NintendoLogic

It should be pointed out that Summerslam 2011 did a lousy buyrate. So if the goal in rushing Punk back was to draw money by striking while the iron was hot, they failed.

Speaking of the AWA, does the 9/29/85 Jumbo/Martel match exist in complete form? I've only seen the JIP version on Youtube.

I think jdw's comments on the NWA tag title tournament for the DVDVR Best of the 90s Project are quite apropos: To echo jdw's point, the "lie on the mat and do nothing" school of matwork had died a well-deserved death by that point. All those coma-inducing MVC matches represented a significant step back from what WCW had been doing.

It never meant anything. It started out as a vanity belt for Davey Boy Smith to wear and became a complete joke once Shawn got his hands on it.

Yeah, they released the full match when Kobashi retired. Anyway, my pick would be the 1985 Lawler/Dundee LLT match.

I don't know about that. This is shaping up to be the worst Mania since 27.

The problem with Cena/Lesnar is that it's yet another feud that won't have a satisfying resolution. There's no way in hell that Cena is losing clean at the Rumble, so it's just a question of what kind of bullshit finish we're going to get.

I'm struggling to think of a single reason to watch this show. TLC has always been my least favorite PPV since it's almost entirely stuntfests with little or no actual wrestling. On top of that, I don't give a shit about anyone on the show and nothing that matters is at stake. You know things are bad when I can't even bring myself to watch a PPV I've already paid for.

Yeah, he said the following in a NJPW World recommendation thread a little over a week ago: Hopefully, that'll kill the "Dave only likes X Division matches" talking point for good.

Trish/Mickie at WM22.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: the only way women's wrestling will draw money in the US is by going the 80s AJW route and marketing to teenage girls.

Why are Paige and Emma paying tribute to the troops?

But Doc hit a much higher peak there than Ace or Spivey, who didn't exactly crank out singles classics. I think it was the perfect setting for Doc's power and physicality to translate, but he also deserves credit for not getting lost in the complexity of those matches. I'd put Ace's 1997 match with Taue above any match Doc had with the possible exception of the one where he won the Triple Crown from Misawa. Anyway, MVC/Steiners is funny because it shows what matwork would look like if wrestling was real. Guy gets a takedown, other guy scrambles for the ropes. Repeat until they get tired of it and start beating the hell out of each other.

I know WWE tends to mail it in during football season, but this year seems even worse than usual. I discovered last night that ESPN Classic shows old GWF episodes at the same time as Raw. I think I might start watching that instead until the Rumble.

To put it in less inflammatory terms, Dunn is Vince's Mark Penn.

Here you go again. Whenever the subject of WWE business comes up, you cherry-pick individual shows that did great business while ignoring the bigger picture. Is the overall trend up or down? Yet another example of cherry-picked data. Looking at the years you highlighted, NBA attendance in 2013-14 was 21.4 million as opposed to 20.4 million in 1997-98. And MLB attendance this past season was nearly 74 million as opposed to 63 million in 1997. So when you say there's less interest in every sport then there used to be, you couldn't be more wrong. Meanwhile, how do WWE's attendance figures compare to 15 years ago? Or even 5 years ago? It's true that WWE has been consistently profitable in recent years. Well, not this year, but let's set that aside for now. The thing is, it's almost entirely due to the rights fee explosion that has benefited every sport (fucking MLS got a big money TV deal, for fuck's sake). If WWE got the same in rights fees as they did a decade ago, they would've been in the red in a major way the past few years. It's certainly a feather in Vince's cap that he's been able to adjust to the changing landscape and continue to make money. But that speaks to his skills as a businessman, not a promoter. His business is based on getting networks to pay him to provide content rather than getting fans to pay to watch wrestling.

It's not that ridiculous. Other than Bruno Sammartino, how many guys who weren't native English speakers have been really strong promos?

I don't think it's reasonable to expect anyone to know everything there is to know about a given field with no gaps in knowledge.

The best description I've heard of HHH is that he's a good wrestler who thinks he's a great wrestler which ends up making him a shit wrestler.

I'm kind of surprised to see a Dory Funk tribute act getting so much more love than the genuine article.

To me, the fact that TNA managed to draw a profit indicates that being consistently profitable in this day and age isn't that much of an accomplishment. Also, for the record, Vince didn't sell out MSG for 30 years. Not even close.

The WWF ended fiscal 1997 (that is, the year ending April 30, 1997) in the red. But like you said, their financial troubles were over once they raised the prices on the IYH PPVs.

I'm downloading it right now, but if Punk is difficult to work with, good for him. This is a shitty business run by scumbags. If you don't look out for yourself, no one else will.

Living the gimmick, brother.

I want to disagree with this, but I really can't. As bad as the bitches-and-bling school of hip-hop is, it's not nearly as bad as the so-called "socially conscious" rappers who spout dumb shit like 9/11 conspiracy theories and calling Louis Farrakhan a prophet. By the same token, trying to make wrestling "progressive" results in shit like Chikara. What it comes down to is that wrestling and hip-hop are both degenerate art forms that appeal primarily to man's worst instincts. No one's quite figured out how to disentangle the awesome elements from the degenerate ones. Setting aside the fact that you're overstating the role of the outlaw in American culture, WWE babyfaces don't really pursue the greater good so much as their own self-interest. It's more a reflection of Vince McMahon's worldview than of American society as a whole. There was a recent comment on the F4W boards that I think was spot-on: I'm not trying to make any political judgements. Seriously. HOWEVER you can tell there's a lot of Ayn Rand koolaid in the booking, and the average person isn't going to connect to that. I think WWE babyfaces make a lot more sense when you view them as Randian supermen.