jdw

Human nature.

On the Backlund-Dory, I tend to agree with Dylan. I prefer to watch Bob, don't care to watch Dory much anymore, but I'd have Dory ahead of him. John

As an addition, I believe that all of the ballots are going to be published in something. I think Steve got that across to people.

Oh... I suspect I'll know who left Hogan off the ballot. John

As Dylan says, strategic balloting is common in all sorts of polls. One thing that likely kept it to a minimum here was: * public ballots * limited number of voters Anyone can be an ass, but when it's public and only 26 ballots to sift through, it discourages people from doing it. Easy to find things like someone voting Lou at #99 to help your #1 Londos, and since it's public pretty much exposes that voter. * not likely a group to do it I think that Bias is far more likely and common that Strategic Balloting. You look over the list of voters, and it doesn't as a group of people who would or could strategically vote in a way to massively impact the results. Dylan and Kris have the minds to know how balloting works, but they're not the type to do it to massively impact the result. Dave? Despite handling ballots every year, I don't think he could work out strat balloting... nor the type who would given the poll. Why the results are the way they are? Far more due to Bias. People like certain wrestlers and certain eras more than others.

12-Antonio Inoki 1987 24 15-Shohei Baba 1801 22 30-Mitsuharu Misawa 1323 20 34-Jumbo Tsuruta 1283 22 51-Kenta Kobashi 964 17 59-Tiger Mask I (Sayama) 814 17 60-Riki Choshu 807 16 62-Keiji Muto 781 19 64-Genichiro Tenryu 757 16 66-Akira Maeda 695 18 69-Toshiaki Kawada 647 15 73-Tatsumi Fujinami 607 18 89-Shinya Hashimoto 488 14 111-Justin Liger 277 10 120-Nobuhiko Takada 219 10 142-Manami Toyota 146 6 143-Atsushi Onita 146 4 145-Masahiro Chono 135 5 173-Chigusa Nagayo 100 5 181-Dump Matsumoto 87 6 186-Kazushi Sakuraba 84 1 188-Hiroshi Tanahashi 82 4 198-Akira Hokuto 72 3 Some funny ones in there, but Toyota one spot above Onita is a hoot. I'm guessing this is more evidence that Maeda wouldn't have gone into the HOF if on the ballot at some point on the 2000s. Er... wait... John

Looks like it's been fixed from looking at my time stamp.

ping

First time I've ever run into it. It does cause some odd things. I can click on the "Wrestlers' opinions of each other" thread and it continues to show that I haven't read it because the last post in it is After the current time I have for the board. I'm not sure what would happen if I posted in it: matter / anti-matter. John

I've got mine set to PST, but it's saying that it's 7am rather than 2pm. Anyone else find the time setting for the site off?

It's likely they can stretch the current and post-Ventura contract to cover the Network. I posted the language from Trip and Steph's contracts up the thread. My guess is that they will do two things: * New contracts At some point, they'll specifically break out the Network and use language very similar to the other buckets: the WWE has a pool of revenue for the Network, and pays people based on a formula that largely is centered on appearances and slotting. It's nice and vague, though the WWE likely has well papered the back end to have something defensible if someone bitches about their PPV bonus or DVD money. * Old Contract (i.e. guys who have long since left) They say that the Network is covered by one of the existing buckets in the contract. The person will get paid by the same formula that folks under the New Contracts will. The WWE has been doing this for likely a long time. Savage left the WWF in 1994. If he has a contract with the WWE now, either that he signed before he died or one that Lanny or his Mom signed since, that doesn't remove the fact that he went from 1994 to 2xxx without a new WWF/WWE contract. In that time, the WWF/WWE released countless videos and DVD's with his matches on them. I think there's zero doubt that the continued to pay him money for those releases under the language of his old contract(s), and coming from the pool of revenue set aside on the specific releases for wrestlers. The stuff getting rebroadcast on the WWE Network would be treated the same. It's likely that the "revenue pool" for 20 year old stuff (and 5-10 year old stuff) will be rather small compared to the revenue pool set aside for New Content such as PPV replacements or NXT moving over there or SmackDown moving over there, or other things. With the WWE likely able to point to the weak ratings that 1986 episodes of WWF Superstars do relative to the new content. They likely be safe and smart on it, and probably have their asses covered well. John

