Is drawing money overrated as a metric when discussing wrestlers?

[Loss]

But even a discussion of what draws money is subjective. If it wasn't, then everyone would promote wrestling exactly the same way. And Vince McMahon has enough experience that everything he does would be successful because he's been around long enough to know what works and what doesn't.

[Matt D]

I think some of this is really about what the discussion is actually about. Are we talking about the WON HOF? Are we talking about the context of why a wrestler only got to wrestle ten minute matches and we can't judge their output well? Are we talking GOAT? Or are we just trying to figure out if someone's a better wrestler than someone else, based on our own specific criteria at the time. With almost any talk here, we are usually on the same page with one another what we're talking about and sometimes it matters a lot and sometimes it matters a little. I think far more important than "Did he draw?" would be "why did he draw?" in as what specific things did the wrestler do to get to that point. That's the same thing with great matches. "Did he have great matches?" is an okay starting point but then go in depth and start to look for patterns.

[stomperspc]

There is not a "perfect market" in pro wrestling. That is, ability does not necessarily equal drawing power. I think that is pretty obvious. Wrestling history is littered with examples of guys who had the in-ring ability, promo ability, ect. but never really made it to the level they could have because of external factors. Promotions don't always push the most talented guys, some guys get lost in the shuffle for various reasons, some end up in the wrong place or wrong time, ect. For that reason, I don't believe it is fair to dismiss certain guys because they never drew since there is not a perfect correlation between ability and drawing. There are other factors that influence a wrestler's ability to draw.

 

Having said that, it is always a disservice to dismiss any available information. That includes drawing ability. If a wrestler is being discussed and he was a great draw (but perhaps is considered only mediocre in the ring and/or as a promo), we should certainly take his drawing power into consideration. If a wrestler wasn't a draw over a long time it should definitely be examined to try and find out why. Sting is the perfect example of that. He was clearly never a guy that moved business with the exception of his involvement in the NWO angle. Was that due to circumstances (spending the prime of his career during what was WCW's worst period) or was there something inherently about him that made him a non-draw?

 

Drawing power is a good metric to use for discussion and should never be ignored. Like any metric, however, it is only a part of the equation and cannot be used as a strict barometer across the board.

[Matt Farmer]

But even a discussion of what draws money is subjective. If it wasn't, then everyone would promote wrestling exactly the same way. And Vince McMahon has enough experience that everything he does would be successful because he's been around long enough to know what works and what doesn't.

No what draws is not subjective, either it does or it does not. Now there are different levels of draws and different ways about determining the level, but at the end of the day something either is or it's not.

 

You can argue what brings in revenue, is it the brand or the attractions or the event or even how it is presented yes. But you can easily determine if something is or is not successful.

 

The best professional wrestler in the world is John Cena, and he has been for the last decade almost. That is a fact, it's not subjective because the role of a professional wrestler is to generate the most amount of revenue so that person can be paid the highest income. The business we watch was designed soley for the purpose of seperating the marks (us the fans) from their money and putting it into their own pockets. We can attempt to muddy the waters and proclaim it to be art, yet in it's similist form that is what the industry is all about.

[Matt D]

Iggy Azalea is part of the top 2 songs on the Billboard 100 right now. Does that mean she's the best singer in the world? Even if so, what about the producers she's worked with, etc?

The best drawing wrestler is Cena. Wrestling is an industry but it's also an art form. It's a performance art. Now, I think there's a great argument for Cena being the best wrestler on multiple metrics, but wrestling is art.

You're looking at things too narrowly, just like you argue that the people who ONLY look at work are missing the big picture. Making money might be the big picture, but there are a dozen other pictures to look at and most of them make for way more interesting conversation.

[stomperspc]

 

But even a discussion of what draws money is subjective. If it wasn't, then everyone would promote wrestling exactly the same way. And Vince McMahon has enough experience that everything he does would be successful because he's been around long enough to know what works and what doesn't.

No what draws is not subjective, either it does or it does not. Now there are different levels of draws and different ways about determining the level, but at the end of the day something either is or it's not.

 

You can argue what brings in revenue, is it the brand or the attractions or the event or even how it is presented yes. But you can easily determine if something is or is not successful.

