See, if Cena had cleanly lost to all three of them a few weeks back, LOL CENA WINS wouldn't be SO bad here, if the two put a damn fine match out there.
But now, unless there's some plan to break Luke off the group (STUPID STUPID STUPID), the result should be 99.9% obvious. (The .1% being the chance that some major shenanigans happen. Like Nikki Bella getting kidnapped by the Wyatts for some reason. Or Distraction Roll Up Finish #9052359.)
The inherent problem with these sorts of gimmicks is they tend to put the emphasis on the wrong part of it. Adam Rose is currently a DUDE that likes to party who occasionally happens to wrestle. Instead, he should be a WRESTLER who also really loves partying. Have his character based stuff be still be related to WRESTLING.
All fans know about him is that he has a bus and a ridiculous entourage that only listen to one song for entire parties. Why the hell would they pop for him or boo him?
An example of how to properly build anticipation for his character:
Week 1: Hype Adam Rose's debut later in the show, facing some jobber. Have him no show the match, instead cutting to him giving a promo from the express about his party running long or something. Essentially the same stuff we saw from the original vignettes, but at least acknowledge that he is a wrestler. He says he'll give the lad a match next week.
Week 2: Same deal, same jobber, same no show, but have Rose actually acknowledge the jobber, saying he can't be pulled away from his party for someone who did not even get a televised entrance or something.
Week 3: The jobber storms the party bus and gets a shot in on Rose before security breaks it up. Rose calms the group down and says he won't let the jobber ruin the party, and promises to bring the party to him next week on Raw.
Week 4: Match finally happens. Standard Rose entrance, DESTROYS jobber. Standard Rose exit.
Yeah, all this takes slightly more TV time, but has told us infinitely more about Rose than him just spouting catch phrases into the camera during his party for like 6 weeks, and shows us that he is a wrestler AND a character. Its not really hype if you don't tell us anything new about the character with all the packages run for a month and a half.
He still may not get over, but it at least gives the audience a chance to decide if they like or hate him fairly quickly.
The original gimmick name was Alex Rose, so they might have been going for a more obvious play on rock star excess before the shift to the Russell Brand parody when he debuted. Like having him be booked for a match early in the first hour and then show up hours late before storming off after a minute or something like that.
I don't know if he didn't want to go THAT into depth, but adding WHY WWE couldn't get a "sports" TV deal from NBC, mainly because:
"Undesirable" demographics, lesser ad revenue than most other forms of TV programming (WAY lesser than the Big Three in sports), and lack of crossover appeal to any other programming (among others)
... would have been a nice fleshing out on that end. But again, that may have been outside the article's focus.
Quick Google-fu reveals that WWE Dividend payments were:
.04/share from 6/03 to 3/04 (4 quarters) .06/share from 6/04 to 9/04 (2 quarters) .12/share from 12/04 to 9/05 (4 quarters) .24 share from 12/05 to 12/07 (9 quarters) .36/share (!) from 3/08 to 3/11 (13 quarters) .12/share from 6/11 to present (12 quarters, will become 13 next month barring change)
That is correct, so fat this season. According to Jayski (Basically Baseball-reference for NASCAR), the only Sprint Cup Race to get under 4 million viewers was Texas on April 6.
Every other race has been 5.5 million or higher, with Daytona (surprise, surprise) pulling in 9.3 million and Phoenix the next week getting 8.8 million.
NOW, when we go over to cable (TNT and ESPN, using 2013 numbers, because FOX still has three races to go before the swap this season)... it's a little different.
TNT broadcast six races in 2013. Daytona was their high point, at 5.688 million viewers, BUT they failed to break 5 million for any other race. And Kentucky failed to reach 4 million viewers, although by no more than a moderate rounding off. (3.984 million)
ESPN broadcast seventeen races in 2013. Bristol, near the end of August, was the most watched race at 6.322 million. But their ratings were nowhere near stable, and striking off Chicago (2.688 million viewers, BUT a five-hour rain delay as a valid excuse for the poor number), ESPN failed to break 4 million twice (New Hampshire and Dover, back to back weeks at the end of September).
NASCAR on FOX destroys the WWE. NASCAR on cable is not a guaranteed win, although they usually do beat out WWE by a fair margin.
TJ: This WhatCulture List "15 WWE Matches You Didn’t Know Featured Landmark Firsts" is incorrect on several points. What's more hilarious is that a commenter by the name of "David Lee Ross Geller" calls the author out on several points. I love that name! http://whatculture.com/wwe/15-wwe-matches-didnt-know-featured-landmark-firsts.php
The only problem I can see is how often do we really talk about the "business/corporate" side of WWE?
Something like that as a weekly/monthly article might fall flat pretty quickly, because there are a LOT of dead times in between moments of glee/sheer terror in WWE's corporate world. Much like serving on a submarine in WWII.
Dude has been a wrestling journalist since the late 90's. He wrote a great blog on LOP until the douchebags that permeate that site ruined it. He is a contemporary to Scott.
They're also somebody's kids. They have a leg up on the psychology. A good wrestler isn't great until his 30s with few exceptions. Guys like Hart, Flair etc were good in their 20s, but it all comes together after 30.
Rose is 100% salvagable. He needs to start wrestling and making people care. So far he's some guy with weird friends and catchphrases. There's no investment in him.
In that case who would be Tatanka and what would represent the ceremonial headdress given to him by one Native American wrestler and one white guy who spent his career pretending to be a Native American wrestler?
No, it sounded like a mid-card gimmick and that's fine, but if they expected it to make some big splash, I think they were delusional from the start. He's basically Disco Inferno
Best point there that needs to be mentioned is that WWE is a profitable, cash heavy company year after year and is still a profitable company this year with cash coming in reliably and frequently. Too often people associate tumbling stock prices with huge losses on the bottom line and that isn't (necessarily) the case here. While Q2 2014 is going to suck compared to Q2 2013, their statement of cash flow isn't going to look like a bomb went off or anything.
