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OCT 2017 WRESTLING JIBBER JABBER


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ROH averaged just over 1,100 people per show for the first six months of 2017. I don't think that falls under "drawing well". Their record setting attendance of 3,500 fell within that time period as well. Take away that show, and they are down to 990 a show.

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Whats the size of the buildings they are running? are they putting 1,100 people in 20,000 seat basketball arenas or are they putting 1,100 people in building that are filled to capacity. They are a small company that is marketed to a small niche audience. Don't front like they are trying to pack huge buildings. over 1,000 people is drawing well for them.

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Yea, I mean...1) ROH is a loss leader for Sinclair. It's meant to provide cheap programming. And, from reports, it does have a pretty good audience for its time slots. 2) They're filling the buildings they're running. 

The fact that the wrestlers aren't making money there isn't really the issue to the overall purpose of the company. The company is in as little danger of going under as they've ever been in their history, unless Sinclair decides to get out of the wrestling business. They're like a tiny WCW....except not losing 60 million a year. 

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I mean it could be better in ROH for sure I mean with Sinclair's resources I they could be marketed and advertised a lot more aggressively but that's not gonna happen.

I mean it would nice if ROH ran more dates a year and toured in more parts of the country and yeah it'd also be nice if Sinclair paid some of the performers more so they could fill out the roster with more of the top indie talent out.

And of course Delirious not being booker anymore would also help. 

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27 minutes ago, Web Conn said:

Whats the size of the buildings they are running? are they putting 1,100 people in 20,000 seat basketball arenas or are they putting 1,100 people in building that are filled to capacity. They are a small company that is marketed to a small niche audience. Don't front like they are trying to pack huge buildings. over 1,000 people is drawing well for them.

The terrible setup they have at Sam's Town looks like they can fill it, but that's a 900 seat setup. It looked bush league for Paragon Pro Wrestling, not sure why ROH bothered running that same venue.

They ran Lowell, Mass at a 2,800 seat venue (not including floor seats). According to attendance figures, they had 1,500 for the PPV, and 500 for the TV taping the following night. Less than 20% of the building was sold for the television taping. The local dumpy bar show in my town that "advertises" on phone poles in the neighbourhood can draw 20% of the building, without being on television across the United States and Canada.

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52 minutes ago, Technico Support said:

I think Alvarez said it, but it bears repeating.  The cruiserweight division worked in WCW because 1) traditional "heavyweights" actually were bigger then and 2) the style was radically different form the rest of the roster.

It also helped to have elite talent like Rey, Eddie, and Jericho anchoring the division during its peak years. There are some pretty good wrestlers in WWE's division now, but no one approaching the talent and charisma combo of those guys.

The biggest thing, though, is that the CW title never main events big shows and the cumulative effect of the "lower on the card = less important" thought process ingrained in wrestling fans. UFC weight classes work because each title main events big shows on a rotating basis, so someone like Demetrious Johnson is a big deal in a way Neville could never be in WWE.

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Prior to the CWC when was the last time anyone even used the term cruiserweights? The whole thing is passe. 

WWE saw the diehards get excited about a bunch of new talents in a new format and the light bulb went off.  "Let's put those same talents in a death slot in a tired format."

 

 

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It's really what others have said, it's presentation. We all should have known that no matter what the best idea is and the opportunity to do something different, WWE is going to do a close version of Raw. The fact this hasn't happened to NXT should be the greatest accomplishment of HHH.

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4 hours ago, Technico Support said:

I think Alvarez said it, but it bears repeating.  The cruiserweight division worked in WCW because 1) traditional "heavyweights" actually were bigger then and 2) the style was radically different form the rest of the roster.  Today, "heavyweights" are smaller, if they're not just outright cruiserweights like Balor.  How much bigger than the biggest guy on 205 Live is Sami or Seth?  And the heavyweights wrestling a more "cruiserweight" style, too.  When the only difference is, "well, these guys might be a little lighter," then what's the point?

Daniel Bryan talked about it on the E and C show. That its hard to have a cruiserweight division when AJ Styles is working as a main eventer. 

Going all the way back to 1998 with the old WWF Light Heavyweight title, X-Pac wanted no part of it or in 2000 Jericho and Eddy did not want it. Only in 01 did it catch on at all because Pac, Jerry Lynn and Jeff Hardy wanted it. 

In WCW it worked because the heavyweights were a lot bigger and every small guy of note wanted it. 

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I wonder how the cruiserweight division would get over if they scrapped 205 Live and revamp it as a PWG knockoff.  Find a modestly sized arena to film it in (does ROH have an exclusive on the 2300 Arena?) and let the cruiserweights flip their spot monkey hearts out.

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I understand what you're saying in regard to performing in front of a responsive audience but what a death sentence that would be to the CW wrestlers by effectively telling them the only place they would ever be able to get over at is Full Sail. Talk about a demotivator

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31 minutes ago, CreativeControl said:

I understand what you're saying in regard to performing in front of a responsive audience but what a death sentence that would be to the CW wrestlers by effectively telling them the only place they would ever be able to get over at is Full Sail. Talk about a demotivator

I think it makes sense at launch. Maybe over time if the show takes off you start expanding. Run small arenas. Have a Saturday night show before a ppv. Follow the nxt model. 

It's not like being featured on B & C shows filmed on days of tv have done anything for any talents. It's been a death slot for close to two decades.

My fear is what the eventual all-womens show is going to  look like. Unless they put  more thought into it's going to be 205 live 2.0.

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It's not that they can only get over in front of a smarky Full Sail crowd, it's that they can only get over in a different format. Running them out in front of tired crowds in half-empty arenas and doing a bunch of cringe-y backstage skits isn't working. Neither is going back to Divas booking, where the champion and immediate challenger are always the focus of the division and everyone else gets love triangle or comedy storylines if they're doing anything at all. Moving to something closer to the tournament presentations with a smaller, energetic crowd would allow them to show that some of these guys ARE over, which could transfer over to the main roster.

Or scrap the whole thing, throw a few of the guys on the NXT roster, and have Gallagher beat Roman for the Universal title.

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The CW division needs the NXT format of taping weeks at a time. No opportunities for constant rewrites and overbooking/thinking that plagues WWE weekly tv. And taping at a Full Sail would keep the show away from the weekly WWE "creative" team.

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I always thought it would be better if they taped 205 in the same place, and maybe had a match or two with the cruiserweights on Raw. No need to send everyone out on the road for no reason. 

17 minutes ago, w. josh said:

Or scrap the whole thing, throw a few of the guys on the NXT roster, and have Gallagher beat Roman for the Universal title.

 

That would be the greatest thing in the history of the sport!

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So at this point Delirious has been ROH booker for even longer than Gabe, right? Gabe left in 2008? My US indy wrestling fandom dropped off around the time ROH got on PPV (I recently found the Respect Is Earned DVD which I think was the last ROH show I bought), but from everything I've read it seems that Delirious has been in charge for a really long time while not really over seeing any noteworthy storylines or anything. Yeah, the Sinclair deal happened, as did working with New Japan which seems very big, but from a booking perspective there's nothing that caught the imagination like ROH-CZW, or even all the chatter around Age of the Fall, or the summer of Punk. There's very little which seems to have really broke out of ROH fans circles into a slightly broader group of people so I can't really wrap my head around Delirious having had the book for so long.

Am I being unfair? Has there been cool things I've missed? Has made the most of a time where ROH is no longer the clear top indy? I'd like to know. I'm thinking of starting going through a bunch of old ROH shows and watching them either again or for the first time so it's been on my mind anyway, and with the Jimmy Jacobs talk lately I guess I just wanted to ask about Delirious as booker.

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