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December 2022 Wrestling Discussion

Dolfan in NYC

By Dolfan in NYC
in The PROFESSIONAL WRESTLING

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The Natural

The Natural

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When you watch a great match and you can't get back to sleep? That's me from Bryan Danielson vs. Dax Harwood on AEW Dynamite just now. It's the 1st of December UK time, 03:35am. The last month of one of the most historic in all of wrestling history. It will be remembered as such.

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Dolfan in NYC

Dolfan in NYC

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This is one of those rare months that neither the WWE (main roster), nor AEW is running a PPV/PLE.   

Notably though, Mandy Rose hit 400 days as NXT Women's Champ yesterday.  As a reminder, she passes Asuka as longest NXT Women's Champ of all time on night 1 of WrestleMania next year!

Happy holidays!

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The Natural

The Natural

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17 minutes ago, Dolfan in NYC said:

This is one of those rare months that neither the WWE (main roster), nor AEW is running a PPV/PLE.   

Notably though, Mandy Rose hit 400 days as NXT Women's Champ yesterday.  As a reminder, she passes Asuka as longest NXT Women's Champ of all time on night 1 of WrestleMania next year!

Happy holidays!

I liked how Starrcade became the biggest PPV of WCW when it was moved to the last month of year. There's only a few memorable WWF December matches.

I'm hoping we get Asuka vs. Mandy Rose just before to stop her taking the record as longest NXT Women's Champion. That's one of my favourite things in wrestling like Hiroshi Tanahashi wanting to stop Kazuchika Okada V12 as IWGP Heavyweight Champion. Recently The New Day failing to stop the Usos WWE Undisputed World Tag Team Championship reign.

Edited by The Natural
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The Natural

The Natural

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9 minutes ago, evidence said:

A reminder that it's been so long since I've watched the Bret vs Davey INY main event 

That's the match I was thinking of when making that post. I too need to see it again. Haven't for ages. I remember preferring it to the SummerSlam 1992 match.

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Cobra Commander

Cobra Commander

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Posted (edited)
1 hour ago, The Natural said:

There's only a few memorable WWF December matches

just remembered how the WWF's December 1997 taping schedule was basically "let's take off some time for the holiday"

  • PPV on December 7th in Springfield, Massachusetts
  • Raw on December 8th in Portland, Maine
  • Raw taping on December 9th in Durham, New Hampshire (to air December 15th)
  • House Show in Bangor, Maine on December 10th
  • Raw taping on Thursday December 11th in Lowell, Massachusetts (to air December 22nd)

So after putting the TV in the can, they went to Tennessee for the weekend (Chattanooga 12/12, Nashville 12/13, Memphis 12/14, Little Rock, Arkansas 12/15), and then that's it until December 26th (in Milwaukee/Chicago). With the Memphis and Little Rock shows involving Lawler/Jarrett vs HBK/HHH matches that never happened because the fans threw things at Michaels/Helmsley.

1997 might be just about the last time that a promotion with national cable could tape their weekly show 11 days before it aired despite having a live rival (who used that advantage to have the NWO do a half hour of construction on that 12/22/97 Nitro)

Edit: thinking about it, the routing is a little weird. It's 3 hours from Springfield MA to Portland ME, then an hour from Durham to Portland, then 3 hours from Durham to Bangor, then 3 hours from Bangor to Lowell. They ran 3 consecutive Raws within an hour drive of each other (an hour from Durham to Lowell, 90 minutes from Portland to Lowell) but also they went to Bangor for a show in-between. And also it's the Northeast in December.

Edited by Cobra Commander
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Elsalvajeloco

Elsalvajeloco

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28 minutes ago, Cobra Commander said:

just remembered how the WWF's December 1997 taping schedule was basically "let's take off some time for the holiday"

  • PPV on December 7th in Springfield, Massachusetts
  • Raw on December 8th in Portland, Maine
  • Raw taping on December 9th in Durham, New Hampshire (to air December 15th)
  • House Show in Bangor, Maine on December 10th
  • Raw taping on Thursday December 11th in Lowell, Massachusetts (to air December 22nd)

So after putting the TV in the can, they went to Tennessee for the weekend (Chattanooga 12/12, Nashville 12/13, Memphis 12/14, Little Rock, Arkansas 12/15), and then that's it until December 26th (in Milwaukee/Chicago). With the Memphis and Little Rock shows involving Lawler/Jarrett vs HBK/HHH matches that never happened because the fans threw things at Michaels/Helmsley.

