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MAY 2016 WRESTLING DISCUSSION THREAD

RIPPA

By RIPPA
in The PROFESSIONAL WRESTLING

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The Natural

The Natural

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Posted

I went to my third ever wrestling event last month, WWE Live to go with April 2015 and November 2015. The show was originally designated as a Daniel Bryan Appreciation Night but that got nixed. I bought the usual WWE Live/I Was There shirt, Kevin Owens Fight Owens Fight and AJ Styles. I’d say the shirts are better fit this time around compared to November, the AJ Styles one is a little baggier to the other two.

I was able to see wrestlers I’ve not seen live before and wanted to: AJ Styles who I’ve watched since 2005 liking as a wrestler and Sami Zayn. In a welcome surprise I got to see Goldust! Poor bugger had to paint his face for a two minute save of R-Truth. A current favourite of mine, Kevin Owens was on the show. I also watched him last November.

There were two wrestlers I wanted to see for the first time, Luke Harper was going to be on this show but he’s done his ACL in and Sasha Banks who wasn’t here. Banks was with Charlotte and Becky Lynch on a different show at the same time. I’d seen Charlotte and Becky Lynch last November.

Wrestling wise, this was the weakest of the three shows. The eight women tag team match was bad and even worse when Eva Marie tagged in. I’ll put the photos up on Facebook when my camera’s hopefully fixed.

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The Comedian

The Comedian

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16 hours ago, Smelly McUgly said:

I am going to have to disagree. Austin/Angle from Summerslam '01 is great and definitely re-watchable, and I'll go out on a limb and say that it, not either of the Austin/Bret matches, is Austin's best WWF/E match ever, even with the cop-out finish.

Yeah I mean, are we forgetting Austin's whole '01 comeback where he was having great TV matches on a weekly basis? The Angle and Benoit stuff where he altered his style to spam vertical and gut wrench suplexes, the later Angle feud where they worked around the threat of a basic piledriver, that was some fantastic shit.

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JohnnyJ

JohnnyJ

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20 hours ago, JRGoldman said:

For what it's worth, Cena finished 30th in the GWE poll and Austin finished 24th. It's a noteworthy discussion and it's not apples and oranges. The people defending Austin are doing so based on qualitative things; his charisma, his aura. I don't think anyone will argue that Steve Austin had more of an allure, and for most of us, was around during a more formative part of our fanhood. That being said, John Cena has had a metric ton of great matches at this point. My initial point was purely based on in ring accomplishments, and I think that Cena based on sheer output is way ahead of Austin. Even if you think their top 5 matches or so are comparable, Cena crushes Austin under the weight of so many tremendous TV matches, week in and week out. 

 

Under this criteria isn't Cena the best wrestler ever? The monthly ppvs and weekly shows with ppv-quality matches are a product of the last twenty years. This means anyone who is above-average in the ring and has been featured prominently for a long period over this era will have a large number of high quality tv matches and ppv matches which would dwarf wrestlers with short runs or from previous eras.

 

  

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Brysynner

Brysynner

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So it seems Adam Rose got arrested, this time for battery domestic violence and tampering with a witness....this is just a sad 30 days for him. I feel especially bad for his wife and son since it seems she was the full-time caretaker of her son and with Adam's potential firing, I just hope she has friends and family to help her through this time

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The Natural

The Natural

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40 minutes ago, Playa Shunna Ver 3.0 said:

Adam Rose got arrested for battery and tampering with a witness.  Not good for him.   I hope he gets his shit straightened out.  I was pulling for him after that NXT special.  

http://www.hcso.tampa.fl.us/PublicInquiry/ArrestInquiry/ViewArrest?id=16018149&k1=8d3798bb6403663&k2=MTMyMzMxMzYwMA%3d%3d

 

Wow. That's not good.

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Jiji

Jiji

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28 minutes ago, Playa Shunna Ver 3.0 said:

Most of his criticisms at least seemed to be based on some truth.  I love Bret though.  I'll always take his side.  

I think his notions on Hunter are distorted from his long-lasting hatred of the man's role in the screw job. He's been sour on Malenko since Bret got hurt in their match way back when too. I was surprised to hear Bret, being a big hockey fan, throw the WWE agents under the bus. Wayne Gretzky and most great players in sports turn out to be average coaches at best. It's the guys that had to work smarter and harder than the talented elites that generally make for the best coaches. I think the same would often apply to wrestling. 

Also love him disrespecting Arn and then giving shout out to Nash as a great worker. 

Bret was my favourite as a kid and his book was one of the most entertaining biographies I've ever read. He's so cranky and bitter now though and I've accepted that stage in his life and enjoy it for what it is.

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cwoy2j

cwoy2j

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30 minutes ago, Playa Shunna Ver 3.0 said:

Whenever I would see Hunter play the tough guy oon TV my mind would immediately recall him sitting there like a little pussy geting dressed down by Bret's wife.  

Someday God is gonna strike you down. Just remember someday Hunter, what goes around comes around.

HHH just stands there looking down at his shoes.

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Charlie M.

Charlie M.

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I'm not sure if bitter is the right word to describe Bret because he seems to genuinely be enjoying his life and that comes through on his podcast. He's just never really been interested in playing politics and will say what he feels. I think for every person he says negative stuff about there's about ten people he praises and says great things about. It's just the ones he doesn't like are pretty prominent figures in wrestling.

He put Wade Barrett over huge this week on his podcast, for example.

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nate

nate

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I always imagine H going afterwards with Shawn, saying something, "Maan, if she had said one more thing/ if we didn't get out of there when we did, I was going to slap the shit out of her."  To nods of approval.

