Dooley

Diff'rent strokes I guess. I found that match to be really boring and I'm also remembering a house show match I saw between the two during that run that totally killed the crowd. It had been a while since the WWF had been to town, so the crowd was super-hot for everything all night. But during Taker-Kama you could actually hear people chewing their popcorn. '95 was pretty much a terrible year for Taker. From feuding with the various stiffs in DiBiase's stable for the first 3/4 of the year and Mabel the other 1/4, I can't think of much in the way of watchable stuff in there.

No. I really don't. I'm reminded of Foley's book where he said the boys called Charles Wright "The Black Hole of Charisma" because not only did he have none of his own (pre-Godfather) he was also able to suck the life out of whoever he was in the ring with.

We found out in '95 just how brutal the matches actually were, despite the two being friends.

LEAVE BRITNEY ALONE! HE'S SERIOUS! But for real, pointing blame at the people pointing out they're idiots instead of the idiots themselves? Can't get behind that one.

That, and throughout Warrior's reign whatever he was doing was presented as less important than what Hogan was doing. Warrior wins the title and on the first SNME afterwards Hogan's blow-off against Hennig gets the prime slot while Warrior's first title defense against Haku (sigh) goes in the last half hour of death spot. Hogan also gets double the time. Then we have Hogan's "comeback" against Quake being treated as more important then Warrior feuding with Rude, who he spent most of the last year feuding with anyway. I could go on. Warrior's reign really was a booking disaster.

I've said this elsewhere on this board but it's also worth noting that Warrior's title reign was so terribly booked that I don't know if even Hogan and Savage could have transcended it. Warrior also fell into the same trap Diesel did years later, that being Vince knew only one way to promote a babyface champion and "face" of the company. Warrior went from supernatural psycho to a guy who went on Regis and Kathie Lee smiling and bringing toys for fucking Cody. Diesel went from badass to grinning corporate moron. Both of those guys were basically stripped of what made them popular when they reached the top.

It's still real to them, dammit.

Oh. That's much better then.

That is the funniest thing I've read in some time.

What did it even mean? Almost 10 years later and I'm still stumped.

Is it just Rock-Cena that's in jeopardy or are they talking about removing Rock from the show altogether? This company must HATE making money.

Bret called the cops on that airport lady. But in all seriousness, Maryse is dating the Miz still, right? I'd expect him to defend her if the situation ever arose, especially if he was in the vicinity of said situation. This only proves that the general public doesn't buy Miz as a threat.

Based on how the rest of TV works, I'm assuming (note the word) if they had just run the last week's episode or any "best of" they had in the can, the worst thing that would have happened is that they might have to run some make-goods for sponsors.

Trips has learned better than to trust his father in law.

Trips has never and does not like Hart, cheerios or no. This is not the situation to play the "people are being too mean to Trips" card.

Based on one show in one market? And I'm not saying it definitely will, but what if the show kills on PPV? Does that make up for the slow gate? I'd still like to know what you consider the "peak". To clarify, game 1 and 2 were at Rogers Arena the previous week. Game 5 was on friday the 10th, UFC was there the next day. But Cup finals tickets being as expensive as they are, it's not like most people can afford to do both.

