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January 2022 Discussion of Wrestling


RIPPA

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On 1/9/2022 at 6:38 PM, L_W_P said:

Didn't Jericho say in his book (or maybe it was Death of WCW?) that a certain % of action figures were set to scan as Hogan at Walmart? You pick up the Raven figure, take it to the checkout but then on the receipt it said "Hollywood Hogan Action Figure" and Hogan got paid the bonus.

On 1/9/2022 at 6:55 PM, odessasteps said:

The story, I believe, is that Jerichos GF (now wife) bought his his figure and it rang up as Hogan. 

19 hours ago, The Great ML said:

That happened to me at Toys R Us back in the day...I distinctly remember it...I bought two or three figures and they all rang up Hogan.

so i've heard this story a bunch of times, but my history in retail gives me a potential different view of that scenario:

There's a very real chance that WCW only had one SKU of action figures per line. So every figure did ring as Hogan, but not in some underhanded "Hogan steals everyone else's action figure revenue", but due to WCW's very new merchandising department only buying one UPC, to be sold as "assorted". I've never seen solid claim that Hogan had a specific % of action figure sales, or even if this would prove/disprove that, but i feel obligated to point out that it may not be some 'bury the young guys' plot.

but, as @The Natural would say, Fuck HH.

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10 hours ago, RIPPA said:

I will post this here too.

It makes about as much sense as WWE booking... or the College Football Playoff for that matter

Can we have the confused emoji added to posts please? It's either that or I start using the crying emoji with reckless abandon.

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10 hours ago, twiztor said:

so i've heard this story a bunch of times, but my history in retail gives me a potential different view of that scenario:

There's a very real chance that WCW only had one SKU of action figures per line. So every figure did ring as Hogan, but not in some underhanded "Hogan steals everyone else's action figure revenue", but due to WCW's very new merchandising department only buying one UPC, to be sold as "assorted". I've never seen solid claim that Hogan had a specific % of action figure sales, or even if this would prove/disprove that, but i feel obligated to point out that it may not be some 'bury the young guys' plot.

but, as @The Natural would say, Fuck HH.

Yeah, that story always sounded kind of bullshitty in a real smark-baiting way.  Your scenario is so much more likely than the alternative, that Bischoff and Hogan conspired to make sure Hogan got ALL the toy profits, then they somehow got the toy company onboard with this whole plan and everybody had no problem with putting the same Hogan SKU on every figure.  Like nobody in the toy company would say, "hey guys, this feels kind of skeevy."  Wouldn't it have been easier to tell the toy company, "forward us the profits and the numbers and we'll distribute the merch money as we see fit" and then just give it all to Hogan if that was then plan?

I agree with Karl Stern when he talks about conspiracies.  Big conspiracies rely on large groups of people not being incompetent and also being able to keep their mouths shut, and when has either ever happened?

I'm more a believer in Occam's razor and the axiom "never ascribe malice when stupidity is a valid explanation."

Edited by Technico Support
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On 1/9/2022 at 5:45 PM, NoFistsJustFlips said:

Now that you mention it I know for a fact Hogan got a bonus for wearing nWo shirts on TV. I don't believe Hall & Nash had that kind of bonus tho. Hogan had bonuses for PPVs he worked. Every Nitro he worked he got a bonus. He got shirt bonuses for wearing certain merch. Like him wearing the his nWo shirt was some kind of brand ambassador bonus or some shit like that. Basically he's using his likeness to promote the sales so he would get a bonus for that. But Hogan's deals were structured totally different from everyone else on the roster.

Beyond Hogan, no one else on the roster got bonuses. Not even Hall & Nash, or Goldberg or Bret Hart. Everyone was salary. Hogan was too. But he just had the pull to get ppv points and weird ambassador clauses and shit. All of the Hall & Nash nWo merch stories I've heard about how they still make six figures to this day off the nWo mech via WWE. Bischoff has said a million times on his podcasts that WCW had no kind of merchandising agreements with guys and up until the nWo they didn't even turn a profit on the merchandise.

The only other bonus income I can think of for a WCW guy was Savage was able to keep his Slim Jim sponsorship. That paid him a crazy amount. But that wasn't coming from WCW. That came from Slim Jim.

Thanks, that makes sense now. I remember looking at the released WCW salary data a while back and being surprised that nobody got any kind of merch money. I found that data and downloaded it into a spreadsheet. What's interesting is that some guys made a lot of money from licensing. Hogan was the top one there of course, but guys like Sting, Nash, DDP and a few others were pulling 6 figures in licensing for a couple of years

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21 minutes ago, Zakk_Sabbath said:

Those figures sucked anyway, except for whichever one came with the ref (I think Nash or The Giant). The huge vibrating(?) ones weren't much better, but I don't remember kids clamoring for Bret Hart dressed like an actual mob Hitman.

