jdw

Dittos. Pro wrestling and job takes a back seat to family. Which I think from all that Dave gets. He just shouldn't get stressed out about saying, "Can't do it - family emergency." John

They do have the opportunity with the NFL / MNF coming to an end to get some focus on storylines. They are up against college football those first two weeks of January. They are somewhat unlucky that Stanford-OSU is on 1/2. Stanford and OSU aren't exactly big national draws, but it is one of the few interesting match ups on what is a pretty dire slate. It also has one of the other interesting match ups leading in: Quack Attack vs Badgers in the Rose Bowl. The WWE would have preferred one of the more traditional night caps to "New Years" bowl games: Sugar Bowl (MI-VA Tech) or Orange Bowl (WVU-Clemson), which are match ups of interest to mostly fans of those teams. The following Monday will have Raw up against Bama-LSU in one of the more hyped games in a while. Will be more interesting to see what the game draws rather than what the WWE draws. John

I kind of felt that way in Dec 1992 when Misawa had the TC, Misawa & Kawada had the World Tag Titles, and Kobashi & Kikuchi had the All Asia Tag Titles. Of course Kawada had to ruin it by... John

Nice of them to do this since the Last Raw Of December is always one I end up being forced to watch by Cheetah and/or Hombre. Though who knows... they could pull a 180 on that show. John

I take that as Bryan's way of admitting he was wrong without admitting he was wrong? John

Damn... too bad I let my sub lapse as that almost is something that would make me listen to one of those podcasts for a change. Have to respect Todd for standing up to it, and shooting it down. The ""as a bullshit Dave line" is an all-time classic. John

"NOTE: I'd add the following: 06/30/95 Misawa & Kobashi & Asako vs. Kawada & Taue & Honda It's probably the last great AJPW Korakuen Hall TV six-man tag main event. I dug it a ton. Not Top 20... but worth tracking down for AJPW fans, and a good example of how the lower ranked workers are mixed in well in the six-man tag format." -jdw, AJPW Pimpin' Ain't Easy I suspect that in other, later walks through 90s AJPW that it got some discussion as well. Ditch's comment back in October would seem to indicate he's given it some run in the past. One or the other of us must have pimped it in the 1995 suggestions thread. For the most part, very few six-mans get regular run because the Singles and Big Tags do. When talked about, they tend to get praise. When Dave reviewed everything, he gave them good snowflakes. But the way of the world usually is for six mans to get less run than the singles and big tags. John

I'm less of a fan of pre-Revolution Tenryu than most. I did enjoy his Revolution era stuff opposite Jumbo quite a bit, and have a soft spot in my heart for it since it's what I cut my puroresu teeth on back in 1989. That starts in mid-1987, so you should be hitting it soon. John

I'm guessing someone is watching the DVDVR 80s set. John

John

I don't think they want to drop that $150M+ of cash/cash equivalents and short term assets a heck of a lot lower given the economy. Which is probably why Vince tossed out the borrowing aspect. Interest rates are extremely low, so if you have to borrow, it's not a bad time. There probably are also some fed and/or local "job creation" tax incentives they can tap into with the WWE Net, either on the books or likely to come in the next few years (since they seem to be the only "job creation" things that can get passed). They also can reduce the dividend rate, or sell some stock which over time they've bought back. They probably don't want to do either of those. I'm mixed on announcing a lauch. At some point they needed to do that to indicate they're serious. April is a tough time because they appear not to have solid plans. I frankly think the time you would have wanted was January-ish because of the Road to Mania aspect of programing, and also because of Rock this year. Lots of things you could do in terms of programing there for initial ratings. But to do January, you needed to have your shit together more than a year ago. John

As FLIK says, lots of other people did moonsaults in puroresu even while Mutoh was doing it. Kobashi? Toyota used it. Others. In All Japan, both Misawa and Kroffat used the Tiger Driver. Power bomb? In All Japan in the 90s you had Tenryu, Gordy, Hansen, Jumbo, Kawada and Kobashi doing basic versions of it. Doc had the Doctor Bomb. Taue early in the decade came down on his knees, then later moved to the Dynamic Bomb which was a sit down version like the Doctor Bomb. Lots of others. For some, like Jumbo, it wasn't even a signature spot or a routine finisher... but just one of many he used. For Kobashi... he did all sorts of different versions of power bombs. John