Vegas always gives out freebies. It's true that the Vegas attendance numbers have stagnated a bit this year, but they've increased in other areas. UFC 125 (Edgar vs Maynard) was at the MGM grand and had 12,688 attendance for a $2,174,780 live gate. UFC 126 (Silva vs. Belfort) was at Mandalay Bay and had 10,893 and generated a live gate of $3.6 million. UFC 127 (Penn vs Fitch) was in Australia and drew 18,186 fans for a gate of $3.5 million. Attendance was up from the previous Aussie card and the gate was up $1 million. UFC 128 (Shogun vs Jones) was in Newark and drew 12,619 attendees and for a gate of $2.14 million. It was down significantly from the previous Newark card that was headlined by GSP. UFC 129 was the behemoth in Toronto. 55,724 attendance and $12.075 million gate. UFC 130 (Rampage vs. Hamill) was at the MGM Grand and had 12,816 and a live gate of $2.57 million. UFC 131 (dos Santos vs. Carwin) was in Vancouver and had 14,685 and a live gate of $2.8 million. It was down from the previous year's Vancouver event, but was also going head to head with the Stanley Cup finals being in town, which will always take precedence in Canada. UFC 132 (Cruz vs. Faber) was at the MGM Grand and had 12,947 and a live gate of $2.3 million. It's worth noting that the two low mark gates were headlined by lighter weight class fights, which traditionally do not draw well unless you're BJ Penn. This is a necessary evil to grow the marketability of the lower weight classes. Even then, the January gate was up slightly from the event held almost exactly a year ago in the same building. UFC 126 was to be Shogun-Evans before Rashad's injury, the Jon Jones buzz hasn't translated to money yet. Rampage-Hamill is nowhere near as exciting as Rampage-Evans, which took place a year before in the same building. UFC 131 had the loss of Lesnar and the Stanley Cup finals. UFC 132 had Cruz-Faber, which is no Lesnar-Carwin which was a year before in the same building. UFC is still opening new markets. Ontario is finally open for business and they're still working on opening the largest market in the US. They're still looking at holding an event at Cowboys Stadium, possibly GSP-Silva if that materializes. A return visit to Abu Dhabi rumored for the end of the year will be another big gate and there's a rumor that the next visit to Montreal will be at Olympic Stadium rather than the Bell Centre. Zuffa is working diligently on opening up India and China which will be huge when it happens. There's no tangible reason to believe that UFC's revenues won't continue to increase. As far as PPV goes through June of both years, 2010 had 8 events for 3,655,000 total buys and 2011 had 7 events with 3,280,000 buys and 2011 had the disadvantage of not having a high profile TUF fight when Lesnar pulled out. Looking at the data, I may have to revise my original response to cm funk. They have stagnated a bit for the time being but with several caveats, and there's no reason to believe revenues won't continue to increase moving forward.

When specifically are you speaking about?

They're 3 months removed from doing a 55,000 stadium crowd and rumor is they're planning another one. The biggest stars still do 750,000+ on PPV. Chuck was a huge draw but UFC does better business now than with either of the other two you mentioned in the main event. Anderson Silva is headlining an event next month, which also should do in the 750,000 range. The data does not support your conclusions.

Is it really only hardcore fans that pirate shows though? Don't casual fans own computers? I would think that hardcore fans would represent the vast majority. Again, most casuals would only visit specific websites such as wwe.com, wrestling.com, etc. I know czwfans usually has a thread that produces a good stream each PPV but I find it hard to believe that most casuals are either: A. going to one of these obscure sites that have threads with decent streams and registering, etc. (Even a bigger site than CZWfans doesn't provide ongoing coverage so stream links would be unavailable.) B. Constantly searching something like jsutin.tv for a stream that doesn't constantly crash C. Having the interest and/or knowledge to register for a site like XWT or PWT to download the torrent. I think you're focusing too much on the "wrestling" aspect. Your average nobody sitting at home has the knowledge to download torrents for movies, music, etc. They find streaming sites like http://www.myp2p.eu/index.php?part=sports or one of a few dozen others that serve the same function and happen to show WWF as well. They won't pay for rasslin' but hey, it's on the site so they'll give it a view.

Is it really only hardcore fans that pirate shows though? Don't casual fans own computers?

After the rave reactions the PPV got, I actually watched the Cena-Punk match today and like most, thought it was great. I'm a lapsed fan, the last time I watched Raw was the night Bret came back and before that it was around 02/03 when I just couldn't justify it to myself anymore. I actually made it a point to catch the end of Raw tonight to see where they were going with it. What I saw was a long, badly acted mic interaction between Trips and Vince. It was like it was 02/03 all over again. It was my own fault.

That was a great exchange, despite Cena. He's the biggest star in the company, he's in his hometown and yet he almost kills a great segment by coming out and diving right in to dog poop jokes. The crowd went mild.

It was SNME. The one where Sid turned on Hogan.

Yeah when Vader first came in both Shawn and Taker read him the riot act about working too stiff. But the SS '96 story I thought had more to do with JJ working in the WWF office then jumping ship to WCW. Vince was afraid Bischoff was going to have another "he beats the big guy with 3 superkicks" situation.