WrestleMania 40

[JRH]

Just realized that with Gunther and Roman (both of whom won their titles when Vince was still in charge) losing, ALL of the previous champs from the Vince regime have lost their belts. We really are in the HHH era

[NotJayTabb]

Even Gunther, though he won the belt in the Vince era, still feels like a HHH guy. He definitely wasn't breaking Honky Tonk's record under Vince.

[KawadaSmile]

Gunther was just as dominant in NXT UK, which despite not being watched by more than 5 people was still Hunter territory.

[El-P]

Cody Rhodes was literally recruited by Vince, who personally flew with Bruce Prichard to meet with him and tried to convince him to come back. His mega-push started under Vince. Him winning at Mania was basically what Vince promised him. 

Gunther is definitely a Levesque guy. Iron crosses and all. He COULD beat Cody in Berlin. Don't think that's the best thing to do, although maybe, heel Gunther against whoever hot babyface at Mania next year (Cody again ? Sami ?) doesn't sound like the worst idea.

[MoS]

Personally, enough of dominant heel title reigns. Time for some long babyface title reigns. That is the shit that ultimately creates generations of long-term fans. 

As an aside, I have always believed that the adage "money is in the chase" is at best very myopic and at worst outright incorrect, and I have always remembered reading a really good discussion about this on this forum. Since I am on leave right now, I decided to finally actually search the board for these posts, and have found the discussion. The entire discussion is excellent and should be read, but I will also quote a couple of SLL's posts about this. I will also quote @Loss discussing from the other perspective. 

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This one is really, really easy to figure out. All you have to do is ask yourself one question: what does the general public prefer to see...the good guy win, or the good guy lose? Yes, I realize there are dramatic benefits to having the bad guy win every once in a while, but I think one would have to be pretty deep in denial to claim that people are more likely to pay to see their heroes lose day in and day out, maybe occasionally winning the day, only to have their victories snatched away from them shortly thereafter, than to see the opposite.

 

What's particularly galling about this one is the way it's so often trotted out without any evidence to support it because it's seen as such common sense, even though the slightest critical look at it causes it to break into a million pieces. I mean, even ignoring common sense observations on the tastes of the general public, don't the careers of Hulk Hogan and Steve Austin - the two biggest money draws of wrestling's modern era - expose this one pretty badly? Of course, as Austin's career also proved, it's probably more important to be perceived as "the man" than to simply be the champion, but kinda hard to be the man when you're always trying - and usually failing - to beat the man. Maybe somebody should ask Lex Luger just how much money is in the chase. You'd think he'd have outdrawn Hogan and Austin put together if there was anything to that claim.

 

Incidentally, does anyone know if I'm correct in my assumption that this obvious myth is a byproduct of 80's smarkdom's hatred of Hulk Hogan and love of Ric Flair? I'm hard-pressed to think of how anyone could have come up with this one logically, but people blinded by fandom desperately searching for reasons why Flair was objectively better than Hogan during the 80's boom seems feasible.

 

Loss:

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 think the idea behind it is more that with a good heel champ on top that people want to see lose, you can get multiple paydays off of various babyfaces chasing the heel, and in the big match where the heel finally loses, they'll do their biggest gate of them all, as opposed to just blowing the whole thing in one match. I think Hollywood Hogan in 1996-1997 is the best example of this I can think of, as they did big shows with Savage, Piper, Giant, and Luger all going after him, all leading to Sting at Starrcade.

 

Also, Goldberg beating Hogan on Nitro is probably an example of why people say the money is in the chase. Goldberg vs Hall, Nash, Savage, etc. building to Goldberg vs Hogan would have been multiple big shows that all probably would have done reasonably well, and Starrcade probably would have been huge.

 

I still maintain that HHH retaining at Wrestlemania 2000, leading to Rock winning the title at Backlash, was excellent booking, because they drew big on two shows instead of just one. I guess that is an example of the money being in the chase. It was obvious they were planning ahead at that time.

