The Unknown Poster

It certainly wasnt boring. But the key angles were a booking mess. And the sudden breaking of the fourth wall is WCW-level. The Shield stuff was good though because they crammed weeks worth of booking into one show since they're running out of time to convince Ambrose to stay. So that was good, though I think I'd have had him win his match to support the reunion. But what can ya do.

Its almost like Harper was on to something when he said JT wasn't ready.

Its what they should have done but they've made such a mess of it...there is no subtly to WWE at all and now they're cramming the idea of the sympathetic babyface Becky down our throats when what the fans want is a bad ass Becky. Suddenly, they have Ronda threatening to shoot on people, threatening Becky on twitter, Hunter dropping "real" names, Braun answering to "isnt this all fake"...like for **** sake. That never works and is WCW level bad. When Hunter mentioned Flair's real name, the air just came right out of the fans' sails.

Bundy only being 61 might surprise a lot of people. He was really young when he had that run with Hogan on top.

Raw was back to being terrible. That hunter promo. Ugh. Man, what a mess they’ve made of Ronda, Becky,, Charlotte.

Sick burn

The one thing most people dont realize is that wrestling, at its heart, is a grassroots thing and is a niche spectacle. The attendance record in Winnipeg for indie wrestling is 1700+ and I can tell you almost 1000 tickets were sold by the boys directly to people they knew. And we spent...upwards of $5000-$8000 on mainstream advertising. We enlisted ticketmaster to sell for us (mainstream, easy to access) and I believe we sold around 300, 350 through them. And the rest were walk-up which represents a very strong walk-up crowd. We did it again four months later but the law of diminishing returns was in full effect. The crew sold the majority of tickets but far less than the nearly 100 they did four months earlier. The same massive mainstream advertising spend. Big names. Lots of hustle. Success lives and dies on the ability of the promotions and its crew to move the most tickets. Thats how its always been and its why its very difficult to invest in very big shows or very expensive import talents without a significant sense of comfort with your ability to move tickets in-house. And why its might seem counter-intuitive to say that less shows mean better business but it seems to be true. Especially in terms of doing big shows and needing the market to support it.

wow!

What I find is you have various types of fans. The hardcore fan that loves your product and comes every show. Usually, they are brand specific fans. Then you have the occasional fan who comes every so often, sometimes a few shows in a row, sometimes misses some. They like it, but its not can't-miss. Then you have fans that are more friends/family/co-workers and like it enough that they'll come to a "big show" because they know it will be awesome and they like supporting their friends. We've had a number of new faces in the last several months which I generally credit to the Kenny Omega show last year. There arent many guys you can slap on a poster or FB event and get an instant sell out, but Kenny is one of them. Perhaps the only one. And much wider penetration too.

Torrie Wilson is official for the HOF this year. Brutus Beefcake is also rumored (so too is the Hart Foundation who were rumoured first). Also, the story on Arn Anderson is, he let Alicia Fox works a house show intoxicated...

As I understand it, he was not signed for the 90210 reboot due to scheduling issues with Riverdale. But it certainly gives them a real reason to "come together" in the series...I imagine his passing will play a part.

Luke Perry has died.

I hope they do continue. Its too important to not bother over money.

