pantherwagner

I know this show focused on US wrestling memorabilia, but as a side note, at some point 15 or 20 years ago one of the Japanese magazines released a catalogue of all the merchandise ever produced in Japan. Memory is fuzzy ... so I don't remember if this was a magazine by itself or part of a magazine, and I'm now not sure if it was women's wrestling only or all of wrestling. I only remembered because it had a collection of all the women/idol music releases ever. Pretty sure that I still have the magazine.... somewhere in my parents' house. I also don't remember if this was the same magazine or a different one (I think it's the latter) but there was also a catalogue of all the commercial video tapes ever released. That's how I discovered and tracked down Dandy vs Pirata Morgan and Villano III vs Perro Aguayo 80s Mexican tapes released in Japan.

At one point in 1991-1992 in Mexico there were more women than men at many shows, especially at the regional level and in smaller neighbourhood arenas. Chris Jericho has got some funny stories about getting mobbed in Monterrey like a teen idol and wondering where the hell he was and what was going on. This phenomenon can be directly attributed to Konnan and Vampiro.

To JvK: What do you think about this angle to sell the push of strong, empowered modern women to Vince? Use the PR and sponsorships angle. Don’t think yet about the number of extra network subscriptions or live event tickets - think about using women like current action films, UFC or some regular sports do to try to raise your profile as a company. “This isn’t your old sexist wrestling from smoky arenas anymore. It’s a modern company that gives a fair chance to anybody (you’ll have to ignore all the dancing blacks and sneaky latinos though)”. If you raise your profile you could perhaps access corporate sponsorship dollars from companies that want to reach a fitness oriented female audience. All of these are extreme longshots and a very long term plan but Nike, Reebok or Adidas won’t ever consider a Bella twin - but perhaps a properly booked version of Charlotte, or somebody like her? Who would have thought a decade ago that they would consider somebody like Paige Van Zant? In general lines, it would help that they start giving last names to the women, though. And also, no NXT booked women will ever have a chance in the main roster if they don't get rid of the "diva" moniker (men are superstars, women are superstars, there are no distinctions) and get rid of the Bella twins. Not literally, they can be managers or do PR or whatever, but even if they start wrestling like Akira Hokuto they have the stink of the diva division. I think it's lousy booking when somebody wins a title in their debut match but have somebody from NXT (not necessarily Charlotte) go up, destroy them and do a Madusa with the title. Get a real looking title without cute wings or hearts or little ponies and rename it the Undisputed Women's CHAMPIONSHIP or whatever buzzwords they want to use, but make sure that Women is part of the title's name.

I got it by the tone of your writing, and I was being sarcastic as well on the last line but sometimes it's hard to get sarcasm through in writing.

That's fine, but saying that women should be treated as a side show attraction (like minis) because they never drew, when they were never put into a position to draw seems ridiculous to me. Ok since MY opinion is "ridiculous" exactly why are the women indisputably a better draw than minis? Kids make up a big part of the wrestling audience too and I'm more inclined to believe that trying to draw kids is a better way to make money than trying to draw women. There is a whole lot more evidence that kids will tune in to a wrestling show in large numbers than women will. What can you actually bring to the table for your side of this argument other than "it works in NXT" and I "I think more women will watch"? Children and minis are not the same. Minis are small men, not children. It works in NXT and joshi was huge in Japan when it was a hugely pushed thing. What other reason would you need to try? 5 years ago, yeah, there wasn't the talent. Now, you have Sasha and Charlotte who you can build around. Thank you for talking to me like I'm a fucking idiot. I did not know that kids and minis are not the same. I thought it was some slick thing Mexican promoters were doing to get around child labor laws. Also why are you now bringing joshi into the argument when you dismissed SHIMMER earlier because it's "completely a women's promotion"? Nothing to do with the subject of the thread but actually kids and minis are sometimes the same, especially at the lower levels. Not so much the top minis that we all know - these are all men - but it's quite common for children to start out as minis when they are 14 or 15. And about children labor laws....... well, it's Mexico. Even in states where there are commissions a lot of stuff goes unregulated.

Workrate is an often overused or misused term but I think that's what Bret means when he talks about his workrate. I recall him talking about Valentine (I believe talking about Valentine both were in Japan at the same time) as a good "solid" wrestler during a radio show. He may be thinking about the slower 89-91 Valentine but either way I don't know if he'd refer to Valentine as a guy with great workrate even if he was a pretty good wrestler. The way he spoke about Valentine wasn't dismissive at all, by the way.

