Elsalvajeloco

The people who run TBS and TNT have made the clear decision to go all in (pun sort intended) in sports. Real and fake. Had ONE FC and Power Slap been successful, we would have been seeing that all across their airwaves. Through two games (first one on TNT but last night's game was on ESPN), the Lakers vs. Warriors series is averaging over 7.3 million viewers. Not the peak...averaging that. We ain't even at the conference finals yet. Obviously, it's two franchises that are popular with two well known superstars. However, that's well above what the NBA has been doing. They've been hovering probably around 1.3-2 million for most of the season. That's great for ESPN, but they have many other original programs that do just fine. TBS/TNT has hopped out of not just the scripted programming game (what happened to "We Know Drama"?) but pretty much hopped out of original programming all together. They have 1 or 2 reality shows but they don't bring any additional audience. By saying you're just going to build around basketball (not year round), baseball (also not year round), hockey (guess what...also not year round), one off annual events like The Match, and a few other sports rights ventures, you have basically said anything we get past playoff sports is gravy. AEW is that brown gravy cause WBD opted out on building their other stations in favor of making HBO and that umbrella the only destination for their scripted programming (in addition to new movies that were just in theaters, which to be fair was always a staple of HBO). They have basically told you if you're not a sports fan, don't even stay on TBS or TNT. You can pretty much find American Dad and Family Guy and most their other programming elsewhere or subscribe to Max. Therefore, they have no other choice but to be ten toes down when it comes to AEW. They have nothing to replace it with that can be as successful and they have already invested in sports packages they could afford. More importantly, they have made no attempts to find additional programming to make either TBS or TNT a welcomed destination for casual or regular TV viewers.

I am going to wait until an official announcement before I start doing cartwheels. However, even as positive thinking as I was, I might have been too conservative: https://deathvalleydriver.com/forum/index.php?/topic/10407-aew-april-2023/&do=findComment&comment=1289420 I thought a decent crowd was between 40,000 - 50,000 worst case scenario. There was that pipe dream (however brief) that UFC could have ran AT&T Stadium which was pretty new at the time with Lesnar vs. Fedor and done a record crowd. The record crowd for UFC at that time wasn't that high. The big record crowd everyone would remember among UFC fans was Georges St. Pierre vs. Jake Shields at Rogers Centre (fka Skydome) in 2011. Since then, for the stadium shows they have done they have topped out at a little over 55,000. The UFC has had some pretty big fights since UFC 129 (GSP vs. Shields), which was well over a decade ago. WCW was pretty damn hot for two or three years, and they topped out at 41,000 for the Hogan vs. Goldberg title change at the Georgia Dome. They're doing this with no card announced. That's insane.

For one solid year at least, that was a phenomenon. If you any way played into it, you were going to get that chant. Men on a Mission were the designated team in WWF to do that just like Scorpio and Bagwell in WCW. I also vaguely remember like Virgil or someone else getting those chants going as well. When in Hustle and Flow came out, you were going to hear Whoop That Trick at damn near every major boxing event. That movie came out like two decades ago and folks in Memphis still do it at Grizzlies games. If something catches fire, people are going to chant it or sing along with it.

Got my entry in with respect to the Eastern timezone. Woo! BOX OFFICE 1. Fast X (May 19) 2. Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning (Jul 14) 3. The Little Mermaid (May 26) 4. Guardians of the Galaxy 3 (May 5) 5. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (Jun 2) 6. Barbie (Jul 21) 7. Oppenheimer (Jul 21) 8. Blue Beetle (Aug 18) 9. Transformers: Rise of the Beasts (Jun 9) 10. The Flash (Jun 16) 11. Insidious: Fear The Dark (Jul 7) 12. The Meg 2: The Trench (Aug 4) 13. Asteroid City (Jun 23) 14. Gran Turismo (Aug 11) 15. Strays (Jun 9) ROTTEN TOMATOES 1. Oppenheimer (Jul 21) 2. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (Jun 2) 3. Elemental (Jun 16) 4. Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning (Jul 14) 5. Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (Jun 30) 6. The Little Mermaid (May 26) 7. Guardians of the Galaxy 3 (May 5) 8. Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken (Jun 30) 9. Fast X (May 19) 10. Blue Beetle (Aug 18) 11. The Flash (Jun 16) 12. Transformers: Rise of the Beasts (Jun 9) 13. Asteroid City (Jun 23) 14. Haunted Mansion (Jul 28) 15. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem (Aug 4) Tiebreaker: Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny - $268.4 MILLION

