Wrestling

[ediger]

Fun show tonight at the Sherb with Ethan Page and PCO. It's a new group, Winnipeg Pro Wrestling, that a couple of my buddies are involved in. Interested to see how they navigate a fairly crowded market but they seem to be targeting a certain niche. There's a ton of wrestling fans in the underground music scene here (which is fairly large) and these guys seem to be kinda marketing towards that group. In the end it could be beneficial to the other promotions, I suppose. There's a small handful of us that check out PCW and CWE shows, hopefully tonights card creates a few more wrestling regulars from our group of rock'n'roll regulars. I'd love it if this kinda started a local Rock'n'Wrestling era 😛

[SpeedFlex27]

5 hours ago, Brandon said:

I don't know...  the stories I read was of him being crazy and used to beat the crap out of his ex wife and threaten her with a gun to her head saying he'd kill her on more then one occasion.     The accusations of him raping women and beating them up...    breaking his nieces knees to collect insurance money.    Guy sounded like a terrible human.

Chris Benoit was a fantastic wrestler...  but it's not like they can put him in the HOF and have everyone ignore his dark crime.

You think he was the only wrestler who treated people badly? Lots of famous wrestlers were bad people. There were bullies, murderers, drug addicts, thugs, criminals & wife beaters. You just don't know about it.  Most people seem to be focusing on Dynamite Kid the wrestler. 

[The Unknown Poster]

I guess it’s true unfortunately. 

I vaguely remember an angle in AWA (I think) where the Freebirds were feuding with someone...and the someone's teased a special weapon to combat Terry Gordy and it was Larry Hennig and the Freebirds went ballistic!  Great angle.

Edited December 6, 2018 by The Unknown Poster

[Brandon]

1 hour ago, SpeedFlex27 said:

You think he was the only wrestler who treated people badly? Lots of famous wrestlers were bad people. There were bullies, murderers, drug addicts, thugs, criminals & wife beaters. You just don't know about it.  Most people seem to be focusing on Dynamite Kid the wrestler. 

You don't say?   What next you will tell me that Jimmy Snuka was not a great human either? 

[bigg jay]

https://www.mandatory.com/wrestlezone/news/1027555-kenny-omega-hbo-documentary

[Jacquie]

RIP  I can remember watching him wrestle back when I lived in Calgary and Stampede Wrestling was the best. He was amazing.

[The Unknown Poster]

3 hours ago, bigg jay said:

https://www.mandatory.com/wrestlezone/news/1027555-kenny-omega-hbo-documentary

Fake news 

[SpeedFlex27]

9 hours ago, Brandon said:

You don't say?   What next you will tell me that Jimmy Snuka was not a great human either? 

Well, actually... yes.  

[SpeedFlex27]

10 hours ago, The Unknown Poster said:

I guess it’s true unfortunately. 

I vaguely remember an angle in AWA (I think) where the Freebirds were feuding with someone...and the someone's teased a special weapon to combat Terry Gordy and it was Larry Hennig and the Freebirds went ballistic!  Great angle.

I remember Roger Kent doing the pbp for the AWA & he used to always say about Hennig that he was "big enough to go bear hunting with a switch".

Edited December 7, 2018 by SpeedFlex27

[bigg jay]

7 hours ago, The Unknown Poster said:

Fake news 

Good to know.  I was fairly surprised when someone posted this on my FB page.

[The Unknown Poster]

58 minutes ago, bigg jay said:

Good to know.  I was fairly surprised when someone posted this on my FB page.

Sorry that was a little tongue in cheek.  I would say, I dont know anything.  And if I did know everything, an NDA would probably prevent me from discussing it 😉  

[The Unknown Poster]

A bit creepy and invasive to film the guy but it’s out there now 

 

[sweep the leg]

I just found out that 80s jobber Barry O is Cowboy Bob Orton's brother. Also, when I googled him to confirm that, I saw that he was the Zodiac in Stampede Wrestling. Crazy...

[SpeedFlex27]

On ‎2018‎-‎12‎-‎10 at 7:59 AM, The Unknown Poster said:

A bit creepy and invasive to film the guy but it’s out there now 

 

Not good. Hope the guy will be okay.

[The Unknown Poster]

Last week's RAW set a new historic low rating.  It only held the record for one week as this week's RAW came in even lower.  

Without that TV money, the comparisons between WWE and WCW near the end would be more obvious.  WWE is an absolute trainwreck.  Its not even a free-fall...its been a slow decline that they've refused to accept or do anything about.  Vince is becoming a serious detriment.