Chris hits some of the data points, but these things are worth going over yet again as the have when they've been brought up in the past: Here's the big problem with those three: TV brings in a massive amount of the WWE's annual revenue. Rights fees where 28.8% of the company's revenue last year, with nothing else close. What drives the Rights Fees are (i) viewers, (ii) hours of content, and (iii) the year round aspect. USA Network's other series run 12-16 episode seasons, 1 hour a piece for draws. Raw is 52 weeks a year, now 3 hours: 16 * 1 = 16 hours for Hit Drama 52 * 3 = 156 hours for Hit Raw You need to sustain viewers to keep those numbers up. Current wrestling fans aren't going to stick around for 3 hours of Squash matches. Okay, okay... I know what someone is going to say: "We're not talking about 100% squash matches." I get that. But 50%? 33%? 12.5%? But the WWE's revenue model has a massive component in it (the largest component, in fact) driven by attracting and keeping eyeballs on TV. Cena vs SD Jones followed by CM Punk vs Brady Boone followed by The Miz vs Barry Horowitz, all going 2-3 minutes... that's not enticing to fans who've grown up for 15+ years of not having old school squash matches on their primary TV shows (Raw, Nitro, Thunder, SmackDown). It's just the reality of Raw/SmackDown level TV at this point. You always have to think of what gets in viewers, and what keeps them.

From the article I linked to: Not exactly sure under which bucket "consulting services" and what not would fall. What major deals with other folks have they done this sort of thing that would generate any revenue of note?

So they're clearly moving in the right direction on the technical side. MLB.tv is interesting, though their subscription numbers are tough to get / figure out. They tend to group a variety of "content" packages / options together to get at their 1M - 2M sub number, since individual games can be bought as well. This is a slightly interesting read: http://www.royalsreview.com/2013/3/4/40652...o-robert-bowman MLB.tv is $120 a "season". I wouldn't do a straight division there, since there are number of other subs than the $120. This is slightly interesting: For the WWE... that's a problem. A big one. $60/6 months = $120/yr. We think of $10/mo as chump change, but that's us. It's not like 1M people are ordering every PPV and look at this as a way to discount. Folks have all sorts of monthly costs, from their phone to their cable to their Netflix to everything else. They're looking for ways to cut out $10, not add it. 1M at $120 is a good chunk of revenue. Though if MLB is going to be partnering on it, they're going to want a cut. John

There will be some cut on the card processing, but they'll just use the same entity that they currently use on WWE.com. Would be interested who they're using to provide the backbone, or if they're putting it together to run themselves in 2 months. So who else is doing something remotely close to this that we can look at as an example?

Conversely Jim Cornette thinks Lawler is the best of all time Larry was a St Louis guy. Corny grew up watching and then working in the Memphis territory. You'll get stuff like that.

