JANUARY 2020 Wrestling Discussion

[Ace]

On 1/27/2020 at 10:44 PM, Casey said:

 

Are you talking about the woman at 0:48? Because I don't think that's Mae Young.

Mae Young's real name is Johnnie Mae Young. That isn't her.

 

[ChesterCopperpot]

"Glamourpuss" 

 

[Hooker]

20 hours ago, West Newbury Bad Boy said:

Quite the opposite. I've long since made my peace with those reactions and think they're super useful. They create the best atmospheres and the biggest big match feel of anything in WWE. Everyone should aspire to get reactions that visceral and raw. Cena and Roman matches (especially before the cancer) were better off because of just how nuts those guys drive a large segment of the audience. Hopefully as Mania season goes on, Charlotte can get some of that Corbin heat. 

Super useful hostile crowd reactions? How's that working out?

[John from Cincinnati]

15 minutes ago, Hooker said:

Super useful hostile crowd reactions? How's that working out?

Cool graph, TJ Hooker. Should we discuss anything that might provide context regarding television ratings and viewership over the last couple decades? Or should we just skip to the fact that their B-show is still good for $5 billion? AEW can't crack a million most weeks and they just got renewed for four years. TV ain't what it was. 

Edited January 29, 2020 by West Newbury Bad Boy

[Kang]

Drew said Heyman is letting Raw wrestlers show more personality.

[SirSmUgly]

I get the points of both @Hooker and @West Newbury Bad Boy, but I don't think that TV networks overvaluing live programming in this moment is really a great, complete response either. Aren't Network numbers cratering? Isn't live show attendance very low?

 

[John from Cincinnati]

4 minutes ago, Smelly McUgly said:

I get the points of both @Hooker and @West Newbury Bad Boy, but I don't think that TV networks overvaluing live programming in this moment is really a great, complete response either. Aren't Network numbers cratering? Isn't live show attendance very low?

Don't know about the Network numbers, but I haven't heard a good thing about house show attendance in ages. And yes, TV networks are definitely overvaluing live content. It can't last forever. 

That said, I don't think crowds being salty about "overpushed" wrestler X have anything to do with it and would still push back on that point. There will always be a storytelling use for people who get that reaction. There's a myriad more valid explanations for the decline illustrated above. Like a product that's pretty much cold from top to bottom. 

[Ryan]

Also, a lack of Austin, The Rock, Undertaker and others all at the exact same time with a super strong opposing company. Mostly that.

[Brian Fowler]

My apologies if this has been talked about elsewhere:

If the details that have been reported about Edge's contract are true, then goddamn. And good for him.

Allegedly 3 matches a year, around 25 tv appearances (I couldn't tell from the way it was written if that was per year or total) for 3 years, at $3 million per year.

[Phantom Lord]

1 hour ago, Hooker said:

Super useful hostile crowd reactions? How's that working out?

I'm trying to remember what exactly the WWF was up against during the peak of the attitude era when they were drawing over 6 million viewers. I have to wonder in today's tv world, even with peak Austin and Rock, I don't think they would come even close to those numbers. There's simply too much competition. 

[nofuture]

Here's a good graph showing the change in tv viewing habits since 2010. 

[Brian Fowler]

We don't even need to overthink this so much. In 2017 when they signed the new TV deals, part of the reason they got such a great pair of deals was that their ratings had held steady year over year from 2016, when almost everything else on TV had dropped. Almost immediately after inking the contracts, the ratings started falling, and the drop just since mid-17 is pretty damn precipitous.

[joseph2112]

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.

[Kang]

I've read that WWE is cutting down the amount of live events.

[Wyld Samurai]

ya know... if Darby Allin ever teamed w/ Thunder Rosa - we'd have a full skull face paint.

[Curt McGirt]

Would Rosemary be their overlord? 

[mattdangerously]

14 hours ago, Brian Fowler said:

My apologies if this has been talked about elsewhere:

If the details that have been reported about Edge's contract are true, then goddamn. And good for him.