 

With Flair in the Crockett days, I don't really think that mindset was in play at all, because Flair was their guy. The idea of them building around Magnum -- well, I think that's revisionist history that should also be classified as a myth. He might have won it and dropped it right back to Flair at the most, but Nikita, Sting, Luger, and Windham, all of whom were as marketable or more marketable than Magnum T.A., didn't get a run with the title during the Crockett years, so why would Magnum T.A.?

 

You could also argue that Misawa's win over Jumbo in June 1990 was the beginning of his two-year title chase. I think the mindset among fans at that time was that it was obvious Misawa was going to win the title, it was just a matter of when it was going to happen.

SLL again:

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Also probably worth noting, when talking about the territories, that the heel world champ wasn't actually there 24/7 like he would be in a national promotion to rub his seeming unbeatability in the fans' faces. The NWA could afford to have long-term heel champs because the territories usually had their own babyface stars to act as the center of attention on a day-to-day basis.

 

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The more I think about it, the more I think I've been approaching the whole "money is in the chase" thing from the wrong angle. It's not that there's no money in the chase. There definitely can be if you do it right. It's that the chase is really a tangential issue to the real source of money: the man. Like I said before and JDW pointed out again, Austin proved that actually having the belt isn't always necessary to be a big draw. What I think is important is being perceived as "the man", and the fans being happy with that. To that end, it helps to be...

 

A. The champ, and...

B. A face...

 

...but the latter is really more important than the former, because usually, your long-term draws are the guys fans actually like, whereas actually being the champion isn't always necessary to being the star of the show.

 

That's why the NWA could get away with - and in fact benefited from - having long-term heel champions. The NWA itself wasn't really a wrestling promotion, at least not in the way we think of one. It was an umbrella organization for a bunch of other actual functioning wrestling promotions, and it recognized one guy from all of those promotions as World Champion. But while the NWA champ was "the man" in a certain sense, he wasn't the day-to-day star of any of the actual functioning promotions (not strictly true, I know, but bear with me), so having him reign forever wasn't a problem. The focus was always on "the man" in any given promotion, and the NWA champ provide a good aside every now and then, putting "the man" up against "the other man", and usually the action confirmed that the local "man" was the real "man" in the eyes of the fans, while the NWA champ got to retain his "official man" status because he hit "the man" in the balls/threw "the man" over the top rope/just barely held "the man" to a time limit draw/etc. so he could keep traveling the world fulfilling his function as wrestling's most high-profile plot device. It's OK, because that guy is gone, and your guy is still here being the man. Sure, Kerry got shafted out of the NWA Title by Flair again, and it sucks, but we can't worry about that now...The Freebirds have struck again!

 

It's also the reason Baba could get away with drawing out very long title chase scenarios without losing the audience. Yeah, Kawada and Kobashi chased Misawa forever, but it's not like the fans were in any great rush to abandon Misawa as "the man". Same with Jumbo/Misawa. Yeah, people booed when Jumbo got too rough with the Super Generation Army, but I don't get the sense that the fans at large were genuinely eager to see him unseated as "the man". I'm sure they wouldn't have minded, and I'm sure they expected it to happen in time, but I don't think Jumbo Tsuruta was Hollywood Hogan.

tl;dr - long heel runs can of course draw money, but a lot of people seem to think it's the only, or at least the most prominent way to present wrestling, and that is completely untrue, and arguably, long face reigns have historically drawn more money than long heel reigns 

[El-P]

Money is neither in the chase nor the reign, not anymore. Money is getting rights deals for a popular brand's content. Which they already have. They have Netflix for 10 years (or 5) and they have bloodmoney for whatever long. That's were the crux is. They could book Karrion Kross as a heel champ for two years, it would not change anything to their current money deals. (BTW, Karrion Kross with a stache and long hair is the weirdest visual ever).

That being said, this year's Mania was the biggest ever. And it was all about the chase (two years in a row, really).

[Ricky Jackson]

I think "the money is in the chase" was a successful 60s-80s NWA territory hero challenging the champ formula, but obviously not the be-all-and-end-all, because the WWWF and AWA had big business with a dominant face champ at the same time (although both had success with heel champs too). It really comes down to the wrestlers and how over they are. When a wrestler is hugely over, you can draw with either a chase or a dominant run formula 

[KawadaSmile]

1 hour ago, El-P said:

They could book Karrion Kross as a heel champ for two years, it would not change anything to their current money deals.

