jdw

Korakuen is a great place to watch wrestling in, especially if you're sitting at the Press Table. Budokan... I'm mixed. It's probably the shows I saw, which were the weakest of All Japan Womens of that 1993-96 big show era. There just wasn't the vibe in the joint you would have wanted. Kick myself for not having a trip in 1995-96 that included a AJPW Budokan card. Anyway, watched the MMA tourney up from on press row, and that was pretty much the same as the MMA tourney: "Eh". The rest of the cards in the lower deck rather than the floor. Sitelines were fine, but again the vibe wasn't there due to the show. Ryogoku Kokugikan is flat out one of the coolest places to watch a show if it's a good show. Sumo boxes are cool. Floor seats are great. The front row of the balcony is easily one of the best places in the world to watch a quality card with a packed crowd. Just awesome. I'm probably one of the few who liked Yokohama Arena in the 90s. It's a pretty generic modern arena, similar to generic ones in the US. But it was comfortable seating, the climate control was perfect (as opposed to a stuffy or hot or cold building), the sit line from where we were sitting in the stands was perfect. I had a better time watching Queendom there in 1995 than the two Discover New Heroine shows the following year. Tokyo Dome... I really didn't hate it as much as others. Granted, a press pass gives you a lot of latitude to go and sit where ever the hell you want. The press row in the stands was perfectly fine to be "in the crowd" and get the feel for what it's like to be in the middle of 50K+ digging pro wrestling. Then to go down on the field for the Onita-Pogo debacle was an experiance. And 50K fans chanting Misawa-Misawa-Misawa after Onita ducked back under the curtains is something I wouldn't trade anything in my pro wrestling experiances for. I'm glad to have seen at least one major packed card in that joint, and given a choice that probably was the perfect one for me to do so given the 13 promotions. Yokohama Bunka Gym was a dump. Fine on some level to watch a card from the extremely narrow balcony... but still a dump. There were a few minor spot show cards in other places, but none of those rate. Well... the "parking lot" FMW show was interesting but not an arena. Anyway, for favorites in Japan, it would be Korakuen for a small card, Sumo Hall for an example larger arena that was the "home base" for a major promotion that was awesome when they were hitting their marks on the card and drawing as well.

David's post kind of points to why they're not insanely undervalued: Part of that is because Raw draw 5M viewers a week, so it has a lot of viewers to divide revenue by. Looking at just USA's primetime line up: Mon: Raw (3 hours) Tue: Law & Order SVU (1) + Modern Family (2) Wed: Modern Family (1) + Psych (1) + Movie Thu: Law & Order SVU (3) Fri: Law & Order SVU (1) + Modern Family (2) Sat: Law & Order SVU (3) Sun: Law & Order SVU (1) + Modern Family (2) Uh... it's not a good sign that the advertising money per viewer is considerably higher for what is largely Re-Runs. Just 4 hours a week are non-reruns: Raw and Pysch. That does change a bit over the year, as these are the "new" shows they air: Psych (last season currently airing) Royal Pains (6th season in June) White Collar (just finished 5th season - renewal a question) Covert Affairs (5th season later this year) Suits (3.2 season starting in Mar-Apr / 4th season ordered) Graceland (2nd season later this year) They've got three additional series on deck: Benched Playing House Sirens Obviously none of these shows gives them 3 hours a week, 52 weeks a year of content that's drawing 5M viewers, not even accounting for SmackDown. But wrestling's advertising money has long been a talked about problem. Vince is working hard to get across that the WWE is like "sports" where people still want to watch it "live" (i.e. not on the DVD skipping the ads). But people don't seem to be buying that as a great value, especially if they can't turn around and make a ton of ad money off it. Is the WWE undervalued in terms of the Viewers it draws? Sure, long has been relative to what other things draw. But people in the TV business know how much they can make off that viewership. Those people have done seemingly insane stuff like pay $200M a year for the NHL (NBC & NBC Sports Network). That draws a test patern rating compared to the WWE, and probably a shitty Demo rating relative to the WWE. But it doesn't look like Comcast offered up $200M a year to Vince, because if they did he would have jumped at it in a second. John

Yep... that's people buying that it's got a shot at the Network doing business and TV Rights going up. It's not really a matter of people thinking it's undervalued at current revenue, but at an increased revenue. This also isn't a new trend. The price has been going up quite a bit since October or so.

