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The importance of jobbers


JerryvonKramer

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They've gone. Have you looked at the decline in PPV buys over the past few years? If they don't like the product, they wander off.

 

What's they've done for the most part if wander off from paying for the PPVs. They still, to a degree, tune in to watch free WWE product that they enjoy. Turn that into WWE product that they don't enjoy and they're gone.

 

John

Couldn't the lack of original money-drawing matches be one of the reasons PPV numbers have been declining?

There's no motivation for fans to pay for something they can get for free every Monday night.

As Lance Storm says, the current WWE system is like a book where you have to pay to read every 5th chapter.

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Couldn't the lack of original money-drawing matches be one of the reasons PPV numbers have been declining?

There's no motivation for fans to pay for something they can get for free every Monday night.

As Lance Storm says, the current WWE system is like a book where you have to pay to read every 5th chapter.

I know there's some logic to that thought, but I'm not sure it's fully supported by what we saw in the past. The WWE and WCW gave away a lot of things for free on TV, and ran matches multiple times, and they still drew buys.

 

Rock vs Stone Cold in 2001 at Mania wasn't a new match. It drew a ton.

 

I would agree that there are limits something can be run, and limits to how often it can be given away for free. But in the end, if it's a product that people like, they'll pay for it and/or watch it.

 

The bigger part of the product problem is lack of success in creating/sustaining/maximizing (i) more major stars and (ii) new franchise stars.

 

I'm not entirely sold that having jobbers and jobber matches is a make/break on getting that done. Stone Cold and Rock weren't made via jobber matches. Regardless of what level we put Trip at, he wasn't made in the WWF by jobber matches. Neither was Foley. Cena wasn't. Brock wasn't.

 

I'm not saying that they can't be. In a sense Goldberg was early on, though eventually he started running through lower ranked non-jobbers. And really... it's wasn't "jobber matches" that did it, but the presentation of Goldberg that kept building.

 

John

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WWE PPV business peaked in the 1998 - early 2002 period. If you go through the booking of that period you'll see a lot of feuds ran into the ground (Austin vs. Taker, Rock vs. Triple H, etc). Moreover, it really exposes the myth that "there's no motivation for fans to pay for something they can get for free every Monday night", as there was more wrestling overexposure and more hotshotting on TV then than there is now. I think the problem is more that they ran off their PPV fan base by diluting their average PPVs with weak line ups through brand only shows, then promoting match gimmicks at the expense of feuds, while their star power diminished as they haven't been able to replace their top stars at the pace they've left. The recent price increase and rise in piracy probably hasn't helped either.

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Piracy is a huge red herring used to cover poor sales of a subpar product just like the music industry does. WWE sees a PPV that was barely promoted until the week before the show and featuring matches no one really wanted to see, and when the buyrates come back in the toilet it must be because of piracy considering the only alternative is to admit not a lot of people were interested in what you were selling.

 

Piracy has been around as long as PPV itself, if anything it's actually harder now because you can't just pick up a black box to descramble the channel. Technically streams are easier, but you have to know where to find them and a lot of them are poor quality. I'd wager the amount of people watching streams is probably close to the amount of people who had black boxes back in the day. What's worse is Dave put a poll up on his site where one of the options was "watched on a stream" and it got like a 11% response so now it's becoming a talking point because it was one of those times where he thinks the usual WON reader hardcore fan is an accurate representation of the WWE audience as a whole.

 

No one makes the argument that TNA PPVs get no buys because everyone's watching streams, and UFC/Boxing PPVs still get a million buys for their big shows with streams.

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What's worse is Dave put a poll up on his site where one of the options was "watched on a stream" and it got like a 11% response so now it's becoming a talking point because it was one of those times where he thinks the usual WON reader hardcore fan is an accurate representation of the WWE audience as a whole.

Bryan is kind of awful with the NO ONE thinks HHH will beat Undertaker stuff. Totally discounting kids.

