Sean Liska

Sting only spent 2 years in a company as successful as WWE has been over the last decade. I'm not a big proponent now on Batista or Edge, but someone deserves credit besides Cena. They are maintaining an already successful healthy promotion. Big difference than being the guy keeping WCW or worse yet TNA from oblivion. WWE's numbers were heading the wrong way from 2001-2004. They ran a few MSG shows that drew in the 4,000-5,000 range, and it overall seemed like a company that was fading and didn't have any answers. They got new life and several big years when they elevated Cena and Batista and other guys like Orton and Edge started clicking with the audience.

Sting only spent 2 years in a company as successful as WWE has been over the last decade. I'm not a big proponent now on Batista or Edge, but someone deserves credit besides Cena.

They were bigger numbers than anyone else has done in the last 9 years. They went on a pretty crazy TV ratings run by modern standards after Edge won the title, including several weeks without Flair. January 9, 2006 4.3 January 16, 2006 4.3 January 23, 2006 4.5 January 30, 2006 4.5 February 6, 2006 4.5

It's not even worth worrying about after finding out a few years ago that Wahlers has a ballot.

I'm a guy who thinks when the word "great" is tossed around like water in the Pacific, it has no meaning. There were a lot of things in the 1994 Carny matches that would certainly qualify as "great" under the 2006-2010 Raw/SD! standards. I could have tossed it out a ton. To have some impact on the word, I used it emphatically for one specific match and across several matches for one specific worker: I almost feel like you have to throw out 90s All Japan when having these discussions because it skews everything so much. To me, there's never been anything close to it and there never will be. The standards they set are so far beyond anything we'll ever see. Yeah, great WWE matches don't compare to great 90s AJPW matches, but what does? You're right, a random Jumbo-Misawa Korakuen 6-man tag from 1991 blows away almost everything we see today. But I think great modern WWE matches can compare with almost any other promotion from any other era.

I kind of started this by saying he should be in the discussion for best ever, and now I'm second-guessing myself. But I think Rey's sheer volume of really good to great matches has to be up there with anybody. I can't think of many times in the past 9 years where WWE has given him 10 minutes of TV or PPV time and he hasn't delivered an above average match. It's crazy. He must be responsible for hundreds of quality TV matches, which you can't say for many wrestlers because you can only do that in modern WWE. I really started thinking about this during the RAW a few weeks ago when he had matches with Miz and Cena. They were both super-heated, exciting, fun, and different matches. It feels like we just take it for granted at this point. In the past few months he's had a great 3-way with Del Rio and Punk, a great tag match with Riley against Miz and Swagger, the Punk PPV match, falls count anywhere PPV match with Rhodes, 2 good Punk TV matches, and a great 3-way with Del Rio and Miz for the #1 contender spot. Who else but the early 90s AJPW guys have produced that volume of output? And Rey isn't exactly working with Kobashi and Jumbo every week. I do think you need to enjoy modern WWE to see Rey in this light, since that's where his best and most consistent work has been. I don't get the sense that modern WWE is too well-regarded around the internet, which is probably an issue for him.

I'm not saying for sure that he's ahead of Flair, Funk, Jumbo, etc, but I think he should be in the conversation at this point.

I've been thinking recently that you can make an argument at this point for Rey as the best in-ring guy ever. He's been having consistently great matches for 18 years, never has bad ones, his matches are always heated, and has a ridiculous amount of 4-star matches to his name. He's an absolute machine. In the last two months, he's had great matches with Cena, Punk, and Del Rio, the 3-way with Del Rio and Punk, and a great tag match with Riley against Miz and Swagger. We just take it for granted.

Punk is not "back in the middle".

It's not just the Mexico trip. There have been plans to put the title on him since January. I don't mind it, since Punk's angry rebel character is probably better chasing the title.

I don't think Nash would put up with all issues that come up with being on WWE creative. They're constantly on the road, on call for Vince, re-writing stuff at the last second, etc. And despite the storyline, it sounds like we're a long ways away from HHH taking over for Vince and doing things his way. According to Meltzer, there's still plenty of stuff that he can't get done in the company. Shoot, Nash got that massive pop at the Rumble and then sat home for eight months, so it's not like Vince is overly enamored with the guy's abilities.

Another issue with this storyline being given proper spacing is that we have to hustle through Vengeance, Night of Champions, and Hell in the Cell over the next two months. It's just a killer with their roster depth. The scheduling was manageable in the days of single-brand PPVs, but impossible to create fulfilling storylines with now.

They nullified everything unique and interesting about the MITB scenario by having him come back as a normal member of the roster 8 days later. The whole point of the angle was that WWE would spin into chaos if their world champ walked away. That's why Vince was panicked and determined not to let it happen and threatened to fire Cena if he lost. It made Punk come across as special, like a real outsider who controlled the fate of the company. To have him stroll out after 8 days like nothing ever happened and go back to business as normal made everything pointless. It was probably a victim of monthly PPVs, because this was the hottest thing they had going and they needed something big for SummerSlam. They ended up getting no attendance or ratings boost from it, and I think it could have made a difference if they had played it out over 2-3 months.