The Marty story I tend to believe are the ones of him drugging up women to bang, which if I recall correctly he told on his brief time on Wrestling Classics. Bix or Dylan - do you remember them? Anyway... it's not something that someone would make up, and only something that someone would say if he thought it was a cool funny story of his fun old days in the business. I recall that a slew of people were flat out appalled.

Shawn and Marty have changed their stories over this several times. Enough that Wiki even spends far more time than usual trying to explain it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rockers#Break_up_and_beyond It's Shawn at the center of the stories, so he's always "take it with a grain of salt" when he's Shooting.

One, we don't know what Vince has told the roster. Two, Vince doesn't know how this will work because he doesn't know how much revenue they'll generate. Vince: "Look... you'll get paid. We just don't know how much yet, and it may take a little while for us to build up the revenue to the degree it was under PPV." Most Wrestler (not really understanding): "Uh... hmm..." Punk (jumping up and down): "I want to know... and I WANT TO KNOW NOW!!!!!!!" I'm far from a defender of Vince, as everyone knows. But we are dealing with a bunch of stupid wrestlers here.

Chris, Good piece here: http://whatculture.com/wwe/10-controversies-wwe-network.php Well worth everyone checking out. It hits a lot of stuff that Chris and folks having been bouncing around for the past few months, but does a great job of pulling it all together in one piece. One item, though: When quoting 7.5, you really need to look at 7.1 - 7.3 which are specifically cited in it. This one for example: Which is almost the exact same language as the PPV section: It just subs one form of content (TV Material) for another (PPV specifically). With respect to PPV, Vince pays them out of a pool that he determines he's going to pay out of PPV revenue, and then he determines how much goes to each person. With respect to "TV" we really don't know because people don't talk about it. I know folks are wigged out about PPV moving to The Network. But if they got paid for PPV under 7.2( c ), they'll get paid for those products moving over to TV under 7.2( b ). The same amount? Who knows, because we don't know the revenue that will be pulled in. But they will get paid. How much? Just like PPV: what ever the hell Vince feels like paying them, based on whatever formula that Vince feels like using. As I mentioned when this came up earlier, over time Vince may add a new 7.2(d) to deal with WWE Network programing in a different manner than 7.2( b ), or incorporate the WWE Network into 7.2( c ). But in the end it won't matter: it's going to be the same vague clause that 7.2(a), 7.2( b ) and 7.2( c ) all are. It's not like if Punk sent his contract to Bix that we'd suddenly discover a specific dollar amount under 7.2( b ) that Punk was getting for each PPV appearance.

I don't care to exchange with jdw for reasons everyone knows by now, but I do think there is a difference between narrative forms and, for example, emotionally connecting to music. I think they are really two different things. I am not convinced that you can have an emotional connection to narrative forms, that is to storytelling, without some suspension of disbelief. I really don't -- and I think it comes down to what people think "suspension of disbelief" is. It's NOT believing that the thing is real. It's simply investing in the storyline enough to become engaged on an emotional level with its world and its characters. Hence, you can "suspend disbelief" watching fantasy or sci-fi. I think there's a lot of confusion over this. "Believability" is not about verisimilitude -- that is, it's not about whether the thing pertains to reality as we know it -- it's rather about something being believable within its own self-contained universe, and believable enough that you can feel something about it. I can't really see how you can dispense with that and still have a human reaction to the thing. There are a wide range of human reactions, and they do not all need to come from "suspending disbelief". When I was watching American Hustle, I enjoyed the hell out of it. But if you ask me to put my finger on how much of it sprung a suspended disbelief. I popped for Bradley Cooper's perm, not because of anything about Cooper's character but instead because I grew up in the 70s where dude I knew had tight perms. When they had the scene where Cooper had his tight perm curlers on, my girlfriend and I popped... not because "Richie DiMaso" did it, but because O Russell and Singer had the attention to detail to add it, and Cooper had the balls to do it. I popped for song after song popping up on the soundtrack... not because I "believed" that they were actually in the background of the movie scene (since the overwhelming majority of them weren't), but because I knew the songs from the 70s and it was cool that they were being tossed around. When "Live And Let Die" was rolled out, Lee and I looked at each other and did a fist pump... because they were cool enough to include McCartney in the movie, and we're both big fans of certain Macca songs. When De Niro showed up, I popped... not because I gave two shits about Victor Tellegio (which is a name I have to go look up because I completely forget the movie)... but because, "Fucking A! They got De Niro to play a fucking mobster in the movie! Fuck yeah!" Which is you're a fan of mob movies is pretty fucking cool... or if your first drive in movie memory is seeing Godfather II at the age of 8 and popping with your dad when De Niro stuck that knife in the belly of that old Scicilian mobster in the homeland... yeah, it really had dick to do with any suspending of disblief in American Hustle, but instead about IT'S FUCKING ROBERT DENIRO uncredited!!! We loved Jeremy Renner's hair... I suspect that Lee and I have talked about his freaking hair and our love of it more than Carmine. In fact, whenever I've talked about the "character" of Carmine in the movie, it's usually to be dismissive of O. Russell's decision to make Carmine sympathetic rather than the asshole crook that he really was. Ditto's if we're talking about O. Russell's finish, where the Good Guys are Bad Guys, and the Bad Guys are the Good Guys... and let's ignore the far more real and powerful end of Jennifer Lawrence's "character" rather than the happily ever after bullshit that O' Russell served up. In fact, if I had been forced by my brain to play the game of suspending disbelief, I actually would have hated the movie since having lived through ABSCAM and reading a lot about it, ye olde disbelief would have been cracked rather quick and I would have hated the thing for being a load of O. Russell bullshit. Instead, cool music, cool things like De Niro showing up unannounced, focusing on the performances (as opposed to the characters) of Adams and Lawrence, digging the cool 70s costuming, having some laughs at some very 70s things, etc. There are a wide range of reactions that we humans can have in life. One does not have to "suspend disbelief" to have the majority of them.

