Dave Meltzer stuff

[Sean Liska]

In 2012 when Todd was railing against WWE one time, I asked him how many periods during the previous 11 years he found the company well-booked. He gave me the summer of 2002 and a few Mania builds. So there were a couple of months in 11 years he really enjoyed. There are a lot of people online like that have been hate-watching for over a decade and it's exhausting talking wrestling with them,

[BigBadMick]

If anybody has an Observer subscription, listen to the Todd Martin show with Bryan, even if you don't normally. They're going through old '82 Observer's starting about half an hour in, and there's highlights like Dave's star ratings for various promotions, the top TV shows for '82, Jim Duggan being rated a better wrestler than Ted DiBiase, and somebody writing in complaining that there's too many Japanese & Mexican wrestlers on the Dave's top 150 wrestlers list (Spoiler Alert - No Backlund on the list at all! Sweet Justice for Parv!), and somebody else (I think) also complaining that Gagne & Brunzell was only ranked #75 and #81 - maybe it's Dylan writing in via time travel!

I've listened to this and it's very interesting. I know Dave's thing is you can't evaluate work outside of its present day context, but do you think he regrets any of his snarky comments from the 80s? For example, is he still as down on Backlund?

[Loss]

In 2012 when Todd was railing against WWE one time, I asked him how many periods during the previous 11 years he found the company well-booked. He gave me the summer of 2002 and a few Mania builds. So there were a couple of months in 11 years he really enjoyed. There are a lot of people online like that have been hate-watching for over a decade and it's exhausting talking wrestling with them,

 

In fairness, there have been plenty of time periods where the booking is a mess - and that's not just limited to WWE - where the show has other positives. Also, from my point of view, I kept watching week-to-week for a long time because I thought things could suddenly get awesome at a moment's notice. As long as that possibility is there, I don't see it as hate watching. I see it as unwavering optimism.

[NintendoLogic]

The people who are constantly down on WWE booking are far less exhausting, and far more consistently correct, than the dead-enders who continually insist that WWE never makes booking mistakes.

[DMJ]

I might've said this in another thread, but I'm really proud of the thought so I'll shamelessly write it again here.

 

They say that, on Saturday Night Live, you have years where the writers carry the show and years were the performers carry the show.

 

I think the WWE is somewhat similar, especially in the modern RAW era of the past 20 years. For a good part of the early Attitude Era, the in-ring talent was kinda weak (especially compared to WCW), but the writing/production/presentation made the show seem "hip" and "must see" (The Godfather, Val Venis, and New Age Outlaws certainly didn't get over 'cuz they were putting on mat classics). Today, it's the opposite - Sheamus and Cesaro have been booked horribly, their characters are completely bland, and they have no direction, but bell-to-bell, they deliver. The same could be said for a number of other guys too, including the Usos, who sell tons of merch despite the fact I'm not sure they've been involved in a single genuine, layered with actual dramatic twists or turns to it. I mean, did Harper & Rowan ever actually make things personal?

 

We're in a "performer driven" era of RAW right now, but I'm not sure thats because the performers are great, or because the writing has just been so consistently terrible over the past few years.

[Sean Liska]

The people who are constantly down on WWE booking are far less exhausting, and far more consistently correct, than the dead-enders who continually insist that WWE never makes booking mistakes.

 

Nah, the company would be out of business if things were as bad over the past 13 years as people claimed. It's not 1997 RAW or 1984 Mid-South inspired, but it's mostly fine. Companies booked as poorly as the Todd Martins make it seem tend to experience 2001 WWF or 1999 WCW or 2002 NJPW or 1985 Dallas level declines. When you do a terrible job for that long, you don't pack 65,000 people into a stadium paying $10 million, you don't sell out SummerSlam 6 months ahead of time, you don't sell out most other PPVs, you don't sell out when RAW comes to Brooklyn, you don't do a big crowd in Mexico City last week, you don't average 15,000 a night in Australia, you don't do 18,000 over two nights in Malaysia, you're not on pace for a sellout in Dallas this week, etc. The entertainment business is too hard, people are tough to please.

[Sean Liska]

 

Whoops, double post.

[pol]

I think there's an argument to be made that by traditional wrestling metrics WWE has been on a slow decline for over a decade, it's just been mitigated by the introduction of so many new revenue streams and the rise of the WWE and particularly Wrestlemania brands as draws in themselves. Hasn't the trend of ratings, non-Mania PPV buys and live attendances outside of international tours been generally downward since 2001?