Sure, bubba. Having a guy whose career highlight was being ethered by Adam Cole (and the promo material is still true, they gave him two heavies AND another manager and he still can't get a reaction to save his life) as your main champipn would yield the same results as they are having right now. It's like me saying Cody could have easily be replaced by a goober like Matt Riddle.

While, indeed, the money is on the deals you can make and not necessarily having a dominant heel or dominant face champ, who you have as the face of your product is still important. We are not yet at a point where the wrestlers are just interchangeable pieces - Cody and Roman are way, way more marketable figures than most, and that is transparent during pressers and other media events. 

 

[El-P]

20 minutes ago, KawadaSmile said:

Sure, bubba. Having a guy whose career highlight was being ethered by Adam Cole (and the promo material is still true, they gave him two heavies AND another manager and he still can't get a reaction to save his life) as your main champipn would yield the same results as they are having right now. It's like me saying Cody could have easily be replaced by a goober like Matt Riddle.

Except I did not say that at all, plus you gotta know I'm going for an absurd example here on purpose. I said the deals are done, and the deals are done because of the overall brand, no whether you have a heel or babyface champ. The Saudi deal was made years ago, when they were on the decline. They have been financially idiot proof way before they got back hotter than (maybe) ever. Fox got them a huge deal because of Ronda. The Saudis got them a huge deal because of the stars of the past. Things weren't clicking then, and they still made huge-ass money deals.

Of course the Roman vs Cody match was a huge draw in itself (if you look at the monetary aspect, their biggest ever, plain and simple). Of course the product right now is hotter than it maybe ever been (again, in financial terms, not in term of mainstream pop culture) because of the Roman/Cody/Sami stuff going back 2/3 years ago now. And of course Karrion Kross is a goof, even moreso with hair and stache.

[MoS]

1 hour ago, Ricky Jackson said:

I think "the money is in the chase" was a successful 60s-80s NWA territory hero challenging the champ formula, but obviously not the be-all-and-end-all, because the WWWF and AWA had big business with a dominant face champ at the same time (although both had success with heel champs too). It really comes down to the wrestlers and how over they are. When a wrestler is hugely over, you can draw with either a chase or a dominant run formula 

Even with the bolded part though, yes, in a lot of territories, the NWA heel champ coming in once or twice a year and the territory ace perpetually challenging him for the title would draw big. But for week-to-week booking, where the focus was on local wrestlers, weren't the territory aces carrying the promotion usually faces?

I agree with your last couple of lines, I just think we have had enough of dominant heel reigns for now - MJF for at least half of his reign was a heel too.

[El-P]

Fun fact, out of the next 6 PLE, only SummerSlam is happening in the US. That's unheard of. And the more they'll go, the more they'll probably book toward those "territory" figures, Drew in Scotland, Gunther in Germany, Priest in Puerto Rico since I guess they'll eventually go back. So the heel/face dynamics will also depend of where those shows happen. Gunther is gonna be a babyface in Berlin, no matter what. Drew is gonna be a babyface in Glasgow. Now, maybe the main title will not be defended on every PLE, although one would hope Cody is around a whole lot more than Roman was the last two years.

[KawadaSmile]

35 minutes ago, El-P said:

Except I did not say that at all, plus you gotta know I'm going for an absurd example here on purpose. I said the deals are done, and the deals are done because of the overall brand, no whether you have a heel or babyface champ. The Saudi deal was made years ago, when they were on the decline. They have been financially idiot proof way before they got back hotter than (maybe) ever. Fox got them a huge deal because of Ronda. The Saudis got them a huge deal because of the stars of the past. Things weren't clicking then, and they still made huge-ass money deals.

Even so, bubba. Given when the deal was made, around 2018, they still needed Ronda, Becky, Roman, and Lesnar. Their roster was less over than right now, but they 100% couldn’t do it, or at least to that extent, without those very specific guys and gals.

