mookeighana

BACKGROUND (you can skip this part) In the fact, in the 2nd Quarter Conference Call, Vince McMahon had this exchange with an analyst (full transcript available at http://seekingalpha.com/article/1597822-wo...all-transcript) essentially laying out that he expected they could double their domestic TV Rights Fees (for RAW/Smackdown).. A few months ago, George Barrios presented at the Citi Global Conference (link to presentation): What four contracts? Why India? Why Mexico? Sports Fee vs Scripted Fees Just for comparison, here is a TV Rights vs PPV revenue chart I made awhile ago. THE QUESTION (here's my real question) They didn't want to talk about what they get per hour per viewer, but keep in mind that before 1999, they were making about In 2012, they made $139.5M in TV Rights Fees split $88.9M domestic and $50.6M int'l (and a paltry $1.4M in TV Advertising). Besides USA for RAW, what networks are likely to make a significant bid? Dave Meltzer made an argument on the 8/29/13 Wrestling Observer show that should Fox Sports 1 (FS1) continue to only draw a few hundred thousand viewers for the majority of their programming, they might be incented to make a big play for a property like RAW. His rationale was that bringing 3-4 million viewers to the channel weekly plus appealing to fans that should have a natural cross-over with UFC would be very much line with their goals. What about Spike? Where does Smackdown go next? Which arm can we hammerlock? Can they really expect to bring in an increase of $25M-$40M more in domestic TV Rights from this round of negotiations? Could USA decide to drop out of bidding akin to what Spike last time did when it was clear they weren't going to win and thus left WWE looking weak and forced to dance with the only girl left at the party?

= Managers bidding for Savage = Savage announces Elizabeth (Heenan has an awesome suit)

Patterson specifically noted that they had notarized addendum that contained a weight-based escape claim. (However, future legal scholars have noted that since the language referenced "weight" and not "mass", thus Albano could have fought in Moon Court to retain Pat.)

Actually, this discussion about how restrictive could a manager contract really be, does remind me a lot of the non-compete contract that Brock Lesnar signed and then sued WWE about in 2005. You can read the complaint, a copy of Brock's 2003 contract and the WWE response here: http://the-w.com/downloads/older/ They eventually settled when it became evident that WWE couldn't enforce a worldwide non-compete in all Wrestling and MMA, but you can see the sort of legal quandry they dipped their toes in.

13th amendment: "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction." Perhaps Hercules was in fact duly convicted a crime? Or, perhaps Hercules had enlisted in a legal military unit (the Paul Jones Army?!) and was deemed to be a deserter, which put his freedom in jeopardy.

I assumed it was that the Wrestler had signed a contract agreeing to have their business interests managed by a certain entity, i.e. "Mr. Fuji Incorporated". In exchange for some of the purse, the manager agrees to protect that wrestler's general interests (including, but not limited to, transportion & lodging needs, match promotion, promotional materials including interview supplementation, "external bias nullification" - i.e. ensuring opponents will not try to use underhanded tactics to secure victories and general publicity). However, that manager could then sell their controlling interests in that entity to another manager organization, and hence " Mr. Fuji Incorporated" was now controlled by Sensational Sherri.

All the random returns in WCW: Iron Sheik (1989-1990), Kamala in 1995, Jacques Rougeau (1996-1997), Marty Jannetty (1998), Bertha Faye (1999-2000)...

Holy Crap - I had forgot that cup-of-tea Clarence Mason was J. Biggs (manager of Chris "Champagne" Kanyon and Harlem Heat 2000).

I've been following the debate on Grandstand (AOL) as well as on several CompuServe CIS newsboards. It's been riveting.

Tough one. Maybe the big tag team Survivor Series match? When we did the non-cannon WWF Best of the 1980s set, the top finishers for 1988 were: #21 Randy Savage vs Ted DiBiase (7/22/88 MSG) #37 Blue Angel (Owen Hart) vs Barry Horowitz (8/13/88 Los Angeles CA) #49 Ten Man Tag Survivor Series 1988 (11/24/88 Richfield OH 1988 Survivor Series) - high standard deviation on this one Other matches on the list were: #51 Bret Hart vs Bad News Brown (4/25/88 MSG) #75 Tim Horner vs Barry Horowitz (12/30/88 MSG) #86 Brainbusters vs Young Stallions (11/6/88 Toronto) #95 Hulk Hogan vs Ted DiBiase (3/12/88 Philadelphia PA)

