sek69

I'd expect to the the MMA Obsever before a boxing one. It's like Dave is like Vince in that way where he seems embarrassed to be associated with pro wrestling.

Yeah, but there's even odds that he'd end up jobbing on Internet-only shows and being wished the best in his future endeavors. Also, what would happen if he did sign with WWE? CMLL owns the gimmick don't they? Would they have him drop the mask on the way out? Wow, that's a lot of questions in one post.

Watching the Monday Night War for 12/9/96 on WWE 24/7 and seeing an ad for this show reminded me of something I wanted to ask the crowd here: The main event for this show is Sid vs Bret Hart for the title, but the name of the show would suggest that somehow Vader was supposed to be involved. Was this orignally planned to feature Vader or is that just one of those wacky WWF things?

You know, I never did get why Dusty's booking gets slagged on like it does. I mean, it's not like he didn't have some ideas that are still pined over to this day (WarGames), and the "he pushed himself too much" argument would have more force if Dusty still didn't have more charisma than the entire WWE roster save maybe 2-3 people.

Reading in the WON how Dusty has successfully lobbied to get the ECW tag titles revived, combined with his previous work booking Smackdown, can a case be made that he almost single handedly saved tag team wrestling in WWE? You could even argue that without Smackdown reminding people that tag team wrestling still exists, the RAW tag belts would still be jobber fodder instead of being fought for between main eventers (one of which being the WWE champion).

I get the feeling whenever Vince is no longer around we're going to see a CMLL/AAA style split since Shane and Stephanie seem to have completely opposite views on what direction to go.

Unless that play includes driving a stake into Vince's heart, I don't see it working. There's no way anyone, including his children, will ever be able to unseat Vince.

It just seems odd that a company that seems to have yearly firings to lower costs (so they can do things like pay the Diva Search winner $250,000) would want to put forth the money to secure TV/run shows/pay extra wrestlers and staff to run shows all over the world on a regular basis.

Wouldn't the costs associated with running a promotion on every continent kill any chance of this happening for real?

Are luchadores that big of marks for working for WWE that they don't see how they'd be misused? I mean for every Rey-Rey there's a million El Dandys jobbing in WCW and Mil Mascaras(es) being eliminated from the Rumble in minutes. Wouldn't someone raised in the tradition of wrestling actually being respected rather be a hero in their own home than being made into a Heat jobber?

Having more time to build a show gives them the chance to make each show better. How many people out there are on the fence or would buy PPVs if they weren't running the same matches every month? Like the number of licks it takes to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop, the world may never know.

What makes this even more awesome, this gimmick is apparently is designed to be a knock of Brooke Hogan. Nothing like taking your anger at someone out on their kids, eh Vince?

It's really difficult to have an effective build for a PPV with 7 or so matches every 30 days. I mean, it's theoretically possible, but WWE has a mindset where the creative staff only focuses on the main eventers which creates a recurring loop where no new stars get created.

There's also the fact that due to the nature of UFC it's not going to be the same guys every month on PPV the way WWE tends to be sometime. You're only going to see the top UFC guys a couple times a year so that alone is going to make any PPV they are on a special event. WWE doesn't have the time to build A level stars (unless they fall into a hot angle/gimmick) due to having a show to shill every month with the same guys on top. That's what burns people out since you tend to not care when you've seen the same match 3 PPVs in a row.

The more PPVs there are, regardless of how much money is made, dilutes the product. I don't think anyone can argue that. The shorter amout of time there are between shows, the less build you can do for each one, until they all seem like episodes of RAW or SmackDown that you have to pay $40 to see. It's pretty much an accounting trick, keep raising the price of the shows while the amount of buys drop so it appears as if the level stayed the same. It's becoming like the TV ratings where only the hardcores are left. WWE has gone from the undisputed #1 of PPV to a distant third. MMA is just smoking them silly to the point where you can barely find any bar or restuarant showing WWE PPV anymore. I thought it was a mistake when they raised the price of the lesser shows to be the same price as the Big 4 (well, WM has always been more), they probably lost a lot of people who were on the fence with that. Especially when you consider 3/4ths of WWE PPVs are not worth the price charged. Sure the hardcores are always going to buy, but you can't run forever on just the core audience. In fact, HBO is doing with boxing PPVs what I suggested WWE should do. They're going to focus on fewer fights so they can be properly promoted and theoretically draw more buys. Time will tell if it pays off for them, but at the very least the people buying boxing PPVs are going to be seeing well promoted fights that will be worth the money paid for them. What's going to be annoying is that WM is probably going to generate a ridiculous number due to the Trump stuff being covered by the media, which will just send the message to WWE that the way they do PPV business is just fine.

