Sean Liska

Didn't the Steen-Generico match end with a chair shot to the head? I feel like no one talked about that.

Wow, trying to come up with with choices for these awards is just depressing.

Indy wrestling is not that business.

That did not seem to be the popular opinion at the time amongst people that were attending WWF house shows and shows from other groups, according to what I've read from 80's newsletters. The Crockett house show handheld footage available looks a lot better similar WWE material from the time. WWE was running three crews, so you never had any depth, and they were handling an insane travel schedule that left everyone completely wiped out. Definitely agreed that Gorilla made house shows more enjoyable, though. He's the only reason I can sit through most of the 80s footage.

I don't know if I would make that leap. I've watched a lot of WWF house show stuff from the 80's, and I will say that a lot of the main events are better than they are given credit for. Hogan matches in particular are pretty solid. Piper knew how to put on a fun show from 84-86, Savage was great, etc. But the undercards are still some of the worst things I've ever seen.

I dunno, Foley has talked about eyeballs being stepped on before they could be put back into place. I really hope it's more of an urban legend than happened once or twice more than something that was a regular happening.

I think he was saying that too. His point was that it wasn't just because Dana was worried about confusing fans with fake/real, which we seem to agree on.

That's Dave's point, though. Dave said he wouldn't let Brock do it either. But not because it blurs the lines of real and fake, but because of the stigma of pro wrestling. He was just saying Dana's explanation isn't telling the whole story for why Brock shouldn't do the show. "I wouldn't allow it either if I was in his shoes, but blurring any lines wouldn't be the reason."

True, but the Austin era allowed them to strengthen those channels to the point where they can terrible PPV buys and mediocre attendance and still do really well financially. That wasn't an option in 1996. Either the traditional revenue streams were good, or the company was in trouble. Not that I'm even saying Austin should be ahead of Hogan. They both did as well they could have done in their spots. But lets not forget where WWE was when Austin was rising up the card, and where it was when he left. In 1997, WWE was the decidedly "cold" brand. WCW was cool. Uncensored 97 did a better buyrate than Wrestlemania 13. RAW ratings were in the low 2s. The NWO was the hottest act in the business. People were saying Bischoff was the new Vince McMahon, and Vince was the new Verne Gagne. They took the water coolers out of Titan Towers to save money. 88 straight weeks. Bischoff had the money to outspend them on stars, and even celebrities like Rodman. Yet Austin was strong enough to buck all of that and propel WWE into the greatest run a company has ever had. On 2/23/97, RAW did a 3.2. On 2/22/98, it did a 5.5. Wrestlemania 13 did 230,000 buys. Wrestlemania 14 did 730,000, and that wasn't just Tyson, because the rest of the shows jumped big. Look at this stretch of house shows in early 99. Not RAWs or PPVs, just house shows. WWF @ East Rutherford, NJ - Continental Airlines Arena - January 17, 1999 (18,740; sell out) WWF @ Cleveland, OH - Gund Arena - January 30, 1999 (matinee) (19,663; sell out) WWF @ Pittsburgh, PA - January 30, 1999 (16,589; sell out) WWF @ Philadelphia, PA - CoreStates Center - January 31, 1999 (16,417; sell out) WWF @ Greensboro, NC - Coliseum - February 5, 1999 (18,129) WWF @ New York City, NY - Madison Square Garden - February 7, 1999 (16,399; sell out) WWF @ Ft. Lauderdale, FL - National Car Rental Center - February 13, 1999 (16,724) WWF @ St. Louis, MO - Kiel Center - February 19, 1999 (17,261) WWF @ Washington DC - MCI Center - February 26, 1999 (17,923; sell out) WWF @ Boston, MA - FleetCenter - February 27, 1999 (17,428; sell out)

I guess the biggest argument for Austin is that his insane success allowed WWE to go public, which enabled them to become a monster unlike any wrestling company before them. We're ten years removed from Wrestlemania 17, and the company hasn't had a ton of home runs since then, but they're still sitting on a lot of cash with no debt. Austin allowed them to set up an infrastructure where they remain very profitable while PPVs are at historic lows and attendance isn't great. He completely changed the ballgame from an economic view.

I know the economy's rough, but you would figure a bankruptcy lawyer would be doing well now. Or well enough to not need to rob banks.

Not to derail things, but I would say that Hogan in the 80's was a good worker. I've been watching a lot of 1982 NJPW, and he's been in a bunch of solid stuff and worked a smarter style than a lot of the guys. His AWA work was fine. Same with WWE if he was matched with competent guys.

I don't know if Dave even visits that section of the board. But he should be more aware of what he's attaching his name onto.

