't think Kane is a guy they would protect, even though he's got long tenure with the company. The chosen few are obviously Cena, Batista, Hunter, Orton, Taker, Shawn and maybe Edge. Meltzer was probably talking about Batista, given that there were rumors going round when he went down with his bicep injury that he had failed a drug test. I think the double standards stem from the company viewing violations for recreational drugs and pain pills a lot more seriously than steroid violations. They still want their top stars to have larger than life physiques, but obviously don't want their wrestlers in no state to perform.

I'm not sure Laurinaitis has done anything quite as stupid as allowing Jeff Jarrett's contract to lapse before he dropped the IC title (at a time when the belt still meant something), allowing Jarrett to hold the company to ransom at a time when a promotional war was still going on. Not that I disagree that Ross was overall more productive in the position than Laurinaitis. Though I think you overstate the blame that you place on him for developmental being such a shambles. Vince may have been batshit crazy enough to shut down developmental altogether and he probably doesn't want to recruit real athletes anymore after being burned by Angle, Lesnar and Lashley.