I'm also very intrigued by the possibility that talent is getting screwed by not getting any cut of the early network revenues while having their PPV checks cut huge. That might be a nice short term band-aid for the company.
Still the big picture analysis is the same. The stock wasn't a 28 dollar stock on merit. That was a speculation bubble fueled by people who had no idea what they were doing (or more accurately inflated by people who knew exactly what they were doing, taking advantage of people who didn't know what they were doing). The real question is what the true value is; whether this is a decent settling point or whether a second correction to a higher point is coming. I don't think there's any way to say that you can back up with concrete financial analysis.
I will say though with absolute certainty that if they start bleeding network subscribers after the initial 6 month subscriber period runs out and we're looking at a "permanent" base of 600k-700k domestic with periodic peaks and valleys, everyone's in trouble and the pain has just begun on the corporate side. I'm cautiously optimistic this won't happen, but this gets out of financial territory and more into customer satisfaction with the product territory.
Any chance the Rose gimmick had was blown to smithereens when Cole started going nuts dancing at the table and actually going step-by-step over what the fans should do. Talk about getting the Cool Dad treatment, sheesh.
Between the awful Watry crap, Mike Campbell shilling for Kayfabe Commentaries, boring junk like Stephen Randle, and that guy's RAW recaps who gives every AJ segment *****, the site has become unreadable. Its the worst of the worst now
Probably because wwe fans won't bother to research what Nascar racing numbers are so it just a non factual thing that can be thrown in without most people calling BS on it.
Bo Dallas might work assuming that the WWE creative is actually up on popular culture. The opportunity to do a gimmick based on a Russell Brand character was about two years ago. I hope someone in WWE creative realize that Bo Dallas is essentially Justin Bieber (and I'm not so sure if Vince actually realizes that). With the hate toward Bieber so high right now, if creative gives Bo the material to capitalize on the "Justin Bieber hate" his heel heat will be through the roof. It's a matter of the difference between having Bo Dallas portrayed as a corny goofball or as a delusional douche who actually believes his own hype so much that he is totally out of touch with reality. Thus far the NXT bookers have managed to thread that line successfully. I'm not sure if the WWE writers could successfully do the same.
The WWE and NASCAR share a common bond of being referred as "low brow" entertainment by the general public and their viewers are in lower income brackets but the WWE doesnt get even a fraction of what NASCAR pulls in from sponsors
Just because they're somebody's kids doesn't necessarily mean they are going to "have a leg up on the psychology," David Flair anyone. They may get more opportunities but that's no guarantee for anything. My comment was more about how long many of today's crop of superstars have been around rather than anything about second or third generation wrestlers.
The BoD could offer Mr. Tito a lucrative contract to work 4-6 dates a year, but it really should focus on building new stars. Unless you all consider Meekin and Bayless to be B+ players.
Fixing this issue would actually require this company to acknowledge that they have an announcer problem and lord knows they're never going to do that.
They should have used the "Brodus Clay" model for introducing him. Say he is coming but let us know nothing about him, then when he comes out for his first showcase match just have come out with his "party train." It provides the "WTF is this moment and allows the fans to slowly get into the gimmick. Have wrestle and party then party with his opponents for a few weeks before they should even consider putting him into a feud.
Brodus Clay did not move up from the midcard because he didn't have the stamina to work a match longer than three minutes. Adam Rose has more than proven that he could work longer matches as "Leo Krager" in both NXT and FCW. They just needed to take a slower burn with the character.
He probably would especially in a place like London since there's much more of a "party all the time" culture than there is in the states. They probably should have waited until the European tour to debut him.
I disagree that Punk-Cena should have main evented and disagree even more so that it should have been for the title.
Punk-Cena would have been an awesome addition to this year's WrestleMania. It surely would have been an amazing match and I would have been down to see it. But at this point, they've already wrestled on about 4 PPV's and had two other big TV matches. So main eventing this year just wouldn't have worked. Also, Daniel Bryan just HAD to win the title this year as well. So Punk-Cena for the title wouldn't have worked.
The timing has just been awkward. You could argue that they could have main evented WrestleMania 27 since they feuded in the months leading up to it. But since their true rivalry started after Money in the Bank, it didn't make sense for them to headline 28 because Rock-Cena was huge. WrestleMania 29 was probably their best shot but they decided to go a different route.
This couldn't have come at a better time for Double J's new promotion, right? With WWE probably about to make a big purge of wrestlers like this article says, then I could see many of them going there with a fresh start rather than the tainted TNA.
Good article, but I think they missed the giant elephant in the room, the fact that there is no viable competition for WWE. I think that all of the issues mentioned would be close to being solved if there were a WCW equivalent today. Look at the point made about how none of the wrestlers who were in WWE in 1988 were there 10 years later at WM 14. Why was that? Because many of the guys who were there in 1988 were on top in 1998 in WCW making more money and working less dates. Look at the point about there being no midcard. Why? Because there isn't a viable competition where guys can get big exposure and then go to WWE being already seasoned. Guys like Austin, Foley, Jericho, and Eddie.
TJ: watching the Brewers-Cubs game. CM Punk is on commentary, and then singing "Take Me Out to the Ballgame". He brought AJ with him, and wanted to say hello to her, and they had her on camera for a few seconds. Apparently, they're getting married next month.
242. I blanked out on a lot of the earlier WMs. And like Cult, the Diva stuff killed me, too. A good trick to getting more answers is typing in guys who show up in matches from someone else you typed in. Like, i typed in Steamboat after typing Randy Savage after seeing their match listed.
Not a lot. Fun fact I just learned trying to look it up, he jobbed to Flair at the Tuesday in Texas PPV but it was a dark match. Why the hell wouldn't you put that on the show?