JR said that Punk's T-shirt is the best-selling one in years, so that's a positive for him. Vince loves guys that move merch. And I don't get how we have the MITB buys 3 weeks after the show, when it took 3 months for the real Extreme Rules number to come out.

I'm not defending Keith but he is a WWE fan that dabbled in some WCW on the side. The Bruno stance would make sense for his worldview. Plus, a lot of people think that however incorrect it might be. I don't think that it's the wildest idea in the world, no? It depends on criteria. Yeah, I think you can make that argument based on his attendance figures, although Hogan's from 84-88 had maybe more significance due to the national expansion.

Interesting that Dick Ebersol was a big Observer fan back in the day.

The more I think about the Punk angle, the more I come to the conclusion that it's really tricky to book this angle in today's environment. I think almost everyone wanted Punk to disappear for a while and have the storyline be Punk holding the belt hostage and everyone chasing after him. The problem is the 2nd or 3rd biggest PPV of the year is two weeks away. What's your main event if Punk is gone and there's no belt? Orton-Christian? I've heard the suggestion that you could have had the Cena-Mysterio tourney final at SummerSlam instead while stretching out the Punk angle.. But if you crown a new champion in a PPV main event, where's the drama with Punk being out with the belt? He's already been forgotten and everyone has moved on. The beauty of the original Summer of Punk angle is that Punk was teasing leaving for WWE with the title, but he still worked every show. It was a really unique and original deal. I've read the fantasy booking with Punk taking the belt to ROH shows and being chased around by Cena, but that doesn't do much for RAW and their PPVs. So my enthusiasm for the angle isn't what it was a few weeks ago, but I'm not sure what the ideal booking would have been. This isn't an easy one like Nexus or the Invasion.

I think the DVDVR guys may have to check out this year's ICP event. Check out these two matches: - Memphis Madness 4 way Match featuring KoKo B. Ware Vs Kamala Vs Jerry “The King” Lawler Vs Dutch Mantell - Tracy Smothers vs. Wildfire Tommy Rich Throw in Piper-Funk and Outsiders-New Age Outlaws and it's an interesting lineup.

Interesting that HHH/Punk was at one point planned for SummerSlam (also in the WON). I would have figured the plan was to be keep HHH out of the ring for a while in this role. Also, to kind of defend the HHH/Punk angle that was proposed, it sounds like the idea was to screw Punk out of the belt to keep him a babyface and build towards HHH going heel. I think that Punk beating a heel HHH would help him a lot and would be another way to play to both the casual and internet audience, but I'm pretty skeptical about that happening. This was something that was also apparently planned as a long-term thing at one point. I'm trying to make sense out of Dave's headline story about the booking now.

I don't get the WO talking point that the Vince/HHH angle is the most important storyline to them. They aren't even doing a feud. HHH just did the deal where a babyface figurehead takes charge from a heel and makes a few crowd-pleasing announcements. Clearly the SummerSlam main event is going to be more important than HHH setting up matches on RAW and Smackdown.

This was in the Observer two weeks ago: "As far as ticket sales go, the 8/6 show in Philadelphia as of a few days before you are reading this had sold 4,500 tickets for $800,000. This would be the first PPV show in years and years, since the company hit it big in 2006, where I would term advance ticket sales really bad, particularly since UFC of late has been doing most of its sales the first weekend." I'm not an MMA expert, but it seems like the novelty of seeing a UFC showhas worn off and people are picking and choosing shows by their star power, which was going to happen eventually.

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. UFC's buyrates and attendance numbers are definitely down from their peak, and just putting on a show with the UFC label on it doesn't mean the business that it used to. But that was bound to happen eventually once it stopped being a novelty. The big names that connect with the public should always do very well, and like WWE, they should be profitable for a long time even if they aren't at peak boom levels.

Dave has always just said that price doesn't matter if you put on something that people want to see, and has pointed to the 1997 raise being a big boost for the company He also talks about house show attendance rising when ticket prices went up in the late 90s, but again, that coincided with a boom. And he points to UFC selling a ton of PPVs at $55. But I still think there's a limit when you're doing 14 wrestling PPVs a year, and $55 is nuts. I can't imagine getting many impulse buys at that price. I've bought a ton of wrestling PPVs over the years, but there's no way I can justify that price for anything besides a mega-event.

I think you would still see a lot of guys walking away because of the brutal travel schedule and the constant pain these guys are in. I went to a house show on Saturday with probably 3,000 people there, and everybody worked hard and took a lot of bumps. Orton and Christian had a better match than their PPV one the next night, so the physical toll has to be steep. There is barely any time off. They're doing a live RAW shoot on December 26th this year. All of the overseas touring is grueling. I think it really is that guys have more money and are smarter than before. Hogan barely worked from 04-09, but he found himself in a position where he actually needed money. And Flair's just crazy.

He also tweeted, ""They should be careful that this doesn't really affect the stock price", implying HHH isn't really taking over, so I don't know what he was trying to say.