[Sean Liska]

I think there's an argument to be made that by traditional wrestling metrics WWE has been on a slow decline for over a decade, it's just been mitigated by the introduction of so many new revenue streams and the rise of the WWE and particularly Wrestlemania brands as draws in themselves. Hasn't the trend of ratings, non-Mania PPV buys and live attendances outside of international tours been generally downward since 2001?

Not really on attendance. They bottomed out in 2003-2004 during the depths of the HHH and JBL reigns and rebounded when Cena got the belt and has been steady since then. I'm pretty old-school so that's the one I tend to pay attention to and it's been very consistent. TV ratings have declined but the entire TV landscape has changed dramatically in the past 13 years, so doing straight comparisons there is unfair. They've been steady since going to 3-hours a few years ago. PPVs experienced declines but Rumble and Chamber actually did surprisingly well this year, the best Rumble besides Rock-Punk in many years, so it probably wasn't the optimal time to get out of that business.

[NintendoLogic]

Even assuming for the sake of argument a perfect correlation between strong booking and strong business (a highly dubious proposition), the numbers don't shake out in WWE's favor. It's easy to cherry-pick individual successes, but if you look at the big picture, the overall trend is down, down, down. It's not falling off a cliff like 2000 WCW, but it's a slow steady decline. Other than rights fees, what aspects of WWE's business are stronger now than they were five years ago? Not attendance. Not ratings. Not PPV buys even before they blew up the PPV model with the Network. When the business press is openly questioning whether the McMahons should still be running things, that's not a good sign.

[pol]

 

I think there's an argument to be made that by traditional wrestling metrics WWE has been on a slow decline for over a decade, it's just been mitigated by the introduction of so many new revenue streams and the rise of the WWE and particularly Wrestlemania brands as draws in themselves. Hasn't the trend of ratings, non-Mania PPV buys and live attendances outside of international tours been generally downward since 2001?

Not really on attendance. They bottomed out in 2003-2004 during the depths of the HHH and JBL reigns and rebounded when Cena got the belt and has been steady since then. I'm pretty old-school so that's the one I tend to pay attention to and it's been very consistent. TV ratings have declined but the entire TV landscape has changed dramatically in the past 13 years, so doing straight comparisons there is unfair. They've been steady since going to 3-hours a few years ago. PPVs experienced declines but Rumble and Chamber actually did surprisingly well this year, the best Rumble besides Rock-Punk in many years, so it probably wasn't the optimal time to get out of that business.

 

 

Interesting. I wonder if year on year average attendance numbers are available anywhere...

[Sean Liska]

Even assuming for the sake of argument a perfect correlation between strong booking and strong business (a highly dubious proposition), the numbers don't shake out in WWE's favor. It's easy to cherry-pick individual successes, but if you look at the big picture, the overall trend is down, down, down. It's not falling off a cliff like 2000 WCW, but it's a slow steady decline. Other than rights fees, what aspects of WWE's business are stronger now than they were five years ago? Not attendance. Not ratings. Not PPV buys even before they blew up the PPV model with the Network. When the business press is openly questioning whether the McMahons should still be running things, that's not a good sign.

People always say this but it really isn't true. The numbers I can find say Royal Rumble 2009 did 450,000 buys and Rumble 2014 did 467,000. The attendance numbers I've seen have been flat. TV ratings aren't a fair comparison because of 2-hours vs 3. And you also have to consider that by agreeing to do 6-hours of first run programming per week with somewhat important matches, they're purposely sacrificing PPV and attendance money by overexposing the product but making up for it in TV money.

 

And if you want to say, "WWE isn't on top of their game creatively, and that's why they've seen some very slight declines", like 83 Mid-South or early 79 Memphis, I wouldn't disagree with you. But the Todd's of the world assume a level of incompetence with the company that would lead to fall 87-NWA type declines. It hasn't happened.

[pol]

Much of modern WWE's business strategy seems to be based on high floor/low ceiling type propositions. Six hours of TV a week, John Cena as ace, the pushing of the WWE brand over individual stars - all these things do wonders for their downside but all of them also hurt the chances of the product heating up again.

[NintendoLogic]

People always say this but it really isn't true. The numbers I can find say Royal Rumble 2009 did 450,000 buys and Rumble 2014 did 467,000.

 

WWE hasn't broken 4 million total PPV buys since 2009. The big three still do good numbers, but business for B-shows has completely collapsed.

 

The attendance numbers I've seen have been flat.

 

WWE hasn't broken 2 million total worldwide attendance since 2010.

 

And if you want to say, "WWE isn't on top of their game creatively, and that's why they've seen some very slight declines", like 83 Mid-South or early 79 Memphis, I wouldn't disagree with you. But the Todd's of the world assume a level of incompetence with the company that would lead to fall 87-NWA type declines. It hasn't happened.