That. I recall being in Mexicalli watching a AAA show, and the Power Rangers (or whatever the hell they were called) whipped out a multiple person Space Flying Tiger Drop. We (as in Hoback, Meltzer and myself) kind of went Holy Shit!!! over it. Why? Because it was a pretty fucking cool sequence at the time, when the SFTD (and Sasuke's equiv of it) were kind of legendary shit among hardcores, and not really something you expected to be whipped out. It's was pretty cool to be sitting in this arena across the boarder watching a show when the wrestlers were told to "take it easy" in advance of a big show in a few days, and that gets pulled out. It really didn't have anything to do with how the ebb and flow of the match was going, the storyline, the selling, the drama they were building, the way they were working the crowd. If I were to ask Hoback, Yohe and Meltzer about that match, they wouldn't remember a thing about it other than the SFTD. Hoback would remember who the heels were in the match, because he remembers all that stuff. Dave probably wouldn't remember that without looking it up... I certainly don't, and Yohe wouldn't. But the SFTD... 20 years later that probably sticks in three of our heads. Sometimes it's just Cool Shit that you enjoy, for reasons that relate far more to why you find Shit Cool than suspending disbelief.

That's kind of what I expected. Daffy Jerry: "You can't enjoy a match without suspending disbelief, having an emotional connection with the wrestlers, and working up a good bit of empathy for them." bugs jdw: "Okay, Doc... here's a match that's cool, with a specific section that I dig as much as carrots. Tell me what I think about it when I watch it." Daffy Jerry: "Shot the Duck! Shot the Duck!!!"

I watched lots of stuff like this before taking loads of drugs in my late teens and early 20s. I'm not one who thinks drugs opened up another way of seeing things.

That you can't imagine other people seeing and enjoying things differently than yourself isn't something sad about me, but sad about you. Unless you are a cyborg or something, I call BS on feeling emotion while not suspending disbelief. Again, I mentioned crying while listening to Two of Us. Suspending disbelief? Or just remember a dead person who really has nothing to do with the song at all? Not everyone thinks like you, Jerry. You kind of need to grow up to the fact that there are alternative ways of seeing things to your own. If you don't, you're going to end up all Resident Evil and get all 'Men are programmed to be with multiple women. Women are programmed to be with the top male they can find.' on us. [side note: for those of you who forgot, read the responses across the pages that followed to get all the entertainment value of that discussion ].