Taking that list a step further and knocking out the votes for the High movie for each director, you get this: 176 Godard (24.5%) 127 Hitchcock (60.1%) 106 Tarkovsky (30.7%) 100 Bresson (32.9%) 97 Bunuel (14.9%) 95 Bergman (33.6%) 93 Dreyer (41.1%) 92 Coppola (36.6%) 82 Ozu (56.6%) 80 Ford (49.4%) 79 Renoir (55.9%) 79 Kurosawa (37.8%) 74 Welles (68.0%) 69 Chaplin (29.6%) 67 Kubrick (57.3%) 67 Antonioni (39.1%) 66 Powell, Pressburger (21.4%) 65 Fellini (49.6%) 64 Hawks (27.3%) 59 Scorsese (39.2%) 57 Lang (37.4%) 56 Mizoguchi (34.1%) 52 Lynch (43.5%) 51 Rossellini (38.6%) 41 Murnau (69.4%) 25 Eisenstein (71.6%) Ford is now #10 for rather than #6. Though the gap from 6-10 was 9 points before, and 15 points now... it's a marginal drop. More interesting is the % numbers that I listed. Those are the % of points that each of those director's #1 movie got. Let's sort that: 71.6% Eisenstein 69.4% Murnau 68.0% Welles 60.1% Hitchcock 57.3% Kubrick 56.6% Ozu 55.9% Renoir 49.6% Fellini 49.4% Ford 43.5% Lynch 41.1% Dreyer 39.2% Scorsese 39.1% Antonioni 38.6% Rossellini 37.8% Kurosawa 37.4% Lang 36.6% Coppola 34.1% Mizoguchi 33.6% Bergman 32.9% Bresson 30.7% Tarkovsky 29.6% Chaplin 27.3% Hawks 24.5% Godard 21.4% Powell, Pressburger 14.9% Bunuel Ford is 9th. The average for each is 42.3%, and he's a bit above that. But... Ford's #1 accounts for a lower % of his overall total than Ozu's #1, despite Ozu having the #3 and #15 films. Ford's #1 accounts for a lower % of his overall total than Hitchcock's #1, despite Hitchcockhaving the #1, #34, and two tied at #53 films. Okay... wait... there's an easier way to make this more obvious: 71.6% Eisenstein (#11 ranked Battleship Potemkin) 69.4% Murnau (#5 ranked Sunrise) 68.0% Welles (#2 ranked Citizen Kane) 60.1% Hitchcock (#1 ranked Vertigo) 57.3% Kubrick (#6 ranked 2001) 56.6% Ozu (#3 ranked Tokyo Story) 55.9% Renoir (#4 ranked La Règle du jeu) 49.6% Fellini (#10 ranked 8½) 49.4% Ford (#7 ranked Searchers) So what happened? For 9 of the directors of the Top 11 movies, there was a massive "consensus" on what their best movie was. Roughly half the votes they got were from that one movie, and for some a good deal more than half. The difference between Ford and those other 8 directors isn't that his #1 was the massive consensus best movie of his career. It's that there wasn't a consensus of what his #2 and/or #3 and/or #4 movies were to get him even a second one into the Top 100. You only needed 17 votes to get into the Top 100. Ford had 80 votes other than The Searchers. That's more than Welles, Kubrick, Renoir, Fellini, Kurosawa, etc... just 2 less than Ozu. Ozu's second ranked movie got 50 of his remaining 82 (61%) votes. Ford's second ranked movie got 14 (8.9%) of his remaining votes. That's extremely low for directors who turned up on a lot of ballots. So... The Searches vote isn't the odd thing. It's that the rest of Ford's body of work is appreciated, but with too many movies breaking up the votes without creating a strong #2 and/or strong #3 like the other top directors did. That actually reflects well on Ford to a degree.

I think both sets of list have movies that people might shy away from praising. Seven Women on the critics list? You get some interesting/different/odd movies getting votes in these polls. I think we might also be dealing with a certain level of Critic in the poll, at least in the when I first came across the poll back in the 80s when Roger would talk about it. They didn't hand them out to anyone, but usually Top Critics, which tended to like things on the more artistic level. They may hand them out to a wider set now... but I also don't think everyone listed over on Rotten Tomatoes is getting one. So the Critics Poll might not represent Average Critics very well. On the other hand, my guess is that the directors who get ballots aren't really representative of Average Directors either.

Probably posted before seeing the fuller list that I tossed up. Which wasn't to knock your point - Kurosawa is a pretty good example of what you're talking about where critics and directors tended to focus on the Big 2, but then Directors tends to get more interesting down the ballot from the Big 2. John

