Is anyone a "draw" anymore?

[Loss]

Every match is worked to garner heat. Some succeed and some don't.

[Guest Nell Santucci]

Kevin Nash claims that pro-wrestling died when the WWE decided to make Chris Benoit and Eddie Guerrero world champions. This is coming from arguably the worst draw in WWE history, a guy who booked himself to kill Goldberg's heat and to never give Goldberg his babyface revenge (which killed Georgia Dome, and even the WWF beat them in their own market in 1999), and who rode the coattail of Hulk Hogan in 1996 to make himself seem relevant. Christ.

 

Grantland.com has published a lengthy article on the life and controversial wrestling career of Kevin Nash, who has begun to gain traction in Hollywood. A notable point in the article has the six-time world champion reiterating his stance on “Vanilla Midgets,” a dismissive term he used as booker in the late ’90s in World Championship Wrestling to describe small-statured, gifted technical wrestlers that didn’t project larger than life personalities but were beloved by fans, such as Chris Benoit, Eddie Guerrero and Dean Malenko. “Big Sexy” feels the professional wrestling industry died in 2004 at WrestleMania XX when WWE’s “Super Bowl” concluded with the under six foot tall grapplers reigning supreme and emotionally celebrating. Even though both wrestlers are now deceased, he still believes they never belonged in the main event scene due to their small stature.

 

“When Benoit and Guerrero hugged [at the end of WrestleMania XX], that was the end of the business,” Nash says. “Has business been the same since that WrestleMania? Has it come close to the Austin era? Has it come close to the nWo or the Hogan era? You put two fucking guys that were great workers that were the same height as the fucking referees, and I’m sorry, man. Are you going to watch a porno movie with a guy with a three-inch dick? Even if you’re not gay, you will not watch a porno movie with a guy with a three-inch dick. That’s not the standard in porno films. So you put a 5-foot-7 guy as your world champion.”

 

Nash has the same problem with today’s “Internet heroes,” CM Punk and Daniel Bryan.

 

“They are not bigger than life,” he says. “I bet they could both walk through airports and not be noticed unless they have a gimmick shirt on and the belt.”

http://www.twnpnews.com/2012/08/nash-says-...orld-champions/

 

Concerning the question, it's hard to gauge how much meaning there is to "being a draw" in a North American promotion. I'm reminded of information for controlled variables in math. In the Cartesian Plane (x, y), if one fixed for 10 points in x and 10 points in y, one would have 100 different permutations for (x, y) if one were to do a "Cartesian Product". Now, consider Euclidean Space (x, y, z). Fixing for x and y and giving z 10 arbitrary points, the Cartesian Product would give 1,000 different permutations for (x, y, z). That means by adding in one extra variable for fixing for the other points in x and y, there exists ten times as much information in Euclidean Space compared to the Cartesian Plane. And to get real meat from the Euclidean Space (say intercepts, minima, maxima, and basic geometric objects), one has to try a lot harder than in the plane Cartesian Plane.

 

So my argument basically amounts to, outside of major defining superstars like Hulk Hogan, Steve Austin, and the Rock, being a draw means little locally, i.e. in isolation without considering broader dynamics that effect an industry as complex and ever-changing as professional wrestling. So here are other variables to consider. (i) Is the industry just in a general recession (like from 1989 on or 2001 on)? (ii) Are there quality heels for the champion face in the WWF sense? (I mean, it should be obvious to everyone but Vince Russo that heat is a necessary condition to draw money. I'm reminded of the Ultimate Warrior's reign where he drew the most money in 1991 against the Undertaker, because he was a fresh heel and interesting, as compared to 1990 where he supposedly "bombed" and didn't draw against Mr. Perfect, Rick Rude, a combination of Rick Rude and Mr. Perfect, and Demolition, despite Mr. Perfect having been shown to be much more inferior to Hulk Hogan and his feud with Rick Rude not being fresh by then.) (iii) What about the quality of the booking? (No one is going to draw in a promotion that is booked like garbage unless that person is Austin, Rock, or Hogan.) (iv) What about subtle messages that bookers send such that the current drawing champion being booked as an inferior to the biggest non-champion star? (That usually results in the non-champion star working with top stars and the champion working with midcarders, which amounts to the history books jotting Chris Benoit as a worse draw than Kevin Nash).

 

In conclusion, one can only measure draws "locally" and only in a qualitative, almost opinionated sense with megastars like those listed above and Bruno Sammartino. In the global sense, i.e. considering draws in the context of their time and in terms of those variables, the end result is one winds up coming men within eras, so Bret Hart v. Shawn Michaels v. Diesel v. Lex Luger as draws, and one might be able to make a somewhat meaningful list of draws globally, but there would be no way to control for a complex pro-wrestling economy like the Recession of 1989 or the Recession of 2002 because the variables matter so much. For example, Hulk Hogan is certainly in a class of his own as a megastar, but he and Slaughter or he and Flair weren't outdrawing the Ultimate Warrior v. the Undertaker.

