cm funk

The sense I've gotten from Sullivan's shoot interviews is that he was more or less allowed to book the undercard how he see fit, but when it came to most of the top stuff he was just one voice of many and tended to be overruled or have his ideas changed by Hogan, Bischoff, Nash etc. Don't know how much of that is him trying to prop up his legacy and how much credit or blame he really deserves for things, but it jives with what other people have said about that time period. 96-98 WCW had a really hot undercard with good booking of the titles, so he probably should get some of the credit for that. And yeah, I don't think you can really blame Sullivan for the Radicalz leaving. Those guys just wanted out and Sullivan became the excuse. Sullivan didn't want to lose them. Blame Bill Busch for just letting them walk right into the WWF. Honestly, the last couple of years of WCW are kind of a blur to me and I haven't watched any of that stuff since it aired. I don't remember a lot about the Sullivan period, but I remember it being a nice change of pace after those first 3-4 months of Russo. Anything would have been better than that though. nWo 2000 seemed like a good idea and they were getting Goldberg back on track, then had their legs cut out from under them when Jarrett, Bret and Goldberg got hurt. Between all the injuries and defections and what Russo had left in place it really was a decimated roster.

The idea of giving everybody a character and a role and pushing new stars is great, Russo just sucked at it. In WCW he saddled everybody with a ridiculous gimmick or hook of some kind and it was just too much going on. Nobody stands out as funny or wacky when half the roster is given a funny or wacky gimmick. The closest thing to a breakout star TNA has had was Samoa Joe, who got over in the period Russo was out of the company, and Russo managed to kill him within a few years with his haphazard booking. How many homegrown stars has TNA created in all the time that Russo has booked that company?

WCW under Russo is probably my least favorite wrestling promotion ever. A lot of 1999 wasn't good, yet somehow it got even worse when he was brought in. Short matches with BS finishes all over the place, tons of 'colorful' characters and gimmicks to the point of oversaturation, work/shoot stuff and inside references that would make no logical sense, sophomoric humour aimed at the lowest of IQs, pointless digs and inside jokes directed at WWF that just made WCW look second rate, made himself and his booking the center of attention......I could go on and on. And that's not even getting started on TNA, which pretty much everybody agrees was at it's best when Russo was out of the picture, and now that he's gone again has actually become more focused and watchable. There are just mountains of evidence of his incompetency on display that I'm not sure anybody else should even be in the discussion. The guy was a total product of television and the Monday Night Wars, poached by WCW suits who didn't understand the business and hired by TNA because Jarrett was his friend and Dixie is a mark for anyone who was a "success" in WWF or WCW and has had no problem swallowing losses and a lack of growth. In any other era of wrestling no promoter in their right mind would let him run their company. I'm not even sure why he ever got into the business when he doesn't even seem to like or understand it.

My personal hall of fame would have unconventional choices like Sabu, Bigelow, One Man Gang, and Tajiri. They'd never be voted into something like the Observer HOF, but they were some of the most entertaining characters to me personally. Everybody is entitled to like whatever they like. There's generally a consensus reached about these things, but it doesn't really matter if you disagree. I think Great Khali is a good worker, but I won't argue with anyone who says he isn't.

I thought the World Class DVD was pretty fair. It's been a few years since I watched it and I'm sure it was slanted in some ways, but I remember coming away from it thinking that it gave due to the popularity and influence of the promotion in the 80's, and somebody coming in watching it cold would probably get the impression that World Class was a pretty big deal in it's time. I think Mid-South would probably get the same treatment. And even the tone of "look at all these stars who became superstars in the WWF, and look at how big they were but we were bigger" is a complement in a lot of ways coming from WWE. As for who should be involved with the DVD, having Watts, Ross, Hayes, DiBiase in the fold is kind of all they need, plus whatever random people they can dig up who worked stints in the territory or even grew up watching it. I can take or leave Jim Cornette's opinions on anything at this point, the dude has been running his mouth nonstop in recent years and it's tiresome. He's not worth the hassle to bring in for a DVD or anything else.

and Big Show

You'd be surprised how much of America still didn't have cable television in the early 90's

Bryan Alvarez thinks the plan is Punk v. Big Show at SummerSlam. Ugh.

