NintendoLogic

You misunderstand my position. I'm not denying that Cena drew tons of money and played a big part in the success WWE has had. It's just that I think his realistic ceiling was significantly lower than you do. Plus, wrestling in America is as unpopular now as it's ever been. Cena's not the main problem, but he's not completely blameless either. Your argument's getting a bit muddled. If you want to argue that they tried to make Cena a bigger star but did it in an incompetent and counterproductive manner, I'd certainly agree with that. But if you're arguing that they deliberately sought to avoid making him a bigger star while putting him in every main event, putting him over everyone on the roster, and cross-promoting him to an unprecedented degree, that's a different story. But if you drive away the latter in an attempt to pick up the former, you risk losing both. Sometimes a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.

Farmer's list doesn't tell the whole story, and it certainly has issues as you go further down. But it does do a good job of demonstrating who the absolute tippy-top guys are.

It's Flair and it's not even close. http://wrestlingclassics.com/cgi-bin/.ubbc...10;t=002127;p=0 Of course, a big part of that is him being the touring world champ during a period when most of the territories were on fire business-wise.

How far back do you want to go? Because there's a 1969 match between Giant Baba and Fritz Von Erich from LA that I liked quite a bit.

These seem to be the most glaring omissions: Bob Backlund vs. Greg Valentine (2/19/79) (WWWF) Jerry Lawler vs. Dutch Mantell (3/22/82) (Memphis) Ric Flair vs. Kerry Von Erich (8/28/82) (WCCW) Jerry Lawler vs. Bill Dundee (6/6/83) (Memphis) Ric Flair vs. Kerry Von Erich (10/12/85) (Hawaii) Jerry Lawler vs. Austin Idol (4/27/87) (Memphis) There's also a Lawler/Dundee match from 1977 on tape, but I'm not sure of the date. I think it's August 5. Also, you're using Mid-South to refer to both Memphis and the Bill Watts territory. The main arena in Memphis was the Mid-South Coliseum, but Mid-South as a territory refers to Wattsland.

So am I the only one who has very low expectations for this considering how Nexus played out? Not to mention Punk's track record with stables.

After digging deeper, it seems that the 187 figure is exaggerated. I've seen wildly varying estimates of the actual figure, ranging from the low 40s to around 127. So it's entirely possible that Backlund did record more MSG sellouts than Sammartino. It's not really relevant to the overall argument, so I'll just concede the point.

Phony, soulless, corporate poseur Cena is exactly the kind of guy Attitude Era fans were taught to hate. And remaking WWE in the image of this phony, soulless, corporate poseur would have ushered in a new boom period? Other than Cena and Michaels in the main event, No Way Out was Smackdown-exclusive. And Bad Blood 2003 did a good byrate pretty much exclusively on the basis of being the first brand-exclusive PPV, so Backlash's anemic numbers represented a huge step backwards. It's well-established that WWE has remained profitable largely by developing revenue streams that are independent of its ability to put asses in seats. And I posted a graph in the HOF candidates thread showing that PPV buys declined every year from 2005 to 2010 before a Rock-assisted rebound in 2011. My recollection is the exact opposite. When crowds first started turning on Cena in 2005, WWE went to absurd lengths to try to turn the tide. First, they tried to recreate Austin/McMahon with Cena/Bischoff. Then, when he was getting booed out of the building everywhere they went against Kurt Angle, they did everything they could to get fans to boo Angle instead (having him insult the troops, giving him Daivari as a manager, censoring the "you suck" chants), to no avail. They may have relented eventually, but they didn't initially meet it with indifference. John Cena is the most prominent member of the regular roster. Changing that would require effort, so he will remain in that spot until acted upon by an outside force. There's no more evidence now that they're actually invested in making him a star than they were then. This is just booking entropy, and if anything, it makes it all the more clear that Tom was right - the goal is to maintain status quo, not to create a big money star. The brand, not the wrestlers. And you'd have to be out of your mind to watch them the past few years and see otherwise. If only they could do more to show that they're invested in making Cena a bigger star. Like having him in the main event of every PPV where he's physically able to perform despite holding the world title (or any title, for that matter) for exactly zero days during that span. Or having him go over Brock Lesnar when booking logic and common sense pointed in the opposite direction. Are you really arguing that Cena accidentally stumbled into being the guy all the booking revolves around in spite of WWE's best efforts? What difference does that make in whether the older fans you've turned your back on will come back? What numbers are you looking at? Sammartino sold out the Garden 187 times. They were doing monthly MSG shows back then, so it wasn't mathematically possible for Backlund to come anywhere close to that number during his reign. I'm not arguing against Backlund's drawing power in general, mind you.