 

There could be a better way to assess this. I want to propose a serious research topic. Let's someday (especially when the PPV numbers list is done) list all the main event feuds in the WWF and WCW and agree on a methodology that can rate the best drawing feuds of all time. (We would probably have around 400 drawing feuds.) I think we would be surprised on the results because guys who've historically been labeled as not being draws (like the Ultimate Warrior) might wind up outdrawing Hulk Hogan on many but not all levels when Warrior and the Undertaker as a feud is considered compared to Hulk and Slaughter (which did worse) and Hulk and André (which did worse). Furthermore, the complex multidimensional variables would be much easier to control for. Think about it. Was 1987 Kamala a bigger star than Bret Hart because Bret Hart never peaked nearly to what Kamala peaked? We know the answer to that, but the local method of Meltzer's leads to meaningless absurdities like Nash being a better draw than Benoit despite Nash's run leading to house shows that had problems getting 1,200 people in (a number that is unprecedented in WWE history).

 

So those are my thoughts on the matter.

[Dylan Waco]

To be honest the older I get the less interested I get in who was or wasn't a draw in WWF/WCW. That is not to say I don't see value in a project like that, but it's not something I could get terribly motivated to work on.

 

I'm far more interested in looking at territorial era draws/stars.

[ohtani's jacket]

Every match is worked to garner heat. Some succeed and some don't.

That's simply not true. If every match was worked to garner heat then every match would feature guys trying their hardest.

[Dylan Waco]

Every match is worked to garner heat. Some succeed and some don't.

That's simply not true. If every match was worked to garner heat then every match would feature guys trying their hardest.

 

Every match is supposed to be worked to garner heat? Or at least the vast, vast majority?

 

I mean aside from the one a show "popcorn matches" - most of which had standard heeling designed to draw heat in them - I'm not sure what other goal promoters would have in mind.

 

"Hey guys don't draw heat. In fact do your best to alienate the audience if possible. We don't want people coming back."

[Loss]

That's ridiculous. Half-assing and getting over can be mutually inclusive.

[goc]

Every match is worked to garner heat. Some succeed and some don't.

That's simply not true. If every match was worked to garner heat then every match would feature guys trying their hardest.

 

I've seen lazy veterans garner far more heat doing simple shit than guys on the indies busting their ass doing all kinds of high spots so I don't think this holds true.

[Guest Nell Santucci]

That's ridiculous. Half-assing and getting over can be mutually inclusive.

Thus Spake on behalf of 1980s WWF.

[NintendoLogic]

One variable that, to my knowledge, has never been examined in great detail is the relationship between the health of the wrestling industry and the health of the economy as a whole. A cursory look at the data indicates to me that the two track pretty well. It's not a perfect correlation, but it does appear to be statistically significant.

[ohtani's jacket]

Every match is worked to garner heat. Some succeed and some don't.

That's simply not true. If every match was worked to garner heat then every match would feature guys trying their hardest.

 

Every match is supposed to be worked to garner heat? Or at least the vast, vast majority?

 

I mean aside from the one a show "popcorn matches" - most of which had standard heeling designed to draw heat in them - I'm not sure what other goal promoters would have in mind.

 

"Hey guys don't draw heat. In fact do your best to alienate the audience if possible. We don't want people coming back."

 

If every match on a card was meant to draw heat then you'd have a card where the workers are trying to be actively good in every match. When does that ever happen outside of indies and Joshi puroresu? If you look at an 80s WWF card, it's ridiculous to say the undercard matches are trying to garner more heat than the mainevent. A semi-main may do, but the rest of the matches are just filling in the card. 90% of them could have been 10 times more heated if the workers had tried more. It has nothing to do with whether they're a draw or not, it's simply the way the company was set up. We've all seen 80s WWF workers have better matches in the territories they came from and on the houseshow circuits away from TV and PPV. It's even the case that they were told to go short and have hot matches. If that was the case, every 80s WWF PPV would be exciting and Coliseum videos would be full of hidden gems.

[ohtani's jacket]

That's ridiculous. Half-assing and getting over can be mutually inclusive.

So you're saying that the rest of the roster weren't over because their matches didn't draw heat?

[Dylan Waco]

Where did anyone in this thread say people in the undercard were trying to draw more heat than the main event?

[goc]

Yea this seems to have been thrown all out of whack by ohtani's jacket arguing the idea that every match trying to draw heat meant they were trying to draw more heat than the main event. But no one said that.

[Guest Nell Santucci]

Jim Powers and the Brooklyn Brawler will try for 90 consecutive nights to show up Hogan and the Big Boss Man. They'll show them.