1997 might be just about the last time that a promotion with national cable could tape their weekly show 11 days before it aired despite having a live rival (who used that advantage to have the NWO do a half hour of construction on that 12/22/97 Nitro)

Edit: thinking about it, the routing is a little weird. It's 3 hours from Springfield MA to Portland ME, then an hour from Durham to Portland, then 3 hours from Durham to Bangor, then 3 hours from Bangor to Lowell. They ran 3 consecutive Raws within an hour drive of each other (an hour from Durham to Lowell, 90 minutes from Portland to Lowell) but also they went to Bangor for a show in-between. And also it's the Northeast in December.

I know they come up with the schedule months in advance, but going back to Lowell in the type of venue for TV in late 97 feels weird even if technically they were still getting their ass kicked by WCW. It felt like a televised house show except with a bullshit bait and switch title change. It also felt like everyone was on autopilot knowing they were about to have time off finally.

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Cobra Commander

Cobra Commander

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WWF, December 1998

  • December 1st: Raw taping in New Haven
  • December 6th: Capital Carnage in London
  • December 13th: Rock Bottom in Vancouver
  • December 14th: Raw in Tacoma
  • December 15th: Raw taping in Spokane
  • December 26th: House Show at the Rosemont Horizon
  • December 27th: House Show at Madison Square Garden
  • December 28th: Raw in Albany
  • December 29th: Raw taping in Worcester

And that's the entire month for the promotion about to pull away with the ratings.

WCW going live every Monday was in the Astrodome on December 7th (drawing 32 thousand), Tampa on December 14th, The TWA Dome in St. Louis on December 21st (drawing 25 thousand), Starrcade in Washington DC and Baltimore for the December 28th Nitro.

WCW was drawing 20k+ multiple times for Nitro in a 30 day period and really the only thing you'll remember of that run is that they did the Fingerpoke in front of 39 thousand people in the Georgia Dome. In a way it's astounding how quickly they fucked it all up.

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SirSmUgly

SirSmUgly

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14 hours ago, The Natural said:

When you watch a great match and you can't get back to sleep? That's me from Bryan Danielson vs. Dax Harwood on AEW Dynamite just now. It's the 1st of December UK time, 03:35am. The last month of one of the most historic in all of wrestling history. It will be remembered as such.

I saw some clips of this online, and unfortunately, they led me away from watching the whole thing. Some of those exchanges looked REALLY choreographed. I also don't get off on dudes actually chopping the shit out of each other as hard as they can anymore. I'm part of the Bret Hart school of "we're only supposed to be pretending to hurt one another, not actually hurting one another," I guess.

I feel like AEW is interesting in that there are some workers who I believe could have awesome matches to my liking, but they tend to value pace, athleticism, and stiffness over everything else. 

Not to say that WWE seems to be better, at least on a small sample size. I don't ever watch that, but my wife was flipping channels and stopped on Smackdown on Friday. She ragged on the neo-Norse tag team that was on (their act was goofy, tbh). That stuff looks REALLY choreographed, in a way that I think is way more apparent since I stopped watching. 

Then we watched a Ruth Goodman show on the Knowledge Channel and wondered whether some of Goodman's crafting and sewing is worked or not. I guess what I'm saying is that Ruth Goodman might just be an elite worker. 

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Cobra Commander

Cobra Commander

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Jericho/Kojima had sort of the over-chereographed chopfest thing which might have faded into the background when Jericho got his chest busted open.

At the risk of suggesting ideas for Jericho, but I would have put a giant chest bandage over that wound for a few weeks too long so that there's a pop whenever some babyface finally takes that bandage off.

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Log

Log

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16 minutes ago, Cobra Commander said:

Jericho/Kojima had sort of the over-chereographed chopfest thing which might have faded into the background when Jericho got his chest busted open.

At the risk of suggesting ideas for Jericho, but I would have put a giant chest bandage over that wound for a few weeks too long so that there's a pop whenever some babyface finally takes that bandage off.

