Sean Liska

It's a real sport. It's like Peter Gammons talking to Bud Selig.

So is Bischoff actually this much of an idiot, or is this in response to Heyman saying he would get rid of everyone over 40 years old?

Yeah, but that show did over 600,000 buys, so they couldn't be too unhappy.

SummerSlam 98 was the apex on my WWF fandom. There was some stuff I didn't like with the new direction of course (for instance, the retarded use of Kaientai), but all in all the build to this show was terrific and it delivered. After, it was a painfull downward spiral, with the Survivor Series being the first extremely Russoesque show with zero good matches and all stories and swerves. The Royal Rumble 99 ended my relationship with WWF for ever. I stopped being a fan right there, never looked back since. I would seriously invest in a 2000 RAW DVD set.

Maybe a stretch of the term, but how about Dixie Carter becoming the most pushed babyface in TNA after the Heyman rumors started up? She's been the target of a con for years now, and this is one of the most transparent tactics yet.

Great point on Kevin Sullivan perhaps being the unsung hero of the NWO boom. I think Terry Taylor co-booked with him during 96-97, so they were a great team.

Lesnar? Cena was only around for, what, 5 years before becoming world champ? Batista wasn't around for 8 years before becoming a headliner. Orton didn't, depending on when you want to say he really became a draw.

More from Bisch: "Talent that "draws money" sell out major arenas, they set PPV records that they main event in, they sell millions of dollars of merchandise and migrate into mainstream media. It takes time. No top talent that has ACTUALLY DRAWN MONEY has been in the biz for less than 8 years with only two exceptions." This guy, Russo, and Dixie are running TNA, and yet we are continually surprised by their levels of incompetence.

This is a guy who said Ric Flair has never drawn money. By those standards, how can ROH guys measure up?

I doubt the average MMA fan is as up to date with Meltzer's views as we are. The guy cut some great promos and did a monster number as a result. We don't have to pretend that everything Metlzer says about MMA is wrong. This one is pretty simple to analyze.

I'm with you. I had to pull for the guy consulting Roddy Piper to help with his promos, especially after Silva's last fight. And you had to love Sonnen backing up his talk and taking the fight straight to Silva from the bell. I was preparing myself to jump up and high-five my buddies when Silva got the choke. What a gut punch. Unbelievably exciting fight, though.

Dave said that Chael called up Roddy Piper for help with his promos. Piper's ideas apparently would have caused too much heat, so I'm assuming he encouraged Chael to use some of his old Mr. T lines.

The Cena PPV match did all right. Before 05, he didn't have as much time on top as you would figure. He had the Cena match at SummerSlam in 05, but that was below Hogan-HBK. There was the 01-02 title run that didn't work. I'm blanking on any others.

Really? He's been a consistent main event figure over the past two years, which he really wasn't before he left in 05. He used to be a guy that was kept mostly at the IC title level with the occasional main event spot thrown in, like his title run in 01-02. Since turning heel in 08, he had the feud with HBK, main event PPV programs with Batista and Cena, the Smackdown Mania title match with Edge this year, and now he's in the middle of the SummerSlam main event hype. I think he's a much stronger candidate than before he left.

Physically, Lawler and Flair have to be two of the most ageless wrestlers ever. These are two guys that have taken thousands of bumps over the years, and they still move around better than most ordinary people at 60. It must be genetic. Most wrestlers end up much more broken down, at younger ages, while taking probably 20% of the abuse.

This note is in the latest Figure Four Weekly. Is it true? Doesn't seem possible. "One interesting thing to look at is that as much as people talk about the millions and millions of viewers who no longer watch wrestling, the reality is that the WWE audience, despite the ratings being in the low to mid-3s, isn't down significantly from the base audience during the boom period. The difference is that because more people have TVs and the audience for USA Network is so much bigger now than it was during the late ’90s/early ’00s, the ratings for the show would be down significantly even if all else remained equal. Ten years ago, on July 10, 2000, Raw did a 6.03 rating. You look at a 6.03 ten years ago and a 3.38 today and you think, wow, WWE is sinking fast. But in reality, that 6.03 is the percentage of people watching the show based on the number of homes that have the channel, the latter of which is much, much larger today. In terms of average number of actual viewers, the July 10, 2000 Raw did 5 million viewers and the July 19, 2010 Raw did 4.8 million viewers, statistically pretty much a dead heat."

Dave's the man when it comes to wrestling journalism but he makes some strange decisions otherwise. Like this Alvarez infatuation over the last ten years. Or deciding that Ben Miller was the man that needed his own column in the Observer. Or any of the stuff he puts up on the website, much of which seem to be letters not even meant to be posted as articles. It baffles me to see how a guy so smart and hard-working can make some of these decisions.

I thought that may be interesting. He flat out said that doing a better job of marketing TNA's product wouldn't help, because you'd still be marketing "shit", to use his term.

This is why I'm so amused to see Cornette as a big Obama supporter, and moreso, to see him call Obama detractors a bunch of racists. It's not one I saw coming.

No, the Hispanic audience crashed without him. It was a terrible move.

He's one of the few guys in modern WWE that can be pointed to as a ratings and attendance draw. He sells a bunch of merch. WWE has taken over Mexico with him as the biggest star. They've done surprisingly well in small Southwestern towns with him on top. Has been in and out of the main event for four years. When you consider that some guys just get in based on work, Rey seems easy. Cena would be an easy HOF inductee even if he retired tomorrow.

Dave and Bryan go way too far on the MMA=Pro Wrestling thing, but I think this board sometimes goes too far the other way in reaction. I mean, UFC's biggest draw is best known for being WWE champion. UFC basically took a character that WWE created, plugged him into their environment, and because he's legit, has done huge business. Lesnar brought in a ton of first-time PPV buyers with him, and you have to assume they're WWE fans. UFC has copied the WWE business model. They control all of their own production, unlike a real sports event like boxing where that's handled by the network. They book matches for business as opposed to based on rankings. Their PPVs are hyped by company-produced TV shows where guys cut promos on each other. You've also got the whole Japan/MMA deal where they're so closely connected. The whole New Year's Eve tradition started with an Inoki show. Pride at times was as close to "real pro wrestling" as you can get. And didn't the term "MMA" come from Inoki matches? So I'm not sure it's fair to act like the comparisons are just a big fraud being perpetrated by Meltzer to keep subscribers. Dave has also pretty much admitted on his board that he covers UFC as a business decision because the interest is so high in it, especially compared to anything in wrestling outside of WWE.

Definitely referring to the fire incident. The aftermath from that dragged on for years.

Dave trolling me with this comment in the newest Observer. "Flair then talked about how the 1986-87 Four Horsemen were better than all of them. Arn was better than Styles. Well, at promos he was." I do believe he just said AJ is a better worker than Arn. I like AJ more than most, but come on.

Oh he is he thinks yawning is a signing of weakness both in himself and others. Oh I buy that he hates spitting, but to the point that he would fire Bryan Danielson over it, that I don't buy. Someone at the Observer board brought up that Vince spit in Bret's face in one of the key Mania angles, so it can't be too big of a no-no.