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Here are the matces in 1997:

 

WCW @ Salt Lake City, UT - E Center - September 22, 1997 (7,923)

Monday Nitro:

Bill Goldberg pinned Hugh Morrus with the Jackhammer at 2:43; late in the bout, Goldberg kicked out of Morrus' moonsault; after the bout, Gene Okerlund attempted to interview Goldberg in the aisle but Goldberg walked off (Goldberg's TV debut)

 

WCW @ Worcester, MA - Centrum - September 29, 1997

Monday Nitro:

Bill Goldberg pinned the Barbarian with the Jackhammer

 

WCW @ Dalton, GA - October 1, 1997

WCW Saturday Night taping:

Bill Goldberg defeated Roadblock

 

WCW @ Orlando, FL - Universal Studios - October 10, 1997

WCW Saturday Night taping:

Bill Goldberg defeated Manny Fernandez

 

WCW @ Tampa, FL - Ice Palace - October 13, 1997 (12,000)

Monday Nitro

Bill Goldberg pinned Scotty Riggs with the Jackhammer at 2:36; prior to the bout, Raven, Perry Saturn, and another man were shown in the audience (the debut of Sick Boy); Mike Tenay mentioned during the bout that there had been talk that Judo Gene LaBell might be wanting to train Goldberg

 

WCW @ Biloxi, MS - Mississippi Coast Coliseum - October 20, 1997 (5,950)

Monday Nitro:

Bill Goldberg pinned Wrath at the 20-second mark

 

WCW @ San Diego, CA - Cox Arena - October 27, 1997 (6,281)

Monday Nitro:

WCW TV Champion Disco Inferno fought Bill Goldberg to a no contest

 

WCW @ Gainesville, GA - Georgia Mountains Center - December 16, 1997 (1,494 paid; sell out)

WCW Saturday Night:

Bill Goldberg defeated the Renegade

 

Starrcade 97 - Washington DC - MCI Center - December 28, 1997 (17,500)

Bill Goldberg pinned Steve McMichael with the Jackhammer

 

WCW @ Baltimore, MD - Arena - December 29, 1996 (12,196; 11,040 paid; sell out)

Monday Nitro

Bill Goldberg pinned Glacier at 1:00 with the Jackhammer; prior to the bout, Raven's Flock was shown sitting ringside

 

The WCWSN guys were very much the mid/late 90s equiv of jobbers. Renegade was pretty much the equiv of a pre-Power & Glory Jim Powers type. He'd beat heel jobbers on WCWSN, and lose to higher ranked wrestlers... which was far more people than not. Run through what he was up to on WCWSN and Pro in 1997 with Ctrl+F:

 

http://www.thehistoryofwwe.com/wcw97.htm

 

It's Jim Powers / Barry Horowitz level stuff. He'd trade wins with people at his own level, and lose to low level guys like Hugh above him.

 

By that point, Hugh was the same thing, just one of the Top Jobbers.

 

Again, it's the equiv of the era. When you rolled those guys out on Nitro against Page or Mongo, you knew what was going down.

 

Things had already morphed by then. The Mulky types were practically dead, replaced by a bunch of Italion Stallions and Jim Powers.

 

John

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It's Jim Powers / Barry Horowitz level stuff. He'd trade wins with people at his own level, and lose to low level guys like Hugh above him.

 

By that point, Hugh was the same thing, just one of the Top Jobbers.

 

Again, it's the equiv of the era. When you rolled those guys out on Nitro against Page or Mongo, you knew what was going down.

Yeah, these guys were basically competitive jobbers. Jim Powers was on Nitro every week in 1996. Along with Renegade, Joe Gomez, then Horowitz himself, Lenny Lane, Nick Densmore, Scott Putski... There were a bunch of jobbers, but WCW had so many hours of programms that these guys could win match on Pro and SN like Phil said. But they were essentially jobbers.

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  • 1 year later...

So this is the different argument. I think it's important it takes place in a different thread because while related to the one we were having in the JTTS thread; I think there's too much baggage and legacy there to be clear-minded when talking through this one.

 

The seeds of this argument were planted in that thread and I will quote it here:

 

What I had in mind was a Wrestlemania card with something like 8 or 9 out of 14 matches having feuds connected with them. "Up and down the card" meaning feuds at all levels of the roster at any one time. It seems to have been taken for "up and down a given card on a given night", which is obviously bonkers. Why? Because guys need time to be built. They need wins to build momentum. So you can't have big feud-y matches up and down every single card. If JCP did, I think that's a weakness for them, it means they didn't have enough guys to go around so they kept having to run feuds into the ground through endless repetition -- short term booking, which can risk burn out fast.

I did throw out a parting shot in that post. One about JCP always putting on strong cards actually being a kind of weakness. I think that's something that, on another day, maybe even with a different set of participants, might be an interesting discussion. "Actually IS it such a great idea to put on so many strong cards?" "

Hell yes, this sounds like it has potential.

