Comments that don't warrant a thread - Part 4

[Robert S]

I definitely hated a lot of Angle's higher profile work in the post Smackdown Six era. I remember thinking that Angle-HBK Mania match being not just overrated but being plain bad. It would be interesting to go back two decades later to see if I was too harsh back then or if my opinion holds up.

[RazorBladeKiss]

Wait until the people in that thread find out about the Mark Henry love on DVDVR. 

[sek69]

Angle was pretty good, but a lot of people in the biz were marks for having a legit gold medalist in their ranks.

[ohtani's jacket]

@Matt D

I don't know where else to put this, but I checked out your new 70s Joshi on Wednesday series and it says Mach Fumiake was a mainstream star when she joined All Japan Women. I don't believe that was the case. She did reach the final of the Star is Born talent show, but she wasn't scouted by any of the agencies. She didn't fit the image of what the agencies were looking for in an idol at the time. Momoe Yamaguchi, the second place winner at the same contest, went on to become one of the biggest J Pop stars of the 70s and was exactly the type of girl the scouts were looking for. 

After she failed to be scouted, she initially gave up on her singing dream and focused on sports instead. It wasn't until two years later when her older sister found an AJW recruitment ad in a magazine and encouraged her to try out. As far as I'm aware, she had just been living an ordinary Japanese junior high school life prior to becoming a wrestler. Her stardom came from becoming a popular pro-wrestler.

I could be wrong, but that's the info I have. 

[Matt D]

Definitely welcome input and info. I’ll loop in @Kadaveri for this side of the posts and you guys can talk it over.

[C.S.]

3 hours ago, ohtani's jacket said:

After she failed to be scouted, she initially gave up on her singing dream and focused on sports instead. It wasn't until two years later when her older sister found an AJW recruitment ad in a magazine and encouraged her to try out. As far as I'm aware, she had just been living an ordinary Japanese junior high school life prior to becoming a wrestler. Her stardom came from becoming a popular pro-wrestler.

Is junior high school something different in Japan? In America, that's generally ages 11-14 (sometimes 15, depending on the school). Did Mach Fumiake really start wrestling that young?

[ohtani's jacket]

You enter junior high school aged 12 and it lasts for three years until you’re 15. Once you graduate junior high school, you’re allowed to quit school and start working. She would have been 15 when she made her wrestling debut. 

[JRH]

While I know why they rarely do one night tournaments now (easier to promote the next show when you know which matches are going to be on there), I miss the drama that they used to provide, plus sometimes you'd get some interesting unique matches.

[Alucard]

16 minutes ago, JRH said:

While I know why they rarely do one night tournaments now (easier to promote the next show when you know which matches are going to be on there), I miss the drama that they used to provide, plus sometimes you'd get some interesting unique matches.

Agreed, was hoping AEW would go that route with the current tag team tournament as something different.

[NintendoLogic]

People have pointed to the 80s oil glut as a factor in the declines of World Class and Mid-South due to its impact on the economies of Texas and Oklahoma. Has there been any analysis of what impact, if any, the farm crisis had on the AWA? More broadly, it seems like there should be more consideration of the strength of the economy as a whole as a factor in the success of wrestling promotions.

[pmo]

It wouldn’t surprise me if there was some damage but it’s not a broad issue like say the way the 70s decline in the auto industry had a hand in destroying the Detroit territory(not that the sheiks booking helped).   
 

Really the issues for the AWA were more that of the WWF invading their territory with Hogan, stale booking, and inability to develop new stars that McMahon didn’t snatch up.  The farm issues weren’t high on the list of problems.  If anything the rust belt issues that doomed Detroit applied far more here with areas like Milwaukee and Chicago than the farm issues that hurt the spot shows.  

Either way all of these territories had already built in issues that the economic situation simply exacerbated.  WWF flopped in Mid South and avoided Dallas.  Even Dallas though was as much the Von Erich issues as anything.  Really Watts has the best argument as his only main loss was JYD and he was structurally pretty sound.  Even then though Mid South under Watts was a small territory punching above its weight.

[sek69]

1 hour ago, pmo said:

Really Watts has the best argument as his only main loss was JYD and he was structurally pretty sound.  Even then though Mid South under Watts was a small territory punching above its weight.

What I don't get is that it didn't seem to be doing the usual tailspin we'd see in Dallas and in the AWA. As a fan it was like one day Watts just said "fuck it", sold everything to Crockett and peaced out.

[clintthecrippler]

I just finished doing a Mid-South/UWF watch, the full 1981 through a couple of months into the Crockett takeover, and I while I don't doubt that the regional economic issues played a part in Watts ultimately selling, I do think the ambitiousness of the play for going national gets downplayed as a financial drain. Loading up on TV stations across the country did ultimately give them more leverage to sell to Crockett, but almost every attempt at going into a new market with house shows turned out disastrous. 

As far as "new" markets that embraced the UWF for live attendance, efforts to run house shows in new TV markets to success was pretty much limited to Kansas City, where they drew 6,000 for a January 1987 show and Albuquerque is reported to have drawn 6,000 fans in February. Efforts to run Memphis did okay but not exceptional or remotely a threat to the home promotion. Late-stage house show runs into California and Chicago/Minneapolis were disastrous though, and I honestly wonder if receipt of initial "first day of sale" tickets for those runs, both sets of shows occurring in the final 2-3 weeks before selling to Crockett, played a deciding factor into Watts and Ross expediting efforts to make a sale. 