Jericho could go full sports-entertainment and start wearing a chest protector.

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Raziel

Raziel

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3 minutes ago, Dolfan in NYC said:

If there was ever a place to bring back "Thunderdome"

I will only except this if it's hosted by Tina Turner.

 

I mean I know she's probably not in any kind of shape to do it, but still...

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Elsalvajeloco

Elsalvajeloco

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Yeah they're not getting into boxing (again).

Dana White said that shit for six years, then realized that every other promoter is going to freeze him out, and just flat out abandoned that idea.

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JLowe

JLowe

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48 minutes ago, Raziel said:

I'm also confused at what other foreign promotions are even worth buying at this point for them.  All of the main "International" promotions are likely not selling.

surely there's some other wealthy, oppressive dictatorship they can get in bed with.

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SirSmUgly

SirSmUgly

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I assume most of that Khan-and-Steph speak is for the sake of investors because WWE has like zero growth potential outside of pro wrestling, and pro wrestling is not exactly on fire right now as a form of entertainment, especially in this fragmented market. 

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Elsalvajeloco

Elsalvajeloco

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2 hours ago, SirSmellingtonofCascadia said:

I assume most of that Khan-and-Steph speak is for the sake of investors because WWE has like zero growth potential outside of pro wrestling, and pro wrestling is not exactly on fire right now as a form of entertainment, especially in this fragmented market. 

Not that anything outside WWE and a potentially profitable AEW isn't a money pit, it's that boxing is the ultimate boom or bust business. And not even like an audible boom you can show off. More closer to a very low roar. If I have an investors call, the last thing I would tell them is I'm going into boxing.

Even if they wanted to go the Tyson Fury route, he is already splitting the pie with Top Rank on the US side and Frank Warren on the UK side. It would be silly for him to hand out another portion to someone else when he himself isn't a huge draw.

If they wanted to do it with Logan Paul, that celebrity boxing interest is dissipating fast. We're having big name ex NFL players fight and either no one knows the fights are happening or the people who do know just don't give a shit cause the fights suck. Granted, it started off with way more interest than the original run of celebrity fights 15 years ago. However, it's cooled off tremendously. I mean they probably could be the third wheel co promoter when he fights some Youtuber, but that's a weird way to piss away money when the last several years they've been risk averse.

If they try to go all in where they try to build around one huge star (none out there really so yeah), the America Presents promotional model 20+ years ago proves that ain't going to work. They (a combo of businessman Mat Tinley and late boxing promoter/hustler Dan Goossen of the famed Goossen boxing family) were able to woo Mike Tyson for a handful of fights in his final years of relevancy as a fighter in the hopes of luring away a potential megastar in the making. At the time, they said as much themselves saying they were looking for the next Mike Tyson. Guess what? Almost two and a half decades later, folks are still in search for the next Mike Tyson. America Presents lasted 3 or 4 years and then went away quickly as they appeared. We're talking about a time in boxing where the landscape was much more open and friendly to promoters that weren't Bob Arum or Don King. You had the aforementioned America Presents, you had Cedric Kushner Promotions which had Sugar Shane Mosley and Virgil Hill, you had Square Ring promoting Roy Jones Jr., you had the revival of Forum Boxing that Jerry Buss started which had Mark "Too Sharp" Johnson and a bunch of great Mexican boxers like Juan Manuel Marquez and Marco Antonio Barrera, you had Main Events which promoted Lennox Lewis, Evander Holyfield, Vernon Forrest, and Arturo Gatti, and a few other notable promotions. Now? It's Bob Arum, Eddie Hearn, and Al Haymon with De La Hoya's promotion Golden Boy barely hanging on. If you're not with those first three especially, good luck trying to be a star or running a show that makes ANY money.

That monopoly is so strong it absolutely ended an American premium cable staple in HBO boxing, which was around for decades. No one is going to break that monopoly. 50 Cent didn't do it. Jay Z didn't do it. Triller certainly hasn't done it. As already mentioned, Dana White didn't even get out of the starting blocks. He got so frustrated he just decided to fucking promote slap boxing instead and get it legalized as an actual sport in Nevada. If Dana White the most equipped person for something like that (even with all his shortcomings) doesn't want the smoke, Nick Khan and Paul Levesque definitely don't want that smoke.

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