I plotted the individual shows that I had tracked - between 10 and 25 for each year. For 2007, it looked like: 2/5/2007 4.1 rating / 40 minutes of wrestling 4/23/2007 3.7 rating / 71 minutes of wrestling 5/28/2007 3.2 rating / 42 minutes of wrestling 7/9/2007 3.37 rating / 25 minutes of wrestling 7/23/2007 3.37 rating / 34 minutes of wrestling 7/30/2007 2.5 rating / 29 minutes of wrestling 9/10/2007 3.9 rating / 19 minutes of wrestling 10/1/2007 3.2 rating / 19 minutes of wrestling 10/8/2007 2.8 rating / 24 minutes of wrestling 10/29/2007 3.5 rating / 22 minutes of wrestling 11/12/2007 3.5 rating / 33 minutes of wrestling 11/19/2007 3.5 rating / 31 minutes of wrestling 11/26/2007 3.5 rating / 32 minutes of wrestling 12/17/2007 3.5 rating / 34 minutes of wrestling It just happened that my sample didn't have a lot of datapoints around that 70 minute show. Still the average for 2007 was 32.4 minutes which was right in line with 2008's average.

I did a study in Jan 2013 where I compared a two-hour RAW and a three-hour RAW. https://sites.google.com/site/chrisharringt...hr_3hr_raw_comp An interesting thing I noticed was: World/Heavyweight title matches didn't really get more time, but the other matches did. I guess what I'm trying to get at is that I felt like Main Event timeframe tend to be somewhat static, while the rest of the show is what is flexed when they decide to add or subtract wrestling content. However, I haven't tested this hypothesis for 1999 Main Events vs 2013 Main Events.

The Earls Court in London, England show

As you can see, the RAW Ratings are more a year-to-year trend thing.

In response to a thread at DVDVR about What Stopped Former Fans from Watching Wrestling, I did a survey for number of wrestling minutes on RAW from 1999-2011: I started with a sample of RAWs from 1999 that I could get match-times for everything on the show (32 shows). Average show in 1999 had 28 minutes 54 seconds of wrestling over 7.5 matches. (Three shows had less than 20 minutes and four shows had more than 35 minutes. Shows sampled had between 6 and 10 matches). For a two-hour RAW (I'll ignore the overrun), that's 24% of the time that was wrestling content. (Granted, with commercials I think a one-hour show is something like 39-42 minutes of content.) To compare, I took a sample of 10-20 RAWs from 2000 to 2011 (210 RAWs total covering 1,504 matches) where I had match times for all the matches I'd listed for that RAW show. Annual Averages 1999: 32 shows (28:54 minutes of wrestling average) 2000: 21 shows (30:58 minutes of wrestling average) 2001: 11 shows (34:36 minutes of wrestling average) 2002: 13 shows (29:23 minutes of wrestling average) 2003: 12 shows (32:15 minutes of wrestling average) 2004: 17 shows (33:13 minutes of wrestling average) 2005: 27 shows (32:46 minutes of wrestling average) 2006: 18 shows (28:33 minutes of wrestling average) 2007: 14 shows (32:22 minutes of wrestling average) 2008: 23 shows (32:21 minutes of wrestling average) 2009: 19 shows (34:18 minutes of wrestling average) 2010: 18 shows (31:38 minutes of wrestling average) 2011: 17 shows (33:22 minutes of wrestling average) So, 1999 was nominally lower in terms of wrestling content than following years, but this could be due to some sample bias. per Loss request:

I'm glad people enjoyed the podcast. VOW guys did a wonderful job setting it up and covering good material. I really appreciate the chance to talk about the project, and many fine, fine board members have reached out since to become project backers. The time and effort that I put into the stat collection is very fulfilling, especially because of moments like this.

