Grimmas Posted July 9, 2015 Author Report Share Posted July 9, 2015 He's not wrong about that. How many title matches on other shows have drawn bigger than Manias? Being the champion should give you more money than just one night main eventing mania. Maybe if you only have a one night reign, but once you are the champion for a month it's a bigger deal. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WingedEagle Posted July 9, 2015 Report Share Posted July 9, 2015 Except it doesn't. Taking out TV rights fees, when was the last time a month of business did more than Mania in a single night? A hot show like Summerslam '98, Rumble '02 or the Invasion PPV (and 2 of those 3 didn't draw because of the title) did better business than some weaker manias in the mid-90s. Other than that the Super Bowl is still the Super Bowl. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Grimmas Posted July 9, 2015 Author Report Share Posted July 9, 2015 Except it doesn't. Taking out TV rights fees, when was the last time a month of business did more than Mania in a single night? A hot show like Summerslam '98, Rumble '02 or the Invasion PPV (and 2 of those 3 didn't draw because of the title) did better business than some weaker manias in the mid-90s. Other than that the Super Bowl is still the Super Bowl. Super Bowl not a fair comparison because winning the super bowl means you are the champion of the league. Money is not the only factor. The title is the ultimate goal, it means you are the best. Headlining WrestleMania means you won the Royal Rumble. There is no fair sports comparisons. I guess you can compare it to movies and say main eventing wrestlemania is like being the lead in Jurassic World. While wining the title is akin to winning the oscar for best movie. Sure both are great to have, but what is better money or being the best? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
goc Posted July 9, 2015 Report Share Posted July 9, 2015 I would say at this point that main eventing WrestleMania means more than being a champion. Otherwise why would CM Punk be so bitter about having a 400+ day title reign but not being in the Mania main event? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Grimmas Posted July 9, 2015 Author Report Share Posted July 9, 2015 I would say at this point that main eventing WrestleMania means more than being a champion. Otherwise why would CM Punk be so bitter about having a 400+ day title reign but not being in the Mania main event? Well it obviously does. However should it really be portrayed as such on screen? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
goc Posted July 9, 2015 Report Share Posted July 9, 2015 People aren't stupid. Everyone knows you can have a title match on any Raw or Smackdown but you can only main event WrestleMania once a year. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matt D Posted July 9, 2015 Report Share Posted July 9, 2015 It's too bad they've really de-linked money from the equation. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Grimmas Posted July 9, 2015 Author Report Share Posted July 9, 2015 People aren't stupid. Everyone knows you can have a title match on any Raw or Smackdown but you can only main event WrestleMania once a year. It's a shame that title is so meaningless that winning it isn't a big deal. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
goc Posted July 9, 2015 Report Share Posted July 9, 2015 It's not that it isn't a big deal it's just that it isn't as big a deal as main eventing WrestleMania. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Grimmas Posted July 9, 2015 Author Report Share Posted July 9, 2015 It's not that it isn't a big deal it's just that it isn't as big a deal as main eventing WrestleMania. Shouldn't it be though? Why should just being in a main match be more important than winning the main title? Shouldn't being the top person in the business be more important than getting a shot at that? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
goc Posted July 9, 2015 Report Share Posted July 9, 2015 If you main event WrestleMania, you ARE the top guy in the business. Why wouldn't someone put a premium on winning the title at WrestleMania instead of at Battleground? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Grimmas Posted July 9, 2015 Author Report Share Posted July 9, 2015 If you main event WrestleMania, you ARE the top guy in the business. Why wouldn't someone put a premium on winning the title at WrestleMania instead of at Battleground? You are not the top guy in the business if you main event WrestleMania. You are the person who won the Royal Rumble. Anyone can win the Royal Rumble and there is a huge pick of luck that goes into it (random entry). If you win the title than you are the best person in the business. Sure, winning the title at Mania is better than at any other show, but main eventing Mania and losing is not better than being the champion. At least it shouldn't be. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WingedEagle Posted July 9, 2015 Report Share Posted July 9, 2015 If you main event WrestleMania, you ARE the top guy in the business. Why wouldn't someone put a premium on winning the title at WrestleMania instead of at Battleground? You are not the top guy in the business if you main event WrestleMania. You are the person who won the Royal Rumble. Anyone can win the Royal Rumble and there is a huge pick of luck that goes into it (random entry). If you win the title than you are the best person in the business. Sure, winning the title at Mania is better than at any other show, but main eventing Mania and losing is not better than being the champion. At least it shouldn't be. That's all well and good in a vacuum, but not so much happens there. Situations matter. Look at Mania 27. Miz closed the show and left with the title. But you could easily argue that he was only marginally more relevant to that main event than the referee. Putting a name or title on someone doesn't make it so. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jingus Posted July 9, 2015 Report Share Posted July 9, 2015 They outright say in some of these announcer rules that titles aren't really that important, period. For example, no one will forget the Austin-McMahon rivalry but few will remember who the champion was during those epic struggles at every turn in the road. Titles are important, but only as important as we make them.That's barely a step above Russo's condescending dismissal of a world championship as "the prop". Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
