jdw

The thing is... some of us are old enough to have "lived it", and happened to think Monsoon sucked back in the day. Some may have changed their view on that when rewatching stuff from the 80s. Some of us haven't. So maybe you have the wrong "you guys". There are a fair number of people here who watched the shit in the 80s.

The flip bump was nice, and Whitney is quite good in it selling his nonsense.

Myths become reality to people when the joke gets passed on to second, third, and fourth hand reports. I definitely knew of the Bret Hart "five moves of doom" as a serious complaint when I started talking wrestling online. No doubt. It was a complaint by people who (i) were too dense to get that it was a joke, and (ii) too dense to actually track whether Bret did it the same five moves in the same order in every match. That's a common theme about myths: Dumb People.

Brutal. :.(

Flair The reason I became a wrestling fan, along with the Midnight Express and Jim Cornette. For the past 15 years, my general thought has been that if I never see another Flair Match, my life would be perfectly fine. Still think he was a great worker, and thank him for making me a wrestling fan. Just don't want to watch his stuff.

Dear god...

Orton-Reigns was really flat with the crowd at Casa del Hoback... and it wasn't a trio of James, grumpy Yohe and grumpy jdw. I was the only grumpy person there, and the other 6 were all watchers of current WWE and generally like the stuff, or at least some of it. Everyone in the room hated Orton, and not in the Good Heel Hate, but in that same old Get Off My Fucking TV Hate. Reigns was surprisingly not as over in the room as you would think for someone who is suppose to main event Mania. The Lumberjack match had vastly more attention and interest in the room. So... yeah, there are some disconnects. I get mine: I'm not at all a fan of modern WWE product. But even a room of generally WWE Fans didn't see that show like Dave.

Anyway to have a rule on spam-shills like this in sig.files? I like the links to people's podcasts and blogs, and I'm always down with the animated gifs of dogs breaking up cats from fighting, so this is the one board where I don't hide sig.files. But... A few of those monster photoshop sig.files popping up, which isn't quite at infestation level yet so I'm ignoring them. But this one... not sure if you want these becoming normal. :/

When the babyface is outside the ring and the Ref is slow on the county or ignoring the count, starting to loudly count for a Count Out. When the babyface is punching, yelling at the ref that it's a Closed Fist! All sorts of shit to playfully give the babyface fans a hard time. But always being willing to bump and stooge when your Heel starts getting his ass kicked. You're not trying to start a riot, or really piss the face fans off. You let them get one over on you when the Face comes back against the Heel. Or at least I did, and if I found myself around other heel fans, we all generally played it that way. It's a two hour show... you can't no sell when they're trying to have fun back, so you got to bump for them.

The problem with tiers is that the WWE lost 100K+ subs who thought a *basic* tier (just $9.99) was too much to pay. So there's a $14.99 tier with More Stuff... how does that get back the 100K+ that took a powder? It's something that's more likely to appeal to those that are already signed up. Worse, that More Stuff much actually be the Stuff that will draw more subs to pay $9.99 a month. Seriously... they have to find ways to make the $9.99 feel like enough ongoing content that 1M people want to pay for it. That's hard to do when you're cutting $30M a year of costs, unless that's coming from things that have no impact on the Network (i.e. including Product that impacts getting new content onto the Network). And example... For years I've talked about them airing a Live House Show on the Network on Saturday Nights. Do it cheap, akin to the old MSG, Spectrum, Boston Garden shows rather than the big production budget of Raw. Spike attendance (people go to the live shows more than non-live shows). Give people a weekly new TV show that's above the Superstars level but below the Raw/SD level. Integrate it into Raw and SmackDown so that at least 1 thing that happens each week on SNWrestling plays into Raw, and at least one thing that happens on SD plays into SNW. You don't need to go insane on it at the start... but it's not that hard to block some things out. The problem is that when you're cutting $30M a year, who wants to spend money on a live produced house show? A decent sized production team, announcing crew (including backstage guy who may also work the crowd), more road agents that you have at a typical house show, etc. Even running it on the cheap, and taking advantage of the WWE already running shows on Saturday... it still wouldn't be cheap. That's just one idea. We've bounced around others over the months and years. They all cost money, attention, production, effort. Those are things that a WWE Network needs, but if they're stripping it down to 500K US subs as break even (or meeting revenue and profit needs), that will be a lean network. Not holding my breath that their coming moves will be any better than what we've seen. They don't seem terribly smart about this, which isn't uncommon over the years when the WWE has gone outside their core business knowledge.

The thing they were trying to avoid was it being seasonal: people plopping down $60 one a year for Mania, then letting it lapse, only to renew the following March. $9.99 a month is suppose to be "painless" as a subscription, while $60 is something that people think a bit more about. At $20 a month, these people will just pay for Mania and think they got a great deal. Perhaps the WWE gets a good deal as well since they pocket the money (less whatever MLB is charging them). They really need to work in the direction of having enough regular ongoing interesting content that makes people think $9.99 is a good deal, beyond just getting the PPV's.

Good lord... I just found out that Roy Lucier compiled every Puroresu News into 4 hours comps for both 1991 and 1992. Both are sitting on Youtube. Wild.