Man, it's crazy that on one of my insomniac driven internet searches decades ago now led me down this even bigger rabbit hole. And you know? I don't mind it one bit because I cannot name as big of an influence on a lot of my views on just not only pro wrestling but shaping how interact in my regular day-to-day life. When I saw someone like DEAN had devoted much of his life loving many of the same things I did to the point where he's convinced a bunch of people who clearly are argumentative to a fault (just like me!) on damn near everything to love those things just the same, it gave me the incentive and all the reason in the world to at least try to do the same myself and hopefully inspire people to be optimistic even if the odds seem to be very much against you. There have been many a sucky days where DVDVR and DEAN specifically put a smile on my face when I desperately needed it. Of course, this isn't anything others have missed in their comments and condolences. However, you have to love that one man gave the courage to many to express what they feel because pro wrestling's biggest strength is making people feel: good, bad, or indifferent. It may be bigger than pro wrestling, but just when the chips are down remember you gotta get that shoulder up at 2.9999. We ain't at the finish yet, kid. RIP DEAN

UFC 288: Sterling vs. Cejudo May 6, 2023 Newark, NJ (Prudential Center) UFC Bantamweight Championship: Aljamain Sterling © (134) vs. Henry Cejudo (135) (third defense) - Sterling, DEC (split) Belal Muhammad (170) vs. Gilbert Burns (171) - Muhammad, DEC (unanimous) Jéssica Andrade (115) vs. Xiaonan Yan (115) - Yan, TKO (punches), R1 (2:20) Movsar Evloev (145) vs. Diego Lopes (146) - Evloev, DEC (unanimous) Kron Gracie (145) vs. Charles Jourdain (145) - Jourdain, DEC (unanimous) ESPN / ESPN+ Preliminary Card: Drew Dober (155.5) vs. Matt Frevola (155) - Frevola, TKO (punches), R1 (4:08) Kennedy Nzechukwu (205) vs. Devin Clark (205) - Nzechukwu, SUB (guillotine choke), R2 (2:28) Kalinn Williams (169) vs. Rolando Bedoya (170) - Williams, DEC (split) Marina Rodriguez (115) vs. Virna Jandiroba (115) - Jandiroba, DEC (unanimous) ESPN+ / Fight Pass Preliminary Card: Braxton Smith (262) vs. Parker Porter (249) - Porter, TKO (punches), R1 (2:10) Phil Hawes (185) vs. Ikram Aliskerov (186) - Aliskerov, KO (punch), R1 (2:10) Joseph Holmes (189) vs. Claudio Ribeiro (185) - Ribeiro, TKO (punches), R2 (3:21) *Forfeits 20% of purse for missing weight Event Bonuses ($50,000) Performance of the Night: Matt Frevola Performance of the Night: Xiaonan Yan Fight of the Night: Movsar Evloev vs. Diego Lopes Attendance: 17,559 Gate: $5.18 million Buyrate:

Apparently, my good friend and our old mod sprewellrimz sent the link to AEW's Karen Tran (some indie fans would know her as KZT) who now works as a digital director after her stint working on NJPW on AXS. She sent it to TK. The pro wrestling community is more close knit than I thought it was. I guess we can thank DEAN for that.

Found it! What's Japanese for "you dirty, rotten scoundrels"? Greatest onscreen wrestling rib of all time.