Ah, Leif Cassidy, how could I forget! I just like this image I have of Vince as being as out of touch as Mr Burns trying to find ringers for his softball team.
Jesus I remember first finding out about dirt sheets on the internet when I was like 13 an Mr. Tito's PDC was by far my favorite as a kid. He was a huge nwa wcw mark, but when the ship was sinking his rants on nitro and "chunder" were classic.
That article made some good points but pretty much lost all credibility with me when it stated that the Bryan payoff was ruined because of Kane and the Shield. Really?
And like previous articles on that same site it completely ignores the excellent job WWE has done lately with the aforementioned Shield and Wyatt family.
He jobbed a few times in WCW I think. But pretty much every job I could find in WWE is either DQ or Countout. The only pinfalls he took was against Bret and Flair twice.
He lost 2 Rumbles and a battle royal. His Survivor teams lost twice, and he jobbed to Rude, DiBiase, and Adonis but not clean.
That's a wee bit harsh dude. Raw is usually good half the time and at it's worst is just stale or dull, which admittedly is a legit issue. I'll also admit 3 hours is too long per week.
You totally just fucked my joke up. You were supposed to say "But he's not a wrestler" and I was going to say that neither is Miz, but both have closed out Wrestlemania.
I performed research on this Leminson Investment Group. This is really interesting guys:
The Chief Investment Officer is a Priest, who along with running this company, also writes criticisms of fraudulent stock practices. In fact, this financial group moved in on one company it criticized and demanded similar actions as with WWE.
Secondly, with accusations against WWE, for fraudulent stock/trading practices, does anyone else smell "scam" artists to me?
I always wondered that too, especially given that Piper was going to be gone after WrestleMania anyway, so it was probably the only chance to get a payday off that match.
Yeah, it's an interesting situation. On the one hand, you're trying to gauge how well people would respond to more frequent, impromptu PPVs like that which are naturally going to suffer a bit in terms of promotion, so maybe you don't want to give away a big match if it's possible that few will see it... but on the other, you need a big match to sell the show.
I guess they figured a return Undertaker/Hogan match, plus Savage's reinstatement would be enough -- and maybe it would have, had the Survivor Series 1991 not done so badly in terms of both buys and customer satisfaction.
It was kind of a nutty idea to begin with -- selling one PPV with another and having only six days between them -- so basically one weekend to sell it on TV? I'm pretty sure the whole idea was hatched out of the fact that PPV availaiblity began to increase more rapidly and research that suggested that most PPVs were last minute, impulse buys.
This whole story just naked me glad I never put my money in the stock market. JBL must be even smarter than he appears if he made his money from that riff raff.
Come to think of it, they messed around a lot with their stuff at that time of year it seemed. The '91 Series was the first one they moved back to 'Thanksgiving Eve' and the year before they did the Survivor Series Showdown USA special on the 18th, the Survivor Series on the 22nd, and a Main Event special the next night on the 23rd.
The SS buyrate started getting laggy in 1989 once people figured out nothing big happened I guess -- but you would think the Hogan/Undertaker title match would have had more interest.
Yeah, I'm thinking they were experimenting with adding more ppv's, but since neither one of these did good business, that idea was dropped until WCW added more shows a few years later.
I don't know, but their stuff on Skechers and Western Digital added up quite nicely. As scary as it sounds... an "honest" investment firm that not only talks, but is willing to try to back up that talk with money?
So who got squashed worse on Smackdown: Titus, Sandow or Ziggler? The Ziggler-Batista squash made the least sense to me because having Dolph give Batista a battle would be the first step in moving him up the card to help fill the babyface void they're going to have with Bryan out of action. As much as WWE has tried to book him like a loser, Ziggler is still over with the crowd and could be credible in a higher position.
Yeah, it's interesting that in the end it was WCW's philosophy and not the cut-rate semi-event PPV model that paid off -- full priced, full hype PPVs didn't end up watering down the overall buyrate numbers, which was always the fear before that point.
269/293. My own damn fault because I was seeing multiple people pop up by default of some of the more popular answers so I missed the fact that I needed to enter people specifically to get the rest of their matches. Completely whiffed on naming Yoko, Luger, and Duggan.
Swagger is screaming for a Hacksawesque face turn. They need to just give up on Vince's hatred of Red State America(tm). I find these Teas Party types tiresome as well, but it just doesn't fit into my rasslin'. Dutch can get heat so many other ways.
See, if Cena had cleanly lost to all three of them a few weeks back, LOL CENA WINS wouldn't be SO bad here, if the two put a damn fine match out there.
ReplyDeleteBut now, unless there's some plan to break Luke off the group (STUPID STUPID STUPID), the result should be 99.9% obvious. (The .1% being the chance that some major shenanigans happen. Like Nikki Bella getting kidnapped by the Wyatts for some reason. Or Distraction Roll Up Finish #9052359.)
He's welcome to write here if he wants.
ReplyDeleteThe inherent problem with these sorts of gimmicks is they tend to put the emphasis on the wrong part of it. Adam Rose is currently a DUDE that likes to party who occasionally happens to wrestle. Instead, he should be a WRESTLER who also really loves partying. Have his character based stuff be still be related to WRESTLING.
ReplyDeleteAll fans know about him is that he has a bus and a ridiculous entourage that only listen to one song for entire parties. Why the hell would they pop for him or boo him?
An example of how to properly build anticipation for his character:
Week 1: Hype Adam Rose's debut later in the show, facing some jobber. Have him no show the match, instead cutting to him giving a promo from the express about his party running long or something. Essentially the same stuff we saw from the original vignettes, but at least acknowledge that he is a wrestler. He says he'll give the lad a match next week.
Week 2: Same deal, same jobber, same no show, but have Rose actually acknowledge the jobber, saying he can't be pulled away from his party for someone who did not even get a televised entrance or something.