*chop* "Wooo!" *chop* "Wooo!" *chop* "Wooo!" *chop* "Wooo!" *chop* "Wooo!" *chop* "Wooo!" *chop* "Wooo!" *chop* "Wooo!" *chop* "Wooo!" *chop* "Wooo!" *chop* "Wooo!" John

I'm scratching my head on part of this: Aside from InDemand, exactly how many deals does the WWE need to enter into to get to 40M homes? Well... iN DEMAND L.L.C. is owned by: Comcast iN DEMAND Holdings, Inc. Cox Communications Holdings, Inc. Time Warner Entertainment - Advance/Newhouse Partnership (a JV of Time Warner Cable and Advance/Newhouse/Bright House) Which means it's partners are: http://www.ncta.com/Stats/TopMSOs.aspx 22,525,000 Comcast Corporation 12,235,000 Time Warner Cable, Inc. 4,838,000 Cox Communications, Inc. 2,139,000 Bright House Networks LLC ------------------------------------------------- 41,737,000 iN DEMAND households I'll be dipped in shit... there's your 40M households! I suspect that's *exactly* why the WWE tossed out 40M as their launch goal number: they know how many the iN DEMAND folks have, and a deal there gets them to that number. I'm not saying they will be *successful* in getting a deal with iN DEMAND. But remember this is the quote from Super Chico: Well, if they get a deal with iN DEMAND, they have their 40M. In turn, we've got Court Bauer tossing this gem out: 19,433,000 DirecTV 3,848,000 Verizon ------------------------ 23,281,000 Households So if Chico is right on "a deal with InDemand", and if Court is right on "maybe Verizon, maybe DirectTV"... you're at 65,018,000 households. I'm not saying they're going to get deals with iN DEMAND, Verizon and DirecTV. That would be Chico and Court. But good reporting (in the case of Chico) and good commentary (in the case of Court) would be to... you know... Attach some numbers to what they're talking about. They're not hard to find either. The Google is your friend, let alone the fact that several of us have been tossing the numbers around with links and shit. The other important thing *isn't* just the Households. It's not really hard to get households. It's harder to get on Basic and get a decent rights fee. And those are the things that the WWE is likely running into. 40M or 90M homes doesn't mean anything if you're not on basic and are not getting a $0.08 fee per household. On the other hand, if we're talking about 40M households as the goal, I'll go back to this chart again: http://www.ncta.com/Stats/TopMSOs.aspx 22,525,000 Comcast Corporation 12,235,000 Time Warner Cable, Inc. 4,838,000 Cox Communications, Inc. 2,139,000 Bright House Networks LLC ------------------------------------------------- 41,737,000 iN DEMAND households WWE Programing airs where? I'm trying to remember what I wrote about this before... that's right: WWE Raw = USA Network = Comcast WWE SmackDown = Syfy = Comcast WWE Tough Enough = USA Network = Comcast Comcast. 54% of the households needed to get to 40M are controlled by the company that the WWE is in bed with. Hmmm... Again, for the 14th time... I'm not saying that the WWE is going to cut a deal with iN DEMAND and other major providers like DirecTV, Verizon, ATT, etc. (though it should be their goal)... nor that they will get onto Basic with each of the providers (though that should be their goal)... or that they'll get $0.08 per Basic household (though that *really* should be their baseline goal, not some insanely higher number). But if you're going to throw shit around, at least support it with the simple info that's out there in the public. Simply finding a way to cut a deal even with *Comcast* alone on the side as a Basic channel at $0.08 per household would be a major start on the path to 40M homes. It also would be $21,624,000 in revenue from Rights Fees before we talk about advertising revenue (which admittedly will not be gangbusters but also won't be $0.00) or infomercial revenue (which many major cable companies do for 6 or so hours a day, which indicates it's not an insignificant revenue stream). That's Comcast, at a time when Comcast it looking for programing on it own channels given the brutal nature of NBC's primetime wasteland... and Versus / NBC Sports stuck with the horrid NHL $200M a year deal as their anchor sport... you'd think in terms of programing that the WWE has some value to Comcast to stick around. I'm a broken record on this, but the WWE should have done a joint venture with Viacom when Raw was over there... and should have been working on a JV for a channel with Comcast every since they moved back. Comcast has muscle to get on other providers, and also has a massive advertising department to see ads on all sorts of programing... including Wrestling Programing. I don't have confidence in the WWE pulling this off. But it's not because the WWE Channel concept can't be pulled off. It's because the WWE haven't been very smart in handling it, and I don't have a great deal of confidence that they will smarten up. That said, it's not something that is all that hard, especially given (i) the models out there to learn from, (ii) the potential partners out there to work with, and (iii) the money the WWE has had to throw at it. As a last side note on (iii): $10,954,000 - Fiscal Year ending 04/30/04 $24,716,000 - Fiscal Year ending 04/30/05 $50,064,000 - Fiscal Year ending 04/30/06 $51,017,000 - Eight Months ending 12/31/06 (bridge period due to change in FY calendar) $68,664,000 - Fiscal Year ending 12/31/07 $81,397,000 - Fiscal Year ending 12/31/08 $82,269,000 - Fiscal Year ending 12/31/09 $83,643,000 - Fiscal Year ending 12/31/10 $38,879,000 - Nine Months ending 09/30/11 (current FY to date) ------------------------ $491,603,000 Those would be the dividends the WWE has paid out over the years. $315,973,00 from 2007-10 when they really kicked it up. I'm not sure what the benefit to the company it's been to toss that level of dividend out there. I know there's a benefit to the McMahons (a good chunk of that has gone into their pockets), and there no doubt is a small benefit to the share price in have a cash return for owning the shares. But if the company had been more modest in retaining even say... half of that amount, they would be sitting on: $58M Cash and cash equivalents (as of 9/30/11) $104M Short-term investments (as of 9/30/11) $150M not paid in dividends --------- $312M in Cash, cash equivalents & Short-term investments That's assuming the non-paid dividends would have been rolled into Short-term investments. Or better year, the company had been using those non-dividends and a chunk of the Short-term investments to fund creating the channel back in 2007. John