goc Posted July 9, 2015 Report Share Posted July 9, 2015 They outright say in some of these announcer rules that titles aren't really that important, period. For example, no one will forget the Austin-McMahon rivalry but few will remember who the champion was during those epic struggles at every turn in the road. Titles are important, but only as important as we make them.That's barely a step above Russo's condescending dismissal of a world championship as "the prop". I don't really disagree with their point though. Personal issues draw more money and get people more interested than chasing a gold belt. There are a hell of a lot more people who can relate to someone wanting to beat the hell out of their boss or wanting revenge over a friend's betrayal than people who can relate to chasing a championship. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Yo-Yo's Roomie Posted July 9, 2015 Report Share Posted July 9, 2015 It's a matter of kayfabe though, isn't it? In kayfabe terms, being the world champion should supersede everything, but in real terms we know that being in the main event of WrestleMania, even if losing, probably means more. And they've really driven that home hard, with the idea of the WrestleMania moment being the holy grail for these guys. It's just another version of the wanting to have a great match/steal the show Vs wanting to win debate. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Loss Posted July 9, 2015 Report Share Posted July 9, 2015 And really, if you've won the Royal Rumble and the ultimate goal is just to main event Wrestlemania, then the goal has been accomplished already. You have the spot. I have no problem with that being a bigger personal motivation for the wrestlers. I just don't like it being presented that way on television. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dewar Posted July 11, 2015 Report Share Posted July 11, 2015 It's too bad they've really de-linked money from the equation. Lawler went out of his way on Smackdown to mention that because Rollins is the WWE World Champion, he's rich. I'd like to see more announcers point out that champions make more money. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matt D Posted July 11, 2015 Report Share Posted July 11, 2015 Part of why Rollins cashed in on the main instead of after was so that he could be in the match itself and get the winner's purse of the Main Event of Wrestlemania. If he cashed in after, who knows if it would have counted as a match when it comes to payoffs. Etc. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Boondocks Kernoodle Posted July 11, 2015 Report Share Posted July 11, 2015 They outright say in some of these announcer rules that titles aren't really that important, period. For example, no one will forget the Austin-McMahon rivalry but few will remember who the champion was during those epic struggles at every turn in the road. Titles are important, but only as important as we make them.That's barely a step above Russo's condescending dismissal of a world championship as "the prop". I don't really disagree with their point though. Personal issues draw more money and get people more interested than chasing a gold belt. There are a hell of a lot more people who can relate to someone wanting to beat the hell out of their boss or wanting revenge over a friend's betrayal than people who can relate to chasing a championship. I've had bosses that I didn't particularly like, but none that I really wanted to beat up. I don't doubt that Stone Cold gave vicarious thrills to a lot of boss-hating fans but I can tell you that for me, a middle schooler at the time, I would have cared much less about that storyline if the championship wasn't involved. The spirit of competition and the desire to win are pretty much the key values of American society, for better or worse. Anyone who ever played high school sports, or was on the debate team, or was in a spelling bee, or tried to get a high score on Ms. Pac-Man knows that. If championships aren't that significant, then why did 25 million Americans watch the womens' soccer finals last week? They sure don't tune in for every game in those numbers. 