Shoe, I also think Bret is correct here. I have been watching a lot of Prime Time lately and my favourite people to watch are Orton Jr. and the Hart Foundation. Opposition plays a big factor: Orton Jr. slows down his pace when wrestling Billy Jack or Pedro, because he has got to. I haven't recently watched much Carolinas wrestling but I'd bet he worked a faster paced style over there most of the time. Valentine and Orndorff also were much faster in the stuff from Charlotte/Georgia/Florida that I have seen (which of course isn't nearly as much stuff as you or most people here have watched). Bret or the Bulldogs on the other hand try to push slower paced wrestlers like Rotundo or Volkoff to work a faster match than usual. When the Calgary crew face each other, or a willing team like the Bees or the Rougeaus, they usually end up having the fastest match on the show. The smaller guys are also more willing to give and take flashier high impact offense that JYD or Haynes won't take. The difference in speed becomes gigantic if we start comparing the Calgary crew to Hercules, Beefcake, SD Jones... That seems to be Bret's definition of workrate so using those parameters he's right. If we want to discuss if Bret wasn't as good as Orton then that's a different subject to what I believe Bret refers to as workrate.

I never heard the story but several different wrestlers have used the name Arandu. IIRC a northern/Monterrey guy and the one who wrestled in Tijuana were different people.

If memory serves me right I noticed that same thing back in 2005 or 2006 when I started watching WWE again for a while after not watching anything since 2001. It's distracting, I'd describe it as a lisp just as you did.

Isn't Irish McNeil's Boys Club a gym/civic centre type building rather than a studio? In between Flair vs Garvin, vs Lawler in Memphis (more a classic angle than a classic match really), vs Steamboat at Disney in 1994... probably a few others I'm not even thinking about, does this make Flair the best studio wrestler ever?

I don't know if Vince really cares that much about TNA, but I can see Hunter pushing for it as his first "trophy".

I truly can't fathom this ending up being the case re: People watching TNA over anything pre Attitude Era. I get a recency bias but that seems a strong. Though I don't know how many people are watching NXT either. But I'd guess that it'd be maybe a quarter of NXT audience on the high end that would watch it. And that would essentially be for Joe since that is the one TNA talent they have and seemingly will have unless I am missing where TNA talent goes to NXT. Can't think of who they would want from there. Would they care about Austin Aries? I can understand the H-Man play I suppos. Does TNA have the 2nd most valuable tape library in USA outside of WWE? Honest question. I think it is self-evident that ROH's blows it out of the water. Should Daniel Bryan have to retire, the ROH library would allow WWE to release a complete career retrospective 3 or 4 DVD set. That thing alone makes the ROH library more valuable than the TNA tapes. Memphis may have been more valuable than TNA but the Lawler DVD is already out. I could still see them someday releasing a Memphis DVD similar to the WCCW or AWA releases.

I don't know anything about number of discs sold but WWE got DVD releases out of the Mid South, World Class and AWA tape libraries. Matches from those libraries have completed important pre-WWF career gaps on the DVDs of people like Hennig, Road Warriors, Warrior and most recently Jerry Lawler. What's the value of the TNA library other than inconsequential filler on a future Kurt Angle DVD? Or Rob Van Dam? Maybe I'm forgetting somebody else but I can't see them releasing another Hardys or Sting DVD for a while, never mind CM Punk.

Flair often talks about how emotionally fragile he was at various points in his career. I can see how having the most powerful guy in wrestling get angry with him would get to Flair. I haven't listened to the podcast yet but Flair sometimes shows how insecure he is when talking about other people (Nash, Hall, Shane Douglas, Bischoff, Bret Hart himself, etc...). Most notably on the Legends of Wrestling roundtables, where he's the worst panelist ever - it's got to be either him or Michael Hayes. He never seemed to be a guy that would let go of grudges easily, so the reviews here of the podcasts are a positive for me because I was not planning on listening to it. It's odd how weak and insecure Flair sometimes is/was about his legacy, his spot on the card and his value to the business in general. I mean we are talking about a guy known for walking around hotel bars cock in hand with only his robe on. You'd think he's got to be the most confident man on earth.

On Rude as a trouble maker: Not sure why I remember this but after Rex King died, Meltzer mentioned that King had a reputation as a "trouble maker" that didn't know when to shut up. He'd stand up for himself and for the rest of the guys all the time but because he wasn't a star he was a "trouble maker who didn't know his role". Rude would do exactly the same thing but because he was a star he was a "stand up guy with balls to say screw you to the system". He also was one of the few who didn't remain quiet during the Montreal stuff.

I didn't know about PROGRESS and I live here. Interesting that they run shows in Camden and Islington, they seem to be doing well too. Is anybody going to the show (also in Bethal Green) next month with Nakamura vs Ricochet? Ishii from New Japan and AJ Styles also on the card.