Consider this: Thirty People with the most matches Jan-March 1998:The Rock, Billy Gunn, Mick Foley, Ken Shamrock, Dustin Rhodes, Marc Mero, The Road Dogg, Don Harris, Taka Michinoku, Headbanger Mosh, Brian Christopher, Headbanger Thrasher, Owen Hart, Brian Lee, Tom Brandi, Ron Harris, Kane, Steve Austin, Dennis Knight, Mark Canterbury, Ron Simmons, Savio Vega, John Bradshaw Layfield, D-Lo Brown, Road Warrior Hawk, Road Warrior Animal, Terry Funk, Triple H, Carl Ouellet, Jacques Rougeau June-August 2002: Stevie Richards, John Bradshaw Layfield, Eddie Guerrero, Spike Dudley, Tommy Dreamer, Shawn Stasiak, Raven, Rob Van Dam, Justin Credible, the Big Show, Booker T, Kurt Angle, Billy Kidman, Jamie Noble, Bob Holly, Molly Holly, Brock Lesnar, Yoshihiro Tajiri, Hurricane Helms, Matt Hardy, Trish Stratus, Rikishi, Chuck Palumbo, Billy Gunn, William Regal, Christian, Dustin Rhodes, Chavo Guerrero Jr, John Cena, Lance Storm The three people on both lists? JBL, Goldust and Cute Kip. Jan-March 2009: Edge, Shelton Benjamin, Beth Phoenix, Jack Swagger, CM Punk, Melina, Kofi Kingston, the Big Show, Rey Mysterio Jr, John Cena, Vladimir Kozlov, Carlito Caribbean Cool, Primo Colon, The Miz, MVP, Kane, John Morrison, Randy Orton, Jeff Hardy, Brian Kendrick, Fit Finlay, Mark Henry, William Regal, Chris Jericho, Ron Killings, Triple H, Shad Gaspard, the Undertaker, JTG, The Great Khali May-July 2013: Randy Orton, Daniel Bryan, Alberto Del Rio, Sheamus, Seth Rollins, Cody Rhodes, Roman Reigns, Curtis Axel, Dean Ambrose, Chris Jericho, Wade Barrett, Ryback, Kane, Christian, Damien Sandow, The Miz, Fandango, Antonio Cesaro, Jey Uso, Dolph Ziggler, Kaitlyn, Jimmy, Darren Young, Kofi Kingston, AJ, CM Punk, Jack Swagger, John Cena, Titus O'Neil, Zack Ryder People on both of those lists? Orton, Cena, Punk, Kofi, The Miz, Kane, Jericho

I agree - the 1998 to 2002 gap felt a lot longer than 2009 to 2013. I think some of it has to do with the number of PPVs going on during that time and the fact you had two rival companies disappear while Michaels was out. Using the endpoint of Austin/Michaels at WM XIV, HBK was out for 52 WWE PPVs (Unforgiven 1998 to Vengeance 2002). Also, there was 36 WCW and 17 ECW PPVs during that time. Both ECW and WCW promotions essentially tumbled into the abyss during the time that Shawn Michaels was no longer an active competitor. (Also, If you go back 52 PPVs from Shawn's match at WM XIV, that's 7+ years -- Royal Rumble 1992. Think about how much WWF changed between Tuesday in Texas and early 1998!). 52 WWE PPVs away from WrestleMania XXV (HHH vs. Orton; Cena vs. Show vs. Edge; UT vs. HBK) would be basically be this year's Wrestlemania (Rock vs. Cena; HHH vs. Lesnar; Undertaker vs. Punk) - same three fellas in the top three matches (Cena, HHH, Undertaker).

Well, Seattle is kind of renown for it's overcast & gloomy climate (see also every documentary about grunge music in the 90s). According to this site: http://www.currentresults.com/Weather/US/a...te-sunshine.php - they were third lowest total hours of sun (among 47 US States listed) trailing only Syracuse, New York and Anchorage, Alaska. As someone who grew up in Upstate NY, I didn't think of us as being a place prone to Seasonal Affective Disorder but the grey skies of home are something that my wife noted when she moved from Minnesota (#21).

Important Article alert! my buddy @RhodesWrestling is tackling my difficult question of ranking B-level WWE Champions using the criteria of "How much would you pay to see them wrestle a Bear?" http://rayrhodeswrestling.wordpress.com/ Today's Episode: The Miz vs Fozzie

Shameless self-promotion! If anyone does listen to the interview and wants to follow along with the analysis we discuss: Correlations between RAW Ratings, WO Feedback and PPV Buys GREAT WWF Jobbers Excerpts from WWE 2Q 2013 Financial Results 30 Years of Wrestling Observer Awards (and Runner-Up) Results Also, pricing options for my "book"? $12 for PDF copies or $25 for PDF and Print Version of Final Book. (Add $2 if you live overseas from the US). The book isn't completed, but I am accepting additional backers at this time. I've been releasing "work-in-progress" and mini-chapters to my supports which total several hundred pages already. If you'd like to support the project, I will send you a copy of all of the releases thus far and you'll be set to join the final release when it's finally done (hopefully sometime in 2013). Backers have already received: * WWF One Shot Stars Chapter (37 pages) * Wrestlenomics - JCP 1983-2001 Records Preview (105 pages) * Wrestlenomics - WWF 1982-1993 Records Preview (79 pages) * Wrestlenomics - minichapters (113 pages) I'd send you a copy of all of these immediately and you'd join the queue for the final product (and any additional releases I make prior to the final release). [email protected]

Review of Night Two (including GIFs) is published here: http://www.voicesofwrestling.com/2013/08/0...un-in-korakuen/

My favorite would be Ultimo Dragon/Shinjiro Ohtani 8/4/96. Those dropkicks!