wrestling / Columns

The Wrestling Sandwich 06.09.12

June 9, 2012 | Posted by Scott Rutherford

Greetings pilgrims and welcome to this weeks Wrestling Sandwich.

Apologies in advance that this is will be shorter in length than my normal column as work, wife and four kids bested out in the time-sharing stakes leaving not much time to get this completed.

So rather than bore you with any more intro…let’s get to this weeks sandwich.

As I’ve pissed and moaned about previously (like in the intro to this very column) real life is extremely busy for me so to afford myself the hours to get one of these columns in every week can be hard. I try and proof as best I can so imagine my chagrin when last week I dropped these two whoppers helpfully pointed out in the comments….

“the Extreme Rules 2012 buyrate dropped with this years PPV getting an extra 40,000 domestic buys than last years while internationally they dropped about 4,000.”

Read those numbers again. The buyrate didn’t drop. It went up by 36,000 buys.

Posted By: Guest#2224 (Guest) on June 02, 2012 at 12:15 AM

Yup. Completely fucked that one up. The only defense that I can offer is that the rest of my opinion stated that it was a rise.

The other one was…

Uh, Orton didn’t miss the Over the Limit PPV. He was in that four way match. What are you, teh dumb?

Posted By: Guest#1862 (Guest) on June 02, 2012 at 01:13 AM

Teh dumb? No but a serious case of blending PPV’s.

I’ve never claimed to be perfect but I always admit to screwing up and I did so last week, twice.

Here’s a little secret, it wont be the last time.

Another comment caught my eye was this…

Actually Lesnar didn’t do this on his own. What I had heard was Heyman through CM Punk pitched the idea to McMahon that Lesnar would schedule a meeting with White to play off the story that he “quit the WWE”. So that the meeting seemed legit Lesnar had a list of names of guys that he would fight that he pitched to White knowing that White would reject all of them, and if White did accept any of them they were supposedly guys Lesnar would have no trouble beating.

Posted By: Guest#2743 (Guest) on June 02, 2012 at 10:45 PM

I agree that planting Brock at a UFC PPV sounds like something Vince would do but I really don’t think Brock is the type of guy that would do that on behalf of someone else. For all of his “caveman” tendencies Brock has shown himself to be a very shrewd businessman and has always managed to get more money from his employers even when he had ironclad contracts. For him to piss Dana off would be very counter productive if as expected Brock goes back for another couple of MMA matches before returning to the hills to beat bears with he bare hands.

The other big clue as to Vince not being in on this was that the WWE didn’t mention this AT ALL on the following RAW. If they were looking for some purchase from this in terms of publicity, the WWE themselves dropped the ball big time. In fact they have barely mentioned Lesnar in weeks and while the HHH-Lesnar match is largely set in stone, it seems Brock and his behavior has everyone guessing.

So one of the big talking points of the week was, of course, Randy Orton and his Wellness suspension. Furthermore was that Randy Orton himself seems incredibly displeased to be have been popped. I’ve stated my reasons for this test becoming public as a WWE show in their perceived declining star value of Randy Orton. This give them incredible leverage over Orton since they can pretty much terminate with good cause since he has two wellness and a raft of disciplinary breaches they can sight.

So lets look at this from a couple different points of view…

WWE
This is all sorts of interesting.

Firstly common wisdom was that Orton was bullet proof from wellness since he was the #2 face in the company and the major star of the Smackdown brand. Putting him into a position that could see his employment ended seemed a hug no go zone. Clearly there are other forces at work here.

In Randy’s favour will be the shift to 3 hour RAW’s. Coming hot on he heels of RAW doing its 2nd lowest rating in the past 15 years and the likely doom for the new first hour and the likely drag down effect on the shows overall ratings, Vince and WWE management will be looking for any sort of rating bump they can and luckily for Randle, he’s off suspension by that week and most likely getting hotshotted into some feud for Summer Slam.

Second advantage is just the complete lack of main eventers left in the WWE working a fulltime schedule. You have Cena with Orton running a distant second and then a huge gap to C.M. Punk and then light-years back to anyone else. Daniel Bryan and Sheamus have potential but the WWE seem unlikely to really pull the trigger on a massive push. The Miz who main evented for a long stretch during 2010/2011 has been so thoroughly buried he needs a complete makeover before coming back. The Big Show and Kane have long since stopped being relevant and potential stars like Dolph Ziggler seemed destined to be jobber fodder.