Yearly average ratings:

1992 (last year of Prime Time): 2.15
1993: 2.05
1994: 1.99
1995: 2.43
1996: 2.57
1997: 2.64
1998: 4.44
1999: 6.09

2000: 5.88
2001: 4.64
2002: 4.01
2003: 3.76
2004: 3.67
2005: 3.81
2006: 3.90
2007: 3.61
2008: 3.27
2009: 3.57
2010: 3.28
2011: 3.21
2012: 3.00
2013: 3.01
2014: 2.95
2015: 2.64
2016: 2.26
2017: 2.17

And it's about a 1.5 so far this year.

Edited December 12, 2018 by The Unknown Poster

[JCon]

8 minutes ago, The Unknown Poster said:

Last week's RAW set a new historic low rating.  It only held the record for one week as this week's RAW came in even lower.  

Without that TV money, the comparisons between WWE and WCW near the end would be more obvious.  WWE is an absolute trainwreck.  Its not even a free-fall...its been a slow decline that they've refused to accept or do anything about.  Vince is becoming a serious detriment.

 

WWE desperately needs competition. Vince loves wiping out the competition to his own detriment. Ted Turner was the best thing that happened to the WWE but Vince seem to despise him. 

[The Unknown Poster]

5 minutes ago, JCon said:

WWE desperately needs competition. Vince loves wiping out the competition to his own detriment. Ted Turner was the best thing that happened to the WWE but Vince seem to despise him. 

Vince definitely despised Ted.  It stemmed from Ted screwing Vince on a TBS deal years before.  

The old way of wrestling was a promotion would tape TV and send that tape to TV stations around their territory with cut ins or scrolls announcing their impending house show.  Wrestling was gate driven.  The TV station would air your tape for free (they didnt pay you and you didnt pay them) but it was like free advertising.

Vince began paying TV stations to air his TV which upset the whole apple cart.   Regional promotions began faltering and shutting down.  Vince would take the top guys in each region and bring them to WWE (which was attractive because WWE's territory included New York and surrounding area which meant bigger pay offs)

In Atlanta, the local promotion was Georgia Championship Wrestling owned by Ole Anderson, the Briscoes, Jim Barnett.  The Briscoes and Barnett sold their majority stake in GCW to Vince.  Ole hated Vince and refused to sell but it effectively ended GCW.

Its referred to as Black Saturday, the day fans tuned in to watch GCW and got WWE instead.  In fact, the show was called World Championship Wrestling and was then branded as WWF World Championship Wrestling.  

Turner was mad because his deal with GCW was that matches were taped in the TBS studio locally whereas Vince sent in a tape.  Fans hated it.  They were used to the southern style, competitive matches and the talent of the area (Flair, Road Warriors etc).  Ratings plummeted.  Ole set up a rival, Championship Wrestling from Georgia and Turner agreed to air it on TBS as well, which angered Vince.

So Vince sold the time slot to Jim Crockett for $1 million (the idea being Vince used that million to finance the first WrestleMania).  Turner loved wrestling as a fan though he didnt really go to shows.  He mostly loved that it was popular, cheap programming which built TBS.  So when Crockett was about to go under (after buying Bill Watt's UWF, which was the best wrestling TV show in the country, and screwing up the NWA/UWF invasion angle and living too large), Turner bought it to keep the programming.

The famous story is, after completing the sale, he called Vince and said "hey Vince, Im in the rasslin business" and Vince replied "That's great Ted.  We're in the sports entertainment business".

The irony is that when WCW was kicking WWE's ass, Vince painted himself as the victim of a huge conglomerate intent on putting them oput of business, which is exactly what he did to many of the smaller regional promotions.

Vince is the great promoter of all time.  But as a booker...not so much.  He always had brilliant bookers around him, be it George Scott, Pat Patterson, Jim Cornette, Paul Heyman, Chris Kreski and even Russo to an extent (Russo sucked but his vision to change WWE to a more adult product was basically based on ECW and pushed hard by Shane McMahon).  The more Vince meddles, the worse it gets and once he promoted Steph to head booker over Chris Kreski (who was booker during the highest rated period in WWE history), it was all downhill.  She ushered in the hollywood era of creative writers and they decided they were a hollywood entertainment company.

The writers today write for one person - Vince.

[ediger]

The WWE needs to do something drastic. As has been discussed to death, the lack of competition really hurts them. There's little to push them. I was talking to some friends on the weekend and we kicked around an idea that they would never go for but we all think would make for a more entertaining wrestling scene. At least on the major stage, the indies are **** hot right now. Anyway, we talked about what if the WWE was more like the NWA and was the governing body over a series of regional promotions. They would be the ultimate owner but could franchise out the different territories. There would be certain standards to uphold but each promotion would have control over how it presents its product on tv (live, taped, ECW style highlight show, etc), the look of the arena, the camera angles. Basically everything. They could even revive some of the historic brands they own. WCW would be the south, AWA the midwest, and so forth. A certain percentage of the roster would be people they franchisees bring in themselves but a majority would be WWE contracted wrestlers who are divided up amongst the regions. Then you would have your top stars who bounce between regions, not unlike the NWA champions would do.

