jdw

This the bit where I say this isn't really about Sting. Except that you were also explicit that you brought it up with Sting in mind. So I addressed Sting. Except you were specific in your premise that you were talking about TV Star in the sense of When The Business Model Change. The business model on "drawing" didn't change to being a TV Star to Sell TV until the point I cited. Prior to that, Sting's job as a TV Star was to Draw House Show Business and Draw PPV Business. At which Sting was a failed TV Star until the Business Model Changed. After the Business Model Changed, he had an extremely short run where his being a TV Star drew WCW money. That's what my response answered with respect to Sting. John

Ahahahaha talk about begrudging. "Sting actually proved himself early on, but it doesn't count because as a fake athlete he didn't single-handedly save WCW from colossal mismanagement issues." Geez, just give the dude a point. My thought would be to read Jerry premise: Jerry is talking about the business changing in terms of TV being a revenue stream, and TV being done to sell TV rather than simply push house shows and PPV. That really only started happened in the 1996-98 time when first WCW than the WWF started turning their ratings into ratings for TV content. That Sting became a TV Star in 1988 doesn't mean anything in terms of a Hall of Fame candidacy unless it made his company a good deal of money. Instead, his company failed and was forced to be sold. Then the new company lost money year after year after year. A baseball manager's job is to win games. Running up a record like this: 1988: 72-90 1989: 72-90 1990: 62-100 1991: 52-110 1992: 52-110 1993: 52-100 1994: 72-90 (thank you Hulkster!) 1995: 72-90 (thank you Hulkster!) 1996: 92-70 1997: 112-50 World Series Champs 1998: 92-70 1999: 52-110 2000: 42-120 2001: 42-120 That ain't a HOF career. Especially when we know that in that 112-50 season that Hulk and Eric had most of the credit for the team's sucess. Sting was a Big TV Star much like a power hitting 1B who played 15 years for the Brewers, had 2-3 all star seasons, one MVP, won one World Series... and no one thinks is a Hall of Fame player. John

Could you imagine in 1991 going to a card with these being the last four matches on it: Kenta Kobashi vs Dan Kroffat Toshiaki Kawada vs Akira Taue World Tag Titles: Stan Hansen & Danny Spivey vs Terry Gordy & Steve Williams Triple Crown Jumbo Tsuruta vs Mitsuharu Misawa Yow...

What's a bit sad is that it didn't get one of these spots: Clash of the Champions XIV January 30, 1991 WCW World Champ Ric Flair drew Scott Steiner (24:25) WrestleWar 1991 February 24, 1991 in Phoenix, AZ The Four Horsemen (Flair, Windham, Vicious, & Zbysko) beat Sting, Brian Pillman, Rick & Scott Steiner (21:50) SuperBrawl May 19, 1991 in St Petersburg, FL WCW World Champ Ric Flair pinned NWA World Champ Tatsumi Fujinami (18:39) Clash of the Champions XV June 14, 1991 in Knoxville, TN WCW World Champ Ric Flair beat Bobby Eaton (14:26) in three falls It couldn't get Wargames or SuperBrawl. But you really wish that it got either the January Clash or the June Clash. They were both disappointing, and in the long run meaningless. Well... Steiner's challenge was meaningful in getting out of people's minds that he could be a top guy. Instead, Pillman-Flair came a few years before the expanded schedule of more PPVs and Clashes popping up between, where Flair-Pillman would have been a good match for the Clash to lead into something bigger for Flair at the next PPV. Really looking back... that January spot would have been perfect to lead into Wargames, with the Horsemen coming in to take advantage of Pillman and Sting & the Steiners running in for the brawl save. Just the visual works better: smaller Pillman holding his own against Ric, forcing heel run in & beatdown, with the Big Guns of the face side running out for the save. Then Pillman wanting "revenge" at the Wargames plays in even more.