In the WWE’s favour is that ratings and buyrates have very little further to fall. Randy and his influence has probably peaked and he alone will not draw any more than what is currently being drawn. As I’ve talked about for weeks now he’s unlikely to have much in ring time as a quality performer left. Attitude and a knack for injuring himself are massive black marks and the return on investment for the WWE may be rapidly shrinking.

TNA
If Randy finds himself on the open market you could make a very safe bet that he will end up in Florida. What are the pros and cons of this?

The big tick will be a current wrestling star making a jump. TNA have had a couple of big jumpers in Jeff Hardy and Kurt Angle but both those guys came with massive baggage. Even with all of his downside, Randy carries himself like a star and that’s what the TNA brand needs, a legit big time wrestling star that will attract interest. Orton can certainly do that.

While he wouldn’t be making as much as he would in the WWE, the lighter road schedule and the smaller house show circuit would be attractive and much easier on his body. Never mind that he could have a bunch of fresh match-ups with old WWE foes and TNA stars like AJ Styles, Christopher Daniels, Robert Roode, James Storm amongst others which have a great appeal.

TNA is slowly shedding the stink of the Russo era and booking and storylines are slowed down and make more sense. The injection of talent like Orton would go a lot further to helping that stench disappear. Hands up anyone that wouldn’t be interested in what would happen with Ken Anderson?

The downside for Orton is that he will be viewed as another WWE transplant that will cost TNA money with little result. He will be on a fraction of the money he was before and performing in front of smaller crowds and have less exposure. His outsider nature may work against him in a locker room where he would be a legit outsider and his knack for demotivation may kick in.

But he would be free to take all the drugs he wants.

It’s certainly an interesting time for Orton and the WWE.

As mentioned in the Randy opinions above, the WWE had a disastrous rating this week and TNA certainly underperformed against expectations.

With TNA it is entirely explainable when you take into account the shift forward an hour for the new timeslot. The big test for them will be in another 2-3 weeks when everyone will be aware of the new start time. If ratings don’t rebound then the move may be viewed as a failure. Which would be wrong.

TNA has been slowly re-inventing itself and they need to stay the course. This weeks Impact, in fairness, was step down but these type of shows cannot hit home runs every week. They are pushing the shit out of the 10th Anniversary stuff and are putting in some hard yards building up Slammiversay with the first sign of pre-planning and long term booking we’ve seen in a good long while.

To pull the plug and panic and start relying on old tricks and even older wrestlers would only be step back to what people have stayed away from. They need to keep looking forward and ride the bumpy road until things smooth out and then we may see a steady upswing in ratings.

For the WWE their rating is a very real worry because it’s fixing to get worse. The bigger story though has been their DVR numbers. Most of their audience drop offs have been made up from people recording instead of watching live. The issue now is that DVR numbers have dropped 11% so not only are people not tuning in to watch their show live, they couldn’t even be bothered to watch it later.

They just don’t care.

So Vince’s big plan is for him to show up in the first quarter of RAW.

This will not help.

Others are saying that he’ll wise-up and drop C.M Punk into the first hour and Vince will show up at the top of hour 2 when people will be tuning in and he can blame Punk for the poor first hour rating and give himself a pat on the back for bringing them back up.

The move to three hours is entirely revenue driven and only a few in charge at the WWE think this is a good idea but certain egotistical, batshit insane, borderline psychopathic people seem to think keeping the books in the black is more desirable that fixing the biggest issue facing their revenue…quality.

So I was browsing through some wrestling torrents looking for “lost” WWF house show matches like The Rockers vs. The Brain Busters and the like because I’ve been nostalgic for some of the good wrestling from my youth and I stumbled upon this house show…

Recorded on:
July 15th, 1988

Location:
Los Angeles, California (USA)

Venue:
Los Angeles Sports Arena

Attendance:
15,000 (approximately)

Promoted by:
Vince K. McMahon (Jr.)

Commentary by:
Gorilla Monsoon, Superstar Billy Graham & Sean Mooney

1.) The Big Bossman vs. Scott Casey

2.) The Rockers: Shawn Michaels & Marty Jannetty vs.
The Conquistadors: Jose Estrada & Jose Luis Rivera

3.) Andre the Giant vs. Hacksaw Jim Duggan

“Weasel Suit” match:
4.) Bobby Heenan vs. The Ultimate Warrior

5.) Bad News Brown vs. Jim Niedhart

6.) Jake Roberts vs. Rick Rude

For starters you’ll notice the complete lack of Busters/Rockers match (boooo) but I find this match listing FASCINATING. I count 6 matches, one a comedy match, another a squash match, a JTTS tag match, a couple of semi-squashes and one legit match in Roberts vs. Rude.