Week 3: The jobber storms the party bus and gets a shot in on Rose before security breaks it up. Rose calms the group down and says he won't let the jobber ruin the party, and promises to bring the party to him next week on Raw.
Week 4: Match finally happens. Standard Rose entrance, DESTROYS jobber. Standard Rose exit.
Yeah, all this takes slightly more TV time, but has told us infinitely more about Rose than him just spouting catch phrases into the camera during his party for like 6 weeks, and shows us that he is a wrestler AND a character. Its not really hype if you don't tell us anything new about the character with all the packages run for a month and a half.
He still may not get over, but it at least gives the audience a chance to decide if they like or hate him fairly quickly.
Why does everyone say that the the WWE does better ratings than NASCAR? They dont. They usually dont come close.
ReplyDeleteRussell Brand.
ReplyDeleteYou should send him an invite, I don't comment over at Lords of Pain it is possibly worse than 411.
ReplyDeleteThe original gimmick name was Alex Rose, so they might have been going for a more obvious play on rock star excess before the shift to the Russell Brand parody when he debuted. Like having him be booked for a match early in the first hour and then show up hours late before storming off after a minute or something like that.
ReplyDeleteI don't know if he didn't want to go THAT into depth, but adding WHY WWE couldn't get a "sports" TV deal from NBC, mainly because:
ReplyDelete"Undesirable" demographics, lesser ad revenue than most other forms of TV programming (WAY lesser than the Big Three in sports), and lack of crossover appeal to any other programming (among others)
... would have been a nice fleshing out on that end. But again, that may have been outside the article's focus.
I think he runs LoP, no? Can't imagine why else he would hang around there since like 1997.
ReplyDeleteTGGI.
ReplyDeleteI think he is tight with the owner but LOP is dead.
ReplyDeleteQuick Google-fu reveals that WWE Dividend payments were:
ReplyDelete.04/share from 6/03 to 3/04 (4 quarters)
.06/share from 6/04 to 9/04 (2 quarters)
.12/share from 12/04 to 9/05 (4 quarters)
.24 share from 12/05 to 12/07 (9 quarters)
.36/share (!) from 3/08 to 3/11 (13 quarters)
.12/share from 6/11 to present (12 quarters, will become 13 next month barring change)
It's a drawing of my big fat cat.
ReplyDeleteVan Halen is pretty big in Japan, he's just scouting the market.
ReplyDeletePunk seems a little bit more bitter and personally upset at the situation, so it might take more than money.
ReplyDeleteThat is correct, so fat this season. According to Jayski (Basically Baseball-reference for NASCAR), the only Sprint Cup Race to get under 4 million viewers was Texas on April 6.
ReplyDeleteEvery other race has been 5.5 million or higher, with Daytona (surprise, surprise) pulling in 9.3 million and Phoenix the next week getting 8.8 million.
NOW, when we go over to cable (TNT and ESPN, using 2013 numbers, because FOX still has three races to go before the swap this season)... it's a little different.
TNT broadcast six races in 2013. Daytona was their high point, at 5.688 million viewers, BUT they failed to break 5 million for any other race. And Kentucky failed to reach 4 million viewers, although by no more than a moderate rounding off. (3.984 million)
ESPN broadcast seventeen races in 2013. Bristol, near the end of August, was the most watched race at 6.322 million. But their ratings were nowhere near stable, and striking off Chicago (2.688 million viewers, BUT a five-hour rain delay as a valid excuse for the poor number), ESPN failed to break 4 million twice (New Hampshire and Dover, back to back weeks at the end of September).
NASCAR on FOX destroys the WWE. NASCAR on cable is not a guaranteed win, although they usually do beat out WWE by a fair margin.
Now we know why JBL was so quick to retire....
ReplyDeleteHim or Sid.
ReplyDeleteHe could make any stock double its price in a day... just by blowing the brains out of the investors with his math. ;)
ReplyDeleteNever saw the appeal. His vignette and backstage interviews were painfully bad.
ReplyDeleteTJ: This WhatCulture List "15 WWE Matches You Didn’t Know Featured Landmark Firsts" is incorrect on several points. What's more hilarious is that a commenter by the name of "David Lee Ross Geller" calls the author out on several points. I love that name! http://whatculture.com/wwe/15-wwe-matches-didnt-know-featured-landmark-firsts.php
ReplyDeleteBut Batista won the Royal Rumble. DEAL WITH IT!
ReplyDeleteIn the words of Caliber, imagine all the money Scott's leaving on the table for not using this PROVEN draw!
ReplyDeleteBig Show is very well paid.
ReplyDeleteThe only problem I can see is how often do we really talk about the "business/corporate" side of WWE?
ReplyDeleteSomething like that as a weekly/monthly article might fall flat pretty quickly, because there are a LOT of dead times in between moments of glee/sheer terror in WWE's corporate world. Much like serving on a submarine in WWII.
The man, the myth, the legend: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CkzjX_GA8Qg
ReplyDeleteDude has been a wrestling journalist since the late 90's. He wrote a great blog on LOP until the douchebags that permeate that site ruined it. He is a contemporary to Scott.
ReplyDeleteAh. I've heard the name in passing, but I must admit to a general blank spot in knowing his breadth of coverage.
ReplyDeleteOh, I'm sorry. I should clarify. He's the guy the audience calls "Boo-tista"
ReplyDeletePenisHead SkinnyPants.
ReplyDeleteAhhhhhh, ic ic
ReplyDeleteTruth be told, you have to be an asshole to survive on Wall Street and make money.
ReplyDeleteIt's like Scott Keith is Vince McMahon and Mr. Tito is...IRS?
