Comments that don't warrant a thread - Part 3

[anarchistxx]

Am I wildly overdramatic for wishing he'd stop doing the diving headbutt?

Nope, I'm the same. Having both Chris Benoit's finishers is pretty distasteful, not to mention the fact that it's a move that:

 

a. Is probably dangerous to long term health

b. Doesn't even look that good

 

There are far more spectacular, impactful, painful looking flying moves you can do than the diving headbutt.

[pantherwagner]

When I lived in South Africa I regularly went to a Virgin Active where three quarters of the weight room were rugby players or looked like them and I have never seen so many HGH guts at any gym ever in my life including gyms in Santa Monica. It's pretty serious shit over there.

[Matt D]

He should do a straight up splash from the top rope and they can play it up that he's hitting guys with his beard. It would pop the crowd like crazy.

[ohtani's jacket]

When I lived in South Africa I regularly went to a Virgin Active where three quarters of the weight room were rugby players or looked like them and I have never seen so many HGH guts at any gym ever in my life including gyms in Santa Monica. It's pretty serious shit over there.

Yeah, South Africa has a big steroids problem, especially in their schools. Rugby in general isn't as clean as people would like to believe.

[anarchistxx]

People tend to naively believe everything is clean when it usually isn't. Look at all the people blindly defending Usain Bolt - if all his fastest competitors are on performance enhancing drugs than it is reasonable to suspect he is as well. But people are in complete denial, even reacting with anger when you suggest it. Why? Because he is some smiling, friendly looking world superstar that kids look up to? If Powell, Armstrong and others avoided detection for so long than Bolt can, especially with the amounts of money involved.

[alexoblivion]

Has anyone watched the Kintaro Ohki & Michiaki Yoshimura vs. Johnny Valentine & King Crow match that is floating around on youtube? This is the only Valentine match I have seen in full, and after reading so much about him throughout the years and only seeing clips, I was kinda surprised that he actually wrestled as described. How much Valentine footage is out there?

[Ricky Jackson]

Link please, I can't find it.

 

And the answer is very little footage as far as I know.

[alexoblivion]

Link please, I can't find it.

 

And the answer is very little footage as far as I know.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3B6V2wi7VOs...NjwEPJ5SI1m8VpQ

[Ricky Jackson]

Thanks

[Bix]

Maybe not, but Sidebottom has a point. A load of people I play/have played Rugby with do have similar physiques just from nailing the Gym. It's almost the Welsh National Physique these days.

Everyone who is a wrestler, is on the road, working matches, working through injuries and has a body like that has always said it was from hard work at the gym and a good diet.

 

For 30 years.

 

We can do some side by sides of Bryan from his ROH days to his early WWE days to that "I'm happy to show off my body next to Cena's" clip. It's the same type of changes we've seen for years. And in turn, the same lack of changes that saw Hero get in the dog house.

 

It wasn't lack of changes that got Hero in the dog house, it was changing before he got signed and then sliding back, and now is apparently not using his gym time.

 

I have no idea if Bryan is on the gas or not, but since you mentioned Cena, can anyone pinpoint when he stopped looking like a vaguely normal human being? The difference between the 2004-2006 stuff I was watching for that BR slideshow and the Total Divas wood chopping contest is startling. As in "Oh, I forgot there was actually a reason some people thought he could be clean."

[Matt D]

Didn't he look like he was juiced to the gills when he was the Prototype?

 

[BrickHithouse]

Nope, nothing suspicious

[Bix]

Didn't he look like he was juiced to the gills when he was the Prototype?

 

Was told to get down to a less ridiculous physique when WWE signed him. Subsequently, he was much smaller and less cut than he was in OVW/the early part of his WWE run during the first few years he was on top (go look up the JBL matches, RVD match, etc). Then he slowly evolved back into whatever he is now.

[mookeighana]

In response to a thread at DVDVR about What Stopped Former Fans from Watching Wrestling, I did a survey for number of wrestling minutes on RAW from 1999-2011:

 

 

I started with a sample of RAWs from 1999 that I could get match-times for everything on the show (32 shows).

 

Average show in 1999 had 28 minutes 54 seconds of wrestling over 7.5 matches. (Three shows had less than 20 minutes and four shows had more than 35 minutes. Shows sampled had between 6 and 10 matches).

For a two-hour RAW (I'll ignore the overrun), that's 24% of the time that was wrestling content. (Granted, with commercials I think a one-hour show is something like 39-42 minutes of content.)

 

To compare, I took a sample of 10-20 RAWs from 2000 to 2011 (210 RAWs total covering 1,504 matches) where I had match times for all the matches I'd listed for that RAW show.