[ohtani's jacket]

The implication was that undercard workers weren't able to draw much heat because people weren't interested in their matches or were only interested in Hogan. I don't remember a problem with the heat for undercard matches and I haven't seen any examples recently. If there was a problem with the heat, I'd wager it more to do with the matches being shit than people not following the storylines. And as far as drawing heat goes, I can't understand how anyone would believe that the WWF undercard were trying to draw heat but failed repeatedly. The matches were shit far too often for it to be a coincidence.

[Loss]

That's ridiculous. Half-assing and getting over can be mutually inclusive.

So you're saying that the rest of the roster weren't over because their matches didn't draw heat?

 

Yes. If they were over, their matches would get a reaction. Plenty of wrestlers have been able to get a great reaction despite not really being great workers or working hard. The match quality has almost nothing to do with that.

 

I'm saying WWF crowds liked Hogan, and to a lesser degree responded to Savage, Warrior, Piper and Andre, and to an even lesser degree got into acts when they peaked like DiBiase, Steamboat, Rude, Boss Man, Beefcake, Duggan, JYD, and Honky Tonk Man, and were generally just polite to almost everyone else. You are arguing that the WWF roster as a whole was pretty over, but if we can't point to crowd reaction or money drawn as proof, then where is the proof? It really comes across as an argument based on what wrestlers people liked as kids. In fact, that was what you specifically cited.

[ohtani's jacket]

I think the WWF as a whole was over. Hogan was its biggest star, but at the peak of its popularity we were reading about everything that was going on in the WWF magazine and in the television guide and local tabloids that had weekly two page spreads devoted to the WWF (as well as posters of WWF superstars), we collected all of the trading cards and wrestling figures (not just Hogan's) and we each had a favourite tag team or midcard face. I think you only have to look at the heels who turned face like Savage, Roberts, the Hart Foundation and Demolition to see that the popularity there was there for other guys. Whether this translated into drawing power in terms of ticket gates I don't know; from my perspective it was a television product. But late 80s WWF was popular on such a worldwide scale that it was almost impossible for the rest of the roster not to be known. To my mind, WWF Superstars was aptly named. Like I said, whether they were tangible draws I don't know, but there were a lot of memorable gimmicks and care and attention was given to the heel and face turns. So much so that I think anyone who got caught up in that boom would remember some of the workers outside of Hogan and even a few of the angles. At the least they're bound to remember a couple of guys Hogan wrestled.

[Guest Nell Santucci]

I think the WWF as a whole was over. Hogan was its biggest star, but at the peak of its popularity we were reading about everything that was going on in the WWF magazine and in the television guide and local tabloids that had weekly two page spreads devoted to the WWF (as well as posters of WWF superstars), we collected all of the trading cards and wrestling figures (not just Hogan's) and we each had a favourite tag team or midcard face. I think you only have to look at the heels who turned face like Savage, Roberts, the Hart Foundation and Demolition to see that the popularity there was there for other guys. Whether this translated into drawing power in terms of ticket gates I don't know; from my perspective it was a television product. But late 80s WWF was popular on such a worldwide scale that it was almost impossible for the rest of the roster not to be known. To my mind, WWF Superstars was aptly named. Like I said, whether they were tangible draws I don't know, but there were a lot of memorable gimmicks and care and attention was given to the heel and face turns. So much so that I think anyone who got caught up in that boom would remember some of the workers outside of Hogan and even a few of the angles. At the least they're bound to remember a couple of guys Hogan wrestled.

One thing's for certain. I recently watched the Brainbusters v. Demolition (SNME, July 1989, ***1/2), and I was struck that, by sheer crowd reaction alone (not that this is necessarily the best measure), Demolition is more over than every single person on the roster today. Of course, that wouldn't translate to drawing power and that today's TV is so much more overexposed than the criminally underexposed 1980s WWF, but it is quite telling nonetheless.

[Bix]

Demolition was over but you can't judge how over someone was based on SNMEs: The audio was heavily sweetened.

[rzombie1988]

Demolition was indeed really over. They had a good enough gimmick where it could reach kids, adults and fans who liked to be cute and cheer heels. Being versatile is one of the strongpoints of Demolition.

[Ricky Jackson]

It always comes back to Demolition...

[Guest Nell Santucci]

Demolition was over but you can't judge how over someone was based on SNMEs: The audio was heavily sweetened.

I'm aware of that, but I wasn't making a judgment off of sounds that clearly could be edited in. Fans were jumping up and down over every move that was done in the match; the audience was totally absorbed.

[Matt D]

It always comes back to Demolition...

I didn't do it.

[NintendoLogic]

And goodhelmet thought he could contain Demolition to a single thread.

[Ricky Jackson]

And eventually the discussion will shift to Kane's strengths as a draw to tie everything together.