My favorite line from Raw this week came from Doc Gallows:

 

"A grown man crying over a toy sword. This is exactly the problem."

 

That made me cracking up more than it should have. Overall a good episode, just hate the return of 'we have to do it for the brand!' trope as WWE hasn't laid out a reason for any of these guys to be loyal to either of the brands at this point.

I thought this was an especially bad episode of Raw. It really dragged for me. So little wrasslin! The Bayley thing was great, though.

If Raw would have been any more mailed in, it would have been delivered by UPS.

WWE Network should really be running election coverage. Imagine the hot takes from Booker all day in front of that hilarious green screen set they have.

change made to Survivor Series men elimination:

 

 

 

Shane McMahon replaced Corbin on team SD. LOL

 

Honestly. the change is a net positive for me. It's not as bad for a multi man elimination match

also:

 

 

Kendrick v Kalisto at Survivor Series and if Kalisto wins the entire cruiserweight division goes to SD. WTF?!

 

I have no issue with Corbin not being on the SD team, because Corbin is terrible. From a technical standpoint he's probably better than Shane, but not from a storyline or crazy bumptaking standpoint.

 

And if that spoiler is true...and Kalisto could beat Kendrick and bring the Crusierweights to SD? Kickass. SD is so much better than Raw right now, that's one less reason to check out Raw. Really, Jericho (outside the ring) is one of the few reasons I even bother with Raw.

I don't see how Kalisto doesn't win and reset the division. Plus, the division will benefit from being presented more like it was on the Network, with Mauro and Bryan involved and more familiar talents, like a Kalisto, holding the title while lesser known talents like Perkins and Cedric fighting to upset him. I'm a Kendrick fan, but he wasn't the guy to build the division around any more than Perkins was.

 

Also, the argument that RAW "needed" the cruisers to fill their 3-hour runtime makes sense in a world where the WWE wasn't putting on 3-hour shows, of varying levels of quality, for a number of years prior to the invention of the division. The cruiser division, as it was introduced, wasn't adding anything but filler to the show - and you can do the same by just adding other forms of filler (more Curtis Axel, more Bo Dallas, more squash matches). Moving them to SD will help the Blue Brand more than it will hurt the RAW brand.

Aren't they also taping that new Cruiserweight show after Smackdown? If so, it would make sense to switch the division.

When SD came on I was thinking to myself that they've had women main event Raw and now a PPV, but never Smackdown, so they should really put Becky vs Alexa on last.

 

Thanks Double Double E for reading my mind.

Shane looks ridiculous with these sneakers. You're almost 50 man, get some loafers.

OK I take it back, the girls are coming out now. Don't tease me like that.

OK I take it back, the girls are coming out now. Don't tease me like that.

 

Agreed, they were really going overboard in hyping it up as the main event, and it really should've been.

People who bought tickets are getting emails that it's going to be a four hour show now. WWE seems to have not learned from previous examples of WCW and to a lesser extent UFC when it comes to putting out way too much content and watering everything down.

WWE is making so much money as a whole that I feel like they're not paying enough attention to their bread-and-butter anymore which is the cable television wrestling show. Sure, they're making hand over fist now but if the TV remains weak and WWE Network subscriptions dwindle, won't those other revenue streams eventually start to run out?

Kevin Nash revealed on the radio that Shawn Michaels is the new head at the WWE Performance Center. That's actually pretty big news

WWE is making so much money as a whole that I feel like they're not paying enough attention to their bread-and-butter anymore which is the cable television wrestling show. Sure, they're making hand over fist now but if the TV remains weak and WWE Network subscriptions dwindle, won't those other revenue streams eventually start to run out?

 

Their TV money is pretty much what's keeping them profitable. The network is just now getting to the levels profit wise that PPV was at before, and everything else has been stagnant.

Network subs are at what, 1.4 million? So that's about $14 million in revenue per month? Have PPVs ever been that lucrative?

Assuming the average PPV was $40, 1.4m subs would be equivalent to about 350k PPV buys every month, which is far above 100k-200k buys they were averaging for pre-network PPVs. And it all presumably goes straight to WWE without cable providers taking anything. Certainly seems like a good deal for WWE.

WWE doesn't get all the profit from the network, part of it goes to MLBAM.

I think I read somewhere the infrastructure cost is around 30%,which is still a way better cut than the 50% they previously received.

But half of a $50 PPV (more for Wrestlemania) is still higher than 70% of a WWE Network sub, plus a lot of people sign up for the free month and bounce without ever paying and/or game the system to have several free months.

How many of those are free months given to new subscribers or lapsed subscribers as incentives for signing up/enticing them to come back? Not all of those active in a month are paying customers.

Has there been any reporting on what their ad rates are for the ads they show on the Network? That is another, likely relatively small, revenue stream as well.