Like I said, Im not a fan of airing the negatives in public. But there has been some obvious (to anyone paying attention) and not so-obvious (behind the scenes things) that have resulted in a lot of negativity. To address your points, historically in wrestling at this level, its not really like you described. Im not a big band guy but in my experience, i've seen local bands pretty cheaply, including for free. Once you ask a regular wrestling fan to pay $20 a show 3 times in two weeks, that's an uphill battle. In fact, I'd suggest that the three shows in the last two weeks with "names" on them all drew less than anticipated. In the past, it was when there was more promotions and more shows that it was harder to draw. There is not any sense of camaraderie in local wrestling historically. What happens instead is, someone runs a show near you and charges half the price and then spreads negative "news" about you or buries you or your talent online. Its long been a situation where promotions, especially (almost entirely) the bad ones and/or new ones would rather tear down the others than try to build themselves up. Im not saying that about WPW, just explaining how its been historically. PCW's best drawing era was probably 2004-2008 (with highs and lows at other various times). And during that time, save a few periods where AWE/WFX cropped up, you essentially had all the top talent working for PCW and everyone pulling on the rope in the same direction. You had some other shows crop up, but never good and never sustained. In wrestling, MORE promotions all fighting for the same market has not made the local scene better or created new fans. In theory, creating a new fan is creating a new fan for everyone. It doesnt work that way and never has. If you go to CWE or PCW now, you see the vast, vast majority of difference faces at each show. I've worked with promotions in the past when we actively ran angles to support each others shows and still couldn't get cross over fans. There was a time when we had three shows per week and couldn't get cross over fans (we even rented busses to take regular fans from one venue to another and it didnt make them come out to the other shows). Plus, if you go to a WPW show, to be honest, any idea that new fans are being created, I would react dubiously. If one new fan is created and they come to a PCW show for the first time, that's great! And I appreciate that. As Im sure Danny at CWE would as well. But you also have to balance the good/bad in creating that one new fan. Usually, issues arent due to "on-screen", but what happens behind the scenes anyway. Ernie (CWF) would have been correct in his feelings that MORE competition would be bad. He was right, it was bad for him because the competition was better than what he was doing and the promoters were more respected than him. The CWF was the top promotion in Winnipeg for awhile, with great shows at Le Rendezvous and really good talent in Robby Royce, Assisted Suicide etc (they even had Paul Diamond for an extended period when he lived in Winnipeg). But unlike most promoters, Ernie wasn't a wrestler. He owned a local trucking business and was a fan and so when he bought into the CWF, he entered the business as the boss without a lot of knowledge of how things worked, but thinking he did. When things were good, it was because he was surrounded by talented veterans. But his personality was always his biggest issue. Guys were always looking to create new promotions to compete. A promotion called Power Pro was started by former CWF wrestlers who wanted to leave (and that was when the CWF was really good). They ran 2 or 3 shows and collapsed (because its never as easy as people thing), making a deal to go back to the CWF. But Ernie agreed to bring them back with a push doing a sort of invasion angle (Ernie's favourite) and making the Power Pro promoter the booker of the CWF. That angered the CWF guys who had stayed loyal to Ernie so they in turn left to start up (some elements of which were part of Ring Masters later on). There was a rival promotion called RCW but they were sort of the "young prospects" roster compared to the CWF and had an on-again, off-again relationship with Ernie. When RCW decided to sell in 2000, they made a deal with Bobby Jay, who had also left the CWF. But Bobby, wanting peace, called Ernie to tell him he was buying RCW and intended their rivalry to be friendly. Ernie immediately called RCW and made a deal to poach the promotion from under Bobby. Ernie's intention was to eliminate competition. But since Bobby was already well into his own planning stage and so many guys didnt want to work for Ernie, he started TRCW. TRCW & CWF had exclusive rosters and very very heated rivalries. In fact, in 2001 when the top guys in CWF all quit (known locally as the Garage Sale Massacre because they went to Ernie's house while he was holding a garage sale and told him they were all going to TRCW), the guys in TRCW refused to work with them because the CWF guys had publicly crapped on them for so long and that helped create a rift where many TRCW guys wanted to leave (hence, PCW). So while you mostly had the best workers split between CWF & TRCW, you still had promotions like RCW cropping up though they mostly made deals with the big two to use their talent and then augmented the roster with their own "trainees" or talent not good enough for the big rosters. When the garage sale massacre happened, it effectively ended the CWF's reign as a top promotion. Ernie ran for a long time though and the CWF was a major player. But he basically focused on out of town tours at that time, occasionally running Winnipeg because you sort of had to, to maintain any sort of local crew. But TRCW was THE promotion from 2000-2002. PCW started up for many of the same reasons TRCW did - a lot of talent who didnt want to be there anymore. PCW didnt create poaching. If you look at the history of wrestling in Winnipeg back to the 30's, it was always competitive, always with rivalries, always with exclusive rosters and guys jumping, dirty tricks etc. Some guys who are part of the modern era think its a new thing...what was new was message boards and social media, but everything else was the same. Its what happens when you have a grass roots business with lots of egos (you'll always have egos and pride in a business that is competitive and performance-based). When