 

The best professional wrestler in the world is John Cena, and he has been for the last decade almost. That is a fact, it's not subjective because the role of a professional wrestler is to generate the most amount of revenue so that person can be paid the highest income. The business we watch was designed soley for the purpose of seperating the marks (us the fans) from their money and putting it into their own pockets. We can attempt to muddy the waters and proclaim it to be art, yet in it's similist form that is what the industry is all about.

 

 

A wrestler either drew or didn't draw. I agree with that.

 

However, the ability to draw is not all up to the wrestler. The promotion needs to place him in a position to draw. He has to be in the right promotion at the right time. Sometimes (although not always) the wrestler also needs the right cast around him to draw or at least maximize his drawing ability. These are all external factors that the wrestler cannot control. How can you blame a wrestler for not drawing if he doesn't get the necessary push to draw? We could only do that if we made the assumption that promotors/bookers always push the guys that will help them draw the most money which is definitely not true.

 

John Cena is WWE's biggest draw and generates the most revenue. That is indisputable and not subjective. Promotors and bookers look for different things in wrestlers. The wrestler with the best potential drawing ability does not always rise to the top. Promotors and bookers often don't push the right guys for various reasons. Other external factors can also play a role in keeping a wrestling with drawing potential from actually drawing. Like I said, pro wrestling does not operate under perfect market conditions so it wouldn't be right to state outright that the best wrestler is the one who draws the most because of the other factors that can and do influence the ability to draw. I think that is what Loss meant by it being subjective. Promotions all have different ideas on what draws. So they will take the guys that fit that mold and put them in the position to draw (at least sometimes). It doesn't mean that the guy working the mid-card couldn't draw if put in a similar drawing position.

 

Also, determining who is or isn't a draw is not always straightforward. Sticking with Sting as an example, would have WCW been worse without him on top from 1990 - 1992? I don't think we can answer that because we don't have a benchmark case of what a Sting-less WCW would have done from a drawing standpoint during that time. Sometimes a guy might not move business but if business would have been worse without him there, isn't he a draw on some level?

[Loss]

Was Britney Spears the best musician in the world in the early 2000s since she was the biggest star? I just have to ask if the answer is no, why the two are different. The goal record companies have in producing artists and making albums is to make money.

[Loss]

To be clear, I think it's good that there are discussions about draws in wrestling, and I think I made too big of a generalization before. The problem is that I don't think most discussions about drawing are all encompassing enough. For a HOF, I agree that all that matters is if the wrestler did or didn't, since a HOF isn't a place to right wrongs. But if we're just talking about drawing in general, I think we should bring in economic and cultural factors. We should discuss details of the promotion and hype when we have them. Numbers without context are misleading and can result in all sorts of false conclusions being drawn.

[El-P]

The business we watch was designed soley for the purpose of seperating the marks (us the fans) from their money and putting it into their own pockets. We can attempt to muddy the waters and proclaim it to be art, yet in it's similist form that is what the industry is all about.

 

Agreed. Pro-wrestling isn't music (hell, not even pop-music), pro-wrestling isn't litterature, pro-wrestling isn't cinema, pro-wrestling isn't painting. Pro-wrestling doesn't express anything. It's not an art. At best it's a craft industry, and some great workers are terrific craftsmen. And they don't necessarely draw the biggest gates, but they are useful dance partners or supporting members of the team. And sometimes it happens that the great craftsmen also are draws. But in the end, the goal of pro-wrestling is to draw money. Period. So yeah. That's why it can be really a dividing argument, because it can be no fun at all to talk about who drew more when you're only concerned about who entertains *you* the most. Hence threads about The Berzerker or Tim Horner that make this board pretty great. (and if there's no thread about Tim Horner, well, there should, damnit !)

[Loss]

 

Iggy Azalea is part of the top 2 songs on the Billboard 100 right now. Does that mean she's the best singer in the world? Even if so, what about the producers she's worked with, etc?

 

I can't stand Iggy Azalea, but she was carried to a fun summer pop song by a clever production synth hook and fun vocals from charlixcx. In other words, she has good road agents working with her to get the most out of her. The analogy totally works.

[Matt D]

 

Though, Cena says that Arn lets him do whatever now and I tend to believe it.