What Jerry says. Both Directors and Critics like a wide variety of Ford movies. Sight & Sound is a good example: Critics #7 The Searchers #117 The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance #183 The Grapes of Wrath #235 My Darling Clementine #235 How Green Was My Valley #283 Wagon Master #323 The Quiet Man #323 Stagecoach #323 Young Mr Lincoln #447 Fort Apache #447 Seven Women #447 The Wings of Eagles #588 Rio Grande #588 She Wore A Yellow Ribbon #588 The Sun Shines Bright #588 They Were Expendable #894 The Long Gray Line #894 The Long Voyage Home #894 Pilgrimage #894 Three Godfathers #894 Cheyenne Autumn Directors #48 The Searchers #132 The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance #132 My Darling Clementine #174 The Grapes of Wrath #322 The Quiet Man #322 Stagecoach #322 The Informer #546 How Green Was My Valley #546 The Sun Shines Bright #546 They Were Expendable #546 Wagon Master #546 Young Mr Lincoln #546 Cheyenne Autumn More movies popped up on the Critics polls, but that likely is due to there being considerably more Critics lists submitted than Directors list. Get a vote, and you're ranked. Those #894 and #546 numbers at the bottom of the lists were the ranking for showing up on just 1 ballot. Is it anymore impressive that there were 4 Top 200 movies on the Director's side and just 3 on the Critics? Not sure it really matters. My Darling Clementine got 7 votes from Critics and 5 from Directors... nothing significant there. Did The Searchers stand out more from the "pack" with the Critics? Sure. But the odd thing is that there was no movie up to threaten the Top 10 on the Directors side. It's not that it was terribly divided in votes: those six 1 vote films at the bottom don't really change much. Kurosawa might be a better example. Seven Samurai (17-C/17-D) and Rashomon (24-C/18-D) finished well ahead of the rest of their movies. With the rest of his movies that got votes, only Throne of Blood (235-C / 546-D) and Red Beard (1 critics vote, no directors votes) saw critics like them more to a degree of any note. And having two Top 25 movies might have been why one of them didn't Top 10 this time around. * * * * * On the more general point... Of course people in the business have different opinions that we do. *We* have differing opinions amongst ourselves. There rarely is a consensus once we move beyond our circles. We might find a circle of Kawada or Lawler or Jumbo or Fujiwara or Rose fans. Go beyond that circle and it gets tougher to the same % people who would agree with you that one of those guys is a Top 10 all-time worker. John

The Hardyz were workrate indies. Well... that was indyz when ECW was all anything thought indies meant, so we can't count them. It's really coming up with something to narrow it right down to Punk and Bryan.

Two separate things: First, I don't think "worker" in the sense that any of us use it really matter to the WWWF/WWF Braintrust on who got 1 shot, 2 shots or 3 shots at the main against Bruno, Pedro or Bob as champs. Example: Peter Maivia got 3 matches against Backlund. I don't think anyone making decisions in the WWWF/WWF at the time thought Maivia was a great worker like we did. Instead, he had a "great angle" turning on, and was one hot in their minds from a drawing standpoint to run to 3 matches. We all probably think Bob Orton was a better worker than Maivia. Bob got just 1 match at MSG vs Bob. So too did Buddy Rose, though both got 2 at the Spectrum. So it's unlikely how we think of the word "worker" had much to do with Pat getting even 1 title shot, let alone 4. Second, we've talked in the past that the 4 shots is odd, and not really well explained in history. Hotter programs didn't get a 4th straight match, not even Bruno-Larry the following year or Bruno-Superstar or Bob-Superstar in prior years. 1979 is a bit odd in how challengers booked ended Patterson at MSG and the Spectrum. The two Valiant Brother matches in Philly were unusal for how the booked Backlund. The battle royal challenger was more than a bit odd, especially when looking at the talent involved. One does get the sense that whatever they had in mind when blocking out things earlier in the year didn't come to pass, and they slapped a few things together. One of them was stretching Bob-Pat to a 4th match in MSG. It's certainly a credit to Pat that he could headline four straight challenges and there's no urban legend out there of the 4th bombing because people were tired of it. The heat was there for the 4th one. Anyway... I think he got the shots originally for the same reason the majority of challengers in that era did: Vince Sr. & Co. thought he could draw. That it went to the rate 3 challenges is a sign that it did in fact draw, and that there were some legs there. That it went to the unique 4... that one was odd. Though it was an odd year in the WWF for challengers.

I don't think anyone accused anyone of group-think.