Longest time on wrestling TV?

[JerryvonKramer]

Is it Vince?

 

If you include commentary hours, then he's been on TV in some shape or form since 1971. If you add together all of the hours, then I can't see whose total could beat it. I suppose there are four other guys with a chance ... Lance Russell, obvious reasons, Tony Schiavone because at one point he was doing weekly 3-hour Nitros and Thunders and was on TV continuously from 1984 till 2001, JR same thing but with RAW and worked beyond 2001, bigger gaps in his career thoughv (don't know how much time his SMW stuff would add), and finally Gordon Solie because of the longevity factor. I still think if you added it all up, the answer would be Vince.

 

If you don't include commentary and just time in front of the camera, then it's hard to look beyond Flair. Not just because of the longevity factor, but because of all the 30+ minute matches he worked. Outside of him, it's anyone's guess. Mean Gene Okerlund must have wracked up a pile of time just doing interviews. Shawn? Too many injuries. Undertaker? Ditto. Nick Bockwinkel has to be in contention, and Lawler.

 

I'm not suggesting that anyone even attempt this exercise, just thinking about it as a hypothetical. What would our top 10s be looking like for sheer amount of time on TV?

[BrickHithouse]

From about 1998 on I'd guess Triple H would be up there. From about 2000-2006 he had those 20 minute promos to open Raw, then usually wrestled a 15 minute main event every week. 35-40 minutes a week minimum for 6 years wouldn't put a dent in a lot of the commentators' numbers, though.

 

This is cool, I've wanted to tally up "face time" for actual wrestlers for a long time to see how Cena and the other newer era guys compare to Hogan, Bruno, etc. as far as total exposure. Never gave any thought to including commentators.

[goc]

Jerry Lawler probably. All the years of being on Memphis TV (how early in the 70s was that?) and then being on Raw for almost 20 years.

[rzombie1988]

Jerry Lawler probably. All the years of being on Memphis TV (how early in the 70s was that?) and then being on Raw for almost 20 years.

Lawler is probably a really good one. Other ones would be Vince of course since he started doing TV broadcasts in the 1970's, Blassie or Moolah.

[Loss]

Vince, Heenan, Flair and Hogan are the big ones that come to mind.

[goodhelmet]

Lance Russell started doing Memphis TV in the 1950s. He was on TV into the 1990s.

[ButchReedMark]

How long was Bill Mercer around for? I imagine Bob Caudle's put a shift in as well.

[Jingus]

It seems like cheating to count announcers for their time on commentary, of course they're automatically gonna win the count by a landslide.

[Marty]

Verne Gagne came to my mind, but I don't even know if he approaches Flair or Hogan.

[jdw]

Baba would be fairly high on the Lawler scale. Regular worker from the mid-60s into the mid-80s, and generally in non-short matches. In the ring... probably more than Jerry. Then on the mic for a long time before dying. 1 hour shows, then 30 minute shows... so they don't add up to being in the both as much as Jerry, but very few people have been in the booth as much as Jerry.

 

It would be interesting to do some sampling of how much Flair was on TV in say 1987. Probably not as much as folks think. The overwhelming majority of it would be promos. It wouldn't add up to the amount of promo & backstage time that say a healthy HHH got in the WWE. As a touring champ in his 1982-85 peak... I wonder how much he was on.

 

Same goes for Hogan in say 1987. He wasn't in syndication every week. One would have to think about how to treat repeat stuff: an angle shot for Superstars appearing on Challenge and then Primetime.

 

I would hazzard a guess that Trip has been on TV as much as anyone if we toss out "announcing", which is a general cheat (and put Cole ahead of all but a few wrestlers).

 

John

[Dylan Waco]

Dusty has to have logged a ton of tv hours between wrestling, announcing, authority figure/guest spots, et.

[Mr Wrestling X]

Dusty has to have logged a ton of tv hours between wrestling, announcing, authority figure/guest spots, et.

Good call.

 

I'm thinking that Earl Hebner has to be a candidate as well.

[JerryvonKramer]

I'm wondering if Michael Cole might be approaching some of the guys mentioned here. He must have some serious hours behind him at this stage.

[cm funk]

I was thinking the same thing re: Flair & Hogan really not being on TV as much as people might think during their peak years. They usually had some face time in some form or another, but Hogan especially rarely wrestled on TV and almost never on the syndicated shows

 

I think Sting is a fair guess to be up there

 

- Got big around the time Turner bought WCW and WCW started adding more and more hours of programming (including Clash of Champions), heavily featured on all forms of WCW programming (it wasn't rare to see a Sting match on Worldwide for example), up through the Nitro & Thunder eras until the end of the company. Only real time off TV was due to injury, during the Crow angle (where he still showed up a lot of weeks and was heavily talked about/promoted), and near the end where they stopped using him

 

- TNA regular throughout the entire Impact era with only brief vacations here and there. If he was around he was doing stuff on TV.