Again, never ever ever going happen but fun to discuss dream scenarios.

[The Unknown Poster]

16 hours ago, ediger said:

The WWE needs to do something drastic. As has been discussed to death, the lack of competition really hurts them. There's little to push them. I was talking to some friends on the weekend and we kicked around an idea that they would never go for but we all think would make for a more entertaining wrestling scene. At least on the major stage, the indies are **** hot right now. Anyway, we talked about what if the WWE was more like the NWA and was the governing body over a series of regional promotions. They would be the ultimate owner but could franchise out the different territories. There would be certain standards to uphold but each promotion would have control over how it presents its product on tv (live, taped, ECW style highlight show, etc), the look of the arena, the camera angles. Basically everything. They could even revive some of the historic brands they own. WCW would be the south, AWA the midwest, and so forth. A certain percentage of the roster would be people they franchisees bring in themselves but a majority would be WWE contracted wrestlers who are divided up amongst the regions. Then you would have your top stars who bounce between regions, not unlike the NWA champions would do.

Again, never ever ever going happen but fun to discuss dream scenarios.

Its sort of an idea they are doing now with the offices in different regions.  NXT UK.  They just did a try out in Mexico and India I believe and want to open an office in Saudi Arabia.  Ofcourse, their purpose is to control all wrestling in the world so the point wont be that NXT Middle East is a different style than NXT UK (there would likely be *some* differences because youre catering to different fans but generally the point is to teach the WWE way of working and the WWE way of writing and production to every one).

This was actually a Shane McMahon idea years ago before he quit.  Incidentally, he also wanted to do more internet based stuff and have an internet-based promotion/show.  Sort of like NXT or 205live is now.  Probably a coincidence how all Shane's "bad ideas" are now Hunter's "good ideas" lol

[The Unknown Poster]

Meltzer:

Quote

In what appears to be the end of an era, The Young Bucks & Cody, most likely Adam Page, and perhaps Christopher Daniels and Frankie Kazarian and others finish up this weekend with ROH with Final Battle on 12/14 at the Hammerstein Ballroom in New York and a television taping on 12/15 in Philadelphia at the 2300 Arena.

Cody adamantly stated that he wasn’t going to WWE, and although WWE made offers to The Young Bucks, Cody and Page, at this point it looks like all are committed to the new AEW promotion that Tony Khan is looking at starting.

 

[Goalie]

Thats cool. AEW will compete with ROH and TNA for the indy mark niche crowd. Unfortunately its not real competition for WWE. Im not sure why these guys would do this... You wont compete with WWE.  They are gonna cater to the hot topic niche market.. Modern day ECW with a less catchy name. 

Instead of competing with WWE its gonna hurt ROH MLW NJPW TNA etc... 

These guys are pretty dumb to do this if thats what it is and not some giant swerve. 

Edited December 17, 2018 by Goalie

[bigg jay]

8 minutes ago, Goalie said:

Thats cool. AEW will compete with ROH and TNA for the indy mark niche crowd. Unfortunately its not real competition for WWE. Im not sure why these guys would do this... You wont compete with WWE.  They are gonna cater to the hot topic niche market.. Modern day ECW with a less catchy name. 

Instead of competing with WWE its gonna hurt ROH MLW NJPW TNA etc... 

These guys are pretty dumb to do this if thats what it is and not some giant swerve. 

Pretty sure the intent is not to be competition for WWE, but to be more of an alternative. 

If this makes sense for them as individuals,  then how is it dumb?  For guys like the Bucks,  with young families at home, if they can make the same (or more) money without all the crazy travel, the dumb decision would be not doing it.  When you consider how much BC merch they sold without making a dime... that's a pretty good incentive to try to get some of that for themselves.

Besides, they have a big financial backer so the risk for them is probably fairly limited.  They can always go back to ROH/NJPW if it doesn't pan out.

[The Unknown Poster]

11 minutes ago, Goalie said:

Thats cool. AEW will compete with ROH and TNA for the indy mark niche crowd. Unfortunately its not real competition for WWE. Im not sure why these guys would do this... You wont compete with WWE.  They are gonna cater to the hot topic niche market.. Modern day ECW with a less catchy name. 

Instead of competing with WWE its gonna hurt ROH MLW NJPW TNA etc... 