Was IRS a direct response to the steroid trial stuff, kind of like when the Lakers beat the Nuggets on RAW? I don't know when the government started getting on Vince, so I don't know if it's even possible for that to be the case. Rotunda started with the gimmick in 1991 and I believe it was in response to what McMahon felt was harassment in the form of annual audits

First inductees Jeff Jarrett and Vince Russo

The best way to figure out WCW ratings would be to go back through all the old Observers. I do know that ratings were not considered strong in 92-93 and they lost some syndication and/or were forced to weaker channels in some areas I'm most curious about #'s on Sting merchandise, but I doubt that exists in any sort of tangible form

Irwin R. Schyster

Exactly. They want to stretch out this feud til SummerSlam, this is just a way to delay things and avoid 4 straight singles matches between Punk and Bryan. Kane's in the match to get pinned by one of them. I don't see it as a lack of faith in Punk and Bryan at all. Kane is the guy who's coming off feuds with John Cena and Randy Orton, the two franchise players, they don't put Kane out there with just anyone. And while I'm not in any sense a Kane fan and his matches are channel changers for me, I do think the booking to get him involved in the program has been cleverly done. I'd prefer to see someone else getting this spot, but in terms of guys with a rub to give who can afford to lose he's a good choice. As stale and predictable as he is, beating Kane still matters. And, the match will probably be pretty good FWIW and is at least interesting in the sense of what Punk and Bryan will do to drag the best possible match out of Kane. I think they're up to the challenge.

WCW was a national promotion in the early 90's. They had national TV on a strong basic cable channel I did a quick run through of match results, not perfect but it will give you an idea of their territory: They had a regular loop of the south east (GA, FLA, ALA, TN, SC, NC), mid-south (MS, LA, OK), mid-west (KS, MO, IN, OH, IL, MI, MN, WI) and mid-atlantic (DC, VA, WV, PA, MD) regions. That's almost half the states in the country that they were running on more or less a monthly basis (some states more than others, but they were hitting all these regions on a regular basis). They weren't running often or drawing well north of PA/MD or out West. 4 times at the Meadowlands in 91, once in 92 and once at the Worcester Centrum. A show at the Paramount Theater in NYC in 93 (2,900 paid) and it doesn't look like anything in 94 or 95. MA and really anything north of NY/NJ/LI in WWE territory they were never really able to break into (they did run a Nitro from the Garden). California they tried to get into in 90/91 then gave up on until they had Hogan and did a few shows late in 94, then abandoned it again in 95, 2 shows in 96, 4 in 97, 5 in 98. Places like Nevada, Utah, Colorado didn't get shows and/or draw until the Nitro era. They really struggled to break into Texas. 14 shows in '91 mostly in smaller cities like Corpus Christie, Amarillo and Lubbock. One in San Antonio that drew 650, One in Houston that drew 1,100, and one in Dallas that drew 3,300. In 92 they're down to 7 shows, 2 each in Houston and Dallas. 93 has two shows in Houston (the Fall Brawl PPV being one), and shows at the Alamodome and Texas Stadium canceled due to low ticket sales. In 94-96 they ran 4 shows each year and abandoned Dallas and Houston. 97 one show in Houston. In 98 they finally started drawing in the state with 2 Nitro tapings at the Alamo Dome and a crowd of 32,000 for a Nitro at the Astrodome

NAO were the top merchandise sellers in the entire company?! Bigger than Austin? Are you talking DX merch or NAO specific merch? I'm not buying that... I'm not even sure the NAO belong in the WWE HOF tbh

Honestly, what do people think Brock v. Cena could have drawn if held off til say SummerSlam? 400k? 500k? More than that? My thinking is anything in the 400-500k range would have been a massive success. There's no way Brock was doing anywhere near a million buys on anything but a Wrestlemania with 2 or 3 other marquee matches. The last non-Mania or Rumble to hit the 500k number was SummerSlam in 2007. In recent years SummerSlam has been in the 350-300k range and trending downwards year to year, and anything 250-300k on a "B" show has been considered a huge success. If Brock got them 250k for Extreme Rules (and the final # will probably be up a bit from that) and SummerSlam with Brock v. HHH reverses the downward trend (309k last year down about 40k from 2010) and does say 365k....is Brock considered moderately successful?