Anyway... The heels were funny and better. Ric Flair, Cornette, the Horsemen and the Midnight Express. There were the funniest and best guys in JCP in 1986. It didn't matter that they were getting their rear ends kicked. It was clear that they were the better performers than the faces. Plus it was fun to be a heel fan at a live show. You could wind up the face fans in a good natured way, and them bump and stooge just like the heels were when the tide of the match turned. And when they got their asses kicked, you could come up with lame bullshit to cover for it after the match: DUSTY FAN: *taunting* "Ric's got his ass kicked!" HEEL FAN: "Sure he got his ass kicked, but he's still the Champ!" DUSTY FAN: "Yeah... he's a pussy s running back to the locker room!" HEEL FAN: "With those 10 Pounds of Gold in his hands that Dusty ain't getting tonight... WOOOOO~!" Wrestling is stupid entertainment. Being a heel fan invited you to get stupid with it in a way of being "in on it" even before we knew better words for it. In contrast, being a face fan made you stupid: you were lapping up the bullshit the promotion was serving you. So of course the Heel Fans were always the Snob Fans of the era.

I love that last part.

The quarterly gain is a positive: 161K. If they happened to add 150K a quarter for 450K over the last three quarters, that would more than hit their 1M goal. On the other hand... The cancellation issue *is* a big issue. The rate is something that can't be explained away by people's cc's expiring, which is going to be a certain number every month anyway. That number is a pretty clear sign of people pro-actively getting out of their monthly billing, just looking to bag Mania at a cheap rate. Three things come to mind: * consumers are smarter than Vince thinks * consumers are getting cheaper all the time Semi-related. It's part of the modern world on the heels of the net where people want content for free/cheap. They are consistently getting smarter at figuring out how to get cheap/free stuff, and how to game the system. * the WWE has done a shitty job on Network Content to hold subs The business model, which was up in the air for years as this was developed, suddenly jerked over in the direction of "Include All The PPV!" In concept, it was a pretty brilliant idea. Cut out the cable company middle men to keep more of the revenue. Give "great value" to subs. It's content that gets churned out every month anyway, so it's not a massive production cost being added. Brilliant! Problem is the WWE PPV's are a big draw in the US anymore on a consistent basis. Mania is... and this proved it once again. But on a month-in, month-out basis, they really aren't. So it's Great Value in concept, but not one that people are breaking down the doors that they must have it every month at the cost of $9.99. Which lead to the issue of them still needing to have in place regular content that attracts and retains subs. Once a month programing isn't enough. * * * * * Is the model going to change to increase content that might attract and hold subs? Seems more likely that it will go in the other direction. Cost cutting, and a reduction in the number of subs needed to break even / make money. That's not really a good sign to believe that the Network is going to blossom to the fullest of what any of us hopped. Perhaps down the road, but seems unlikely now. Instead it's more likely that the Network is going to be treated more bare bones. :/

http://www.f4wonline.com/more/more-top-stories/96-wwe/38247-dave-meltzer-notes-from-wwe-conference-call

I'm not sure if WWE ever ran a show at the Forum. They always ran the Sports Arena. This. The Sports Arena was their regular LA arena for most of the 80s and into the 90s.

I believe this sums it up well. I was thinking of going to the Hogan Well, but you already drew from it perfectly. It's unlikely to happen on a board because discussions tend to strike him as confrontational. But it would be interesting offline to have a conversation with him on whether he would agree that he was harder on Hogan in the 80s than he would be now. Try make the conversation as much as possible about *not* asking his to re-rate stuff, but more on the conceptual level that he's more attentive to crowd heat and response now than he was back then. I kind of get why he thought differently in the 80s. Over in JCP/NWA was Our Hero Ric, who both got Great Crowd Heat and put on "Great Matches" in the way Dave liked. In contrast, Hogan got the heat but didn't work matches in a way Dave cared for. Ric was going to get rated higher, and Hulk was going to rate lower in contrast.

So? The interwebs didn't love Dean as much as you think it did. They loved Benoit and Eddy more. Dean was the third wheel.

3/4 of the current WWE roster would kill to get the pop Dean got for unmasking as Ciclope after that battle royal at Superbrawl (I think). Of course, that might be more a credit to Jericho's heel work than anything else. Dean was over in stretches. He also wasn't always awful or sucky. He did have his moments. That's one of the things that was frustrating about him is that there was a base to build on, and frankly a really good persona as a contrast to everyone else in the division. But he feels akin to one of those NBA players where you'd like to point out to him what he does well, what's solid, what works strongly for him, and the stuff that is bad for both him and his opponent... and knock off the crappy stuff, focus on the good and solid stuff. John

When those discussions were going on, I was hardly the only one who thought Dean wrestled to his own tune and zoned out the crowd.

Which is funny, since Cooke already pointed out that I've been bagging on Dean since 1996... which happens to be when I get online. One of these years I'm going to need to put together a list of the things I get blamed for (Taue "sucking", "overrating" Backlund and The Destroyer, "Sell The Arm!!!", My Turn/Your Turn, Flair Criticism...) and the things that I don't get credit for ("Dean is a stupid worker", "Toyota is overrated", "That Hogan guy was pretty damn effective worker", "Good lord is the work in All Japan is starting to piss me off"...). I think Sammy vs Ohtani might be one of the few things right in the middle between those two extremes.

It didn't draw like a territory. Territories that drew at the levels of ECW were in their death spirals. We talk about Portland being a "small" territory. But I suspect Bix and/or Dylan could point to them out drawing ECW Arena. ECW was largely drawing like an Indy Plus.