Let's break Sting's "TV" career down into sections on a national level: 1986-87 UWF Sting wasn't a bit star in the promotion. It died while he was moderately moving up. No HOF credit there. 1987-95 JCP/WCW The company was losing money hand over fist. Sting's big ratings moment (such as Clash 1) didn't put any money into the company's pockets to keep it from losing money hand over fist. Did it help keep the company alive because it was TV Content that had value to TBS? That's a trickier question. But for Ted and his fondness for the company, it's a question whether the promotion would have been kept alive. I don't think any of us have a clear picture of whether the $6M of losses on the WCW books were off set by more than $6M of add revenue for TBS (more in the sense that TBS and Turner in general had to turn a profit on the deal to off set the WCW losses). Not sure on that one. 1995-1996 WCW There was a stretch where Nitro was doing ratings but before the companies (both WCW and Turner/TW) started making money in buckets. We can't just flip the switch at Nitro and say Sting being a TV star meant a massive crapload in terms of a HOF candidacy. 1996-1999 WCW WCW gets hot, starts making money, and makes loads for Turner/Time Warner. Sting *is* a part of that. We talked about this in the prior Sting threads on how we split this up, but the reality is that more than 50% of the credit ends up with Hogan and Eric. If Eric doesn't have the stones to pull what he did, and if Hogan doesn't go heel to anchor the whole clusterfuck, the rest of the knuckle heads keep losing shitloads of money. That's in terms of TV every bit as much as house show business and PPV, probably more. Splitting up the rest of the 50% is where it gets even trickier. Some goes to Hall & Nash, because love them or hate them, their jump shaped where WCW, Eric and Hogan went. We talked about Savage and Piper doing huge business with Hogan, and having key TV roles to do so. So it's really tricky to put a huge credit onto Sting. He gets a cut, but not a majority of it, nor close to it. Before folks run in and talk about how big Sting up in the rafters was... I know that. We talked about it in the other thread. But up in the rafters has no impact without what came before it... which was caused by Eric and the Outsiders, then hit out of the park by Eric and Hogan. 1999-2001 WCW Promotion went to total shit, lost tons of money, and went out of business. Skip "blame", and just focus on this: Sting gets no credit for being a TV Star of a Titanic of a tv show sinking what had been a wildly successful promotion. Don't get hung up on whether he gets any blame for it... just that the period covered by it is a 0 on the HOF candidacy. 2003–2013 TNA The promotion has been a total bomb, losing money left and right, kept alive by money marks. Sting gets a Blutarsky as a TV Star for that period: 0.00. In fact, Sting is probably one of the reasons it's bombed: an obsession with past their prime overpaid "talent" from the 80s and 90s. Mixed in with the obsession of being a vanity promotion for years to put over Jeffey. So we're back exactly where we were in Sting's normal HOF Candidacy: He was a really big star for a certain period of time in say late 1996 through early 1999, where if you zero in on the really important part of it narrows way down into 1997 with a little tail before and after... but not as much as people think after he came out of the rafters for the two matches with Hogan. Sting's probably a bad test for this. A WWE wrestler of the 00's where TV revenue is higher is probably a better one. But then... One would have to prove that he actually was a ratings driver, rather than it just being WWE Product in general that was drawing a large amount of the baseline rating. Tricky. I know Dave has toyed with that stuff for well over a decade, but it never was very satisfying / conclusive to all of us how he analyzed the data. But folks could have at it... he's certainly rolled it out enough. John

Thought we hit this way back on the first page: The Million Dollar Man, Mr. Perfect and Undertaker stuff was all scripted out. Word-for-word? Who really knows, since Curt is dead, Ted is going to take credit where he can for the good stuff, and Mark ain't talking. But hell... the Hogan-Savage turn was "scripted" to a large degree. Hogan and Savage didn't sit down and come up with that stuff. It's pure WWF-style goofiness.

Lots of risk on her side. It's just a Workers Comp case. If it's damaging enough to a company, they'll appeal it into the courts. How hard TNA would want to fight it (quite hard) and hard how Daffney would want to fight it (not cheap), how long it would drag out, and the risk of getting $0.00... If the settlement covers a chunk of what you're looking for (along with what you owe the attorneys), you settle even when you're "winning". We settled a case last week. We were "winning". But we took less that what we were fully owed because: * we still didn't have a final ruling * to get there would cost considerably more in atty fees * there was a risk of any number of thinks breaking up the winning streak * even that would be appealed * even if you run the tables, atty fees added on top of that are always a tough win We didn't take what we were fully owed, but to get from what we took to what we were owed would have cost a big chunk of the difference because of that second item with the fifth item meaning we were unlikely to get that cost in an award. My guess is that Daffney and here atty ran the numbers, saw that they had a moment of leverage with which to get paid Now rather than possibly down the road, and took it. In the end, good for her. John

I think my two favorite pictures of all time are MLP with the Snake and Kinski with the Snake. Of course I was an impressionable 15 year old when the Nastassja one was done. And yes... I know you love MLP, and was saddened that you no sold my original post. I was trolling specifically for you.