 

I think generally if you really looked at it modern WWE guys who've been around a long time will by and large dominate a list like this. Including WCW Big Show has been on TV forever at this point. Kane has been on TV forever, and you can even throw in Issac Yankem and Fake Diesel to pad his stats. HHH, as mentioned, might actually have the most tv time of any wrestler ever.

 

Even if you include announcing I'm not sure if Vince would be #1, but he might be. His commentary in the 70's was what, 1 hour a week? In the 80's and 90's he didn't do commentary on every show. He stopped doing commentary in 97. He's certainly been all over tv as a character since then, but there's also been big gaps where he's off tv. And do you count doing an hour of commentary as an hour of tv time, or just the stuff where he's featured on camera or interviewing someone?

 

Interesting topic

[tlk23]

As far as modern WWE guys of the last 20 years, Jericho, Big Show, Kane.

[mookeighana]

This one was nagging at me, so I decided to take a shot at it.

 

I took my 1963-June 2013 WWWF/WWF/WWE database (compiled from TheHistoryofWWE results) and tried my best to attribute which matches were televised (ACTION ZONE ALL AMERICAN WRESTLING ALL STAR WRESTLING ALL STAR WRESTLING/MAPLE LEAF CANAL+ CHAMPIONSHIP WRESTLING CHASE COUNTDOWN ECW FNME FREE FOR ALL GCW HBO HEAT INT'L WRESTLING CHALLENGE JAKKED JAPAN TV Les Etoiles de la Lutte MAIN EVENT MAPLE LEAF MARCH TO WM MSG MSG/USA NXT PPV PRISM PTW RAW SATURDAY MORNING SLAM SHOTGUN SHOWDOWN SKY MOVIES+ SMACKDOWN SNME SUMMERSLAM FEVER SUMMERSLAM SPECTACTULAR SUNDAY NIGHT SLAM SUPER ASTROS SUPERSTARS OF WRESTLING TELE+2 TELE5 THE MAIN EVENT TNT TRIBUTE TV ULTIMATE CHALLENGE USA VELOCITY WRESTLING CHALLENGE WWE SUPERSTARS WWE.COM WWF GCW WWF SUPERSTARS YOUTUBE) and match lengths. For matches that were televised but I did not have the match length, I applied the average match length for that show. This ONLY includes matches - no contest, no rumbles, and explicitly excludes 2/3 falls and 3/5 falls matches. I haven't cross-referenced the televised results that I guessed against the actual show histories (i.e. I tried to figure out what matches were part of the Velocity taping, but I haven't gone back to double-check that exactly those matches aired.) This does not include interviews - so good luck adding those adjustments in!

 

Top Fifty WWWF/WWF/WWE performers in terms of length of televised matches (through about June 2013)

