Sean Liska

I've run into Foley in a variety of random contexts over the years (including separate run-ins at Disneyland and Disney World!) and he has always been exactly as friendly and generous with his time as his public image suggests. Not a name you hear a lot in these talks, but I met Roddy Piper once and he was so over-the-top friendly and welcoming that I swore there must have been cameras recording us somewhere. But I couldn't find any.

I was just thinking the other day about how much I loved JBL in 2006-2007. Even though it was clearly not true, he did a heck of a job making you believe that SD was really the important A-show and made everything on the shows seem significant. He was funny, he told the stories of the matches well, he and Cole had great chemistry. And now...

Supposedly he headlined the most successful "normal" Sumo Hall show in like 10 years. I have some doubts about the attendance reported, but Dave says it's legit. (normal meaning not a G-1 Final, not something like the combined NJPW/AJPW 40-year anniversary show)

Just watch the preview of it in the Shoots thread. Stuff like him claiming he had a locker room confrontation with all 3 of the Shield and bitched them out, acting like he's some long time veteran shaking his head at the new kids, claiming that he put together a lot of Del Rio's matches. Ricardo is full of shit. I was wondering who's even left on the roster to play the Bob Holly/JBL/Benoit role of "grumpy locker room vet who gives grief to the punk kids". Didn't think it would be Ricardo.

They're going to be getting $235 million in TV rights in 2018. You can't turn that down. They could have just cancelled PPVs altogether and been fine with all of that money.

I think Dave really nailed it with this line, "Long-term, the key is that they have contradicting priorities. They have to create tons of free content for their rights fees revenues, but in creating so much free content, it lessens interest in more content, particularly with PPVs feeling less important except the big 2-3. " There's a cap to how many people are willing to keep up with WWE' countless hours of prime-time programming while still wanting to spend $10 to watch Nitros or documentaries on older stuff. Most people aren't sick like us. This thing had a chance if they were able to enforce the 6-month commitment for people that wanted to see Mania or Rumble. Without that working? I'm not sure it would have been a big money-maker during the Attitude Era.

"This is awesome" would kill me at the Impact Zone. But when you've got 10,000 people at a WWE show representing a $500,000 gate chanting it? It's not totally my thing, but shoot, tip your cap and take the compliment, money is money no matter how people are consuming the product.

People always say this but it really isn't true. The numbers I can find say Royal Rumble 2009 did 450,000 buys and Rumble 2014 did 467,000. The attendance numbers I've seen have been flat. TV ratings aren't a fair comparison because of 2-hours vs 3. And you also have to consider that by agreeing to do 6-hours of first run programming per week with somewhat important matches, they're purposely sacrificing PPV and attendance money by overexposing the product but making up for it in TV money. And if you want to say, "WWE isn't on top of their game creatively, and that's why they've seen some very slight declines", like 83 Mid-South or early 79 Memphis, I wouldn't disagree with you. But the Todd's of the world assume a level of incompetence with the company that would lead to fall 87-NWA type declines. It hasn't happened.

Not really on attendance. They bottomed out in 2003-2004 during the depths of the HHH and JBL reigns and rebounded when Cena got the belt and has been steady since then. I'm pretty old-school so that's the one I tend to pay attention to and it's been very consistent. TV ratings have declined but the entire TV landscape has changed dramatically in the past 13 years, so doing straight comparisons there is unfair. They've been steady since going to 3-hours a few years ago. PPVs experienced declines but Rumble and Chamber actually did surprisingly well this year, the best Rumble besides Rock-Punk in many years, so it probably wasn't the optimal time to get out of that business.

Whoops, double post.

Nah, the company would be out of business if things were as bad over the past 13 years as people claimed. It's not 1997 RAW or 1984 Mid-South inspired, but it's mostly fine. Companies booked as poorly as the Todd Martins make it seem tend to experience 2001 WWF or 1999 WCW or 2002 NJPW or 1985 Dallas level declines. When you do a terrible job for that long, you don't pack 65,000 people into a stadium paying $10 million, you don't sell out SummerSlam 6 months ahead of time, you don't sell out most other PPVs, you don't sell out when RAW comes to Brooklyn, you don't do a big crowd in Mexico City last week, you don't average 15,000 a night in Australia, you don't do 18,000 over two nights in Malaysia, you're not on pace for a sellout in Dallas this week, etc. The entertainment business is too hard, people are tough to please.