PCW started, our day one crew were all former TRCW wrestlers and left them with about 5 or 6 guys, most notably Robby Royce & Vance Nevada, both of whom had personal issues with our then-booker Mike and were not invited to join us. Nevada left town shortly thereafter. One thing we wanted to do was feature the best talent so fans didnt have to be split. If you wanted to see the best roster in 2002, you went to PCW. If you were a fan of Royce (and many were), you'd have to go to TRCW. But even then, we both drew our own audiences. PCW was almost a necessity. TRCW had lost their main venue and werent going to get it back (PCW was able to). The booking and management of TRCW alienated a lot of their crew who were looking to leave whether PCW existed or not. So we brought stability to the local scene. Ring Masters was another group of former CWF wrestlers who didnt want to work for TRCW and honestly, most would not have been invited to join PCW. So when you have promotions that reasonably can carry 20 or so guys but you have 60 wrestlers in the market, what happens? The top 20-30 find a soft landing spot. The bottom 30 end up running their own shows that arent very good. And if anything that hurts the local market because if a fan goes to their first show and its awful, how will anyone else get that fan to spend money? The only time since PCW started that there was really a talent split was when our booker quit and started AWE/WFX. Before that, like I said, 90% of the best talent all worked for us. So it wasnt much of a split. PCW was always the target for start ups (TRCW was a fierce rivalry and guys did jump back and forth for a few months before TRCW shut down following a serious injury that almost got everyone shut down). When AWE/WFX started (they sort of started, did a show, took a long hiatus, started up again, so on and so on). But that split the roster to a degree. Though in a way it helped things because when Mike quit in 2003, he took "his" guys which were the guys getting pushed on top and that left "my" guys to move up...Kenny Omega et al. Thats a good point. I know some guys still like to rail against the idea of being exclusive but it was always a thing in wrestling, not just here, and not just recently. The business case for it is to create a unique roster to draw fans. If fans want to see CWE guys, they have to go to CWE. Same with PCW. If one promotion has all the talent and the other has half, as a fan Im more likely to go to the one with all the guys. So if you're looking at the business aspect, you want to be protective. Of course, you dont have to be a control freak and run into the trouble Ernie did. Historically a start up would reach out and make a deal with a promotion (or promotions) to use their regular roster because 1) they want the best talent and 2) the existing promotions have put in the work, time, effort, money and so deserve some respect and deference. One argument I've often disagreed with is the idea there is a PCW universe and a CWE universe and so on. There isnt. Its not like 20 years ago when fans wouldn't know where guys worked the night before. Its all out there. I think it can create a better experience for the fan to embrace that. If you see a guy from CWE or HIW or RCW or wherever, in PCW and he's a champion, we'll acknowledge that. I think thats a win-win and since wrestling is a work, unless you're a lousy booker, its not hard to work around "restrictions" guys might have because they're champions or top guys with another group. It wasnt long ago (2000-ish) that guys had contracts so were barred from jumping, though they still did and some were sued. No one has a contract so its really about where they have fun and get development opportunities. But it works both ways. A wrestler has the right to work anywhere that wants him. A promoter has the right to book or not book anyone he wants. For example, if a wrestler makes homophobic remarks on social media, they arent welcome in PCW and wont be booked. And, in fact, talent would be strong encouraged not to work for any promotion that thinks thats okay. On the flip side, if I decided I only wanted to run the big money shows, I could decide to run 3 shows a year and make lots of money and rely on someone else to run more often, help build the community, create a good place for the talent to develop. But then when I went to that someone, I wouldn't expect them to actively help me leverage their efforts to make money for myself especially if I was also slandering their group and disrespecting their talent. I was once the young guy full of piss & vinegar wanting to take on the world, so I get it. But over 17 years, experience teaches you things you never knew and allows you to impart that knowledge on others if they're willing to take it. I know specifically that CWE's biggest concern when anyone starting up is that it doesnt disrupt the positive relationships in the local scene. ie. there is peace and harmony so if you mess with that, it causes unhappiness. To bring this novel back around, I was good friends with one of the guys in WPW (At least I think I was) so I was very supportive. But I think if you have a group ownership that lacks experience, they're inevitably going to run into trouble. Not insurmountable trouble. But if you actually say you're going to show the established promotions the right way to do wrestling, you cant be surprised when you get met with less than enthusiastic support...lol Generally, good communication can overcome that. Time will tell.

The owner of Ringmasters was a long time veteran and respected by many. The promoter was a nice guy but generally pretty clueless though he had around two years of time in the wrestling business. They also owned their own equipment and boosted their own roster. So...

I’m less inclined to air dirty laundry in public but I would disagree with the assertion of best intentions. And strongly disagree with assertions that it’s good for the local wrestling scene And I say that as someone who considered Korba a good friend. That being said. People are free to attend any shows they want. In my 17 years I’ve seen a lot of start ups. None of them, save one, currently exists.

A group of fans that frequented other shows around Winnipeg.

Your friends are always welcome.

Helle has the flu I believe

The PCW & CWE wrestlers are really good.

Full twitter meltdown by trump.