 

Annual Averages

1999: 32 shows (28:54 minutes of wrestling average)

2000: 21 shows (30:58 minutes of wrestling average)

2001: 11 shows (34:36 minutes of wrestling average)

2002: 13 shows (29:23 minutes of wrestling average)

2003: 12 shows (32:15 minutes of wrestling average)

2004: 17 shows (33:13 minutes of wrestling average)

2005: 27 shows (32:46 minutes of wrestling average)

2006: 18 shows (28:33 minutes of wrestling average)

2007: 14 shows (32:22 minutes of wrestling average)

2008: 23 shows (32:21 minutes of wrestling average)

2009: 19 shows (34:18 minutes of wrestling average)

2010: 18 shows (31:38 minutes of wrestling average)

2011: 17 shows (33:22 minutes of wrestling average)

 

So, 1999 was nominally lower in terms of wrestling content than following years, but this could be due to some sample bias.

 

per Loss request:

[Loss]

Awesome! Are you able to do a comparison of ratings as a contrast on the same chart?

[Matt D]

I wonder if we have more or less longer matches now than then. It feels like we have more longer main events and what not but looking at the numbers, I'm not sure if that can be right.

 

As always, well done.

[Matt D]

edit: double post, sorry

[mookeighana]

Awesome! Are you able to do a comparison of ratings as a contrast on the same chart?

 

As you can see, the RAW Ratings are more a year-to-year trend thing.

[Matt D]

What the heck happened in 2007?

[mookeighana]

What the heck happened in 2007?

The Earls Court in London, England show

 

Shane McMahon, Umaga & Vince McMahon defeated Robbie Brookside in a Three On One Handicap No DQ Match (6:50)

Trevor Murdoch (w/ Lance Cade) defeated Matt Hardy (3:45)

Melina defeated Maria (1:05)

The Great Khali defeated Carlito (3:03)

Shawn Michaels defeated John Cena (55:49)

[Matt D]

One show can move the mark that much?

[mookeighana]

I wonder if we have more or less longer matches now than then. It feels like we have more longer main events and what not but looking at the numbers, I'm not sure if that can be right.

 

As always, well done.

I did a study in Jan 2013 where I compared a two-hour RAW and a three-hour RAW.

https://sites.google.com/site/chrisharringt...hr_3hr_raw_comp

 

An interesting thing I noticed was:

 

World/Heavyweight title matches didn't really get more time, but the other matches did.

 

I guess what I'm trying to get at is that I felt like Main Event timeframe tend to be somewhat static, while the rest of the show is what is flexed when they decide to add or subtract wrestling content. However, I haven't tested this hypothesis for 1999 Main Events vs 2013 Main Events.

[mookeighana]

What the heck happened in 2007?

I plotted the individual shows that I had tracked - between 10 and 25 for each year. For 2007, it looked like:

 

2/5/2007 4.1 rating / 40 minutes of wrestling

4/23/2007 3.7 rating / 71 minutes of wrestling

5/28/2007 3.2 rating / 42 minutes of wrestling

7/9/2007 3.37 rating / 25 minutes of wrestling

7/23/2007 3.37 rating / 34 minutes of wrestling

7/30/2007 2.5 rating / 29 minutes of wrestling

9/10/2007 3.9 rating / 19 minutes of wrestling

10/1/2007 3.2 rating / 19 minutes of wrestling

10/8/2007 2.8 rating / 24 minutes of wrestling

10/29/2007 3.5 rating / 22 minutes of wrestling

11/12/2007 3.5 rating / 33 minutes of wrestling

11/19/2007 3.5 rating / 31 minutes of wrestling

11/26/2007 3.5 rating / 32 minutes of wrestling

12/17/2007 3.5 rating / 34 minutes of wrestling

 

It just happened that my sample didn't have a lot of datapoints around that 70 minute show. Still the average for 2007 was 32.4 minutes which was right in line with 2008's average.

[rovert]

Not sure how well known this is but Highspots acquired the rights Southwest Championship Wrestling footage:

http://www.highspots.com/p/marquee-1.html

http://www.highspots.com/p/marquee-2.html

http://www.highspots.com/p/marquee-3.html

[s1rweeze]

Interesting exchange here:

 

https://twitter.com/WWE/status/365924115175047170

 

Bill Simmons ‏@BillSimmons 5h

We need better 4th majors for golf, tennis and WWE. The PGA Championship = Australian Open = Survivor Series = blah.

WWE @WWE 3h

.@billsimmons How about #MoneyInTheBank for @WWE's "4th Major?" ... @WWEUniverse, Post your thoughts with #WWE4thMajor tag.

I'd be for moving MITB to November as a Big Four replacement. Wasn't WWE flirting with getting rid of the Survivor Series name anyway?