This would have been normal for a C-show but you had Andre, Warrior plus the main event, which puts this solidly in B-show territory. No sight of any titles here either and interestingly enough your main event is between two mid-carders (for the most part).

Did anyone else notice the attendance?

FIFTEEN THOUGHSAN PEOPLE!

HOLY FRICKIN’ HECK!!!

I respectfully submit that this crowd had to be high. I mean, could you imaging a house show with C.M Punk and Daniel Bryan drawing that house? Even taking into account the fact this was in the middle of the first wrestling boom period I have a hard time believing that 15,000 Californians saw the card for this show and decided this was the place to be on July 15th.

How is this relevant now?

Obviously people weren’t paying their hard earned to watch great matches. The draw here was the wrestlers themselves and the brand WWF. People wanted to get one last look at Andre before he left wrestling, they wanted to see Bobby Heenan get humiliated and to be sure, they wanted to see Jack Roberts beat the piss out of Rick Rude. They also knew what a night at a WWE show was and the entertainment that was to be had.

Today, house shows are lucky to break a couple of thousand and the lack of stars means a lack of interest and the mistrust from fans of the WWF product these days cannot be understated. To many times has swerve booking and aborted pushes burnt the fans.

It seems baffling that the WWE is so set in using TV as their main revenue source while already established sources like PPV and house shows slowly die. We’ve all seen the ebb and flow of the wrestling business and every time it has surged back to popularity it has been on the back of logical booking, giving the fans what they want and new stars.

I may spend a great deal of time bashing Vince and with good reason, but I really want to see him regain this lost ground. WWE has always been my team and you stick by your team. I stayed when Hulkamania died and when Diesel nearly destroyed house show business in 1995 and through all the shitty gimmicks and poor storylines. I stayed when WCW hit paydirt with the nWo and had a more interesting program.

Maybe Vince is too far-gone these days but I’m waiting for the reign of HHH and hopefully the start of a new golden era.

Lastly I’ve listening to a fair few comments about he current WWE/TNA lawsuit.

One of the big things I’ve heard was the 3-week lag between the WWE firing Brian Wittenstein and informing TNA of the reason why was proof the WWE was playing games and doing the dodgy. In terms of corporate procedure that’s about par for the course.

This would have been handled through middle men and that takes time. You’re not going to get Steph McMahon wandering into Panda head office to shoot the shit with Dixie and casually drop what this Brian fella did. Documentation needs to be drawn up and signed off on by WWE legal. Also, don’t forget the fact that the WWE wouldn’t view this as any sort of priority is not illegal in itself. The fact is they acted correctly in this case. Period.

The TNA case seems to be centered round damages involving the poaching (or attempted poaching) of Ric Flair which is nigh on laughable.

Flair had flagged TNA management he was not sticking around and all of his supposed “no shows” at TNA events where known to TNA weeks prior. They continued to advertise Flair for these shows. Secondly, if anyone in TNA actually believes the WWE didn’t know when Flairs contract we going to be up they need to remove their heads from their own asses.

In case most people have forgotten Ric Flair is best friends with HHH. You known, one of the top levels of management in WWE. Also the little fact that Flair told a room full of people during the recent Four Horseman induction at the WWE Hall of Fame. Everyone fucking knew he was going and when he would be gone.

Matt Morgan has gone on radio and said he would go back to WWE if given the chance. Wrestling can’t keep their mouths shut and it would be ridiculously easy to obtain end dates on contracts.

But what damages are TNA actually claiming?

The WWE lawyers asked in court this week for a hiring freeze of all TNA talent. There is no financial gain for them at this time. The WWE never mentions TNA on air. They may mention talent on that roster but never where they’re currently working. TNA means exactly ZERO in the world of WWE.

More likely is that TNA are looking for some publicity and this lawsuit doesn’t hurt them that much. It actually shows they will stand up against the bigger, nastier McMahon monolithic WWE machine and fire off a few shots. At worst they may end up paying the WWE lawyers fees if a judge decides that this a frivolous lawsuit but the gain in profile would be worth that money. At best they may get some solid body punches against the WWE and actually get some respect and attention.