joseph2112

He'd be Cesaro.

A great episode of Arn! this week (maybe the best one yet), they sort of live watched some stuff from Superbrawl 2. I was DYING laughing listening to Arn talk and make sounds during the Simmons/Cactus match.

So I had a wrestling dream a bit ago. We were at a fever-dream carnival and at the end of the night there was supposed to be a wrestling match featuring the Honkey Tonk Man. So we walked to this stage with a curtain and when it rose up it was just a killed jobber with pieces of a busted guitar laying around. That's it, shows over. The strange thing is apparently this was the funniest GD thing I ever saw because I was laughing so hard it woke me up. Then I couldn't stop laughing and my wife woke up and was wondering what the hell was wrong with me and what was so funny. And it still makes me laugh a little. And before anyone suggests it, I'll print this post out and take it to therapy.

I am a lifelong auto racing fan and much like WWE, I'm almost completely out on Nascar. It's interesting the similarities between the two in some respects int hat there is a large contingency of online fans who just love to bury and complain about it. They also have terrible declining business metrics in almost every area except TV rights and they spent YEARS not reading the marketplace/society and going with the "if you leave, someone else will just take your seat" business plan. Their TV strength though, is that they have a hardcore base that can draw anytime. for instance, this fall they had 2.57 million viewers for their race in Phoenix which was an all time low. But, it's on a Sunday afternoon directly against the NFL. For a company like NBC who doesn't have Sunday afternoon football, that's quite the audience and I'm not sure there is anything else that can get those numbers. The "create a star" thing is real to a point, Dale Jr was the biggest name but his career started with a bang and slowly fizzled. He never won the top series championship and you could probably chart the downward spiral of the series right along with his career. (Which would be a good book, btw, but Nascar reporters are mostly hard shills for the sport). Their "national expansion" basically happened in the early 2000's, they alienated their longtime base, the casuals all figured out it's kind of boring and left and now they are stuck trying to figure out how to bring people back. That sounds familiar. Anyway, more than you ever wanted to know about Nascar, sorry for the long post.

5% up today, I'll take it.

Stock opened another 15% down. At this point this is an overreaction. I bought some.

I doubt Vince would ever sell but then there is that one small fever dream I have of him getting 5b for the thing and power walking off stage as the greatest carny of all time.

Well if it happened immediately, there are all of the guaranteed TV deals already in place which make it very valuable. The other thing is it's the brand name "WWE". It's pro wrestling to anybody except for people like us. I would say there are other things for sure, but just being the WWE is what is the most valuable thing.

You may believe that after a Roman heel turn he wouldn't have been able to eventually turn that into a mega babyface run, but your wrong. The WWE isn't going it of business anytime soon, but they've lost 25% of their value since Thursday. I'm an small time stock trader for about five years and I've rarely if ever seen that from a big company. It's shocking.

Somewhere along the line the WWE lost track of the fact that they are a professional wrestling company. Not a merch sales company, not a internet service provider or a make a wish foundation. That's their core business. The most glaring example is the mishandling of Roman. Put him over. If he's not getting over as a face, turn him mega heel. ( I know, the "smarks" would just cheer him because he's heel. They had no problem booing DB as a heel, that argument is closed, thanks). 18 months as a heel and he turns as the biggest babyface you have. But nope, he sells the most merch! If they did pro wrestling first, they'd be fine.

Much like plays near the end of the 28-3 disaster, this will be the sequence I remember as the worst head scratcher. I think SFwas averaging like 9 yards a carry and the goal there is to take time off the clock.

The Rock does the 49er's and Stone Cold DOESN'T do the Chiefs? Whose booking this?

If WWE put NXT on USA for free that's pretty much textbook predatory/anti-trust business and serious lawsuit bait. Of course the current political climate might make that pretty difficult.

I think all of this is a little from all of the columns available. The "mixed" reaction has become the hottest thing they've been able to generate year over year based on a lot of things, one being the fact that the product is ice cold. Again, many reasons for that ranging from poor storytelling (their fault) to over saturation (a byproduct of the $). We've hand wrung about it for years but the bottom line I see is that the WWE doesn't really care about the mixed reaction. It beats the holy hell out of silence. If they cared they would do something about i t. And I'm feeling we're about to get Knighted here in a minute, lol.

For the pub I'd have him come out and punch MJF in the face if he would do it.

That definitely brings up this memory. Yeesh.

100/100.

And yet I wonder what the Sarge would think if I went around telling people I was a former WWF big shot or something.

The thing is, after 2001 the WWE owned the wrestling landscape so hard they could have formed it into anything they wanted, but the shows are still very similar today. With the normal caveat that they've done well. It's always difficult to judge where any monopoly business could or would be.

Randy Orton.

The Arn Anderson podcast is the best, you can't change my mind. I know you can only read between the lines so much but I think that Arn might be one of the most independently wealthy retired wrestlers there is. He bought one house in Charlotte in the 80's and still lives there, couple that with the money he talks about/infers that he has made the guy has to be living a nice retirement.

The best part of the Arn podcast this week was the story of him slapping the dumb off of disco's face.

I mean, that is the old school territory way. Bring a guy in, launch him to the moon and see what happens. It's a lot easier to shuffle someone down than it is to push them up. New idea: Put him in a 50/50 feud with Corbin.

I think the likelihood of PCO wrestling at some point in AEW is high, and when that happens he should be presented with a trophy because that's pretty much all of them. The list of companies that guy hasn't worked for is longer than the ones he has.

And you skipped right over the part where WWE is sending their heels out to get heat by using a foreign language.