Maybe we should change this (red-lines to show changes): "Prom ticket, limousine transportation, Mr. Flair's round-trip plane ticket and Viagra are to be paid for by the parties involved." John

You need to add in there something about: * have con defended by Flair Fanboys * find new "friends" to con out of money John

They appear to have changed their minds several times during 1995. I'm pretty sure that the plan in March *wasn't*: Mar: Aja --> Toyota Jun: Toyota --> Kong Aug: Kong --> Dynamite Dec: Dynamite --> Toyota Certainly wasn't anything we got in the building in March, which was a result that surprised the hell out of at least one person affiliated with AJW. I mentioned in the prior thread that it wasn't anything that was around the time they started selling tickets for Toyota-Hokuto, which was being pimped as a title match. It's also not terribly consistent with their past booking of the belt from the time of Jaguar on through... well, how much later in the decade was it when there were four Big Red title changes in a year? They just massively changed their plans. We could on some level argue it would have been better "booking" if they didn't do it. But we also got this match, which was good. Then the Aja-Dynamite title change, which was good. And the Dynamite-Toyota match, which even if people end up finding it didn't age well, at least we got to see the two in a big match in the era. If AJW didn't change their minds after March, we probably wouldn't have had any of those. John

From PWI via PWT Boards... this appears to be all over the next, but Bix and Keith haven't shared it with us here. I actually don't see it on his website. Not saying it's not there, but perhaps it's buried. I did find the $25K Flair Robe. John

Loved the Bill Watts "eye contact" explanation. John

FWIW, I dig that they're rolling out flyweight. With all the shows they've got going on, it makes for another interesting group of fighters... and frankly the lower weight classes tend to be fun a shit fights. I do wonder what the over/under is for UFC going to a super heavyweight division. I know they have no great desire or plan for it... and lord knows there could be a lot of stinker fights in it. But I always through they had in Brock someone who could open it up if (i) there was a heavy champ he simply couldn't beat, and (ii) he was still over enough / good enough to compete against fatter fucks. John