 

6 minutes ago, El-P said:

Fun fact, out of the next 6 PLE, only SummerSlam is happening in the US. That's unheard of. And the more they'll go, the more they'll probably book toward those "territory" figures, Drew in Scotland, Gunther in Germany, Priest in Puerto Rico since I guess they'll eventually go back. So the heel/face dynamics will also depend of where those shows happen. Gunther is gonna be a babyface in Berlin, no matter what. Drew is gonna be a babyface in Glasgow. Now, maybe the main title will not be defended on every PLE, although one would hope Cody is around a whole lot more than Roman was the last two years.

It's insane, man. All those international events and they sure as fuck wouldn't be able to fill a stadium in Brazil.

[El-P]

8 minutes ago, KawadaSmile said:

Even so, bubba. Given when the deal was made, around 2018, they still needed Ronda, Becky, Roman, and Lesnar. Their roster was less over than right now, but they 100% couldn’t do it, or at least to that extent, without those very specific guys and gals.

Sure. My original point is that money was neither in the chase nor the dominating babyface. Of course the brand had a bunch of key players, but who they were was much more important than their role in a pro-wrestling sense. Hell, Roman was a heel, but before Sami and Cody exploded, he was basically the most popular wrestler on the roster anyway.

8 minutes ago, KawadaSmile said:

It's insane, man. All those international events and they sure as fuck wouldn't be able to fill a stadium in Brazil.

Oh yeah ? Not popular in Brazil ?

I gotta say this, based on the last time they were around, the crowd at Backlash is gonna be MOLTEN. Last time they chanted Rollins theme for TEN STRAIGHT MINUTES. And if they get the idea of introducing the announcers Agius & Chereau during the live show (which they should, honestly), these guy will get a Rock/Taker/Austin level pop, I'm telling you.

[Tenese Sarwieh]

Cody's big moment felt anticlimactic, overshadowed by numerous cameos, Samantha Irvin's lackluster announcing, and incessant efforts to elevate Levesque above all else.

[strobogo]

A lot of just fine sports entertainmenting. Sami/Gunther definitely stood well above anything else ring wise, the main events were good spectacle horseshit (absolutely should have been Austin instead of Taker popping up). Rock's entrance was prob the best thing of the weekend. 

With the story finished, hopefully they can move on to new stuff as the Bloodline really peaked in terms of interest a year ago. It's fascinating and hilarious how much of an absolute goober Seth Rollins has come off this whole 4 month period. Why he was so gung ho to defend Cody and be second fiddle despite being champion, getting constantly punked out by Roman or Rock, loses the main event of night one, loses his title in the opener the next night, then shows up in the main event to get punked out one final time. And then had to just be out there half dead for Cody's celebration. 

[NintendoLogic]

11 minutes ago, strobogo said:

It's fascinating and hilarious how much of an absolute goober Seth Rollins has come off this whole 4 month period. Why he was so gung ho to defend Cody and be second fiddle despite being champion, getting constantly punked out by Roman or Rock, loses the main event of night one, loses his title in the opener the next night, then shows up in the main event to get punked out one final time. And then had to just be out there half dead for Cody's celebration. 

Being a goober is Seth's natural state.

Anyway, it's worth remembering that the NWA champion only came to most territories a few times a year and wasn't making the top babyfaces looks like chumps week after week. It should also be noted that Dusty Rhodes drew well as NWA champ. But the old-line promoters wouldn't allow him to have a long reign because they were set in their ways and he didn't fit their mold of what a champion should be.

Historically, the biggest problem facing babyfaces who end long heel title reigns has been the lack of fresh challengers because the other heels on the roster are usually the guys he beat to build himself up for a title shot. That isn't remotely the case for Cody with how loaded the roster is. As a side note, that's why the Royal Rumble is arguably a superior method for establishing a new champion. Anyone he eliminates instantly becomes a potential future challenger, and tossing someone from the ring in a battle royal isn't nearly the same as beating them in a one-on-one wrestling match so it's still a fresh matchup.

[pmo]

Yeah I mean one of the benefits of Romans long reign has been the slowing down of angles.  One interesting aspect is that the chase territories tended to be weekly events while babyface territories tended to be monthly ones.  That said there’s so many angles that can be worked here besides the obvious, overcoming Gunther, a turn from Seth, Heyman aligning with Punk to get revenge, McIntyre that they should be able to sustain it for at least year.