Good for her. John

Right clicking on the image and seeing the link should do it: her name was right in it. John

He kind of got around to that after getting hammered on the Watts one, so he called in the Calvary of More Shoot Interviews to bolster his position... or at least try. Let's see how the worked out... 1. Oil mega-trend (Watts) Jerry's original theory which he fought tooth and nail for. 2. JYD left so gates were down and / or the product wasn't what people wanted to see anymore (jdw and Loss) That's a narrow view on what we've said. In general, the product wasn't enough to draw people to shows. That is always the reason attendance goes in the crapper. 3. Dundee hotshotted the territory (DiBiase) That is the Product. It would be like saying Steph and WWE Creative aren't part of the Product: they write and book the shit. 4. Costs were out of control (Taylor) Costs aren't a problem if you can draw. WCW's costs were "out of control"... except they weren't when the company was making money hand over fist. Once ratings went down, house show business went down and PPV went down, they couldn't cover the costs. The UWF's drawing went to shit. Why? Not because of the "costs". The "costs" (i.e. the cost of running the promotion) being out of control don't keep fans from buying tickets. I'm not sure why attendance figures are needed. Jerry admits, thanks to his shoot interviews, that attendance went to shit. John

I would have never pegged you as a Brony, John. I suspect you have the wrong MLP. The one I love... John

And in the end, Vince won. You think Greg and Honky came up with Rhythm and Blues?

"OK, I'm interested in writing for you. I've done a 13 part series for HBO, so I think I could write some compelling storylines for you and make great TV drama. How does production work?" "Well, our main show is three hours, plus we have a secondary two hour show that's sorta part of the story, plus another 2 1/2 hours of spin-off shows featuring the lesser characters. We air a new episode every week, all year round. We start writing at most five days before broadcast and finish writing on the day of broadcast. Occasionally we rewrite as the show is airing. We use athletes and bodybuilders rather than actors and we hand them the script on the day of broadcast. We don't do rehearsals. A lot of the stuff we film before an audience and broadcast live, so it has to be done first take. We have this weird deal where some of the characters are aware they are in a television show, but in some of the scenes set 'backstage' the characters don't always seem aware they are being filmed and their actions broadcast on live TV, though we do show it to the live studio audience and pipe in their reactions. Absolutely any storyline you write can and will be thrown out or completely altered by your boss depending on his mood. Oh, and for every fifth episode or so we charge the fans $55 to watch." Great.

You love that period of WWF you grew up on, to the point where maybe you're still justifying the inordinate amount of money you spent on WWF home videos , but a lot of that was stuff was hokey. You love it because it's kitsch. Today's stuff will probably be kitsch in thirty years time. Besides, if you really go through that stuff you'll find there was a lot of bad acting and a lot of scripted promos to boot. Wrestlers who couldn't talk were told what to say. Quite often it looks like they're reading it off auto cue. FWIW, the skits and vignettes that Jerry is talking about were generally "scripted" and "written". WWF Creative (be it Vince or Pat or someone else) came up with those characters for the most part, and told the performers what to say. We overplay the word-for-word nonsense and get hung up on it. In reality, Ray Traylor didn't come up with Big Bubba Rogers nor The Big Bossman. Dusty Rhodes and Jim Cornette came up with pretty much all the elements of the first one, while WWF 80s Creative came up with the second one. Ray's performances for a hell of a long time were scripted out for him, even if it's wasn't 100% (though lord knows the early Bossman ones were almost certainly 100%). John

Would be interesting to have the total including CHV stuff. For example, from Graham's site: The Undertaker: His Gravest Matches (12/15/93) #126 Bret "The Hitman" Hart (8/10/94) #140 Razor Ramon (10/5/94) #143 Shawn Michaels: The Heartbreak Express Tour (3/11/97) #168 Hogan likely has the most.