 

Not quite. There will always be an audience that will watch and pay for wrestling in some form, and WWE has the advantage of being the only game in town. It would take TNA-level incompetence to drive those fans away en masse.

[shakla]

In the latest WON, Dave says that the upcoming Bellas "loser must be winner's personal assistant" match stipulation was originally and officially worded as (paraphrasing) "loser must be winner's bitch for 30 days". There's no search results on WWE.com with "bitch" in the last year. Did WWE ever calls this a loser is winner's "bitch" match? Or was it just something Nikki said in an interview and was reported as such by sites until WWE made the stipulation language official? I don't see where WWE at this point would use "bitch" to describe a match. Maybe this is like how all the sites called the group of African-American wrestlers "the New Nation" with little basis.

[rovert]

In the latest WON, Dave says that the upcoming Bellas "loser must be winner's personal assistant" match stipulation was originally and officially worded as (paraphrasing) "loser must be winner's bitch for 30 days". There's no search results on WWE.com with "bitch" in the last year. Did WWE ever calls this a loser is winner's "bitch" match? Or was it just something Nikki said in an interview and was reported as such by sites until WWE made the stipulation language official? I don't see where WWE at this point would use "bitch" to describe a match. Maybe this is like how all the sites called the group of African-American wrestlers "the New Nation" with little basis.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYSzJ5wLm2M

[shakla]

 

In the latest WON, Dave says that the upcoming Bellas "loser must be winner's personal assistant" match stipulation was originally and officially worded as (paraphrasing) "loser must be winner's bitch for 30 days". There's no search results on WWE.com with "bitch" in the last year. Did WWE ever calls this a loser is winner's "bitch" match? Or was it just something Nikki said in an interview and was reported as such by sites until WWE made the stipulation language official? I don't see where WWE at this point would use "bitch" to describe a match. Maybe this is like how all the sites called the group of African-American wrestlers "the New Nation" with little basis.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYSzJ5wLm2M

 

 

I didn't say that Nicki didn't use "bitch" in an interview. In "storyline", Nikki was probably paraphrasing what Steph told her. But WWE still never called this a "loser must be the winner's bitch" match tho, right?

[NintendoLogic]

I thought this sentence in the most recent Observer was worth highlighting given the discussion of New Japan's booking on this board:

 

 

I’m not really a fan of being overly critical of bookers who have more than doubled core business in two years while getting tons of headliners over and created a secondary title that can viably headline PPV shows

 

Note that this is the beginning of a paragraph in which he does, in fact, criticize New Japan's booking-specifically, running Okada vs. Nakamura at the Seibu Dome with two days build.

[Dylan Waco]

Tons of headliners?

[pol]

On Prince Puma vs. Johnny Mundo: "By far the best match I've seen on American TV in some time."

 

Alright, Dave.

[pol]

Tons of headliners?

 

I can only imagine he's thinking of how, in addition to Okada and AJ being legit main eventers, guys like Makabe, Goto, Naito, Shibata and Suzuki can main event shows against one of the real top drawing guys without causing the numbers to tank.

 

I'm pretty high on New Japan booking in general because it makes sense which is a rare thing in a major promotion these days, but I definitely agree with others that their lackadaisical approach to elevating guys that are clearly more over than their push like Shibata, Honma and Ishii has been irritating. At least Shibata seems to be finally getting his chance now.

[Jimmy Redman]

Has anything changed with Naito headliner-wise since he got overwhelmingly voted out of the Tokyo Dome main event?

 

And I thought the word was that AJ wasn't drawing on top of NJ?

[pol]

Yeah actually thinking about it I'm not sure Naito has been put in a position to headline since then. AJ/Tanahashi just did their first Sumo Hall sellout for a non-G1 show in over a decade though.

[KrisZ]

Munro/Puma was a classic Dave style match that he would gush over of course. It was a really fun match but I wouldn't go as far as he did

[hammerva]

On Prince Puma vs. Johnny Mundo: "By far the best match I've seen on American TV in some time."

 

Alright, Dave.

 

I really liked that match but from that I gather the following:

 

1. He doesn't watch or have Ring of Honor TV because AJ vs Kyle O Reilly was the last great "best match I've seen on American TV" in my opinion

2. He doesn't consider the Network "American TV" because there have been NXT Takeover matches better

3. His short attention span is really kicking in because Cesaro's pre WM matches blow any 2014 TV match out of the water.

 

So should I be worried about Jim Ross talking about the Network on observer radio in talking about the Network?. is it going to be 60 minutes of "these guys work too fast, they don't sell anything, there are no heels anymore" talk