This is what I posted the last time Sting's candidacy came up (in the 2011 WON HOF thread) I tried to find the post I had made on DVDR but couldn't. But basically I looked at all the PPV buyrates in the 90-94 years, and shows that Sting main evented almost always did the best buyrates. The info is out there on the web if you're curious enough to do the research yourself. I'm not even that big of a Sting fan, I just feel the need to defend him because the wrestling industry was in a total tailspin in the early 90's and WCW was a complete trainwreck of a promotion. I've never bought the idea that Sting couldn't draw.

Dave's been following and covering MMA since the start of UFC and even prior to that if you count UWF and Pancrase as common roots. He's always had his finger on the pulse of combat sports as an industry, boxing, PPV, etc. and understands the history that all of these things share..... That's why I've always thought it's silly when people get on his case about blending coverage of MMA and wrestling and how he draws parallels between them.....they are two different forms of the same thing and have more in common than not, and Dave is as knowledgeable about the history of both as anyone out there Dana White knows as well as anyone the type of knowledge Dave brings to the table, I remember when he was the fresh faced new promoter and sucking up to Meltzer, I remember him lavishing praise on Vince McMahon......Dana White isn't fooling anyone with his act. He's a carnival barking promoter, no different from McMahon or Don King or Paul Heyman or Hulk Hogan or Howard Stern or anyone else with a product to sell

It's not the be all and end all, but of course size matters. Depending on their style small guys can believably hang with giants and maybe give hope for an upset/fluke win, but it should be a rare occurrence. I think Rey is a great example of how a small guy should be booked. He's almost always an underdog, but can believably beat anyone within a certain size range. He's effective in tag match/rumble/scramble situations. In his big 1 on 1 matches with Khali, Big Show, Lesnar, Batista etc. he puts up a good fight but ultimately tends to lose in a pretty convincing fashion. That's realistic booking.

IIRC Mysterio never beat Big Show....in fact I remember their most famous match ending with Show strapping him to a gurney and swinging him into the ringpost like he was a wiffle ball bat

Angle has a couple inches on Bryan, and when he was wrestling Brock he was probably in the 220-230 range. Bryan is maybe 185. That's a big difference in size.

And to steal UFC terminology, styles make fights. It's plausible that Cena can beat Brock, and that Punk can beat Cena, and that Bryan can beat Punk....but that doesn't mean Punk could beat Brock, or that Bryan could beat Cena. MMA math.

Right, and in the pro-wrestling context they've established with Brock he's never lost to anybody smaller than him other than Eddie, who was completely jacked up at the time, and it took a Goldberg spear and incredible luck for Eddie to win that match. Brock has dominated guys like Mysterio and the Hardys, and D-Bry has not been presented as superior to them.

Not sure I buy that. Wrestlemania 2000 and Backlash 2000 were in the same billing cycle as well, and Backlash did an amazing buyrate for the return of Steve Austin, and Austin wasn't even wrestling. If this was a main event that captured the wrestling audience's attention, they would have bought the PPV. They didn't. It's 2012

People bring up Punk and Bryan as potential opponents for Brock but personally I wouldn't really buy either of them having any chance against Brock. I can buy Cena beating Brock in the way that he did, but a 260 lb quick as a cat heavyweight against guys who barely weigh 200 lbs? It's like putting GSP in there with Brock, skill only goes so far. A Brock-Punk match that wasn't 10 minutes of Brock wiping the mat with him and Punk unable to generate any offense would be a disappointment