There's no reason a wrestling crowd can't give a standing ovation instead of a "This is Awesome" chant except giving the standing ovation might make them marks whereas the chant let's everyone know how smart & discerning they are. It's not really uncommon to see a standing ovation accompanying a "This is Awesome" chant.

In 2012 when Todd was railing against WWE one time, I asked him how many periods during the previous 11 years he found the company well-booked. He gave me the summer of 2002 and a few Mania builds. So there were a couple of months in 11 years he really enjoyed. There are a lot of people online like that have been hate-watching for over a decade and it's exhausting talking wrestling with them,

When a UFC crowd doesn't come into a fight emotionally invested in the outcome, but give two guys a standing ovation at the end of a round because the action was so exciting, is there something wrong with them as an audience? That's the best comparison I can come up with for a real sports "this is awesome" chant. They're cheering for the action but don't care who wins.

Just watched Tanahashi-Shibata. It was a smart, entertaining match. But even knowing what Dave looks for from NJPW, I don't see how that's more than ****, much less the full 5. I don't normally comment on Dave's ratings nowadays because they're all over the place, but I feel like I watched something entirely different. They wrestled that match like they were trying to not burn out the crowd before the main event.

I just don't see why we're wondering whether they think he's over. He's not a midcard guy trying to break through anymore. He headlined a Mania that was built around him wrestling in two main events. He was supposed to headline SummerSlam. They think he's over.

I feel like Dave's always trying to get us worked up about their views on Bryan. Like when HBK told a story about Vince telling him that he just didn't see anything in a member of the roster, and Dave told us this was almost assuredly a reference to Bryan, even though that didn't match what was happening on TV at the time.

They knew the Network numbers right when Mania was over, and the plan was for him to beat Kane at Extreme Rules and then beat Batista the next month at Payback before headlining a very important SummerSlam against Lesnar. So they weren't *that* angry.

They built an extremely important Mania completely around him and it did pretty well all things considered. Why are wondering if they think he's over?

Sometimes I think we overrate the idea that guys have to spend years bouncing around the country to become any good, though. How many places did Jerry Lawler and Kenta Kobashi work before they became great?

If Austin were willing to do a match, it would be such an obvious move on WWE's part to do it for the sake of the Network. All of the other stuff is so small in comparison.

I always hear that no one actually believed wrestling was real in the old days, but why did Ox Baker start a riot in Cleveland beating up a babyface? Did people riot at plays in the 70s? We scoff at the old-timers talking about fighting off fans, but we have proof here. Clearly the emotional dynamic was different. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hG-FO6UnaeQ

I think Lawler is right there in the discussion for best ever, but you do have to acknowledge the multitude of reasons why it's harder to get responses now than before. Crowds have seen everything by now. WWE has produced so much product over the past 15 years. Hours upon hours of competitive matches during that whole time. Fans are smarter. People didn't surround the ring and make it difficult for Flair to leave the cage after he turned on Dusty because Flair was such a smarter performer - they also did it because they were dumber people to respond to fiction that way. You can also see how much harder it is to get a response in Japan or Mexico due to how much those audiences have seen too. The point about fans knowing to wait for the finishng sequence has merit too. In the old days you could do a hiptoss and a backdrop and get people popping big in an opener, and it's not because those guys were so smart and sometimes won matches on arm drags two minutes in to keep fans honest, But Lawler is right there with Flair and Funk for me as greatest ever. The stuff about his athleticism makes no sense if you saw him in the 70s and early 80s.

Pretty similar to September 97 and September 98 PPV finishes. And last September. September 2002 for Brock-Taker too.

HHH on Twitter posted a picture of himself in front of a monitor at Raw pointing to Zayn and Neville. Still trying to wrap my head around the internet's #1 enemy for a decade now being the savior responsible for guys like Generico, PAC, Kenta, Moxley, Black, and Steen getting opportunities. Interesting times.