Again, just because you can't doesn't mean that it's not possible. In fact, look back over the thread: most people seem to have an Angry Emotion when Wrestling Sucks and fucks with what they claim is their Suspended Disbelief. "He fucked up moves left and right... it just wasn't believable. Pissed me off." That's an emotional reaction from looking at the match analytically and intellectually. Honestly... I don't really give a shit about having empathy for pro wrestling work. Bob is selling his ass off while Muraco is working over the arm. You may want to have empathy for "Bob" having a damaged arm and being in pain. I don't. I just see it as him selling his ass off, in contrast to say Patterson or Muraco going all Fifth Of Gin selling at times in similar situations. It doesn't at all *ever* cross my mind that he's "hurt". Even when I'm watching it with friends, I'm tossing out: "Awesome selling" and "He's selling the hell out of that". And I, and others, have disagreed with you on Books or stuff you drag over to support your views. Since you seem to know what I'm thinking when I'm watching a match, may I suggest you watch from 10:54 - 15:23 (video time) of this match and tell me what I'm thinking when I watch them work the Dusty Lounger: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HWTrMvJEOVE And exactly how I suspend disbelief during it and work up a big case of empathy for Bob and/or Dusty.

I've long been aware of the meaning, as Like I said up the thread: I've cried listening to the song "Two Of Us" by the Beatles. It doesn't mean I suspended disbelief while listening to it. There are just times when the thought of my brother crosses my mind when it's on. That sure as hell isn't what Paul was thinking about when he wrote it: he claims Linda, while most think a decent amount of Lennon was on his thoughts. Again, I'm not saying that others don't "suspend disbelief" if that's how they want to term their pro wrestling experience. But don't think that it's a universal rule that applies to everyone, or that it's The Only Way To Watch Pro Wrestling And Enjoy It. That's a bit like saying the only way to enjoy pro wrestling is 1993 All Japan. People are different. John

Two additional years of Raw+SmackDown will get them 400+, so make it 3 additional years of Raw and 2 additional years of SmackDown. Since that stuff doesn't take a lot of effort: they've digitized new content for years, and they've been in HD on both since 2008. If they tossed up every Raw and SmackDown from 2008-2013, that's 1300 "hours" plus change given half a year in 2012 of 3 hour Raws. Since on the PPVs are up, they don't need to have that much Raw & SD up... it's just that it's very easy for them to "add more hours" without really adding some of the deeper library cuts we want. That's not even getting into them simply putting up loads of existing DVD content, mostly stuff released a few years ago that they aren't moving many units of anymore (rather than stuff that came out last year). It's really easy to pad the "hours" without putting up every MSG and Spectrum card of the 80s. :/

What's odd about the WWE announcing their "programing lineup" is that they really haven't, at least as far as I can see. They're just highlighting some shows. For example, what's on the line up while Raw and SmackDown are on?

WWE's response: http://www.wrestlinginc.com/wi/news/2014/0219/570388/wwe-releases-official-statement-on-dish-network-not-carrying-wwe

It absolutely is. No clue why that bothers me when a few guys setting up and holding position to catch someone on a dive isn't nearly as troubling. Not like it ruins a match or anything, just a spot I'll see, wonder why the hell its happening and then get back to business. If I was getting that caught up in something so insignificant we'd have a bigger problem to address. I've told the story before of enjoying Kawada on a spot show side stepping a too slow Ace on a transition move out of the corner and kicking him. Then working a couple more minutes on top before feeding him the next transition spot, which Ace hit crisply and Kawada sold the fuck out of. I'm not a fan of the "waiting around forever for my opponent to hit his spot" moment, and tend to wish there was more Kawadas out there dealing with them. John

A billion "likes" on the last part.

FWIW, I don't mind the rope running stuff. Goofy, but it's pro wrestling.

Step to the side.

I mean... well... there's always: Whether either is good or entertaining doesn't have a lot to do with "believe".

Growing up, Pro Wrestling was just bad Roller Derby, which I knew was rather quickly. I was a massive sports fan, and Fake Sports wasn't something I cage a shit about. I was 20 in college in 1986 when I first became a fan. JPC on Saturday when baked after a long week of school/studying and partying... Flair and Corny caught my eye, and were wildly entertaining when stoned and/or chilling. Then, as I posted in the other thread, I thought about why those guys specifically were entertaining and good. Hooked, and stayed hooked when I sobered up.

Favorite: either the 07/27/78 Backlund vs Inoki or the 03/05/69 Baba vs Destroyer Least Favorite: probably the 01/29/74 Bisco vs Funk