[dawho5]

I think one thing missing from this discussion is the separation of what you or I, the fan, enjoys in the ring or on the mic from the reason this question seems to have been asked.

 

If I'm looking at this, this isn't a question of somebody watching (we'll stick with this example) a Sting match or a few of them and then saying to themselves, "I really liked those matches, but he wasn't ever a big draw so I'm not so big on them now." This is more from a career restrospective or comparison of wrestlers way of looking at things. More like, did Hogan or Sting have a better career? And, like most here, I would want to say Sting because I personally enjoyed watching Sting a lot more than I ever enjoyed watching Hogan. But if I looked at it objectively, I'd have to go with Hogan because he made whatever company he was working for at the time far and away more money than Sting ever did. And that is the entire reason the business exists. Sure other factors come into that sort of discussion, but drawing is a pretty huge part of it given the importance of how much money a wrestler brings in to A. the wrestler and B. the company.

 

Talking about the matches and wrestlers I personally like, however, I could more or less give a shit about how much they drew. I just know I enjoy them for what they were. But I don't think that is what is being discussed here.

[Childs]

When people use drawing data to paint a richer picture of a guy's career and context, I find that valuable--thinking Dylan on Blackwell as an example.

 

When we fall into the same old debates in which someone invariably tells us wrestlers care only about draining money from the marks, I find it some of the most tedious stuff in all of wrestling discussion. The Beatles turned money-drawing craft into art, and it's a lot more fun to talk about how they did it than to have someone come in and say: "Well, pop acts were motivated by money." No shit, right? Can we just accept that and move on.

[funkdoc]

i am pretty much on the opposite end of the spectrum from matt farmer & el-p, as much as i respect both of them and can sympathize with them.

 

i just think we NEED to move more in the direction of "wrestling as art" (hate phrasing it this way, just referencing what has already been said in this thread) if we want it to have any chance of relevance anymore. kayfabe is dead, it's never coming back, and nobody cares about "real sports" stuff when even real sports aren't "real sports" anymore.

 

i mean, what gets the strongest heel reactions in WWE nowadays? HHH's meta trolling! the guy can't draw heat to save his life as an actual wrestler, but that stuff is nuclear. the entire bad news barrett gimmick is basically "i'm an asshole smark", and that's become one of their strongest acts. i think a more postmodern approach is the future, and i also think that WWE won't fully grasp this until some indie promotion realizes it and gets hot (think ECW). chikara probably comes the closest currently, but it's a bit TOO wacky & comic-book-nerdy...

[Dylan Waco]

The number of people that show up at a building, buy a ppv, watch a show, et. is not subjective. The amount of money brought in by the live gate is not subjective. How you analyze those numbers is subjective EVEN IF you try and apply uniform "objective" metrics.

 

For example I know when various people do research about "main events" they often give credit only to the match that went on last. I understand why people do this - it's theoretically an objective metric, it's easier to do if you don't know all of the context of a time period, it's consistent, et. The problem is that it often leads to terrible conclusions. There are many reasons for this.

 

For starters not all main events are the same. Main eventing a card in Sumter, South Carolina at the high school in 1986, is not the same thing as main eventing the Greensboro Coliseum in 1986. Going further if you were in a hot feud third from the top on a Greensboro show that did a big number but not a sellout, is that more or less impressive than main eventing a high school gym that did 2800 paid and sold out with a record local gate?

 

Then there is the fact that in a lot of promotions the match that went on last was not really the main event. The most obvious example of this is the WWWF where the match that went on last was often a bout involving upper mid-carders, or a strong secondary feud, while the hotter feud or title match that was promoted as the main event is on earlier in the show. If you stick with he consistent, easy to apply, "objective" metric in this case, what you get is a version of history that is wildly off the mark.

 

And then you have the issue of shows with double main events, or multiple hot feuds/programs that were positioned on t.v./through angles to draw. My favorite example of this is the AWA's Super Sunday show. The popular history says that the show did a tremendous paid attendance and live gate, among the best in the history of the AWA, and that this was done because of how incredibly hot Hulk Hogan was as a challenger for Nick Bockwinkel. But if you use the "what went on last" main event metric, that match doesn't get an ounce of credit, because the match that closed the show was Adnan/Blackwell v. Verne/Mad Dog, coming off a hugely hot angle which triggered a literal riot in the St. Paul Civic Center. The logical thing here is to give both matches credit, but again that requires looking at more than just the objective metric of choice.

