Matt D

Bonnema always carried more of a family feel to me. You felt like you were part of the neighborhood or something.

I thought they did give some profit margins and what not and the million was US only. One thing Meltzer brings up all the time is that we don't know how many people currently are foreign subscribers and a lot of the most eager people probably found a way to subscribe.

84 AWA needed a Greg Gagne heel turn. I love Mid South in 84, with Dundee coming in and heating up the booking. It's got the Mr. Wrestling II heel run and the RnRs and Midnights coming in. There's something pretty special about JCP in 1985 too, with the rise of Magnum and advent of the Horsemen. ECW in 2009 was super enjoyable with Christian as the babyface Ace and a good mix of old and new talent. Portland in 1979 is over the top with Roddy and Martel as the babyfaces and Rose and the Sheepherders as probably the most iconic version of the army. WCW from fall 91 to summer 1992 with a million Dangerous Alliance matches given away and Pillman vs Liger and Steamboat returning and Dustin coming into his own, etc.

Ding, ding on Paige. Her act in NXT was that she was a badass post-apocalyptic warrior. Now she's a shrinking violet. And they changed absolutely moronic things about Rose's act, like how they emphasize the fans singing the music instead of shouting the "hey"and timing his jump with it. I couldn't figure out why the hell they would possibly do that. But yeah, Dunn sabotage makes way more sense than anything I could come up with. It might explain why they didn't go with the 5 Count on Big E too.

And hey, either it goes well or the internet will be hilarious to watch. Win, win.

He's the sort of guy that is hurt a lot by 2x a week, competitive matches I think.

Occasionally, I think likes should be enabled. Then I think better of it.

Again, not a top guy but if Haynes didn't take his ball and go home, how high do you think his WWF run might have gone?

I'm torn. I still think the way this works best is as Triple H's apprentice and you kind of need the long hair and facial hair for that, or at least the long hair, but he should probably sell out and totally go corporate by cutting the hair, shaving etc. Being in a suit most of the time and what have you. I also think he should start working like a dick and tease dives but not do them and do a bunch of leverage stuff and what have you.

In that case shouldn't they put a 20 minute preview or what not?

And he's a Freebird. What's your excuse?

We're running with "Cerebral Architect"

Internet tone problems. I wasn't kidding. The way I minimize my tedium should have an appreciation course in a college somewhere.

The way I navigate through the bureaucratic bullshit in the day to day existence of my job is absolutely art.

They only seem to run one house show at a time on Fridays. They're in Providence on the 20th. There's your date.

Well if you are going to have someone portray a farmyard rooster....

I really think they should have done a network special one night tournament to crown the champion, with Rollins getting a first round bye (and maybe bracketed vs. the winner of Reigns vs Ambrose). Then do MITB as a normal PPV. That's how you get people to buy the network.

We call you pretentious, absolutely, but that's only because my write up on Bock vs Hennig broadway is lost in the ether of the internet.

I don't think it could ever survive Vince shouting in announcers' ears.

The difference is I don't think anyone else is having the discussion but the thirty or so of us?

Do we have any sense of whether Ziggler actually moves metrics? Or is it just a vocal part of the live audience that is behind him? It could be the illusion of goodwill. Over at DVDVR, I said they should put it on Brock and I still think they should. That way they could even play up his absence as a strength, that his contract lets him have the time between fights he had in MMA but they can't strip him of the belt and that he's basically holding WWE hostage and no one can stop him. You could have Heyman basically running things with Cesaro (holding a secondary belt that in Brock's absence becomes a primary belt), and play up Bryan as sort of the savior of the WWE in trying to get the belt back when he's healthy again.

I think the flipside would be Savage as an artist, since he took so much care in planning out his matches, though.

Neither here nor there, but I've been writing more than anyone ever ought to about Jindrak over at Segunda Caida recently. After seeing what I have, my gut says he could have been used fairly well in the WWE mid-card around 2009, and actually could have been part of a really solid babyface tag team with Masters around that time, where he could have been the hot tag, but one that could have also sold well in a double FIP.

It's all tricky in that regard because someone like Shawn Michaels would get pissed off when a match didn't go how he wanted, not necessarily because he wanted that match to draw money, but because he wanted it to be a CLASSIC. That's sort of after the era a lot of us care the most about, though. That said, there are stories about someone like JJ Dillon who would go out and try to have a great match to impress the boys (though of course the moral of the story is that he got reamed because he wasn't supposed to do that and he didn't play his role right to draw money, but it does show that such a thing could matter to wrestlers even in the early 80s).

I think there are two different arguments here and it's worthwhile to separate them on some level. The first is: "Can Pro Wrestling be seen as art even if the intent of wrestlers is simply to make money?" or "Is this a reasonable way to view pro wrestling?" maybe. The second is "What are the downsides and difficulties in trying to understand drawing power?" I think I said it before, but to me, looking at someone who we think is a draw and then trying to figure out how they drew and why they were a draw and what made them a draw relative to their peers, is the key part of this. It's understanding the numbers, and then, if you want to get a total picture, cross-referencing that with the artistic elements and see where they intersect.