Which reminds me, Resident Evil always spelled magic with a j for some reason.

This match was way more fun than it had any right to be. It actually reminded me a lot of Cena/Lesnar. Both matches are chaotic bloody brawls, and Brock and Muta are both out-of-control seemingly unstoppable monsters.

I keep hearing that Bull Nakano was better than Aja Kong, but everything I've seen indicates that the reverse is true, so I've figured that maybe I hadn't seen the right Bull matches. Well, a match like this is as much of an apples-to-apples comparison as you can get, and after watching it, I feel secure in considering Aja the better of the two. She sells better, and her offense is more appropriate for her role. Bull wrestles too much like a fat Kyoko Inoue. Well, fatter.

I like Liger in general, and I thought the 8/89 match between these two was really good, but I've never been able to get into this match. Whenever I tried to watch it, I found myself zoning out and not caring about what was happening. After making a concerted effort to pay attention while watching, I figured out the problem: the beatdown by Sano goes on for way too long. Liger barely gets in any offense at all for the first 18 minutes. When someone's in control for that long, it crosses the line from "how's Liger going to come back from this" to "Sano doesn't have enough to put Liger away." It's like a football team that dominates the time of possession but doesn't score any touchdowns.

But even an NFL washout is still a high-level athlete.

My subscription has lapsed, but I recall Dave mentioning how Curtis Iaukea and another guy whose name I can't remember walked out of Raiders camp because they could make more money wrestling and wouldn't have to put up with coaches yelling at them. It was in the context of how fewer of the cream of the athletic crop goes into wrestling today than in past years. On that note, there was a piece in the Observer a while back about how fewer top athletes going into wrestling has made the talent more docile. Elite athletes are used to being coddled and getting what they want, so they're more likely to press the issue if they don't think they're getting a fair shake. By contrast, most of today's talent look at themselves not in comparison to other athletes but to the average American. By that standard, they're doing pretty well, and most of them are just thankful for the opportunity.

I never really cared about FLIK's spelling. But it's become something I can't unsee thanks to tigerpride harping on it. At this point, I just want to know what the backstory is.

So is this an omnibus grammar Nazi thread now? Because it really bothers me that SLL doesn't know the difference between its and it's.

So some indy geek got a Romney tattoo on his face: http://gawker.com/5959765/guy-who-got-romn...regrets-nothing Controversy creates ca$h!

I didn't think it was that bad myself, but it should be noted that Lawler had no problem with using his mother's death in a wrestling angle despite acknowledging that his mother probably wouldn't have appreciated it. Amusingly, he was apparently genuinely offended when Jimmy Hart compared him to a thoroughbred that had to be put down after he broke his leg.

UFC PPVs are also premium episodes of a TV show.

Not a steep decline. A slow steady one. None of which were serious issues for UFC until they started oversaturating the market and running too many weak cards. It's almost as if there's a lesson of some sort that can be drawn from this.

Peep this chart: There was a significant uptick in PPV business during Cena's first year on top (though it should be noted that WWE ran 15 PPVs that year). But buys declined every single year after that before rebounding in 2011 thanks to Rock. Cena isn't the primary cause of the rot at the heart of WWE, and they'd be much worse off without him. But he's become part of the problem. WWE right now is like an aging NFL team that keeps trading away draft picks so it can make one last run.

If Tanahashi got inducted, it wouldn't be because of work alone. A big part of his candidacy is his role in turning business around for New Japan. I don't think he's a strong candidate now, but if he maintains his current career trajectory, he will be in a few years.

Tell that to Mitt Romney.

From the Businessweek interview: Those worked out so well that she did even worse with women voters this time around (60-39 vs. 59-40 in 2010). She also got creamed among working-class voters (67-30 among voters with incomes of less than 50k). So either the polls showing her doing well among that group were way off or they smartened up after the debates.

Is Sting a better candidate than Randy Orton?