ReplyDeleteThey're also somebody's kids. They have a leg up on the psychology. A good wrestler isn't great until his 30s with few exceptions. Guys like Hart, Flair etc were good in their 20s, but it all comes together after 30.
ReplyDeleteRose is 100% salvagable. He needs to start wrestling and making people care. So far he's some guy with weird friends and catchphrases. There's no investment in him.
ReplyDeleteIn that case who would be Tatanka and what would represent the ceremonial headdress given to him by one Native American wrestler and one white guy who spent his career pretending to be a Native American wrestler?
ReplyDeleteEven WWE admits 3 hours is way too much. The "crowd might have been tired". Yeah, ya think?
ReplyDeleteAlso, Russell Brand fucking sucks. Why would a pro-wrestling derivative of him be expected to be good?
He will be tagging with Fandango against 3MB in a few months.
ReplyDeleteNo, it sounded like a mid-card gimmick and that's fine, but if they expected it to make some big splash, I think they were delusional from the start. He's basically Disco Inferno
ReplyDeleteBo Dallas sounds like he should be some hick ass kicker back in the the '80s NWA, so it's kind of funny the way they are presenting him.
ReplyDeleteHey, he's entertaining in FSM and GHTTG.
ReplyDeleteThe Party Animals.
ReplyDeleteThere is a reason Sons of Anarchy, Mad Men, Walking Dead, etc don't go three hours. WWE should focus on quality a bit more than quantity
ReplyDeleteNothing wrong with that at all. Fresh tag teams are a good thing and I bet they could work decent matches with the Usos at least
ReplyDeleteI thought the problem was that the Rose experience was the same size on Raw that it's been in NXT. It needed to be relatively bigger.
ReplyDeleteBest point there that needs to be mentioned is that WWE is a profitable, cash heavy company year after year and is still a profitable company this year with cash coming in reliably and frequently. Too often people associate tumbling stock prices with huge losses on the bottom line and that isn't (necessarily) the case here. While Q2 2014 is going to suck compared to Q2 2013, their statement of cash flow isn't going to look like a bomb went off or anything.
ReplyDeleteI'm also very intrigued by the possibility that talent is getting screwed by not getting any cut of the early network revenues while having their PPV checks cut huge. That might be a nice short term band-aid for the company.
Still the big picture analysis is the same. The stock wasn't a 28 dollar stock on merit. That was a speculation bubble fueled by people who had no idea what they were doing (or more accurately inflated by people who knew exactly what they were doing, taking advantage of people who didn't know what they were doing). The real question is what the true value is; whether this is a decent settling point or whether a second correction to a higher point is coming. I don't think there's any way to say that you can back up with concrete financial analysis.
I will say though with absolute certainty that if they start bleeding network subscribers after the initial 6 month subscriber period runs out and we're looking at a "permanent" base of 600k-700k domestic with periodic peaks and valleys, everyone's in trouble and the pain has just begun on the corporate side. I'm cautiously optimistic this won't happen, but this gets out of financial territory and more into customer satisfaction with the product territory.
Even Mr. Tito says that there is no other wrestling to watch other than WWE.
ReplyDeleteAny chance the Rose gimmick had was blown to smithereens when Cole started going nuts dancing at the table and actually going step-by-step over what the fans should do. Talk about getting the Cool Dad treatment, sheesh.
ReplyDeleteRandom: I'm playing sporcle and Hulk Hogan in his entire career has only lost on PPV 9 times.
ReplyDeleteThat CAN'T be right...can it?
ReplyDeleteWhoa, Jim Neidhart won the Royal Rumble this year?
ReplyDelete(Sorry, I had to.)
Sforcina is literally propping up the whole site these days.
ReplyDeleteWarrior, Yokozuna, Taker, Piper, The Giant, Flair, Angle, Rock, and Sting.
ReplyDelete...huh.
ReplyDeleteHe lost to The Rock twice. Wrestlemania X-8 and then No Way Out 2003.
ReplyDeleteThat dude is a giant homophobe.
ReplyDeleteTaker twice, no?
ReplyDeleteBetween the awful Watry crap, Mike Campbell shilling for Kayfabe Commentaries, boring junk like Stephen Randle, and that guy's RAW recaps who gives every AJ segment *****, the site has become unreadable. Its the worst of the worst now
ReplyDeleteYeah I worded it wrong, I meant 9 people instead of 9 times. Still, it isn't a lot of times.
ReplyDeleteCsnoka is the only good writer on that site.
ReplyDeleteMakes more sense. Also losses to UT at Survivor Series 91 and Unforgiven 02, since I wanna be "that guy".
ReplyDeleteI like Adam Nedeff. He reviews the same WWF shows that I do.
ReplyDeleteProbably because wwe fans won't bother to research what Nascar racing numbers are so it just a non factual thing that can be thrown in without most people calling BS on it.
ReplyDeleteJudgement Day 2002 because I am "that guy"
ReplyDeleteBo Dallas might work assuming that the WWE creative is actually up on popular culture. The opportunity to do a gimmick based on a Russell Brand character was about two years ago. I hope someone in WWE creative realize that Bo Dallas is essentially Justin Bieber (and I'm not so sure if Vince actually realizes that). With the hate toward Bieber so high right now, if creative gives Bo the material to capitalize on the "Justin Bieber hate" his heel heat will be through the roof. It's a matter of the difference between having Bo Dallas portrayed as a corny goofball or as a delusional douche who actually believes his own hype so much that he is totally out of touch with reality. Thus far the NXT bookers have managed to thread that line successfully. I'm not sure if the WWE writers could successfully do the same.
ReplyDeleteBastard. You corrected me before I could do so myself.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.sporcle.com/games/BrianZane/hogan_ppv
ReplyDeleteFun, kinda tough Hogan quiz. Name all of his WWE PPV opponents. Got 65 out of 67.