And while a Summer 1986 co-promotion with JCP did 7,500 at Reunion Arena, return efforts on their own to Dallas didn't come close to matching that show, and the UWF turning Power Pro Wrestling into a separate show with its own set of professionally-produced television tapings and running those tapings in Fort Worth just seemed to reinforce that as far as the Metroplex was concerned, that market was burnt and instead of swooping in to on a weakened competitor, it just fueled the fire, especially as more and more empty seats, and even empty ROWS on the floor, are very visible as time goes on with the Power Pro tapings. 

[strobogo]

Really any of the territories outside of WWF trying to go national kind of never made sense to me. WWF had NYC, Philly, Boston, with a home base of the biggest media city in country (world, really) with probably the most famous arena in the country as their home arena for decades. 

All the other territories were much more specific to their areas that weren't as big media hubs, and were also overlapping with other promotions in a way that WWF didn't have to deal with. A Mid South or WCCW trying to go national without first absorbing or buying out all the other territories along its edges could never work in a way that it could for the WWF.

[pmo]

Yeah with Watts he has said his plan was to basic rely on his base staying strong and build out with national TV.  What killed him was the economic downturn that softened his numbers along with having to rely on a syndicate deal once Crockett got the TBS instead of Watts.  And you could see how it would have worked if he kept the TBS deal. Grab Georgia, pickup the pieces in Missouri and TX.

Even then he admits in the Cornette shoot that he it was going to be tough.  His thought was the way things were going if he didn’t take the risk someone else would and eventually win. Basically better to go down fighting than to end up like Memphis or Portland.

[PeteF3]

I believe Watts was planning to move his base to Atlanta if he'd gotten the full TBS deal.

Honestly, I think the only other major contender to go national successfully based on markets would be Verne, and he'd never have a national vision. But he had Chicago, he had the Bay Area, he had in-roads in Canada, he had two other good-sized markets in Minneapolis-St. Paul and Denver, and if he'd had the foresight to try to seize upon L.A. upon the closing of the Lebell territory, like had with San Francisco, then he'd really have something. But as much as the AWA is underrated as a wrestling product, it didn't have the consistency or compelling storytelling of Mid-South, Memphis, Crockett, or post-expansion WWF. 

[pmo]

Yeah Crockett is really the only other.  Florida had the matches and storytelling but Graham was too cheap.  Continental tried a bit but way too late and really it wasnt the fullers welch style.  None of the Canadian promotions were strong enough and that left basically portland.

[Control21]

The Ugandan wrestling promotion has a white guy as a heel called "Lord White." Those guys know what they are doing.

 

[NintendoLogic]

The fact that he sounds like Lord Alfred Hayes makes it even better.

Also, it looks like Ospreay could be on his way to avenge his countryman.

[Coffey]

That's pretty cool of Ospreay. He's got over 250k followers too, so that's some nice visibility for SGW.

[Strummer]

On 3/22/2024 at 8:14 PM, NintendoLogic said:

People have pointed to the 80s oil glut as a factor in the declines of World Class and Mid-South due to its impact on the economies of Texas and Oklahoma. Has there been any analysis of what impact, if any, the farm crisis had on the AWA? More broadly, it seems like there should be more consideration of the strength of the economy as a whole as a factor in the success of wrestling promotions.

 

The WWF's decline in the early 90s coincided with an economic recession in the US (1992ish). But obviously there was a bunch of other factors in the the WWF's business tanking.

[sek69]

The US had an economic decline in the 70s and that didn't seem to destroy any wrestling territories. I'm sure houses were down a little in some markets but it was also probably the biggest the NWA was in terms of success.

[NintendoLogic]

The mid-to-late 70s were actually a rough period for most territories (Detroit and California were on death's door by the end of the decade while others had fallen off noticeably from earlier in the decade). Some other examples to consider: the WWF's post-Attitude Era decline coincides with the bursting of the dot-com bubble and the collapse of WWE's PPV business in the late 2000s coincides with the financial crisis. Conversely, the peak of Hulkamania and the Attitude Era both took place amid strong economic growth. Booking always matters to a degree, but booking mistakes become magnified when times are tough because pro wrestling seems to be pretty idiot-proof if the economy is strong enough. 1999 WWF is some of the most wretched television ever produced, wrestling or otherwise, but it didn't even dent the company's popularity. Perhaps the greatest testament to how awful 1999-2000 WCW was is how many fans they drove off during an economic boom.

[PeteF3]

Conversely, wrestling and movies, being cheap escapist entertainment at the time, actually did very well during the Depression (and movies did very well during the Great Recession).

[JerryvonKramer]

I'm still convinced that if you added up all the ticket sales nationwide that the aggregate revenue for pro wrestling in America was likely higher in 1978 than in 1988.

 

Look at the crowds WWF or NWA were drawing in formerly solid towns and in many cases the gates are less than half what they were at peak. St. Louis is a banner case, but it's the rule rather than the exception. And by the end of the decade almost none of these places were being run every month either.