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Playa Shunna Ver 3.0

Playa Shunna Ver 3.0

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15 minutes ago, nate said:

I always imagine H going afterwards with Shawn, saying something, "Maan, if she had said one more thing/ if we didn't get out of there when we did, I was going to slap the shit out of her."  To nods of approval.

Nah.  Hunter is a pussy.  Bret would have wiped the fucking floor with him if he put his hands up to his wife.  

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cwoy2j

cwoy2j

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I'm still surprised that Triple H somehow got himself on the booking committee and had the ear of Vince McMahon and main eventer/world champion HBK after only being in the WWF for like 2 years and the business as a whole for 5 years. Everyone talks about how he married Stephanie but he was a McMahon guy long before that.

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Greggulator

Greggulator

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I have finished my first semester of my MBA program. One of my classes required a final project where I would analyze the financial statements of a publicly traded company and ultimately make a recommendation on their stock price. I naturally chose the WWE.

My findings:

1) The WWE is a very conservatively run company for the most part. A lot of companies (particularly media ones, which the WWE is) have all sorts of branches and segments. The WWE is so simple. They produce wrestling content and make money directly off of that. They make money from people watching wrestling and buying ancillary products afterwards. They keep it simple, and that's a great thing. I think Vince learned his lessons from the XFL and bodybuilding and other debacles.

2) The biggest risk they took was the WWE Network, obviously. I don't know of any other company that looks to generate content and also control almost all of its distribution. They are WAY ahead of the curve here. Major sports have streaming services but they broadcast live games and that's pretty much it. The WWE has an insane amount of content available.

3) The WWE Network has worked incredibly well for the company's bottom line. Media division revenue rose by $85 million in 2015 compared to 2014. That's almost all because of network subscriptions. They had 1.2 million at the end of 2015 and are projecting to end at 1.8 million this year according to their last earnings call, which was last year.

4) Their liquidity ratios (which determines if a company could pay back creditors if it were to go bankrupt) have narrowed a lot in the past five years. On its face, that's troubling. But with the greater context -- that's not a bad thing at all. It means they're investing in their own product more, via the network and all the content they have to produce. They were too conservative five years ago. Now they're taking a risk by reinventing a large part of their business model (moving to the Network from PPV and DVD sales). It's paid off a lot already.

5) The WWE's profit margin has shrunk in recent years but rebounded in 2015. However, their Net Operating Asset Turnover (a measure of the efficiency of a company's assets that directly make money for the company) have improved dramatically. Their products are efficient and make money.

6) The WWE has a ridiculously low amount of debt. They have no outstanding bonds. They have access to credit obviously, but they are very risk averse when it comes down to going to lending markets looking for money. Essentially, any investments they make come from their own cash resources. That's not a bad thing at all.

7) The WWE will always be prone to dramatic price swings. They don't have a lot of shares on the market relative to its size compared to other companies. It doesn't take a lot of trading to move their price one way or the other. Most of the time, their stock price won't fluctuate one way or the other. But in case of bad news (like the TV contract), it will swing prices dramatically downwards. And good news (maybe a surprising pop in subscriptions) would go the other way. But for the most part, the company is going to trade in a very narrow range.

8) The company is also structured in that it cannot become part of a hostile takeover. The McMahon's own an insane amount of restricted shares with massive voting power. Another company could buy up every share traded publicly and would only have something like 1/10th the voting power Vince and Co. would have. They will ultimately decide to sell the company or not. It's a smart move, because some business press murmurs said a company like Viacom might be interested in the WWE to some degree since media companies need content more than ever, and there's also a unique distribution channel.

9) Based on what the company says (which you have to take with a grain of salt), they're predicting revenue growth in 2016 somewhere between 7% and 9%. All of the growth is essentially dependent on the success of the WWE Network, which already has a track record of success.

10) I went with the higher end of their projections when making my stock price target. I ended up with an estimate of about $17.50/share. That's right in the range it's currently trading at. This means the market agrees with the company's projections. It's fairly valued right now, which would be a HOLD rating. (And that's not a bad thing. You can buy a bunch of WWE shares and collect their decent 48 cent per share dividend and wait for a move in price. If it's up on the high side, you make money. If it falls, the cash from the dividend acts as a buffer of sorts.)

11) The 2014 collapse of the stock price was really crazy. I wasn't following the stock then, but it looks like it was completely overvalued based largely on hopes that their TV deal would get money like NASCAR or something similar. However, the rights fees bubble burst right when the WWE was going for its contract. And at the same time they changed their business model. The market expected something that did not happen, and the price bottomed out. I wish I bought when it bottomed out. If I were to buy 1,000 shares last year, that would cost around $10,000. Those shares today are worth about $18,000. That's a really great return. I don't think the stock price is going to go dramatically higher anytime soon, but that was a great value buy when it bottomed out.

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Cristobal

Cristobal

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51 minutes ago, Charlie M. said:

I'm not sure if bitter is the right word to describe Bret because he seems to genuinely be enjoying his life and that comes through on his podcast. He's just never really been interested in playing politics and will say what he feels. I think for every person he says negative stuff about there's about ten people he praises and says great things about. It's just the ones he doesn't like are pretty prominent figures in wrestling.

He put Wade Barrett over huge this week on his podcast, for example.

Take the knee-jerk certainty of the most opinionated, up-their-own-ass internet posters you know, and combine that with the experience of actually having been a top guy in the business and you've got Bret Hart. He likes what he likes and doesn't like what he doesn't like, and no one is going to convince him otherwise.

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Charlie M.

Charlie M.

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Bret might be a poster on this board considering he spent about 5-10 minutes on his podcast lamenting the lack of big blob wrestlers today, talking about how he'd like to see them maul about 15 Dolph Zigglers and wondering why Mark Henry wasn't used better.

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