The WWE and NASCAR share a common bond of being referred as "low brow" entertainment by the general public and their viewers are in lower income brackets but the WWE doesnt get even a fraction of what NASCAR pulls in from sponsors
ReplyDeleteSo the decline of WWE stock IS partly Daniel Bryan's fault. Just... not in the way we quite expected.
ReplyDeleteJust because they're somebody's kids doesn't necessarily mean they are going to "have a leg up on the psychology," David Flair anyone. They may get more opportunities but that's no guarantee for anything. My comment was more about how long many of today's crop of superstars have been around rather than anything about second or third generation wrestlers.
ReplyDeleteThe BoD could offer Mr. Tito a lucrative contract to work 4-6 dates a year, but it really should focus on building new stars. Unless you all consider Meekin and Bayless to be B+ players.
ReplyDeleteFixing this issue would actually require this company to acknowledge that they have an announcer problem and lord knows they're never going to do that.
ReplyDeleteFeuding him with a heatless black hole like Jack Swagger isn't going to help him at all.
ReplyDeleteEspecially in the southern states.
ReplyDeleteTwo whole weeks have passed. Clearly, it's time to declare him an utter failure.
ReplyDeleteI'd say 3 months is a more appropriate length of time.
ReplyDeleteMaybe Adam will be big in the UK.
ReplyDeleteFinished it with 1:27 left to spare
ReplyDeleteStop down voting me creative!
ReplyDeleteThey should have used the "Brodus Clay" model for introducing him. Say he is coming but let us know nothing about him, then when he comes out for his first showcase match just have come out with his "party train." It provides the "WTF is this moment and allows the fans to slowly get into the gimmick. Have wrestle and party then party with his opponents for a few weeks before they should even consider putting him into a feud.
ReplyDeleteBrodus Clay did not move up from the midcard because he didn't have the stamina to work a match longer than three minutes. Adam Rose has more than proven that he could work longer matches as "Leo Krager" in both NXT and FCW. They just needed to take a slower burn with the character.
Stop down voting me Regal!
ReplyDeleteFucking Rooster and Bravo stumped me.
ReplyDeleteHe probably would especially in a place like London since there's much more of a "party all the time" culture than there is in the states. They probably should have waited until the European tour to debut him.
ReplyDeleteI watched some old survivors series recently so those were fresh in my head. Even still, Butch Reed stumped me a bit
ReplyDeleteI disagree that Punk-Cena should have main evented and disagree even more so that it should have been for the title.
ReplyDeletePunk-Cena would have been an awesome addition to this year's WrestleMania. It surely would have been an amazing match and I would have been down to see it. But at this point, they've already wrestled on about 4 PPV's and had two other big TV matches. So main eventing this year just wouldn't have worked. Also, Daniel Bryan just HAD to win the title this year as well. So Punk-Cena for the title wouldn't have worked.
The timing has just been awkward. You could argue that they could have main evented WrestleMania 27 since they feuded in the months leading up to it. But since their true rivalry started after Money in the Bank, it didn't make sense for them to headline 28 because Rock-Cena was huge. WrestleMania 29 was probably their best shot but they decided to go a different route.
6:30 to spare.
ReplyDeleteSwagger would be a huge face in that feud in the South. They would see "Adam Rose" as an example of the excesses of "The North."
ReplyDeleteThis couldn't have come at a better time for Double J's new promotion, right? With WWE probably about to make a big purge of wrestlers like this article says, then I could see many of them going there with a fresh start rather than the tainted TNA.
ReplyDeletelol
ReplyDelete"If the WWE were to create a unique way to crown the vacated WWE Title
ReplyDeleteto someone and if they pick the perfect someone, it's a homerun for the
WWE."
The unique way is "REGULAR MATCH" and the perfect someone will be "JOHN CENA AFTER DEFEATING RANDY ORTON". Business saved!
http://www.sporcle.com/games/nscox/every-wrestlemania-match-ever
ReplyDeleteThis one might take time
Good article, but I think they missed the giant elephant in the room, the fact that there is no viable competition for WWE. I think that all of the issues mentioned would be close to being solved if there were a WCW equivalent today. Look at the point made about how none of the wrestlers who were in WWE in 1988 were there 10 years later at WM 14. Why was that? Because many of the guys who were there in 1988 were on top in 1998 in WCW making more money and working less dates. Look at the point about there being no midcard. Why? Because there isn't a viable competition where guys can get big exposure and then go to WWE being already seasoned. Guys like Austin, Foley, Jericho, and Eddie.
ReplyDeleteWWE spells is "Judgment Day" because I too am "that guy.
ReplyDeleteBayless: Check your E-mail.
ReplyDeleteTJ: watching the Brewers-Cubs game. CM Punk is on commentary, and then singing "Take Me Out to the Ballgame". He brought AJ with him, and wanted to say hello to her, and they had her on camera for a few seconds. Apparently, they're getting married next month.
ReplyDelete283 out of 293 before I ran out of time. the divas matches killed me.
ReplyDeleteHA! Punk looked like he was having an awesome time. "Who needs this wrestling shit?"
ReplyDeleteWierd seeing Punk settle down with one wone given all the chicks he's bagged over the years.
ReplyDeleteAJ's pussy must be lined with Molly.
He said shit on the air?
ReplyDeleteCult:. Belt's done.
ReplyDeleteLet me see it.
ReplyDeleteShoot me your E-mail. The peons aren't worth.
ReplyDeletedannomico@gmail.com
ReplyDeleteSent. Let me know what you think.
ReplyDeleteI like it, I'll make it my avatar in a sec.
ReplyDeleteCool.
ReplyDeleteIt's up.
ReplyDeleteI see it. Looks good.
ReplyDeleteNice belt.
ReplyDeleteI'll post the full pic when the Saturday Thread goes up.
ReplyDeleteCan't wait.