Allegedly 3 matches a year, around 25 tv appearances (I couldn't tell from the way it was written if that was per year or total) for 3 years, at $3 million per year.

If that's true, it's an insane amount of money to pay someone that they've always overrated.

[For Great Justice]

Made me feel old to realize that Edge is 1) older than Backlund was during his comeback and 2) was gone longer than Backlund was. 

He’s also older than Rick Martel during his comeback and almost 10 years older than Michaels was when he came back. 

[NikoBaltimore]

7 hours ago, Wyld Samurai said:

ya know... if Darby Allin ever teamed w/ Thunder Rosa - we'd have a full skull face paint.

 

3 hours ago, Curt McGirt said:

Would Rosemary be their overlord? 

Shit, guys.  I didn't know how much I wanted this to happen until now.  I'm sure Rosemary's still with Impact but once her and Thunder's contracts expire I would love to see them both in AEW.

[MORELOCK]

That seems like a lot of money for Edge, and it is, but I am betting it is all coming directly from the Saudi money to get him to work the Saudi shows. They want Attitude Era stars, right? Seems logical.

So if you needed another reason not to watch the Saudi shows, there you go.

[RIPPA]

Okay - next few posts will be to provide more context to about three different things being discussed. All from the WON that just came out

Quote

The other major story was the return of Edge (Adam Copeland, 46), who retired after the 2011 WrestleMania due to neck problems. While there had been strong rumors of his coming back and being cleared for months, he himself denied he was cleared, even when showing photos of him being in better cosmetic shape than when he was younger and active. But that’s what wrestlers nowadays do when it comes to WWE signing and returns.

He wouldn’t have been allowed to do that spear at SummerSlam if he wasn’t cleared. This all dates back to last summer when AEW made Edge a major offer to wrestle a few matches per year. Edge used that offer, which he told WWE was for $3 million per year and he would start when the company got television as his leverage, to get the same deal with WWE. So that was his leverage to get one of the highest deals in WWE history. The reports were out that his deal was for five matches and 25 television shows per year, but we are told that the money figure is correct but the date numbers are not accurate and that there are more matches and dates involved in the deal. The deal is far less than people like Brock Lesnar and Bill Goldberg have gotten, since Goldberg earned $2 million just for doing his match with Undertaker.

Since this is now a second time this has happened, it does bring up unique speculation as to guys who were medically disqualified from ever wrestling in WWE again (Edge and Bryan) both were cleared when it became clear that they were going to wrestle outside WWE. It’s not as cut-and-dried as that, but when it happens twice in a row involving talents that legitimately would garner substantial interest outside WWE, it is notable.

Bold for the specific money discussion

[RIPPA]

Regarding the changes to House Shows

Quote

There looks to be a major change in the house show business. With the shows having started to lose money last quarter, plus with them drawing less, the attendance decline has hurt the stock price and given the perception (accurately by the way) that the brand’s popularity is declining, they are cutting way back. Instead of two brands doing four shows per week as has been the case for years, house shows have become more rare. There are no regular house shows this coming weekend. There is one, a super show on 2/9 in Fresno, the following weekend. There are two, both Super shows, one each on 2/15 and 2/16. The next Raw brand house show is 2/23 in Brandon, Manitoba and it’s the only one of the month. The next Smackdown brand house show is 2/29 in Elmira, NY, and obviously, it’s also the only one of the month. AEW doesn’t do house shows, so the number of live major league house show events in the U.S. in 2020 will be way down. The positive is that it cuts money losses and also, since the TV tapings usually draw okay to good, the average attendance for the quarter will improve since it’s the traditional house shows that drag down the average. Keep in mind that historically, the best three months of the year for business are January through March. So artificially, in late April or early May, it’ll look like arena business is up for average attendance even though total revenue from live events and merchandise sales should be way down. This should in theory cut down on the injury rate, so that’s a good thing. The bad thing is that for talent, house shows are usually more fun, and for younger talent, that’s where you get to improvise a little and improve your game. There was a good amount of talent who had no idea about the cutback in house shows until they got their February booking sheets and saw how much it was cut down. While the top guys are making a lot of money these days, the rest of the crew will have their income affected by working so many fewer dates. One noted there was a happy medium between four shows a week and TV and maybe two more shows very other week and it’ll affect both pay and for the big stars, will hurt their merch sales significantly so many are unhappy about how this went down. NXT is actually now doing more events than Raw or Smackdown but NXT talent isn’t paid based on the house shows as they are on flat salary, making the same if they work 20 shows or 120. For some of the NXT talent, the ones who weren’t already stars elsewhere before coming in, working more dates is beneficial to everyone involved because in the aspect of developmental, those wrestlers need as much ring time as they can get in front of a crowd. It used to be WWE tradition to do early afternoon East Coast shows on Super Bowl Sunday

