Matt D

Someone should rephrase all this and tweet it to Tony Schiavone. I just read that Expos book over at DVDVR and I kind of wonder if the announcers aren't there to provide the franchise with more money in various ways, that being one of it.

I think there are plenty of baseball announcers who don't make the players look good, but instead knock them or are entertaining personalities in general. When you have to fill time for a nine inning baseball game, you have to keep people engaged that way. It's sort of the same for a long MSG show from 85.

I think that's an oversimplistic way of looking at things. Different roles can be used in different ways to achieve different ends. At the end of the day, the goal is to make money over a prolonged period of time. How you add up to that can be done in different ways. The WWF machine was so pervasive and there was so little room for divergence, even down to the months and months that they ran the same house shows, that if people tuned into PTW for Gorilla/Heenan shitting on things, then that's more money for the WWF and with relatively little damage since they weren't doing any lasting harm to much of the core audience. Or at least that's an argument, and I think a valid one.

The story goes that Buddy Rose didn't either, having hugely entertaining matches on TV where he gave the enhancement talent way too much so the crowd in MSG didn't see him as a threat to Backlund.

The DVR-less nature is this: Raw, like sports, is live. If you miss it, then you're immediately behind in what's going on and the story doesn't seem as fresh. When you're watching it in that moment, you're part of something that's happening right then and there. I'm not explaining it well, but being live matters and it matters to this DVR issue.

It's interesting that Heyman on the Austin podcast said that he was so interested in where the John Cena character goes next at NOC because the answer is "no where" or at least not for more than a night. He makes it all into a fun narrative though. "He said he wanted not to beat Brock but to beat his ass." "He has to go the places he refused to go vs Bray Wyatt at Wrestlemania." I think a talented wrestling personality has the ability to take all of the hasty bits of bullshit and to make some sort of narrative out of them.

Hogan's weakness was coveting the wife of another.

He's going to come back under a hood with a bad Texas accent.

Revenue streams are an interesting point and maybe we should have a note on it. We know that TV has sort of hit a ceiling given what WWE is. What should they be most focused on? The Network? Live gates? International markets? Merchandise?

I didn't mind it all that much. I don't think it's ultimately indicative of anything groundbreaking but then I hurt my finger scrolling through 3 MMA stories in a row on the phone, so by that point I missed the google trends. There were takeaways: WWE is up. UFC is way down. He explained why. Divas are up (Total Divas but not just?), but that doesn't always mean anything. Reigns has a lot of buzz. Ambrose has less but still beats out Rollins. People still care about Gina what's her face. Etc. Some of these things correlate with what I think are real trends.

I have fond memories of the Briscoe vs Briscoe match at the first ROH show I went to in the Boston area, with some really fun finger-worker, but I don't know if I'd want to revisit that now.

I liked the Niebla vs Niebla mask match.

Schiavone told a pretty good story on Jim Ross' podcast which explained how he became the soulless hypeman he was for the last couple of years of WCW. It's so funny to go back to, let's say 1991, and how viscerally and desperately he was trying to get the action over and make sense of everything that would happen in a match whether it was Flair or Oz in the ring, and then listen to something, like, let's say this random Super Calo vs Barry Houston match I saw where he and Larry Z didn't actually call one move in the entire match until it hit the replay, and they were doing dives and all sorts of stuff too. Not one move because the PPV was that weekend.

I get the argument that Hogan wasn't hot in 94-95 and that Cena is moving merchandise now, but I'd argue that Hogan sold a heck of a lot more merch after he went heel. I don't think that a turn would actually hurt Cena's bottom line that much, so long as they were able to produce a piece of merchandise that was iconic. What's his biggest shirt ever? The Rise Above Hate one? the NES one? Has he ever really had that Austin 3:16 or NWO shirt? They were nuts not to keep him in the Nexus for another month or two, even reluctantly, long enough to have a Cena-branded Nexus shirt to sell. I think we've reached this crazy point where people are as willing as ever to wear goofy gimmicky shirts. If they turn him, a ton of his current fans would come along for the ride. They did with Hogan since it felt cool. It'd also open up to a slightly older demo who might have more disposable cash. I don't know about the merch thing. I think they'd be fine there. The charity thing is trickier.

Is there a PWO-level forum for postal workers? Something so intrinsically full of over-analysis?

... and by appeal to them, I kind of mean "toss a lot of money at Stacey Kiebler for an angle with Batista."

This is weird, but, and I get that there's probably not a TON of overlap between the new Total Divas fans and Guardians of the Galaxy but if Batista starts to feel like a STAR, I'd probably try to use him to appeal to them somehow.