ReplyDelete242. I blanked out on a lot of the earlier WMs. And like Cult, the Diva stuff killed me, too. A good trick to getting more answers is typing in guys who show up in matches from someone else you typed in. Like, i typed in Steamboat after typing Randy Savage after seeing their match listed.
ReplyDeleteI got them all with about two minutes to go. It took a while
ReplyDeleteYour idea involves putting thought and effort into a midcard character, so it never could happen.
ReplyDeleteNo, that's what he was thinking, I'm sure.
ReplyDeleteI doubt Vince knows who Bieber actually is. His pop-culture radar has probably just made it to David Cassidy.
ReplyDeleteHe will be booed out of the building due to the fact that he's being pushed as English despite being South African.
ReplyDeleteNASCAR does have the advantage of having the ads RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU for the whole race, on the cars.
ReplyDeleteWell played good sir
ReplyDeleteAh ha!
ReplyDeleteIs it just me or did Meekin draw today and not Bayless?
ReplyDelete"high WWE Network costs (... wrestler/personality payouts, etc.)"
ReplyDeleteBWAHAHAHAHAHA
He got to David Cassidy in 1995!
ReplyDeleteI wonder how many times Piper has lost on PPV?
ReplyDeleteNot a lot. Fun fact I just learned trying to look it up, he jobbed to Flair at the Tuesday in Texas PPV but it was a dark match. Why the hell wouldn't you put that on the show?
ReplyDeleteAh, Leif Cassidy, how could I forget! I just like this image I have of Vince as being as out of touch as Mr Burns trying to find ringers for his softball team.
ReplyDeleteSeriously, the only I could think of was Bret Hart.
ReplyDeleteJesus I remember first finding out about dirt sheets on the internet when I was like 13 an Mr. Tito's PDC was by far my favorite as a kid. He was a huge nwa wcw mark, but when the ship was sinking his rants on nitro and "chunder" were classic.
ReplyDeleteincluding the nostalgia run?? thats crazy!
ReplyDeleteThat article made some good points but pretty much lost all credibility with me when it stated that the Bryan payoff was ruined because of Kane and the Shield. Really?
ReplyDeleteAnd like previous articles on that same site it completely ignores the excellent job WWE has done lately with the aforementioned Shield and Wyatt family.
He jobbed a few times in WCW I think. But pretty much every job I could find in WWE is either DQ or Countout. The only pinfalls he took was against Bret and Flair twice.
ReplyDeleteHe lost 2 Rumbles and a battle royal. His Survivor teams lost twice, and he jobbed to Rude, DiBiase, and Adonis but not clean.
hes really good, and it sucks bc all the trolls at lop are teenagers that give him shit and dont even know what they are talking about.
ReplyDeletehim and scott are the only 2 journalists online who I care about their opinion.
ReplyDeleteIn fairness, AJ is awesome.
ReplyDeleteno hes just loyal to the guy who runs the site bc he gave him his first chance as a kid to write columns i believe
ReplyDeleteActually on PPV in his career, Piper is `12-20 with 2 draws. Wow.
ReplyDeletePiper had 32 PPV matches?
ReplyDeleteThat's a wee bit harsh dude. Raw is usually good half the time and at it's worst is just stale or dull, which admittedly is a legit issue. I'll also admit 3 hours is too long per week.
ReplyDeleteAccording to this website I just discovered, http://www.profightdb.com/
ReplyDeleteThis site is awesome, I'm probably going to waste my whole day with it now.
http://www.lordsofpain.net/columns/mrtito/MR_TITO_STRIKES_BACK_-_WWE_RAW_Review_Daniel_Bryan_Injury_Thoughts_Evolution_Shield_more.html
ReplyDeleteheres his raw recap from mon night, i think he would be a welcome addition to our community.
That site is sweet. I'm assuming that figure includes WCW matches? And maybe TNA?
ReplyDeletethe dude from kentucky was the only writer i kinda liked on 411
ReplyDeleteEverything, it even lists his bullshit indy matches.
ReplyDeleteMore proof that Adam Rose is a failure.
ReplyDeleteAt first I was just thinking WWF. They didn't even have 32 PPVs total when he left.
ReplyDeleteI am begging for them to move Cena out of the Wyatt feud.
ReplyDeleteThis site is amazing. They even have star ratings for every match, they use Meltzers.
ReplyDeleteFun fact, wrestler with the highest win % in history? Ultimate Warrior!
Lawrence Taylor has a higher winning %.
ReplyDeleteRandom, "Nobody's gonna see it." TJ:
ReplyDeletehttp://deadspin.com/striking-photos-of-the-abandoned-silverdome-1577478667
So fucking depressing.
minimum 50 matches
ReplyDeleteAnd I figured it'd be Goldberg, with Warrior in second. I might (probably) be wrong about this, but I don't think Goldberg has ever lost clean on TV.
ReplyDeleteHe has 17 non PPV losses.
ReplyDeleteYou totally just fucked my joke up. You were supposed to say "But he's not a wrestler" and I was going to say that neither is Miz, but both have closed out Wrestlemania.
ReplyDeleteSorry, I like to call it in the ring.
ReplyDeleteAnd I believe all 17 were either at house shows or due to interference or something.
ReplyDeleteHis only TV loss in the WWE was losing a 3 on 1 hanidcap match to Evolution. He lost a bunch on TV back in 2000 on Nitro.
ReplyDeleteBut did he lose clean? I swear I remember this being part of a Sforcnia article.
ReplyDeleteI performed research on this Leminson Investment Group. This is really interesting guys:
ReplyDeleteThe Chief Investment Officer is a Priest, who along with running this company, also writes criticisms of fraudulent stock practices. In fact, this financial group moved in on one company it criticized and demanded similar actions as with WWE.
Secondly, with accusations against WWE, for fraudulent stock/trading practices, does anyone else smell "scam" artists to me?