I'm honored jdw would confuse me with Loss.

I always thought the problem with Ricky was that the "family man babyface" schtick wasn't getting him over. It was supposed to be Family Ricky vs Ric Flair the playa, but Flair ended up more of the face in the end.

It's as if they went out of their way to pick matches that would not convey the awesomness of the Four Horsemen. But then WWE would never bury something that got over they didn't create, right?

You know, I think a lot of the TNA hysteria comes from people hoping they'd be the white knight to save pro wrestling from the WWE. When they didn't live up to expectations, that's when all the "dead in 3 months" stuff started. Every so often people just hitch their wagon to what they hope is the company that's going to knock Vince McMahon on his ass, and end up turning on said company when it becomes apparent they aren't going to do it. Is TNA bad, even horrible at times? Sure. Worst promotion in history? That's just crazy. Just look at all the justification going on in this thread on why other worse promotions don't count.

There's argument that by cutting back on the PPVs (and looking back, 6 is too low a number) they might end up getting more buys just from being able to build stronger shows and having an audience that isn't quite so burnt out. Also, if they're going to keep 16 PPVs a year, they really need to lower the price on the lesser shows. expecting people to fork over $40 a month and $50 for Wrestlemania is just insane when the only show that's guaranteed to be a justifiable purchase is WM.

Another PPV buyrate report came out from WWE, showing a continuing downward trend. It's pretty much at the point now where only the Big 4 shows get any kind of significant buyrate, and that's more for the name than anything else. I think WWE is killing the goose that lays the golden eggs with scheduling too many PPVs in a year period. There was that stretch where there were like 3 PPVs in a month's period leading up to December to Dismember which would pretty much guarantee a shitty buyrate even if it wasn't the worst show of the year just due to the audience being totally burned out and/or not being able to afford 3 PPVs in a row. I've always believed the monthy PPV system does more harm than good, especially in the post Monday Night Wars era. There's no chance of any serious long term booking because you always have a show to shill within 30 days (or less). Adding a third brand with its own PPVs (or matches on other brands' PPVs) are only making matters worse. UFC is only making the problem more apparent. Given the choice, a lot of bars and restaurants are showing UFC PPVs and only showing the main WWE PPVs if that. WWE really needs to move to a schedule where they go to maybe 6 shows a year to allow for an actual build.

I tried to start a topic there about WWE PPV buyrates and I got a error saying I don't have permission to start topics in that folder.

Is it really a debate? ECW is just another brand like RAW and Smackdown, no one would argue they are separate promotions. Speaking of, I think they hit on something with the ECW Originals vs New Breed feud. They finally found something for the old guys to do and it might give some of the new faces a rub they badly need.

According to the WON, it appears like the WWE Revisionist History Machine is going to end up crediting Michael Hayes as the architect of the boom period, mainly because Kevin Von Erich's memory is shot (cocaine is a hell of a drug). This seems to be shaping up to be the winner of the unintentional comedy award for 2007. You've got a two disc set coming out about a company who you don't want to mention beat you in one of your home markets and did a lot of things copied by the WWF, and the sole surviving member of the founding family has basically turned himself into Reverend Jim from Taxi. Not to mention the Heroes of World Class DVD already covered the same story about 10000x better since they didn't need to spin it into something else to save face. What I don't get is they did a fairly even job with the AWA, they acknowledged that they were competitors and didn't go out of their way to bury them. There was WAY more chances to do so with the AWA, one would think, yet World Class has to get the WCW treatment? I just hope they do a good job picking matches since the documentary part is seemingly going to be for laughs in term of being an accurate tale of history.