1. Triple H: 6553 minutes in 677 matches televised matches.

2. Glen Jacobs: 6040 minutes in 828 matches televised matches.

3. Shawn Michaels: 6027 minutes in 600 matches televised matches.

4. Randy Orton: 5910 minutes in 530 matches televised matches.

5. Chris Jericho: 5761 minutes in 670 matches televised matches.

6. Undertaker: 5611 minutes in 698 matches televised matches.

7. John Cena: 5607 minutes in 520 matches televised matches.

8. Edge: 5411 minutes in 625 matches televised matches.

9. Bret Hart: 4698 minutes in 588 matches televised matches.

10. Big Show: 4660 minutes in 669 matches televised matches.

11. Matt Hardy: 4341 minutes in 627 matches televised matches.

12. Rey Mysterio Jr: 4317 minutes in 444 matches televised matches.

13. Christian: 4284 minutes in 574 matches televised matches.

14. CM Punk: 4005 minutes in 392 matches televised matches.

15. Jeff Hardy: 3818 minutes in 523 matches televised matches.

16. Chris Benoit: 3606 minutes in 409 matches televised matches.

17. Tito Santana: 3523 minutes in 560 matches televised matches.

18. Kurt Angle: 3370 minutes in 423 matches televised matches.

19. Rock: 3281 minutes in 404 matches televised matches.

20. Greg Valentine: 3220 minutes in 494 matches televised matches.

21. Miz: 3170 minutes in 382 matches televised matches.

22. John Morrison: 3162 minutes in 364 matches televised matches.

23. Davey Boy Smith: 3125 minutes in 471 matches televised matches.

24. Batista: 3074 minutes in 308 matches televised matches.

25. Hulk Hogan: 3072 minutes in 388 matches televised matches.

26. JBL: 2864 minutes in 444 matches televised matches.

27. Dolph Ziggler: 2727 minutes in 305 matches televised matches.

28. Booker T: 2711 minutes in 331 matches televised matches.

29. Kofi Kingston: 2665 minutes in 329 matches televised matches.

30. Owen Hart: 2617 minutes in 408 matches televised matches.

31. Rob Van Dam: 2561 minutes in 306 matches televised matches.

32. SD Jones: 2560 minutes in 477 matches televised matches.

33. Sheamus: 2520 minutes in 279 matches televised matches.

34. Bob Backlund: 2511 minutes in 258 matches televised matches.

35. Mark Henry: 2502 minutes in 403 matches televised matches.

36. Billy Gunn: 2448 minutes in 476 matches televised matches.

37. Cody Rhodes: 2435 minutes in 306 matches televised matches.

38. Randy Savage: 2425 minutes in 366 matches televised matches.

39. Tony Garea: 2345 minutes in 376 matches televised matches.

40. Shelton Benjamin: 2341 minutes in 310 matches televised matches.

41. Ted Dibiase: 2319 minutes in 377 matches televised matches.

42. Jim Neidhart: 2286 minutes in 356 matches televised matches.

43. Bob Holly: 2232 minutes in 424 matches televised matches.

44. Johnny Rodz: 2161 minutes in 358 matches televised matches.

45. Eddie Guerrero: 2154 minutes in 271 matches televised matches.

46. Sean Waltman: 2121 minutes in 396 matches televised matches.

47. Rick Martel: 2120 minutes in 327 matches televised matches.

48. Steve Austin: 2101 minutes in 236 matches televised matches.

49. MVP: 2075 minutes in 222 matches televised matches.

50. Ric Flair: 2036 minutes in 232 matches televised matches.

 

If you want to see the detailed match counts by TV show, check out the giant chart:

 

or the webpage I'm updating: https://sites.google.com/site/chrisharringt...ost_tv_time_wwf

[soup23]

This topic was begging for some Mookie analysis but I didn't want to push the issue. Looking at this, I find it incredible how much people wrestle on TV today compared to before. The fact that someone like Dolph (who still feels like a youngster in a lot of ways) is two spots behind Hogan on total TV time and at this rate will eclipse him in total matches on TV at the end of 2014.

[mookeighana]

This topic was begging for some Mookie analysis but I didn't want to push the issue. Looking at this, I find it incredible how much people wrestle on TV today compared to before. The fact that someone like Dolph (who still feels like a youngster in a lot of ways) is two spots behind Hogan on total TV time and at this rate will eclipse him in total matches on TV at the end of 2014.

It's still my first stab at the topic and I do want to refine some of the metrics before I feel really confident at the findings.

 

I didn't include rumbles or 2/3 Falls match which would probably favor Hogan; obviously there is a lot more PPVs now for people to gain TV time (along with 3-hour RAWs and 2-hour SMACKDOWN!s). Hogan did a lot of TV interviews and wrestled on tons of house shows in the 80s (interviews to entice you to come to the show to see him) so he just didn't wrestle on free TV in a given year nearly as much as someone like Dolph does. This excludes Dark Matches too - previously Hogan/Andre wrestled lots of those, but now the champ does double-duty - once on TV and once for the live crowd. The Kane # of matches being SO much higher than HHH is a bit shocking to me; dunno if that's because Kane has stayed active these last few years while HHH has moved into a part-time role, or whether it's because Kane was doing tons of squashes (more matches, shorter overall time) or because I screwed up something! It could probably be split into quartiles of match lengths: under 3 minutes, 3-6 minutes, 6-10 minutes, above 10 minutes. Things like the Rockers/Rougeaus marathon matches obviously favor HBK's performance.

 

There's also Triple H and Undertaker average 17-20 minutes per PPV match while guys like Kane & Big Show only average 12. Over time, it adds up - Kane only had about 1,650 PPV minutes in my model while HHH had almost 2900. If Kane wrestled twenty minute average (like Hunter), he'd be up at 2,580 - much closer. Guys with 1,000+ minutes of PPV time (again, this excludes rumbles but does include some iron man matches): Triple H, Undertaker, Shawn Michaels, John Cena, Chris Jericho, Randy Orton, Edge, Glen Jacobs, Rock, Big Show, Kurt Angle, Rey Mysterio Jr, CM Punk, Steve Austin - obviously a very modern-centric list!

[JerryvonKramer]

HOLY SHIT

[mookeighana]

 

I included some more matches with estimated times so these estimates are a bit higher than before.

 

[JerryvonKramer]

I absolutely love the fact that SD Jones comes above so many bigger stars. also, Denucci at 89!!

 

There's a distinct lack of Bruno on this list Mookie, where does he rank? Seems odd to think that Kelly's boys (Denucci, Scicluna, Estrada, Rodz) all had more TV time than him.

 

The other person who stands out is Davey Boy. More screentime than Hogan? It's his late 90s run alone doing that, which speaks a lot to Chad's point.