1989 was good, thought impacted by the guy above Flair. Blaming everything on Herd can be overplayed, but there clearly was a lot of truth in him being a negative. Credit for Ric in that period is a bit tricky. He didn't come up with all the ideas nor block the stuff out. It sounds more like the had a decent team of guys around him, and as the "head" booker was good at letting them do stuff. With someone in the place of Herd, it probably was a good team for the time... except that it didn't make money relative to the WWF. Catch-22 there. John

Note: I have nothing invested in Lawler, and really don't care if he's in the Top 50 anymore than I care if Hansen does (who I have more invested in). Lawler isn't my cross to bear in guys to pimp. On the other hand, I tend to hate stupid inconsistent arguments that don't even get out of the batter's box. John

Do these guys even stop to think if a comment like this passes the laugh test? 2. Ric Flair 4. Hulk Hogan Yeah... I mean, seriously... they're just making up their excuses as they go along, without pondering how it applies to other people. Flair wasn't "believable", except as a loud mouth who bitched out to fat Dusty Rhodes left and right. And he drew doing it. Hogan wasn't "believable", except he Beat The Heels. And he drew doing it. Lawler wasn't believable... except as a face, he Beat The Heels... and as a heel, he bitched out to the faces. And he drew doing it. This isn't rocket science, for fuck's sake. John

Punk was a mid carder who moved up. Shitty on promos? Now granted... I don't jerk off to Punk's promos like most hardcores, and generally don't find his character, promos and storylines interesting at all. But that's a personal taste: he's allegedly great at all of that. Is scomeone "scripting" that out? Probably not in the sense of word-for-word. But Heyman worked with him in ECW. Folks are working with him now on his stuff. They also need to know what he's generally going to do to have people prepared to play off it... and "general" is far too broad. They need to know some specifics so that others are truly prepared to play off it. Dick is an interesting example. I guess my problem with it is that Dick never worked in an era where selling TV Content was important at all. This is like our discussions on Squash matches: the business has changed on what TV means in terms of revenue.

The analogy would be this: I love watching MLP, and she raises interesting questions about how hot she still is in her mid 40s. But then again, I know that chances of me ever banging MLP are 0.00%. That's pro wrestling shoots. And frankly I'd rather watch MLP because at least she can act here ass off, while pro wrestling shoots just leave me rolling my eyes. John

Here's your original post: Point me to any factor other than the "oil crisis" that you cite as causing his promotion to be put on the verge of BK. In the very first post that follow, Loss pointed to "product". Which you wouldn't buy, and won't let go of the oil factor. Come on Jerry... don't pull a Watts and rewrite the history of this thread. We actually can go back and read what happened a day ago, as opposed to Watts being able to pull the wool over your eyes on something that happened nearly 30 years ago. Christ...

Well, maybe Larry's shoot interview only focused on the WWF. The highlight clips on youtube were enough to make my head spin that I never checked out the hole thing. Still... would you take anything Larry said of his time in the AWA as the gospel?

Most certainly. But has there been a good wrestling *writer* thus far we can talk about ? They've all been pretty shitty. Folks seem to have liked SMW. A vast majority of the was Corny blocking out what he wanted. Corny will never call it "writing", because he's an old school carny wrestling guy who doesn't want to be in the same bucket as Russo.

I actually think word-for-word promos are a bit overblown. Does anyone think a writer is coming up with every word Trip is saying? Are Taker's promos in the past three years scripted out any more or less then his and Paul Bearer's were back in 1992-94? Does anyone really think Cena is a good enough actor to remember 10 straight minutes of promo script without a single break to retape something (like they'd do in his scripted movies), or that he has a more general "script" to work off? * * * * * I'm going to go back to this again. Raw and Smackdown are weekly TV shows. As dictated by the revenue streams, their point is every bit as much to get people to watch the shows as it is to get people to go to house shows or buy the PPVs. 52 weeks a year, no re-runs. 5 hours a week now, not even counting the other shows. 260 hours = Raw + Smackdown 13.5 hours = Cheers at it peak season I'm not sold that Pro Wrestlers are so much more gifted creatively than Cheers Actors when it comes to being able to pull shit out of their asses to fill 246.5 *more* hours of TV content a year. Again, I think we overplay just how much of the "script" in terms of words ends up on TV. But we also underplay the importance of "scripting out" 260 hours of Television Content a year where the point is to get people to watch that content this week, and next week, and the week after in an era of diverse viewing and entertainment competition and options. I've got issues with Russo as a person involved in Pro Wrestling, and a lot of his theories are utter bullshit on top of being delusional. So I tend to hate that this discussion springs from a shoot tape of the jerkoff. It poisons a broader discussion.