 

These are just some issues with one metric that is often used to analyzing drawing power and drawing cards. You can find other problems with this metric (for example title matches that went on last with weak challengers, over several hot feuds), or you could pick another "objective" sort of metric and find problems with that. The point here isn't that you throw it all out, the point is that discussing and analyzing drawing power is often hurt by an obsession with objective metrics that were picked for subjective reasons. This is one of the reasons why I have done so many different things with my Patera research, and explored it from so many different angles. I want as complete a picture as possible, and I want the numeric aspects of the project to be grounded in an understanding of history.

 

Another thing you have to consider is that drawing means different things in different contexts. AJ Styles is a draw on the indies today, but what he is drawing would be considered a disaster for the WWE. NJPW drew 7k in Yokohama Arena which would be a good number for them in the majority of venues they run (and a sellout in many of them), but it's poor for an 18k facility and a major show. SMW drawing 1500 paid in Knoxville in 1993 was very good-to-great. WCW doing the same number would be seen (rightfully) as disgraceful.

 

One final thing that is somewhat related to the last point, is that who is and isn't considered a draw often has a lot to do with perception. For example the perception of New Japan is that Inokism killed it, it was on it's ass and Tanahashi (and going by some narratives Okada too) revived it and made it a hot promotion. By contrast Akiyama is seen as a guy with tons of promise who routinely failed when given the big pushes and chances on top. But here is the thing. Akiyama has far more big houses on his resume than Tanahashi. Akiyama at Budokan v. Tanahashi at Sumo is probably not a very favorable comparison for Tanahashi. Akiyama has at least a few instances we can point to where he popped business, whereas it is very tough to find those things for Tanahashi. Tanahashi does have the IPPV craze which is a new revenue stream that has changed the game in many ways, including making NJPW available and easier to follow in real time for U.S. fans than at any point in history. But if you compare him head to head to Akiyama as a drawing card it's very tough to see how he comes out ahead other than the fact that perception - in part fueled by different contexts - makes him seem like a bigger star.

[El Boricua]

The number of people that show up at a building, buy a ppv, watch a show, et. is not subjective. The amount of money brought in by the live gate is not subjective. How you analyze those numbers is subjective EVEN IF you try and apply uniform "objective" metrics.

 

For example I know when various people do research about "main events" they often give credit only to the match that went on last. I understand why people do this - it's theoretically an objective metric, it's easier to do if you don't know all of the context of a time period, it's consistent, et. The problem is that it often leads to terrible conclusions. There are many reasons for this.

 

For starters not all main events are the same. Main eventing a card in Sumter, South Carolina at the high school in 1986, is not the same thing as main eventing the Greensboro Coliseum in 1986. Going further if you were in a hot feud third from the top on a Greensboro show that did a big number but not a sellout, is that more or less impressive than main eventing a high school gym that did 2800 paid and sold out with a record local gate?

 

Then there is the fact that in a lot of promotions the match that went on last was not really the main event. The most obvious example of this is the WWWF where the match that went on last was often a bout involving upper mid-carders, or a strong secondary feud, while the hotter feud or title match that was promoted as the main event is on earlier in the show. If you stick with he consistent, easy to apply, "objective" metric in this case, what you get is a version of history that is wildly off the mark.

 

And then you have the issue of shows with double main events, or multiple hot feuds/programs that were positioned on t.v./through angles to draw. My favorite example of this is the AWA's Super Sunday show. The popular history says that the show did a tremendous paid attendance and live gate, among the best in the history of the AWA, and that this was done because of how incredibly hot Hulk Hogan was as a challenger for Nick Bockwinkel. But if you use the "what went on last" main event metric, that match doesn't get an ounce of credit, because the match that closed the show was Adnan/Blackwell v. Verne/Mad Dog, coming off a hugely hot angle which triggered a literal riot in the St. Paul Civic Center. The logical thing here is to give both matches credit, but again that requires looking at more than just the objective metric of choice.