[KawadaSmile]

7 minutes ago, pmo said:

Yeah I mean one of the benefits of Romans long reign has been the slowing down of angles.  One interesting aspect is that the chase territories tended to be weekly events while babyface territories tended to be monthly ones.  That said there’s so many angles that can be worked here besides the obvious, overcoming Gunther, a turn from Seth, Heyman aligning with Punk to get revenge, McIntyre that they should be able to sustain it for at least year.

Cody's coronation yesterday was the culmination of YEARS of planning, booking, and all the right pieces falling together at the right time. Roman's Reign was just an insane feat in terms of storytelling and booking. From him feuding with Jey, to still holding a grudge against Seth for turning on his Shield brothers, to accepting Sami Zayn into the Bloodline, to beating Cody last year, we are talking about almost FOUR YEARS of everything brewing into the perfect clusterfuck main event.

Now, can they keep this up? The more I think about the match, the more I think it's one of my absolute favorites.

[Ricky Jackson]

1 hour ago, MoS said:

Even with the bolded part though, yes, in a lot of territories, the NWA heel champ coming in once or twice a year and the territory ace perpetually challenging him for the title would draw big. But for week-to-week booking, where the focus was on local wrestlers, weren't the territory aces carrying the promotion usually faces?

I agree with your last couple of lines, I just think we have had enough of dominant heel reigns for now - MJF for at least half of his reign was a heel too.

Oh yes. I just meant that the chase formula worked for many territories, not as week-to-week booking of course, but for multiple big shows per year (the # varried from territory to territory)

[C.S.]

Due to circumstances, I couldn't see either night of WrestleMania live. I ended up binging the whole thing. Despite that taking a considerable amount of time, I didn't feel the length at all. Every match was good, and the entire show was well-paced, which is something you haven't been able to say about WWE in decades. Absolutely fantastic Mania with a photo finish, so to speak. I don't know where this ranks among the all-time great WMs - I'm hesitant to put it at the very top without some time and distance to reflect on the show - but it was a good one.

[Zoo Enthusiast]

Both nights when it got to the main event, I said “already?” That’s pretty unbelievable when it comes to big WWE events.

[Blehschmidt]

3 hours ago, Tenese Sarwieh said:

Samantha Irvin's lackluster announcing

Oh Thank God I am not the only one who felt this way.

I saw people on Twitter hailing her as the greatest ring announcer they've ever had and I couldn't be more dumbfounded. (and angry for Howard Finkel)

Her announcing is so ridiculous and over the top it almost makes Justin Roberts seem natural by comparison. I literally spent two nights just being annoyed at how "try hard" it was in every fucking match. 

Every announcer they've had since Lillian has sucked, and she paled in comparison to Finkel.

[El-P]

20 minutes ago, Blehschmidt said:

Her announcing is so ridiculous and over the top it almost makes Justin Roberts seem natural by comparison.

I only watched the main event, and yeah, she sounded fucking awful to me. But hey, what do we know.

Micheal Buffer. From Bret Hitman Clark fame.

Also, gotta say this, Bubba Ray Dudley getting a Mania gig after being a complete douchebag about AEW forever is some hilarious WWE pettiness. 

[KawadaSmile]

Thought Samantha was fucking awesome. Gimme someone who shows human emotion when it matters, all day. Michael Cole cemented his place at the top, too. 

I strongly disliked Corey Graves, though. He's good as a play by play guy, but on color commentary and specially on a three-man booth, he's bad.

[sek69]

44 minutes ago, Zoo Enthusiast said:

Both nights when it got to the main event, I said “already?” That’s pretty unbelievable when it comes to big WWE events.

When Snoop did the attendance gimmick and said "you ready for the main event" at like 9:45 eastern I did a double take. Neither show felt like it dragged at any point but night 2 absolutely ZOOMED by.

Also Snoop should be hired to announce every sport ever. He did a guest spot for the LA Kings calling hockey and NBC is sending him to Paris to do stuff for the Olympics.