Sharp. Shooter. ?.

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Looks like NXT finally became the third brand:

Quote

Going forward, the NXT creative team will not be operating independently, PWInsider.com has confirmed with multiple sources. Before, under the Paul Levesque regime, the NXT Creative team had been autonomous in nature, operating as a separate bubble within the company. As part of the changes made last week that unraveled that era of NXT with WWE cutting the majority of the team Levesque had assembled over the years while building the NXT brand, that will no longer be the case, at least short term.

PWInsider.com has learned the NXT Creative team has been informed that for now, they will now fall under the purview of Bruce Prichard and Christine Lubrano, directly reporting and answering to them, consistent to how the Raw and Smackdown Creative Teams each operate. The days of NXT being a separate little pocket within WWE look to be over.

With the departures of others from the creative team, PWInsider.com has also confirmed that going forward, Johnny Russo will be heading the NXT writing team under Prichard and Lubrano's supervision. Russo joined WWE back in October 2011 and worked on the Raw and Smackdown brand creative teams from 2015-2018 before being promoted to the role of Senior Creative Writer/Producer in August 2018. Russo has been working on the WWE NXT creative side since August 2019 and became NXT Lead Writer in July 2020. Since I know SOMEONE will ask this, he has no relation to Vince Russo.

Dewey Foley, the son of WWE Hall of Famer Mick Foley and Anthony Golden Jr. also remain on NXT Creative, PWInsider.com has confirmed. Foley has been overseeing 205 Live for some time now. Golden Jr. has been with the company since March 2021 and has a theatrical background with a Masters Degrees in acting as well as a Masters in Film and Television Production.

??‍♂️

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1 minute ago, LoneWolf&Subs said:

How soon will NXT be filmed in front of a RAW crowd, and basically become an enhancement talent show?  They might actually save more money doing it that way.

I think that's what I predicted when they initially did the whole NXT 2.0 thing that it would only be a matter of time before they really WWECW this thing and NXT talent are working their show before the live Raw or SD airing.

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I was watching WCW Saturday Night from 1997. Those shows had 10 matches on them. I doubt the accumulated time for matches on that show was more than an hour. That program was two hours long(really hour twenty five). So it was padded out with recaps, and interviews, as well as jobber entrances. AEW Dark Elevation had ten matches, but the show was forty seven minutes, without any real extra content. The WWE easily tape a five match show in under an hour on both RAW, and SMACKDOWN, and stuff it full of segments promoting whatever they want to promote to fill two hours on a Tuesday night.

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They won't be able to do tapings for NXT until the international contracts for Main Event and 205 Live run out.

Well I mean they COULD do the tapings but they would be super long and the crowd would be burnt out before RAW or SDL actually started

It also seems like, at the moment, they are trying to keep a smaller amount of people backstage as part of the COVID protocols (since they aren't testing anymore)

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John Cena said on Ellen today that he might not be at Mania due to a bunch of "upcoming opportunities" he has (but he also seemed to not know the exact date of Mania too).

He did say that he wasn't done with pro wrestling by "a long shot"

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12 minutes ago, RIPPA said:

They won't be able to do tapings for NXT until the international contracts for Main Event and 205 Live run out.

They could split the 2-hour NXT into two programs, with the Main Event, and 205 Live bumpers, as well as change the announcers. Would the international partners get upset with that if they tried it?

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21 minutes ago, LoneWolf&Subs said:

They could split the 2-hour NXT into two programs, with the Main Event, and 205 Live bumpers, as well as change the announcers. Would the international partners get upset with that if they tried it?

Quite honestly, the international partners might not even notice. Especially if they load it with Raw/SD recaps.

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45 minutes ago, LoneWolf&Subs said:

They could split the 2-hour NXT into two programs, with the Main Event, and 205 Live bumpers, as well as change the announcers. Would the international partners get upset with that if they tried it?

The international versions of things like Superstars and Action Zone went from being "Squash matches plus a TV main event" to "Squash matches plus Raw highlights" to "Raw highlights plus one JTTS match, usually featuring JTG or Tyson Kidd" to "Raw recap" pretty quickly. 

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2 hours ago, AxB said:

The international versions of things like Superstars and Action Zone went from being "Squash matches plus a TV main event" to "Squash matches plus Raw highlights" to "Raw highlights plus one JTTS match, usually featuring JTG or Tyson Kidd" to "Raw recap" pretty quickly. 

I've said this before about house shows, but the death of the C-show is another thing from prior eras that has saddened me with it's disappearance. So many of my weekends as a kid were spent with Superstars, Worldwide, Pro, Shotgun, etc. It's nice having the Darks and (now again) the NWA to kind of fill that void a little, but it loses some charm not being syndicated on random local stations.

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