Another example of 'last match is the main event' being misleading are those cases where there is a double shot scheduled that day and the main event in the first show is earlier on the card to allow time for the wrestlers involved in the main event time to make the second show. And it's always going to be tough in cases where you have several top feuds / hot issues. As an example, how much credit would you give to Hogan/Slaughter and Warrior/Savage for WrestleMania 7? Savage/Flair and Hogan/Sid for WrestleMania 8?

[BillThompson]

 

The business we watch was designed soley for the purpose of seperating the marks (us the fans) from their money and putting it into their own pockets. We can attempt to muddy the waters and proclaim it to be art, yet in it's similist form that is what the industry is all about.

 

Agreed. Pro-wrestling isn't music (hell, not even pop-music), pro-wrestling isn't litterature, pro-wrestling isn't cinema, pro-wrestling isn't painting. Pro-wrestling doesn't express anything. It's not an art. At best it's a craft industry, and some great workers are terrific craftsmen.

 

 

Pro wrestling is the very definition of art. It's along the same lines as literature, movies, TV, etc. It expresses emotion, creates an engaging relationship with the viewer, tells a story, etc. Those are all facets of art, and wrestling is a tremendous form of performance art.

[funkdoc]

dylan nails a lot of things i had felt but hadn't articulated well enough to write about yet. there's a lot of mythmaking involved in who's a draw, just as there is in the rest of history.

 

here's an interesting one that i've had on my mind: the MSG house show where wendi richter won the women's title from moolah. i watched that whole show a little while back, and it really felt to me like the women's match was the main event even though it was in the middle of the card. hogan vs. greg valentine didn't really strike me as a top-shelf matchup, you know? yes, i know valentine was a lot higher on the totem pole back then, but i recall that match not being worked or sold like he was much of a threat. dunno, but that really seemed to be an example of women drawing money in the US even if it was about cyndi lauper.

 

there really is an art to this stuff the more you look into it. reminds me of how complicated it's become to interpret football stats as more advanced stuff comes out...

[Johnny Sorrow]

Blackjack Mulligan and Kendell Windham drew money.

 

BOOM! I'll be here all week, try the veal.

[fxnj]

 

 

The business we watch was designed soley for the purpose of seperating the marks (us the fans) from their money and putting it into their own pockets. We can attempt to muddy the waters and proclaim it to be art, yet in it's similist form that is what the industry is all about.

 

Agreed. Pro-wrestling isn't music (hell, not even pop-music), pro-wrestling isn't litterature, pro-wrestling isn't cinema, pro-wrestling isn't painting. Pro-wrestling doesn't express anything. It's not an art. At best it's a craft industry, and some great workers are terrific craftsmen.

 

 

Pro wrestling is the very definition of art. It's along the same lines as literature, movies, TV, etc. It expresses emotion, creates an engaging relationship with the viewer, tells a story, etc. Those are all facets of art, and wrestling is a tremendous form of performance art.

 

Agreed. If anything, pro wrestling is one of the highest art forms in existence because its sole focus is on generating raw emotion while leaving no room for any of the pretentious bullshit seen in something like contemporary painting. Also, Matt's point doesn't even make much sense considering that (to paraphrase an old tomk post) the goal behind many of the masters of classical art was to make money and get pussy. It didn't seem to go over too well last time I linked icycalm's On the Genealogy of Art Games, but the guy does a really job destroying the mentality seen in El-P's post and showing it as a recent development from people who just don't want to accept recent and popular art forms not only have artistic merit, but are actually better than older ones.

 

I think factoring in drawing would be very useful in assembling a HOF or MOTY comps just because, since individual tastes can vary so much, a wrestler/match's popularity gives you about the only clear metric available to see how well it can appeal to the overall fandom and, thus, the chances of it appealing to whoever checks out the HOF/comp. In terms of being brought up when analyzing matches, I agree that it's basically a cop-out and that we should just analyze wrestling with the same depth we'd give any other art form. There's a lot more that can be said to sell someone on a match than "people loved this at the time."

[Matt Farmer]

 

 

The business we watch was designed soley for the purpose of seperating the marks (us the fans) from their money and putting it into their own pockets. We can attempt to muddy the waters and proclaim it to be art, yet in it's similist form that is what the industry is all about.