I'm now seriously upset that Kerry never had a run as a nazi supersoldier, they could have done a bionic leg gimmick as well, and him doing a Pokemon/Dragon Ball style evolution into Sid Vicious sounds brilliant.

Also for the same updates in a single link: http://www.reddit.com/r/SquaredCircle/wiki/wwe_network_shows_by_added

Well, they only added them the last couple of days. Check this out: http://www.reddit.com/user/WWE_Network_Bot Daily updates on what's new. There's a twitter bot as well. It's an unofficial bot - just a smart kid that created a few scripts that look new stuff up on the servers every few minutes.

I remember there was brief dispute betweeen the family and Demon Jr. a few years back (over money I guess), and they brought up him not being a blood relation. For a second it looked like they might make him drop the mask, but things got smoothed over. I forgot that - you are right, that was in several Mexican media outlets. The family wanted to give the mask to somebody else, which would have a been a huge mistake.

I believe that the people handling programming aren't from the wrestling business, and the people who know about wrestling are too scared to mention it because they'll get laughed at the notion that people want to watch rasslin from dark smoke filled studios full of drunks.

If they were smart they'd create a premium tier where they charge you 5 or 6 extra bucks for regular old territory TV, MSG shows and Coliseum video releases. They have enough content to milk that cow for decades if they want. And if you don't care, you can keep watching your PPV's, Stern Show, etc. for 9.99. I'd say that would be far from smart for them. So much of their marketing was the whole 9.99 thing (without telling people what they are fully getting for their money - quite wrongly to my above point). The last thing they want to be doing is introducing tiers (i.e. confusion) into the market place. They would put themselves in a position where if they were smart enough to start plugging archive footage, they would then have to bang on about a tier payment system. It would cause more problems than it's worth. I'd go back to the root of the problem - the whole 9.99 gimmicky marketing was a terrible idea because they screwed themselves out of the tiers and of basic service price increases anytime soon. I can't imagine numbers would be too different if it was 14.99 instead of 9.99, and the lower number would be offset by the people who will subscribe 12 months a year paying more. At some point growth will stop (if it already hasn't) and shareholders will push them to make more money out of it.

It's a tremendous deal for current fans and people who used to buy every or almost every PPV. Even for somebody like me (I stopped watching WWE months ago) it's still a great deal because I travel a lot and all of this great stuff is available in HQ from my laptop or ipad. I can pop in a random Nitro, COTC or SNME to put me to sleep when I'm jet lagged somewhere in a different continent. Like Loss (and others here at the start) I also had this pipe dream that they'd end up putting all kinds of cool weekly TV there, including their own programs, as well as keep bringing up rare treasures from their vast library. However instead we have a product with a terrible interface, a random upload schedule (and you won't find up what's new unless you go to the unofficial tracker accounts on reddit or twitter) and no pre-Attitude era content. At this point I don't care too much and I don't use the WWE Network much unless I'm travelling. I'll keep watching Georgia and Memphis on youtube as long as they don't take them down. If they were smart they'd create a premium tier where they charge you 5 or 6 extra bucks for regular old territory TV, MSG shows and Coliseum video releases. They have enough content to milk that cow for decades if they want. And if you don't care, you can keep watching your PPV's, Stern Show, etc. for 9.99. Then again I doubt they even have the technology now to have a separate premium tier, as silly as that sounds.

As they have hours and hours of footage pretty much ready to go I imagine that someday somebody will decide to randomly upload some 80s stuff, perhaps once they run out of old Raws and they finish uploading all Nitro episodes. Maybe NWA Saturday Night or the entire catalog of WWWF/WWF MSG shows. I don't expect it to happen this year at all but at some point they will run out of ideas to get people to sign up. I mentioned this same thing months ago but UFC still keep putting new live shows on their Fight Pass but also keep buying old footage: they acquired a shitload of libraries early in the year (which they haven't released yet but Marshall said that it wasn't going to be immminent) and they recently bought the IVC events from Brazil, which those in the 90s will remember for their crazy violent brawls with legal headbutts and legal nut shots (Goodridge vs The Pedro). Are MMA and wrestling fans all that different? Who do you trust to listen to feedback and produce unbiased analysis? And who do you expect to go back to the same old preconceived mantras?

I don't know about wrestling because I have never been to a wrestling show here (things like Raw tend to do well at the gate) but it's definitely the case for theatre and any other performance tickets. I couldn't tell you what's the logic behind this technique, but I guess they are confident that they are going to do well enough with the cheap or fairly priced tickets at face value and they will try to get as much money as they can of the people willing to pay a hundred bucks for the premium seats.