15 million watched the final World Series game last year. 23 million for the last game of the NBA finals. (The Super Bowl is such a spectacle in and of itself that I won't count it here because a lot of people do watch it for the commercials, or just because it's the biggest event on TV.) Why is Mayweather the biggest draw on PPV? Why are almost all the biggest UFC shows headlined by title fights? I know it's wrestling, not a real sport, but I do believe there is enough evidence to prove that a championship is a draw when it is treated as a big deal. In real sports that's easy, because there's either one champion a year or the best athlete wins it. In wrestling, it's more complicated, but it's not that hard. Not every feud can be a heated grudge between two guys who want to kill each other. If you do that every time, eventually people will stop caring. But when it's established that every wrestler wants the championship, that's it's very difficult to attain that championship and that only the best wrestlers can win it, that there are material benefits for winning it, and that the championship very rarely changes hands, the fans will care more about championship matches. And that's what it's all about, getting them to care. That's not to say that the title is more important than the wrestler. Even when the title is presented as important, you can't just put a belt on an unover wrestler and expect it to get them over. But when a wrestler gets over, putting a belt on them, when it's handled correctly, can get them more over. We've seen this happen too many times for it not to be true. Was the idea that "the title is just a meaningless prop" ever a piece of conventional wisdom in the wrestling business before Russo started spouting it in all his interviews? Because I was about 14 or 15 when he started saying it, and of course I always knew wrestling was fake, but up to that point I had never thought that the championship wasn't important within the fictional universe of wrestling. I thought that the title was a big deal. All my wrestling-loving friends did too. In '98, the fans went crazy for Austin beating HBK for the title, Goldberg beating Hogan, Mankind beating Rock. (The last one happened in '98, but aired in '99, dont correct me!) But in '99, all of a sudden, titles are meaningless because Vince Russo said so. That doesn't hold up to close scrutiny in my opinion, and it's also not consistent to view the title as a prop when one of the pillars of Russo's ratings-drawing philosphy was frequent title changes. I view the handling of the championship as the Pascal's Wager of wrestling: even if it turns out to be true that the championship is just a prop and fans are only interested in personal issues, promotions should still act as if the world championship is very important and handle it accordingly by limiting the number of title changes, only putting it on wrestlers who are already over, portraying the champs as huge stars who are famous and make a lot of money. If they do this and it the fans are indifferent to it, then the only real loss is whatever ratings gain you would have gotten out of frequent title changes. If, however, the title is important and you devalue it by hotshooting title changes or giving the belt to Jack Swagger-types who aren't over to that level, it could lead to the fans becoming indifferent to your championship matches. And I don't know if anyone has noticed, but most PPV main events are for titles! (That is, when there's a champion who wrestles more than four times a year!) This post was quite TL;DR and not all that well-written, and I don't mean to imply that goc has the same view of the belt as Vince Russo. But my overall point is that it's easy to make the fans care about the championship when you just take a wrestler who the fans love or hate and give them the belt and match them up with top opponents and have them win a lot. People come into wrestling fandom with the idea of the importance of championships already ingrained into them because in our culture there is a tremendous amount of social conditoning that lets us know that sports championships are a very, very big deal. That conditioning is a free gift to wrestling promoters from the sports world. Why try to beat it out of the fans? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
goc Posted July 11, 2015 Report Share Posted July 11, 2015 I never said the title is a worthless prop but I don't think it needs to be something that gets worshiped as the most important thing in wrestling regardless of all other factors.Thinking like that is what got us a WrestleMania main event of Chris Jericho vs. HHH where the crowd could not have cared less. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Boondocks Kernoodle Posted July 11, 2015 Report Share Posted July 11, 2015 Well no, you don't have to always put the title on last, especially not when there's also one of the biggest dream matches in wrestling history on the same card. But HHH-Jericho might have had a better reception if Jericho hadn't been portrayed as Stephanie's lotion-fetching errand boy, if he hadn't been booked as unable to beat the likes of Rikishi without cheating, if HHH hadn't jobbed to Kurt Angle twice in the month leading up to Mania. I believe those were factors as well. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Slasher Posted July 11, 2015 Report Share Posted July 11, 2015 Jericho vs HHH was not built up on the need to be the world champion. It was built on Jericho taking shoddy care of HHH's dog. Bad example. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Boondocks Kernoodle Posted July 11, 2015 Report Share Posted July 11, 2015 In retrospect, WWE really missed the boat by not having HHH bring the injured Lucy to the ring and having her claw Jericho's eyes during their match. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
goc Posted July 11, 2015 Report Share Posted July 11, 2015 It would not have mattered what the title match was, who was in it, and what build it would have had. Put it on after Rock/Hogan and it still would not have felt like the main event over Rock/Hogan. There is nothing you can do to convince me that their current problems have much to do with the title not being important enough. Plenty of wrestling companies did great business without making their main title the end all be all most important thing 100% of the time. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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