Perhaps a certain company has some inside info...
278. I missed mostly divas matches, and oddly anyone named McMahon.
ReplyDeleteFor guys I probably should have gotten, I missed Del Rio, Henry, Adonis, and Booker T..
It doesn't say if there was interference or not. That would be my only suggestion, a little notes column that tells you want the finish was.
ReplyDeleteThe CIO is a fucking Priest. This is ridic.
ReplyDelete261
ReplyDeleteI always wondered that too, especially given that Piper was going to be gone after WrestleMania anyway, so it was probably the only chance to get a payday off that match.
ReplyDeleteEven from Vince's perspective. You'd think he would want a big time match like that advertised if he was serious about getting that concept over.
ReplyDeleteNice. 58.
ReplyDelete60
ReplyDeletethe survivor series matches got me, plus the '02 tag title match
what does jermaine say, though?
ReplyDeleteJohn Cena has a paltry 66 winning %. He jobs too much.
ReplyDeleteMaybe feed him to Barritt?
ReplyDeleteYeah, it's an interesting situation. On the one hand, you're trying to gauge how well people would respond to more frequent, impromptu PPVs like that which are naturally going to suffer a bit in terms of promotion, so maybe you don't want to give away a big match if it's possible that few will see it... but on the other, you need a big match to sell the show.
ReplyDeleteI guess they figured a return Undertaker/Hogan match, plus Savage's reinstatement would be enough -- and maybe it would have, had the Survivor Series 1991 not done so badly in terms of both buys and customer satisfaction.
It was kind of a nutty idea to begin with -- selling one PPV with another and having only six days between them -- so basically one weekend to sell it on TV? I'm pretty sure the whole idea was hatched out of the fact that PPV availaiblity began to increase more rapidly and research that suggested that most PPVs were last minute, impulse buys.
Might have worked better if you flipped them. Tuesday PPV leads into Survivor Series a week later.
ReplyDeleteThis whole story just naked me glad I never put my money in the stock market. JBL must be even smarter than he appears if he made his money from that riff raff.
ReplyDelete"This whole story just naked me glad"
ReplyDeleteok then
Dammit you caught me before the edit.
ReplyDelete"he made his money from that riff raff."
ReplyDeleteangus made his money partly from this riff raff:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0I7FuO4Br0
Come to think of it, they messed around a lot with their stuff at that time of year it seemed. The '91 Series was the first one they moved back to 'Thanksgiving Eve' and the year before they did the Survivor Series Showdown USA special on the 18th, the Survivor Series on the 22nd, and a Main Event special the next night on the 23rd.
ReplyDeleteThe SS buyrate started getting laggy in 1989 once people figured out nothing big happened I guess -- but you would think the Hogan/Undertaker title match would have had more interest.
Sporcle is such a ridiculously fun way of passing time.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I'm thinking they were experimenting with adding more ppv's, but since neither one of these did good business, that idea was dropped until WCW added more shows a few years later.
ReplyDelete273/293
ReplyDeleteIt kept refusing to accept my spelling of Wendy Richner.
I don't know, but their stuff on Skechers and Western Digital added up quite nicely. As scary as it sounds... an "honest" investment firm that not only talks, but is willing to try to back up that talk with money?
ReplyDeleteJBL is a smart asshole... a perfect start for Wall Street success.
ReplyDeleteRichter, you mean.
ReplyDeleteHuh, so that's why I have sudden cravings for Kellogg's cereal, 5-Hour Energy and washing my clothes with Tide.
ReplyDeleteIt would work best as a Kurt Angle type of character, where he thinks everyone likes him and he's everyone's motivational speaker.
ReplyDeleteSo who got squashed worse on Smackdown: Titus, Sandow or Ziggler?
ReplyDeleteThe Ziggler-Batista squash made the least sense to me because having Dolph give Batista a battle would be the first step in moving him up the card to help fill the babyface void they're going to have with Bryan out of action. As much as WWE has tried to book him like a loser, Ziggler is still over with the crowd and could be credible in a higher position.
Sandow gave his best Bagwell impression.
ReplyDeleteYeah, it's interesting that in the end it was WCW's philosophy and not the cut-rate semi-event PPV model that paid off -- full priced, full hype PPVs didn't end up watering down the overall buyrate numbers, which was always the fear before that point.
ReplyDeleteI don't trust religion so when I heard about this guy I was immediately skeptical.
ReplyDeleteThe company if forecasting to lose $50 million this year.
ReplyDeleteIf everything they said came true, the stock wouldn't have tanked.
269/293. My own damn fault because I was seeing multiple people pop up by default of some of the more popular answers so I missed the fact that I needed to enter people specifically to get the rest of their matches. Completely whiffed on naming Yoko, Luger, and Duggan.
ReplyDeleteI also forgot Jeff Jarrett but does everyone?
278. Mostly missed divas, but I did miss Mark Henry as an obvious one.
ReplyDeleteOnly missed Butch Reed.
ReplyDeleteSo which NXT wrestler is getting Cap Lemmelsen as a wrestling name next month?
ReplyDeleteMisspelling intentional...you know, from the lawyers.
I also got 65. Missed couple survivor series guy
ReplyDeleteI'd approve of the threadjack if only Scott hadn't already post That Very Link.
ReplyDeleteThe Braden Walker Test.
ReplyDeleteOnly there's no Capital City Goofball...unless that's yet another new nickname that Cena can milk on a t-shirt.
ReplyDeleteIf that's the case, then what is the point of NXT?
ReplyDeleteSwagger is screaming for a Hacksawesque face turn. They need to just give up on Vince's hatred of Red State America(tm). I find these Teas Party types tiresome as well, but it just doesn't fit into my rasslin'. Dutch can get heat so many other ways.
ReplyDeleteI'm thinking HTM.
ReplyDelete