Comments that don't warrant a thread

[Bix]

Master of Unlocking: http://www.audioatrocities.com/games/residentevil/index.html

[Bob Morris]

So Raw's ratings are back on the rise again. I wonder if any of the familiar Net personalities will ever admit that it's because John Cena is back.

[Boondocks Kernoodle]

So Raw's ratings are back on the rise again. I wonder if any of the familiar Net personalities will ever admit that it's because Dolph Ziggler is back.

[Jkeats]

So Raw's ratings are back on the rise again. I wonder if any of the familiar Net personalities will ever admit that it's because John Cena is back.

Wade said it on his update. He said you can't deny that the ratings rise is due to Cena being a draw.

[Bob Morris]

I should explain that when I made that post, I was going through the WO columnists thread and, of course, one of the discussions there was about how a couple were going about how terrible Cena is.

 

So that was what prompted my remark more than anything.

[Guest LShunter]

I should explain that when I made that post, I was going through the WO columnists thread and, of course, one of the discussions there was about how a couple were going about how terrible Cena is.

 

So that was what prompted my remark more than anything.

These are probably the same people who argue that Randy Orton hasn't improved over the past two years (i.e. idiots).

[Jkeats]

Ah, gotcha. Yeah I don't understand that sentiment. I think Cena has developed into a solid worker and works the WWE style to a T. He's been involved in way too many very good matches to be considered a stinker.

[kjh]

Lilian gets picked on again. Very funny.

[Bix]

How many times has the WWF run the "every manager tries to sign hot newcomer but newcomer picks a previously unseen in the WWF manager" angle? I had know about Savage/Elizabeth in '85 and Bigelow/Humperdink in '87, but now I found another one: I'm watching some shows from late '83, and they ran a more subtle version with Orndorff and Piper. Orndorff debuts with no manager, Blassie and Albano scout him, and then Piper (initially brought in the replace the Grand Wizard after he died and not wrestle) shows up to get the gig (before becoming a wrestler and eventually being replaced by Heenan, who also took over for him in managing John Studd, while Dr. D stayed affiliated with Piper and stopped having a manager).

[sek69]

I always wondered about that, was Piper really brought in just to be a manager? I just assumed he was just in that role while recovering from an injury (the ear thing from Starrcade maybe?), but was it the plan for him to stay a manager? If so, what made them decide to have him wrestle after all?

[Al]

I always wondered about that, was Piper really brought in just to be a manager? I just assumed he was just in that role while recovering from an injury (the ear thing from Starrcade maybe?), but was it the plan for him to stay a manager? If so, what made them decide to have him wrestle after all?

Just speculating, once business exploded with Hogan I imagine the incentive to wrestle full-time became much greater.

[Bob Morris]

I have the Roddy Piper DVD, and the way Bruce Pritchard described it, it was as if the WWF was trying to build to that opportune time when he would wrestle. I would imagine there is more to it than that... the company did seem as though they felt Piper was better in the manager role to start, given that his greatest strength was his mic work.

 

I believe the point when Piper actually did start wrestling full time with WWF occurred after the Piper's Pit with Jimmy Snuka, although I'm not entirely positive about that.

[kjh]

I would take what Pritchard said with a grain of salt given that he was working for Paul Boesch in Houston at the time.

[Loss]

I would take what Pritchard said with a grain of salt given that he was working for Paul Boesch in Houston at the time.

Why be skeptical over something so trivial?

[Boondocks Kernoodle]

Because he wasn't there. They may have just needed a dude who has been there for a while to give the WWE party line and they figured, "who's going to know Bruce wasn't here in '84?" Like when they the Best of Wrestlemania special before WM18 and they had Sgt. Slaughter give the behind-the-scenes perspective on Hogan-Andre at the Silverdome.

[kjh]

What BK said. If he wasn't there at the time, then there is a good chance he was just guessing as to why he wasn't used as a full time wrestler right off the bat, with the bias being that Vince is a creative genius and doesn't make mistakes, so obviously it must have been part of some clever plan to make Piper a bigger star.

[Sean Liska]

I posted this at DVDVR and I thought I'd post it here to see what you guys think:

 

What is with Meltzer re-writing the history of the NWO nowadays? A while ago Kurt Angle said that the MEM was like the NWO. Meltzer commented that the NWO helped put WCW out of business. He's been saying that a lot recently.

 

Then in a new poll on his site about the MEM's impact on TNA, one option is, "Short-term boost like NWO was, but they aren't building future stars 18.1%". The NWO was short-term? Wasn't it wildly succesful for 18 months? Didn't WCW go from drawing 800 fans at the Omni to 40,000 to the Georgia Dome under the NWO angle?

