Brock is back

[Mr Wrestling X]

Instead we get John Cena Vs. John Laurinaitis in a comedy match, which was actually better, in my opinion, than if we would have had to sit through a John Cena Vs. Lord Tensai feud.

[Coffey]

You can joke but a fat white guy coming out and doing karate poses is not going to do anyone any favors, but I will concede that the wrestling would be better.

 

On that note, I think you said it best:

 

The most worrying thing about Vince McMahon in my opinion is his often bizarre view on his product.

[Mr Wrestling X]

I still stand by what I said, I think that McMahon is the WWE's biggest detriment as well as their biggest asset and his apparent embarrassment about being percieved as "just a lowly wrestling promoter" hurts his product. He's not "just a lowly wrestling promoter", not at all, but the erratic actions performed by the company (even if it's not down to him, he still gives the execution orders) often alienate the WWE fanbase.

[anarchistxx]

Nothing is boosting business for WWE at the minute; I don't think there are many if any people they could bring in and get a huge buy rate. Lesnar v Cena with only three weeks of build isn't going to change that. WWE is stupid to think otherwise.

 

It might just be that WWE has reached its limit of people who will pay for their product. There is no data for people (like me) who watched it illegally on streams and on torrents in the days afterwards. I'd wager far more people watched the stream of Over The Limit than, for example, Elimination Chamber. But I have no way of proving that. Either way, there really isn't a whole lot you can do to make those people pay for the show.

 

And yes, having Cena going over was still an absurdly bad decision. Because it looked ridiculous in the context of the feud and match, making Lesnar look weak. Because Cena jobbed to one of the least over guys on the roster two weeks earlier. Because Cena jobbed to a punch a month later, to a non-wrestler. Because Lesnar is brought in as a monster heel then jobs to Cena straight out. Because they could have got more money out of a rematch, with the easy storyline of Cena raising his game to gain revenge.

[flyonthewall2983]

It all makes me wonder when the well is going to run dry. I don't know how much money is going into Linda's campaign, but if the Brock thing goes bust which a few of us can agree that it is already heading in that direction on top of another failed run for office, it's all going to add up somewhere. The push for the TV network ultimately failing? "Wrestle-rainia"?

[cm funk]

Honestly, what do people think Brock v. Cena could have drawn if held off til say SummerSlam? 400k? 500k? More than that? My thinking is anything in the 400-500k range would have been a massive success.

 

There's no way Brock was doing anywhere near a million buys on anything but a Wrestlemania with 2 or 3 other marquee matches. The last non-Mania or Rumble to hit the 500k number was SummerSlam in 2007. In recent years SummerSlam has been in the 350-300k range and trending downwards year to year, and anything 250-300k on a "B" show has been considered a huge success.

 

If Brock got them 250k for Extreme Rules (and the final # will probably be up a bit from that) and SummerSlam with Brock v. HHH reverses the downward trend (309k last year down about 40k from 2010) and does say 365k....is Brock considered moderately successful?

[Dylan Waco]

We'll never know but there is no real reason to think Brock would have been a successful draw.

[Matt D]

If the booking was good enough then he probably would have been.

 

But then if the booking was good enough Yoshi Tatsu would be too. Obviously, there's a level of scope there, but yeah.

[goc]

I think people have always kind of over-estimated how much BROCK LESNAR is a draw. I'd say after he beat Heath Herring, and especially after beating Randy Couture, a large part of his drawing power was based on people wanting to see him lose. He had his fan base, mostly wrestling fans who he brought over, but the majority of people who were already watching UFC before Brock showed up wanted to see the big dumb pro wrestler get knocked out. And once Cain Velazquez did that, his drawing power was already greatly hurt. His fight against Overeem was way down from the Cain fight. The people paying for UFC PPVs to see him lose, had mostly already stopped paying to see him. They certainly were never going to follow him to WWE.

 

The other large part of people buying Brock UFC fights were wrestling fans. I bought UFC PPVs to watch Brock fight, but there was pretty much no chance I was going to buy a WWE PPV to watch Brock wrestle. I'm still a huge Brock mark. I'm happy he came back. I just can't imagine anything WWE can do that would make me buy a PPV at this point. Other than suddenly remember how to book episodic TV with satisfying payoffs. And looking at the WWE PPV numbers and their steady decline over the past 5 years, I am not alone. For all this hand wringing about how WWE screwed up and ruined the great draw of Brock Lesnar, I wonder how many people saying this would have ever bought a PPV to see him wrestle themselves?

[anarchistxx]

So it looks like Brock is jobbing again at Summerslam. HBK has clearly been added to the feud so Brock can job but stay somewhat strong, as presumably the finish will include outside interference. Stay strong, that is, so whoever he jobs to next will still get a rub. McMahon really is a self serving bastard, he's ruined what could potentially have been a fantastic years run. And it's also hurt himself, as if Lesnar went unbeaten it's a huge boost for whoever finally got the victory over him.

[Victator]

I'm sick of Brock, if he is not mauling jobbers, he is worthless.

[flyonthewall2983]

11 years later and he’s still mauling jobbers