These guys are pretty dumb to do this if thats what it is and not some giant swerve. 

Controlling their own destinies and making lots of money would be the reason.  

There are three possibilities:  1) its real and they will get a good TV deal  2) its real but they wont get a TV deal  3) its a swerve.

Anyone with any sort of content, now is the time to try and cash in.  Networks, streaming platforms etc are begging for content, especially DVR-proof content like "sports".  Its why there are multiple football leagues looking to start up suddenly.  its why UFC was bought for a huge price.  its why other MMA groups are trying to make a go of it.

Even Impact is out there having talks with multiple networks.  

What hurts ROH is lack of support from their parent company Sinclair who has more money than WWE and a built in massive syndication network.  ROH has a ceiling, imposed upon it by Sinclair.  You're 100% correct that losing the Elite guys definitely hurts what ROH is right now.  And PCO isnt a suitable replacement (they also signed Bandido who is awesome).

How much it hurts New Japan is open to debate.  New Japan is really successful and far more successful in Japan than WWE.  Of course, on a world wide basis, its a fraction of what WWE is.   If New Japan was serious about it's US expansion, then losing the Elite guys hurts.  But there has always been a debate over presenting an Americanized New Japan or a traditional New Japan when running shows in the US.  

The key thing is, all the Elite guys still want to work for New Japan.  And since New Japan isnt US-based, its entirely possible they'd keep booking them.  The decision will come when/if AEW becomes a real thing and ROH wants New Japan to maintain their relationship.  New Japan might have to choose between ROH and AEW and likely chooses AEW.  Even now, they wont let their guys work Impact.

The Elite guys look at All In, the increase in ROH attendance when the Bucks & Cody appeared (and especially Kenny which set records) and the ROH/New Japan/MSG show and think its time to strike while the iron is hot.

The idea against it is, why not just go to WWE and make money.  The problem is, you sell your soul to go to WWE.  You have to be where they tell you to be, do what they tell you do.  Put up with their crappy booking and house show schedule.  For most guys, its the most money they'll ever make.  But if you're one of the few where you make a ton of money without going to WWE...and in fact, you make more merchandising yourself than if WWE merchandised you (outside of the top 3-5 guys), in some ways you're taking a cut to go.

If you make a million dollars (just using it as a round number) and control everything about your life and career, but could make 1.5 million to have no control and risk being miserable, how much is enough money to not go?

Its hard to say because its been a long time since there was this option where the top free agents were all saying they'd negotiate together, plus you seemingly have an uber fan who is a billionaire plus lots of TV money out there for the taking and you're in the prime of your career...where if it doesnt work out, you can make a different decision in 2-3 years.

The third option...I had heard that WWE not only had deals on the table for the Elite but a major angle in mind and it would essentially be an invasion.  I suppose you could invade with just a group of 4-5 guys (like the Nexus) but if you had some legitimacy behind you as if you were your own group it could only help. 

What if All Elite Wrestling trademarks being filed is legit in the sense these guys will own it and their deal with WWE includes an invasion with realism up to and including them running their own PPV (All In 2) to create the aura of competition.  Think, Heyman's ECW which was legit competition but worked with WWE to a degree.   

[The Unknown Poster]

10 minutes ago, bigg jay said:

Pretty sure the intent is not to be competition for WWE, but to be more of an alternative. 

If this makes sense for them as individuals,  then how is it dumb?  For guys like the Bucks,  with young families at home, if they can make the same (or more) money without all the crazy travel, the dumb decision would be not doing it.  When you consider how much BC merch they sold without making a dime... that's a pretty good incentive to try to get some of that for themselves.

Besides, they have a big financial backer so the risk for them is probably fairly limited.  They can always go back to ROH/NJPW if it doesn't pan out.

The ideal scenario if you're these guys is, you keep New Japan, you keep all the indy/outside bookings you want.  But in the US, instead of being exclusive to ROH, you own your own promotion.  WWE can outbid anyone, including your own dreams.  But they've never been one to *want* to do that...they have a pay structure (thats far less than all major sports revenue splits) and arent going to guarantee Kenny, Cody and the Bucks several million dollars.

Plus you then have them merchandising you.  And if you dont have creative control, that impacts everything else (how well your merch sells, how much your draw in outside bookings).  In WWE you cant get your own side gigs.  Kenny has many endorsements and has done some acting appearances.  Cody wants to do that too. You cant in WWE...unless you have a unique deal.

From what I understand, there are "unique deals" being talked about.  But who really knows...other then the Elite.

[Brandon]

I'm not sure if it's the same but in MMA some guys make crap loads more money fighting outside of the UFC because they can get their own sponsors and control their schedule and make tonnes more doing their own thing.