 

[RIPPA]

To really go back - here is Dave's report about what happened at Rocky Johnson's funeral

Quote

There was a lot of talk this past week regarding the funeral of Rocky Johnson on 1/21. Superstar Billy Graham, who was not at the funeral, but his mother-in-law, who was friends with Johnson, was. He made a facebook post saying Vince McMahon and Pat Patterson were inconsiderate and tasteless. We heard from two people at the funeral who said that was true. They said that the pastor went very long and was more negative toward pro wrestling and it being fake than some were comfortable with. They said Vince did his strut coming to the podium which was way out of place and first put over Johnson for being a great athlete and performer. He then ended by saying the best thing Rocky ever did was marry Ata (Ata Maivia). He then pointed to Ata and said that Ata had kids (they had one child, Dwayne) and then he strutted off the stage. He then left the building. Shane and Paul Levesque left shortly after. Two people said that Vince made it clear he was annoyed the funeral went long. Vince did do the same thing at Eddy Guerrero’s funeral in 2005. Graham presided over that funeral and also went very long. This ended up with Graham getting heat with Chris Jericho as Graham told Jericho to keep his speech short and Jericho didn’t listen because he had far too much to say about Guerrero, who he was very close with, to keep in short. But Vince made a remark about Graham going long which Graham ended up offended by since it was at a funeral. One person noted that the preacher went long, which took away from time for friends and family speeches. He described Patterson’s speech as weird. The description was that he made perverted jokes, used the word shit, didn’t really talk that much in his speech about Johnson, kind of insulted Johnson at one point and eventually they cut his mic off. Patterson also talked about getting drunk the night before and going to the bathroom to drink some water when the toilet seat fell and hit him in the head, implying he was drinking out of the toilet. I don’t know Patterson’s status but I did a show with him in England in 2018 and it was sad because his memory was so bad in the sense he literally couldn’t remember the names of anyone who was in the San Francisco territory during his heyday other than Ray Stevens, was asked about the first WrestleMania and told a story about it being at the Pontiac Silverdome and at another point when somebody brought up Buddy Rose to him, he had no idea who Rose was. Al Rosen, a close friend of Johnson’s, said that the family was not offended by anything that happened

 

[RIPPA]

And lastly - and I know this is in a few threads - no matter what is going on regarding Brock/Matt Riddle, Riddle does have heat with Vince McMahon. 

Part of it Dave says is that they (WWE management) have told folks at the PC to not call out anyone on the main roster unless approved by management and obviously, Riddle hasn't been doing that. There is also some thought that Vince just doesn't "get" Riddle.

Anyhoo - Dave says that this call could easily be part of Heyman master plan since a lot of the pieces fit his MO perfectly but there is still some smoke to the "Riddle has heat" story

[Casey]

4 minutes ago, RIPPA said:

Part of it Dave says is that they (WWE management) have told folks at the PC to not call out anyone on the main roster unless approved by management

It must be approved now since WWE PC has posted a video with Riddle talking about how he wants the match with Brock.

This is such a weird company.