 

I know that everyone hates all the old NWO guys, but this is crazy. The NWO angle ended in April of 1998 when they split it up. 1998 was the most succesful year in WCW history. In December of 1998, 8 months after the angle ended, they did three Nitro's that drew over 30,000 fans to various domes. They drew a near million dollar gate in January of 99 at the Georgia Dome. The company tanked when Nash took over the book and drove things into the ground at the end of 98 and begining of 99.

 

Another argument is that the NWO killed the WCW brand name, but it was strong enough to launch Goldberg in 98 and draw all those huge gates and PPV numbers. What killed WCW was the product sucking for a really long time.

[kjh]

The nWo angle ended in April 1998? I know they split them up into two factions then, but I wouldn't call that ending the angle. Really the angle didn't end until the spring of the following year when it fizzled out without a conclusion after Hogan took the opportunity to use his heel coolness to turn face before taking time off for a knee injury and reverting back to his Hulkamania schtick on his return. The problem wasn't so much the angle per se, but that when it came time to put over the babyfaces Hogan either half assed it (Sting), sabotaged his potential opponent to the point the match lost all of its appeal (Bret), avoided the match even though it would do big business (Nash in the late spring/summer of '98, Goldberg in the spring of '99) or used his booking power to ensure that when he did do the right thing in the ring he remained the star who the whole promotion revolved around (Goldberg).

 

The problem with the Main Event Mafia angle isn't that the babyfaces defending the promotion won't get put over strong in the end, it's that the young babyfaces are being castrated so that the aging boss can return to save the day.

[Bob Morris]

Kev summed up the nWo situation nicely, but I wouldn't say the nWo was responsible for WCW going out of business... or even partially responsible. The booking of the nWo did lead to the downturn in business, but not the company going out of business.

 

Things that really led to WCW going out of business were Ted Turner losing his say as far as what was going on with WCW (the company lost money most of the years prior to Ted's businesses becoming part of Time Warner, but Turner insisted WCW keep going) and Jamie Kellner deciding there would be no more wrestling on TBS or TNT.

 

There were things that were booked that cost WCW a lot of money and further fueled its downturn, but ultimately, it was when the person willing to keep pumping money into it lost his say, combined with somebody deciding not to keep the time slots for WCW, led to the demise.

 

TNA is in the same situation. It's losing money, but Panda Energy keeps pumping money into it. If Panda decides to stop, there goes TNA. If Viacom decides not to keep TNA programming and they can't find another station, the demise is likely as Panda probably won't keep funding a company without a weekly TV slot.

 

That's the two things a wrestling company needs: Money and a TV slot. Without them, the company either goes under or can never expand (with the latter, as is the case with ROH, which has been fine doing house shows, but it's in a very limited area... without regular TV exposure, ROH will never get past the indy stage).

[Sean Liska]

I consider the split of the NWO into the Wolfpac and Hollywood and whatever else factions to be the end of the feud. They still used the NWO names but the idea of the WCW-NWO feud that was the focus of the company for the previous 20 months was over.

 

It's just crazy to me for Dave to marginalize the angle like that. Like WCW was this healthy and profitable company in May of 96 that got a short-term spike in business but was then shortly done in by the negative effects of the NWO angle. They went from a loss leader to a company with something like an $80 million dollar profit in 1998. They went from running small buildings in the Southeast to sellout streaks in NY and Chicago and huge dome shows for mere TV tapings. TV ratings were in the upper 4's. It's one of the most successful angles in American pro wrestling history. I hate what Nash and Hogan did to the company as much as any other self-respecting internet fan, but you have to put that aside and give credit where it's due. Dave seems to act like WCW would have been in better shape if the NWO angle never happened. The NWO angle was the best thing that could have ever happened. Bischoff just needed to maintain some control once it ran its course.

 

I mean, I guess you can kind of blame it on the NWO if you do consider it to last until early 99. You can blame Nash beating Goldberg on the Wolfpac, and Nash laying down for Hogan on NWO Hollywood, and all the rest of the mistakes they made. What really killed their revenue streams was the egos and selfish politics backstage and Bischoff's total lack of control.

 

I agree that the MEM angle is being horribly executed. But I'd expect nothing less from TNA.

[Boondocks Kernoodle]

Of course if you arbitrarily consider the end of the nWo angle to have coincided with the end of WCW's ratings dominance then any claim that the nWo angle killed WCW would seem stupid. Most people who watched WCW in '98 would NOT consider the nWo storyline to have ended there, not when the biggest storyline in the company from April until November when Hogan temporarily retired involved Nash's nWo feuding with Hulk's nWo, and then for the first few months of '99 it was the reunited group feuding with WCW again, and then at the end of the year it was a new nWo declaring war on WCW.