God, they should have ribbed her like Nanae, Momoe, etc. did Manami Toyota back when AJW was doing shows at the Fuji TV headquarters. Manami climbed on top of a TV truck, and they moved out of the way instead getting in position to catch her. You never seen a woman or a wrestler period regardless of gender look as foolish as Manami getting ready to do her to big dive off the TV truck/platform and then having to climb all the way back down. This was big girl bully era Manami and it's not like she ever learned how to come down lightly before she got bigger. They probably thought screw that noise.

I think the larger story coming out of this that's both positive and negative is the quiet death of supplemental programming that also in a way served as shoulder programming. Once wrestling went national, it elevated what pro wrestling was just cause there was a great demand for it. Syndication was still big, big business and being in different markets made a huge difference to your bottom line. During the down period in the 90s, it helped keep pro wrestling alive cause people still took it serious enough where you can do angles and storylines on those platforms along with the occasional major match here and there. Now? Promotions are getting paid top dollar to do live televised shows and the more, the better. You're essentially allowing viewers to pick and choose with zero hesitation. Moreover, it's taking away another critical part of the business. House show/live events served in the role of allowing wrestlers to get more comfortable with their craft and work out their matches. By the time they got to TV they could call in the ring and know exactly what to do. You're also learning the style and ways of the promotion and how to integrate what you do best by blending it in. You're working with someone (whether singles or a tag team) so frequently that you know their strengths and weaknesses. People would have A match, a B match, and sometimes a C match. So just judging by the time they're allotted on TV, they already had it figured out and could work in whatever finish they needed to do. The supplemental programming like Superstars, Challenge, Worldwide, Pro, WCW's Main Event, and post Nitro era WCW Saturday Night added onto to that because you're getting all the benefits of what you did on house shows/live events with the added advantage of now being able to start introducing your work on television. In addition, the talents that weren't doing as much on the main shows or were brand new to that particular promotion could begin flourishing. You could also see what was and wasn't getting over, and what was or wasn't going to translate once it made television. You had levels to what made pro wrestling and each level was extremely integral. They folded right into each other. By killing these parts of the pro wrestling business, you're making a lot of pro wrestlers (many of them who are as green as astro turf) to work without a net. Pro wrestling is as sink or swim as it's ever been. I dunno if that's the best way of going about evolving pro wrestling. It's certainly better for the physical toll in many ways and probably better in terms of benefitting mental health and home life. However, just purely in terms of what impact it could have on the business, it could majorly affect the overall growth of the pro wrestlers themselves and their career progression. You're robbing Peter to pay Paul.

That's either going to be a five round takedown fest or we're going to get another upset. Very little in between there.

Sir, let me propose this hypothetical and improbable situation based on having very little evidence. First of all, we don't even know who or what is on the card let alone what situation could arise from it.

If the show managed to sell a good amount of tickets WITHOUT a match being announced, pretty sure you're not going to get an additional payoff. This ain't the 1980s and you ain't Bruiser Brody.

As someone who follows boxing religiously, why is Coppinger tweeting about wrestling? Does he cover wrestling on the side?

It's a very old Scott Keith narrative that Kip Frey was perhaps the best person to run WCW so lets tread lightly. Being serious though, maybe Kip's biggest misstep was turning WCW Saturday Night into that weird quasi talk show. However, when you think about it, the most early to mid 90s thing (bringing back the Springer connection) was the trashy talk show. If you remember, between the old Prime Time Wrestling format w/ Bobby and Gorilla and the Vince roundtable version with two people on either side, WWF did a similar thing and it was quite terrible. However, I cannot really fault pro wrestling for getting with the times. I can fault it for sucking, but I am not going to complain that much about them doing something new. IIRC he also signed Ventura. The problem with that is I don't think Jesse did what he was able to do for WWF. His connection to the glory days of WWF didn't really resonate with the WCW audience. Then, he just became a burden in terms of what his deal did financially for the later regimes to the point where he ultimately ended up gone as his place became less secure with WCW constantly signing folks who jumped ship and not fitting in to a company that (turns out) doesn't need a star color commentator.