 

Agreed. Pro-wrestling isn't music (hell, not even pop-music), pro-wrestling isn't litterature, pro-wrestling isn't cinema, pro-wrestling isn't painting. Pro-wrestling doesn't express anything. It's not an art. At best it's a craft industry, and some great workers are terrific craftsmen.

Pro wrestling is the very definition of art. It's along the same lines as literature, movies, TV, etc. It expresses emotion, creates an engaging relationship with the viewer, tells a story, etc. Those are all facets of art, and wrestling is a tremendous form of performance art.

Professional wrestling has been called art, but you can put the label art on anything. The skills required to convice people to purchase your product can be called art sure. But the goal of wrestling is not, nor should it be to present the coolest looking highspots. It's goal at the rarest level is to draw revenue.

 

Compare it to literature or movies or heck event ballet if you want, but their goal may not be same. If your purpose of writing a book is soley to generate revenue, than that is a fair comparison. Unfortunately modern age fans, and thus modern day people involved in the industry have lost sight of the origins of this industry.

 

Even the most successful promoter ever, Vince McMahon will tell you publicly "we put smile on faces" but when he wakes up in the morning his main focus is ways to increase revenue.

 

Off Topic, I do want to say it's refreshing to post on a thread where people discuss topics intelligently and without resorting to juvenile tactics lol.

[BillThompson]

Art and making money are not mutually exclusive. Movies are made to make money, but they are also works of art. Books are published to make money, but they are also pieces of art. Wrestling is performed to make money, but it is also art. You can replace money with other factors, such as scoring women/men, gaining favor with politicians, etc. There can be ulterior base reasons behind art, but that doesn't stop it from being art.

[BigBadMick]

Blackjack Mulligan and Kendell Windham drew money.

 

BOOM! I'll be here all week, try the veal.

Thanks, Johnny - needed that! It's a great thread but it's heavy going....

[JaymeFuture]

Love this topic, may have to poach this for a podcast in future.

 

I can't see it possibly being overrated as a metric when the fundamental intention of wrestling is drawing money, I think the debate, as has been discussed already, is in the ambiguity of circumstances and the tenor of the times. I absolutely love the Akiyama/Tanahashi comparison, because as much as I love New Japan (though it's taken a bit of a turn for the more questionable in the last few months), that direct comparison shines a whole hell of a lot of reality on their surge in popularity.

 

An old radio show with Brian Pillman stands out on this subject too, where he talked about the ambiguity of "drawing money", when so much of it depends on taking a piece of talent and building him up, and right place/right time. But when so much of it is out of the individuals' hands, how is it that when they succeed or fail, most people invariably pick apart the performer more than the circumstances (this was in response to somebody asking Pillman if he ever drew money).

 

On El Boricus's point, Mania 19 is a good example, where the buyrate was alarmingly low, Angle/Lesnar went on last, but the bulk of the promotion for the show went to Hogan/McMahon. Can it be held against Brock and Kurt?

 

Sting was the classic case of a guy in a really terrible position that was known for never being able to draw the way he was supposed to. He also has the biggest buyrate in company history to his resume, but the former outweighs the latter.

[El-P]

Art and making money are not mutually exclusive.

 

No. But pro-wrestling's only goal has always been to draw money. Period. You can make music, litterature, cinema, painting for the sake of it, for experimental researches, to express yourself, to protest against injustice, to stay alive, to heal other people. Pro-wrestling never had any other aim but to get money from its spectators. Pro-wrestling is basically psychological mass manipulation. The "pro-wrestling tell stories" argument has become amazingly overstated in recent years. The stories pro-wrestling tell are amazingly simplistic and limited, and aimed right at the reptilian brain. Bad guy = boo. Good guy = cheers. Bad guy cheats = me sad and angry. Good guy beats the shit out of bad guy = me happy. It's a low-brow form of entertainment born from the carnivals, it can be fascinating and great to watch, but no great wrestling match can be compared to a great work of litterature, cinema or music. Nor it shouldn't, because it's different.

 

Now, if you want to compare the pro-wrestling industry with other entertainment industry which are using cinema, music and litterature to generate money, then it's another thing, but it's another point of comparison. And pretty often, most of the biggest money generators in the entertainment industry are shit pieces of "art".