 

So in this thread, 2 years ago, we talked about the importance of jobbers.

 

In the long debate we've just had, there seem to be two general assumptions made:

 

1. That a strong card is a good thing.

 

2. That jobbers and JTTS are just fodder. Or at any rate, that a lot of JTTS on a roster isn't adding any depth.

 

I want to stop and pause here and wonder about those two assumptions and ask a series of questions:

 

- What's the better idea: putting on strong cards week after week or putting on lots of middling cards possibly leading upto one strong card? Sub-questions:

 

A. What is the benefit of putting out variations of your strongest card week after week?

B. Are there any potential benefits of putting out weaker cards?

C. If there is a benefit to B., then does it make sense to maintain a larger roster?

D. Is scenario A. necessarily "better" than scenario B? Why?

 

- What is the difference between booking tv and booking house shows? The idea of TV is (was) to get over talent in order to get folks at home to fork out money and come to see them live, correct? But what is the real function of a house show? Is it:

 

A. Just to make money?

B. To showcase the talent even more, possibly teasing a bigger show to get folks to come again to said bigger?

C. To test out combinations of talent to see how well they can work with each other AND to give guys time to build chemistry so they can work together again in the future on TV or at big-money PPV shows?

D. To further build guys?

E. To continue feuds?

F. All of the above.

G. Something else I'm missing?

 

- To what extent do guys need wins to build momentum?

 

- And if guys do need to build momentum by going over other guys on the roster:

 

A. Is that just on TV or at house shows too?

B. Doesn't it make sense to have a healthy supply of semi-credible JTTSes to burn through?

 

- Finally, does it make SENSE to have every match on a given card be part of a feud? Is that a good idea or a bad idea? Sub-questions:

 

A. Might a 100% feud-match ratio on a normal show (not a PPV) actually serve to devalue feuds?

B. If everyone is always part of an on-going feud then when do they get time to "build" by gaining momentum through wins?

 

That should be enough to get things started I think.

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Kinda disappointed no one bit on this. Does it look THAT much like a trap? Shall I change my name to Wile E. Von Kramer?

 

I was hoping it might develop into a good look at Dusty's relative strengths and weaknesses as a booker as well as those of Vince/ Pat Patterson. Who really did use their roster better after you work through all those questions? I think that's interesting.

 

This could also be applied to other promotions and bookers and also to the way wrestling is booked today, although the role of the house show has changed dramatically since the 80s.

It's a common criticism of the Monday Night Wars era that they were giving top matches away for free on tv every week, but in a way JCP wasn't booked all that differently. The one thing they did do very well was keep Flair TV matches a relative rarity.

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Your two Assumptions were misreads of the prior thread, so it was kind of a "why bother when he's wrong out of the box". Kind of the opposite of a "trap". More along the lines of a sobriety check point where the officer himself is three sheets to the wind. :/

 

John

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It's a common criticism of the Monday Night Wars era that they were giving top matches away for free on tv every week, but in a way JCP wasn't booked all that differently. The one thing they did do very well was keep Flair TV matches a relative rarity.

JCP had more top matches on free TV than WWF, but not by much. JCP TV was mostly just Star vs Jobber matches just like WWF.
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I would like to see you explain how that's a misreading jdw. Those two things weren't implied by you? Really? It wasn't strongly implied in that thread that strong cards are a good thing? You didn't point out WWF having 20 JTTS on the roster when doing a depth comparison in order to imply that there wasn't really that much depth? Why did you mention it then? I get it though, the fault can't possibly be yours, it has to lie with me, right? Fine.

 

Anyway, this is not really about you -- or indeed about me -- even if you didn't have those assumptions in mind, I still think it would be good to interrogate them. There was a general conclusion that JCP used their roster better than WWF in that thread (or is this a misreading too?!), I think going through those questions might put some doubt on that, or at least complicate that conclusion.

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Meh, not interested anymore. A person could point to a booking philosophy that draws and be correct. Someone could come along and prove that theory incorrect in 30 seconds by pointing to a card that was set up totally different that drew well and be correct. It's all a huge gray area. Likely fun to discuss for a while.

 

Then things will devolve to a point where we're arguing whether toilet paper should come off the roll over the top or from the bottom, or whether Frankie was a better worker than Damien or Matilda.

 

Everything has worked, nothing has worked, each approach is correct, each is incorrect.

 

(Over the top is correct)

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