How much did he (Bill) really want to compete with Vince in the middle of the height of WWF's success? What would be Bill's counter to the MegaPowers exploding? 1989 had some crappy stuff like the Ding Dongs, but it also had the Flair/Steamboat trilogy, the introduction of the Great Muta to the U.S. audience, the Flair/Funk feud, and some other good stuff. I mean Starrcade: Future Shock kinda killed some of the momentum, but it was a good year considering 1988 was them trying recover from what looked to be a financial collapse. Watts had pressure on him in 1992. Three years earlier, that's even more pressure and scrutiny. I think one of the bigger issues with Herd was it always felt that WCW was one step forward, three steps back. The Sting injury didn't help of course, but it felt like a lot of it was their own undoing. Bill would have had the luxury in 1992 of WWF falling apart at the seams, and it not getting better. The business stateside was begging for a savior. After the pizza guy and Kip Frey who was there for maybe 3 months, they (the people who felt they know wrestling) finally had their wrestling guy....and he preceded to somehow do worse than those guys. Could he have done better if he wasn't five years removed from following wrestling? It's possible. It's also possible he would have floundered even more knowing the WWF is gangbusters, and he's coming in facing a major deficit even if he would have had more critical success. All I know is he still had the pieces in 1992 to do better than he did.

Can you retract this? Also, are you still a multi-millionaire by the way?

......

Right, not A_K. **wink wink** Wait, several decades? Also, how do you know? I mean AR15 or whatever his name is could have been here posting about the ratings on the DuMont network and how YOY they beat the shit that's on ABC. He has his finger on the pulse, daddy. It's not like folks always had the same screenname.

Since WWE is in Puerto Rico this week, how about a good ole fashion, absolute bloodbath in San Juan? There is a disturbing amount of bloodshed in this match. Did I mention that?

You're right A_K **wink wink**. I respect you, bookerman.

I dunno about it being killer, but I believe had Pillman time to develop his personality more and of course dealt a bad hand with injuries and addiction, he probably could have found something that worked. I think he obsessed too much on getting one over on the marks. You can hear it in the Kim Wood interviews that pair loved all the shit that come from it even though there was absolutely no payoff for it. There was a small time he was with the Horsemen right before the I respect you booker man stuff where he was starting to get back to where he was with the Blondes. However, it was obviously cut short. Outside the handful of weeks he was paired with Goldust before he unfortunately passed away, his stuff didn't really register with me other than a guy trying way too hard.

If it was a 2 hour tape, they probably edited off random stuff to fit in the main matches and what they could around those matches. On paper, it seems like it's more bang for your buck especially when you're younger but WCW had some of the most random ass matches on PPVs.

The Blondes split hurt Pillman way, way more than it hurt Austin and you can see it over the next 3 1/2 years. Austin got stuck with Colonel Parker when he didn't really need a mouthpiece. Rewatching Pillman in 1994 right now, he got sent back to be Flyin Brian. Keep in mind, Pillman turns 32 in 3 weeks time where I am at on my rewatch. He was way too old to be the plucky underdog babyface. Once he got to do something different, he spent a whole lotta time overcorrecting the issue of not having that chance to break out. Once he got his ankle fused, that was the end of it. You can see though the Loose Cannon stuff wasn't connecting like he thought it would. The commentary on Raw and Shotgun he does where he's basically the anti-woke guy who says controversial shit didn't gel then and definitely is horrendous now. He was trying too hard. If I had my druthers, he gets to spends 6-9 more months in the Blondes and develop more. Then, you can break them up and give Pillman something different than being Flyin Brian when he feuds with Austin. Also, of course, he doesn't have the hummer accident.