[khawk20]

I absolutely love the fact that SD Jones comes above so many bigger stars. also, Denucci at 89!!

 

There's a distinct lack of Bruno on this list Mookie, where does he rank? Seems odd to think that Kelly's boys (Denucci, Scicluna, Estrada, Rodz) all had more TV time than him.

I'd relate this to the idea that "The Champ" appearing on TV was treated as a special event in most areas, so the appearances were kept to a minimum (Verne as Champ was like this in the AWA as well, for example),whereas Rodz et al were getting fed to someone on TV in some capacity weekly.

[mookeighana]

There's a distinct lack of Bruno on this list Mookie, where does he rank? Seems odd to think that Kelly's boys (Denucci, Scicluna, Estrada, Rodz) all had more TV time than him.

It's absolutely true that this list is very post-1982-centric.

 

In terms of total matches, pre-1980, Bruno blows everyone away:

1963-1979 WWWF/WWF

1. Bruno Sammartino: 1843 matches

2. Baron Mikel Scicluna: 1473 matches

3. Chief Jay Strongbow: 1336 matches

4. Gorilla Monsoon: 1281 matches

5. Johnny Rodz: 1203 matches

6. Prof Toru Tanaka: 981 matches

7. Arnold Skaaland: 950 matches

8. Dominic DeNucci: 920 matches

9. Victor Rivera: 898 matches

10. Tony Garea: 897 matches

11. Ivan Putski: 755 matches

12. Larry Zbyszko: 734 matches

13. SD Jones: 697 matches

14. Pete Sanchez: 691 matches

15. Killer Kowalski: 681 matches

16. Luke Graham: 675 matches

17. Spiros Arion: 668 matches

18. Stan Stasiak: 641 matches

19. Manuel Soto: 616 matches

20. Pedro Morales: 613 matches

21. Tony Altimore: 579 matches

22. Johnny Valiant: 559 matches

23. Bobo Brazil: 535 matches

24. Haystacks Calhoun: 533 matches

25. Johnny Rivera: 508 matches

 

I'm still trying to figure out the best way to determine which matches were and were not televised.

 

Here's an example of what I'm tackling (I made up these results)

 

EVENT @ PLACE (ATTENDANCE)

All Stars Wrestling taping:

A. Dory Dixon defeated Tony Altimore

B. The Shadow defeated Gene Kelly

C. Prime Time Wrestling 9/30/84: Skull Murphy & Brute Bernard defeated Pete Sanchez & Tony Martinelli in a Best 2 out of 3 falls match, 2-0

8/15/79:

D. Ted Lewin defeated Manuel Soto

E. Pedro Morales pinned Bull Johnson

8/22/79:

F. Ted Dibiase & Tito Santana defeated Jerry & Jimmy Valiant via disqualification

G. Andre the Giant pinned Big John Studd with a reverse cradle at 12:08

 

In this scenario, I would assume that matches C/E/F/H/I were televised (at least once, possibly more than once on several shows) while A/B were probably dark matches before the taping actually started. However, it's possible they were taped too. Making things even weirder, PTW showed some old pre-1980 matches in the mid-1980s too so you have the issue of people who had matches air on WWF TV years after they were originally taped.

 

To deal with this I labelled each match by what show they were possibly on as well as a separate flag on whether I thought that match ever aired. Some matches are "yes" (they aired), some matches are "no" (they probably didn't air) and some matches are "unclear" - which is that I have a length for the match, so it's very likely it did air even though it's unclear when it aired. I tried to include the "yes" and "unclear" matches in my analysis. For matches that were "yes" but didn't have a time, I applied the average length of time for a match on that show. So, as you can see, until I reconcile the results with match-airing lists, there's a lot of potential for mistakes.

 

Furthermore, usually after 1980, if there is a time on the match, quite often it was a televised match. However, in the pre-1980 results, there's a large discrepancy between matches with times and when the TV tapings seemed to be happening.

 

For instance, Bruno Sammartino has 256 matches with times (1963-1979) which total 4,499 minutes - this includes several 60+ minute matches with Waldo Von Erich, Gorilla Monsoon, Pedro Morales, Bill Miller and Hans Mortier.

Were the MSG shows all televised even back to the 1960s?

[Ricky Jackson]

Were the MSG shows all televised even back to the 1960s?

First televised MSG show was June 30, 1973 on HBO. Through the 70s only certain MSG shows were televised though. 3 in 73, 3 in 74, 8 in 75, 7 in 76, 8 in 77, 6 in 78, and 9 in 79. Also, I think only 4 or 5 matches per show were televised.

 

I think a random mid-60s MSG show was televised in the NY area.

[thebrainfollower]

Is this for male wrestlers only or are their no women who have cracked the top 100? Be curious to see the top 5 females in TV time.