sek69

Ever since the infamous Bob Holly match, the Rumble always has a "dude who has no chance in hell of winning the title" match to give the champ a boost into Wrestlemania. Of course by now most people KNOW that there's going to be a weak challenger at the Rumble, but whatever.

Looks like the deal's off. WWE is pissed Mistico waited to tell them till after the tryout that he's signed to a long deal with CMLL. Their legal team decided it wasn't worth the effort to get him out of it.

I'm thinking this deal's not going to happen if someone points out to Mistico the fact that if he leaves and CMLL has him drop the mask, his career's pretty much over if WWE ends up not using him/releasing him after a few months.

WWE 24/7 is showing Wrestlemania III: Super Hyper Championship Fighting Edition this month. That should get you back to a foam finger waving Hulkamanic in no time.

I'd expect to the the MMA Obsever before a boxing one. It's like Dave is like Vince in that way where he seems embarrassed to be associated with pro wrestling.

Yeah, but there's even odds that he'd end up jobbing on Internet-only shows and being wished the best in his future endeavors. Also, what would happen if he did sign with WWE? CMLL owns the gimmick don't they? Would they have him drop the mask on the way out? Wow, that's a lot of questions in one post.

Watching the Monday Night War for 12/9/96 on WWE 24/7 and seeing an ad for this show reminded me of something I wanted to ask the crowd here: The main event for this show is Sid vs Bret Hart for the title, but the name of the show would suggest that somehow Vader was supposed to be involved. Was this orignally planned to feature Vader or is that just one of those wacky WWF things?

You know, I never did get why Dusty's booking gets slagged on like it does. I mean, it's not like he didn't have some ideas that are still pined over to this day (WarGames), and the "he pushed himself too much" argument would have more force if Dusty still didn't have more charisma than the entire WWE roster save maybe 2-3 people.

Reading in the WON how Dusty has successfully lobbied to get the ECW tag titles revived, combined with his previous work booking Smackdown, can a case be made that he almost single handedly saved tag team wrestling in WWE? You could even argue that without Smackdown reminding people that tag team wrestling still exists, the RAW tag belts would still be jobber fodder instead of being fought for between main eventers (one of which being the WWE champion).

I get the feeling whenever Vince is no longer around we're going to see a CMLL/AAA style split since Shane and Stephanie seem to have completely opposite views on what direction to go.

Unless that play includes driving a stake into Vince's heart, I don't see it working. There's no way anyone, including his children, will ever be able to unseat Vince.

It just seems odd that a company that seems to have yearly firings to lower costs (so they can do things like pay the Diva Search winner $250,000) would want to put forth the money to secure TV/run shows/pay extra wrestlers and staff to run shows all over the world on a regular basis.

Wouldn't the costs associated with running a promotion on every continent kill any chance of this happening for real?

Are luchadores that big of marks for working for WWE that they don't see how they'd be misused? I mean for every Rey-Rey there's a million El Dandys jobbing in WCW and Mil Mascaras(es) being eliminated from the Rumble in minutes. Wouldn't someone raised in the tradition of wrestling actually being respected rather be a hero in their own home than being made into a Heat jobber?

Having more time to build a show gives them the chance to make each show better. How many people out there are on the fence or would buy PPVs if they weren't running the same matches every month? Like the number of licks it takes to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop, the world may never know.

What makes this even more awesome, this gimmick is apparently is designed to be a knock of Brooke Hogan. Nothing like taking your anger at someone out on their kids, eh Vince?

It's really difficult to have an effective build for a PPV with 7 or so matches every 30 days. I mean, it's theoretically possible, but WWE has a mindset where the creative staff only focuses on the main eventers which creates a recurring loop where no new stars get created.

There's also the fact that due to the nature of UFC it's not going to be the same guys every month on PPV the way WWE tends to be sometime. You're only going to see the top UFC guys a couple times a year so that alone is going to make any PPV they are on a special event. WWE doesn't have the time to build A level stars (unless they fall into a hot angle/gimmick) due to having a show to shill every month with the same guys on top. That's what burns people out since you tend to not care when you've seen the same match 3 PPVs in a row.

The more PPVs there are, regardless of how much money is made, dilutes the product. I don't think anyone can argue that. The shorter amout of time there are between shows, the less build you can do for each one, until they all seem like episodes of RAW or SmackDown that you have to pay $40 to see. It's pretty much an accounting trick, keep raising the price of the shows while the amount of buys drop so it appears as if the level stayed the same. It's becoming like the TV ratings where only the hardcores are left. WWE has gone from the undisputed #1 of PPV to a distant third. MMA is just smoking them silly to the point where you can barely find any bar or restuarant showing WWE PPV anymore. I thought it was a mistake when they raised the price of the lesser shows to be the same price as the Big 4 (well, WM has always been more), they probably lost a lot of people who were on the fence with that. Especially when you consider 3/4ths of WWE PPVs are not worth the price charged. Sure the hardcores are always going to buy, but you can't run forever on just the core audience. In fact, HBO is doing with boxing PPVs what I suggested WWE should do. They're going to focus on fewer fights so they can be properly promoted and theoretically draw more buys. Time will tell if it pays off for them, but at the very least the people buying boxing PPVs are going to be seeing well promoted fights that will be worth the money paid for them. What's going to be annoying is that WM is probably going to generate a ridiculous number due to the Trump stuff being covered by the media, which will just send the message to WWE that the way they do PPV business is just fine.

I'm honored jdw would confuse me with Loss.

I always thought the problem with Ricky was that the "family man babyface" schtick wasn't getting him over. It was supposed to be Family Ricky vs Ric Flair the playa, but Flair ended up more of the face in the end.

It's as if they went out of their way to pick matches that would not convey the awesomness of the Four Horsemen. But then WWE would never bury something that got over they didn't create, right?