The primetime decisions, like the NFL channel games, do take drawing power into consideration. Jets-Bengals was a playoff game last year, the Jets are a media sensation, and Cincy looked interesting with TO and Ochocinco. They also stagger when games take place, like Colts-Pats always happening during November sweeps. Where Dave is wrong, though, is saying that certain teams play each other more often because of drawing power. That is set in advance.

Hell, judging by ECW's product, Heyman was totally burned out of ideas by late 98. An how much did Tod Gordon actively contributed to the creative aspect of the shows back then ? I've heard interviews in which he's said to be 50% responsible of ECW's booking. I know it's an accepted fact (myth) that Heyman is a creative genius, but doesn't Gordon deserve some credit for ECW being as ground-breaking as it was ? After he left, quite frankly, it didn't take long for Heyman to be drained out of good ideas. By the time they got on TNN, the booking was awful. Nah, Tod never did anything with ECW before Heyman took over and never did anything interesting with his indies after. ECW's creative definitely wasn't as good by 99, but you also have to factor in the talent losses. It's a lot easier to be a great booker when you've got Mick Foley as your lead heel cutting brilliant promos every week, rather than when you're trying to somehow coax Justin Credible into being a compelling figure. And it's not like he pushed Credible at the expense of better guys, the roster was just drained. It's too bad ECW didn't last until the indy talent explosion a few years later.

To be fair, the debate was about whether Dana or Vince was the better promoter. So you can theoretically discuss that without saying MMA=Pro Wrestling, like comparing David Stern and Bud Selig, although it's still kind of a goofy argument to have.

Meltzer on early MMA PPVs: "UFC 2 did 100,000 buys not 300,000 buys, and in those days because there were so few events on PPV, every event was promoted like hell by the cable companies. UWFI debuted to 95,000 for a taped show months old at the same time. Pancrase debuted to 60,000 for a taped show months old a year later Completely different era. UWFI and Pancrase today couldn't do 8,000 buys today under those conditions. Pride, on a same day tape delay with a product that was far more appealing to Americans and with TV on FSN was only doing 10,000 to 20,000 buys in its heyday." Um... ECW came around once we had 12 PPVs a year from the Big 2, that's pretty much this era. You can't deny that Heyman was far better at getting their fans to spend money than TNA is now.

I post over there as Sean Reedy (don't want those people knowing my name), and I'm trying to at least make Dave defend his arguments, like that the Norwegian food had been shockingly succesful a decade before. His new one is that the original UFC was going downhill before the government problems because the style argument had been settled. Does anyone remember it that way? I thought they still had some main event personalities that could draw.

Dave had one of his all-time great quotes today, talking about how TNA's business would almost surely have improved with Heyman there. "All I know is Heyman's PPV shows with no budget did 40,000 when he had no TV at all and 99,000 at their peak. Heyman's house shows with no ad budget and without having WWE's first or second hottest star from the year before never did as bad as TNA's shows do now. He may not be great, he may not even be good, but you're comparing him with Russo & Bischoff."

Come on, it's not even close to Dr. Heiny or Rosie vs. Trump and a million other things. I thought it was funny. I laughed at Vince's heart rate immediately shooting up when he heard the $50 million figure, and the "Did Cena destroy Nexus yet?" - "Actually, Cena is in Nexus now" dialogue. And the Daniel Bryan line was great.

In the past on Wrestling Classics this was certainly true, but that isn't really the case anymore. He's certainly not 'above the fray' on the f4w board. It's too bad most of his time is spent battling with obvious trolls. I wish they would start a new Observer forum and plug it in the newsletter, instead of it being a continuation of the F4W one. I guess the end result would probably be the same, but I always thought an Observer forum would be pretty cool. I can only handle the current one by having about 27 people on my foe list.

I think they've toned down on the evil foreigner stuff because so much of their business is international now. Places like France, UK, and Mexico are great for them, so you won't be seeing anything like the Mexicools on lawnmowers or La Resistance carrying poodles anymore. Guys like Wade Barrett, Sheamus and Drew McIntyre don't have stereotypical gimmicks, and can be babyfaces when they visit home (maybe not Barrett, might be too good at being a heel).

They even kazooed to Benoit's old theme music. That's a remarkable attention to detail.

I would say that Nexus losing at Summerslam is at least a pretty good example of what Nash is talking about. Hopefully they're smarter with the Cena deal and let it build for a while.

NBC and WWE split the XFL losses. I think it ended up being in the 60-70 mil range for WWE, which pretty much wiped out their biggest year ever. The new Observer says Linda's campaign will probably end up costing around $50 mil.