I know that we don't usually do these for ones on the Observer site itself, but there's so much stuff in the lead story here, and stuff I've never even heard of before, that I want to rewrite some of it out. My tenses are going to be all over the place and I apologize for that. The story is that Vince is coming out "Guns blazing" against the Turner Empire. In the past 7 days he: -Filed a complaint with the FTC claiming that TBS has been enacting a "systematic plan to destroy the WWF so it can achieve a monopoly." He did this on 2/8/1996, attacking the Time-Warner merger, it seems, since that was a hot topic with a lot of eyes on it. Dave didn't have the exact details and FTC claimed not to have a copy of it. He said it wasn't a single action, but lots of different things: Nitro being put up against Raw, the shows starting a few minutes early/ending a few minutes late "unprecedented" in television in 1996, alleged contract tampering with WWF performers, snatching syndicated time slots from WWF using CNN Headline News as leverage, eating into profits by charging less for ad time to steal sponsors from the WWF, name calling on TV, and fabrication of stories about the WWF on the WCW hotline. The contract tampering mentioned Diesel, The Bushwhackers, and Jean Pierre Lafitte (there was a paragraph on that later). -Took out a quarter page ad in both Weds and Thurs NYT Financial sections claiming that Turner had a vendetta against WWF and warning the stockbrokers about it.WCW only responded with a quote in the Wall Street Journal saying the FTC thing was without merit. -Had McDevitt send a letter to Bischoff demanding an apology for comments on Nitro that WWF had caused a power outage in Lakeland during the 2/5 show. Bischoff had to apologize on air which he did begrudgingly. He was also forced not to talk about WWF on air which was apparently frustrating to him since he was about to do a "full court press." -Writing a letter to Turner complaining about blading. Which is kind of awesome: "Dear Ted: Since there has been no response to my repeated request and you and your pro-wrasslin' company stop the practice of self mutilation, I can only assume based upon the last two weeks of Nitro that the practice of self mutilation (slicing oneself with a razor blade) is not only condoned but encouraged. As you know, Hulk Hogan has been bleeding all over the place the past two weeks. There have been numerous references on your wrasslin programming that this weekend's double cage match will be so violent that one opponent will be "bleeding to the point of no recognition." This encouraged practice of self mutilation is disgusting, violent, potentially infectious and completely contradictory in everyway to your testimony before Congress in June of 1993 and contrary to your 1995 participation of "Voices against Violence." Notwithstanding numerous unprecedented predatory practices against the World Wrestling Federation, if you continue to promote self mutilation, I hope your stockholders hold you accountable for this unethically, guttural, potentially unhealthy practice." Dave says that this is looking pretty desperate especially considering that buyrates are up and Vader is coming in and the babyfaces are starting to draw and are pretty deep over in WWF land, but that Vince thinks he's fighting for his life again, and he's worried about the summer more than the spring (which makes sense given what would happen with Hall and Nash). He also says that on paper, WWF seemed way ahead on everything but ratings and that by going on the attack like this, the public perception would be that WCW was actually ahead. Dave does a lot of compare/contrast here between what Vince claims WCW had been doing and what he did himself ten years before, something that Vince at the time claimed was totally different. He said he wasn't trying to put people out of business back then, just survive and grow himself. There's plenty of listing of Vince's "sins" (like Survivor Series 87 and Rumble 88 and buying out the time slots and raiding the talents. There's some fact checking too as WCW claimed that WWF were under cutting them on ads, but "a third party" said otherwise. He also looked at Bret's blading vs Davey Boy back in December, which was suspect at the time but I think Bret's admitted to since. Dave spent a paragraph on the Billionaire Ted skits, saying that Vince claimed these were the only way he could legitimately air his grievances, because if he did so openly, it would turn off viewers. So he could use them to inform and entertain, and he could make he public aware of what sort of person Turner really was. He claimed that Ted had a vendetta against him since Vince would never let Ted buy in. He also said that Vince wanted to move Raw to a time period not up against Nitro (Monday night at 10 PM for instance). IF so, Dave said WCW would just expand to two hours anyway, which Vince said he actually wanted, since it would water down the WCW product and help him win. WCW thought Vince would be hurting himself by a move to 10 because they'd lose the kids and if they expanded to two hours then they could show 15 minute matches instead of 5 minute ones. Contract stuff: Diesel claims to have been offered a 3 year 750K per deal through an intermediary (Hogan wanted to bring him in as a heel, says Dave). Most expect him to take it given his age and how he has a family. Other people say it's 450K Bushwhackers offered 120K per a piece but were still under WWF contract (WCW didn't know). Vince wouldn't let them out. Lafitte seems like tampering. Not out til 7/7 but everyone knows he's jumping. He does his negotiation through Rougeau. Overtures towards an unhappy Razor (shrinking paychecks and unhappy with the Goldust feud). Vince said that Lex was under contract when he jumped. Luger said he wasn't. I think it's come out as a handshake or verbal deal no? Pretty interesting stuff all around, especially so early into 96, well before the NWO was a wisp of a dream. If there is a FTC complaint I think that'd be really interesting to look at, especially Vince complaining about a potential monopoly considering how the War and and how close TNA is to the brink.

Wikpedia says that Adnan lies in Minnesota and is 75. It's your job to go interview him and do a paper about how an Iraqi and an Italian American became Native American superstars and how Strongbow was really terrible at it.

I saw that Ross was on Austin today and decided to listen to the Piper podcast with Samoa(n) Joe instead. I was thinking of turning NPR on actually.

If they could run Goldust/Stardust vs Henry/Show for the titles for a few months without putting it right on Henry/Show, I'd be pretty interested in those matches.

I feel like they should be putting up something else from the Federation era too, something like Tuesday Night Titans that really hits the nostalgia hard (at least until the matches start).

I am a civic minded gentleman and will accept any and all suggestions for what matches I am going to make goc watch when he loses the bet.

Even if you're putting Cena over at the PPV, I don't get why he's even able to walk right now. Aw, come on, don't have Luke Harper tap.