 

Like WCW was this healthy and profitable company in May of 96 that got a short-term spike in business but was then shortly done in by the negative effects of the NWO angle.

Uh, they kinda were. WCW was doing OK before the nWo came along. The Savage-Flair feud had reignited house show business and through some "creative bookkeeping" they were able to show an on-paper profit. The nWo success caused Bischoff to become cocky (well, he always was, but this made him TOO cocky) and complacent. I think on occasion Meltzer has said that if WCW hadn't signed Hogan, they never would have become big, and they'd probably still be around today. I don't necessarily agree with that (especially the latter). The bottom line is that they couldn't keep the momentum going.

[Sean Liska]

The Savage-Flair angle maybe drew some crowds in the 5,000 range, which was great for the time, but it wasn't anywhere near what the company would do later. They weren't really a healthy company. Outside of that program they didn't draw anywhere. PPV wasn't anything great.

 

The NWO was bad for WCW because it was so succesful that Bischoff got complacent? Would they have been better off not achieving success?

 

I mentioned April of 98 to be the end of the NWO angle because it was the end of the WCW-NWO feud. When Meltzer talks about why the NWO was bad, he says its because the NWO was so dominant it made WCW look bad. He's not saying the NWO was bad because of the Hollywood-Wolfpac feud. He's saying that that the original concept of an invasion angle was ultimately bad for the company. Even if you stretch the NWO angle out to November of 98, the company was still hugely succesful then. TV ratings were still big and they were drawing insane gates. Starcade 98 was the 3rd biggest WCW PPV ever. The company really tanked when Nash got the book.

[Sean Liska]

Here's the other quote from Dave I was talking about.. He's actually recapping an interview Angle did on the radio.

 

"There is a funny story on Kurt Angle at http://www.longislandpress.com/articles/features/540/ by a reporter who clearly didn't believe his bullshit. When reporter Josh Stewart, after Angle said the Main Event Mafia would be like the NWO, and noted the NWO put a company out of business, Angle explained the difference is that the NWO people rarely went to house shows and rarely wrestled on television. Well, at least he's not making the key decisions given his understanding of what killed WCW."

 

A little tough to decipher but Dave seems to be agreeing with the idea that the NWO put WCW out of business. Combine that with the poll question stating that the NWO only provided WCW a short-term boost, and I think he's off on this one.

[Kronos]

Has this ever happened to you?

 

My brother -- who is not a rasslin fan -- and I have been watching a lot of MMA lately. I am loving the sport, which is a fairly new discovery for me. Anyway, yesterday, we watched UFC 3 and 4. Then, because I wanted him to see it, we watched Joe v Kobashi followed by Danielson v Storm because these are my two favorite ROH matches -- we were watching the Koch ROH comp). Then, we went back to MMA, with Pride Shockwave 05.

 

About half way through the Pride show, we both kind of realized that adding some long (and awesome) wrestling matches between MMA really jacked with our heads. I kept expecting the MMA guys to get out of submissions with an insugiri (sp?) or for them to pause for a moment after doing some gorgeous grappling to "catch their breath" and staredown, so the crowd can cheer. That kind of thing. I even laughed about one of the Pride announcers breaking kayfabe by talking about how a particular victory carried a built-in storyline because the particular fighters understood it was about entertainment and not just fighting. (of course, I then got the joy of explaining "kayfabe" to my brother)

 

Anyway, we have both agreed that MMA has learned to walk that illusive line between Vince and boxing, able to take the best of both worlds in a lot of ways. I love both shows -- MMA and rasslin -- but I would suggest not mixing them on the same day if you don't want your head to explode. . .

[sek69]

Dave's opinion on the nWo stems from two things:

 

1. WCW was never allowed to get any significant wins over the nWo, and any time they did it would just get overturned the next night. It ended up being the Dusty Finish of the late 90s where no one bought a WCW guy winning anymore since everyone knew it would just get reversed on the next TV show. Obviously they wanted to keep the momentum going as long as they could but they ended up making the WCW side look like punk asses who couldn't get the job done.

 

 

2. Dave's been consistent in having the opinion once heels become "cool" and popular you basically ruin the point of having heels. You end up having the guys who are supposed to be popular and draw money for your company again look weak, and the entire point of the wrestling business is to have the faces eventually gain revenge on the heels for their heelishness and that was never going to happen.