411 Fact or Fiction 02.08.07: WM23, ECW, TNA Special, More

1. WrestleMania 23 will top 1 million PPV buys.

Stuart Carapola: FICTION. I don’t see it happening, and I think that by running Wrestlemania in the massive venue they chose, they’re seriously overestimating their drawing power at this time. I have no doubt that they’ll fill the building, but massive amounts of papering and configuring the set to fill as much leftover empty space as possible can do wonders for your definition of “sellout crowd”.

Justin Pelletier: FICTION. HBK/Cena and Batista/Taker are both big draws but they aren’t Austin/Rock and won’t draw 1 million by themselves. I promise you that Hogan/Khali isn’t Hogan/Andre II and won’t have “the casual fan” turning out in droves. HHH is out and Austin and Rock won’t be walking into Ford Field on April Fool’s Day.

Score: 1 for 1

2. WWE made the right decision going with Undertaker/Batista and John Cena/Shawn Michaels as the WrestleMania 23 main events.

Stuart Carapola: FICTION. I think it would have been much better the other way around, for while I have no doubt that Undertaker will be able to get a decent match out of Batista, Shawn Michaels would get a better match. Also, even though I think that Cena vs. Michaels will be a quality match, I think that Undertaker vs. Cena, Title vs. Streak, Icon vs. New Top Guy, would have drawn much better, especially since I think there’s more long term upside to putting Cena over Undertaker at Wrestlemania than there would be for Batista if they were to have Undertaker lose. Also, I think that Cena vs. Undertaker would do a much better job of drawing a big crowd and maybe hitting that 1 million PPV buy mark.

Justin Pelletier: FACT. Where else were they supposed to go? Cena/Taker has been done before and, despite the fact that it most likely would be the best match of the Animal’s career, Batista/HBK just doesn’t makes sense. Their top two matches can’t be both face vs. face so at least one of the four need to turn heel. HBK has proven that he has no interest in being a full blown heel at this point in his career, the same can probably be said of the Undertaker and turning Cena at this point just seems too risky. So that leaves Batista. I see a heel turn in his future and what better way to get a monster heel over than by ending Undertaker’s streak?

Score: 1 for 2

3. The TNA Monday night special will draw the highest rating ever for a TNA broadcast.

Stuart Carapola: FICTION. I look at this special in much the same way I would look at a PPV, in that the audience will be a subset of the regular TNA Impact audience. While I don’t think it will be significantly lower, I do think that the TNA special will draw a lower rating than the regular Impact audience and it would be unrealistic to think otherwise. I think a better question would be “is the 2/15 episode of Impact going to draw a higher rating as a result of the TNA Monday Night Special?”

Justin Pelletier: FICTION. As much as I hate to, I’ll have to agree again. The original two-hour specials have failed to spike ratings and, although Monday is your traditional wrestling night, this special will fail as well. I can understand TNA’s logic being that a certain portion of wrestling fans only watch wrestling on Mondays and, of that portion, some would like to watch TNA but don’t because they are not on Mondays, but that logic is flawed. The fact is TNA has a section of fans which watch every week only because it is the only wrestling program on Thursdays. If TNA is ever matched up against RAW, those fans will probably choose Raw.

Score: 2 for 3

—SWITCH!!!—

4. The ECW Originals/Vince McMahon angle is a step in the right direction for the new ECW.

Justin Pelletier: FACT. I’ll say fact with a caveat. That caveat is that regardless of whether it is a step in the right direction for the new ECW, it is a step in the right direction for the ECW Originals. This program will give those men more exposure than most of them have enjoyed in their entire career. It guarantees them, not only a big pay day but, a place, however small, in WWE history. I don’t know if this program can pull the new ECW out of the doldrums but it is nice to see the Originals in an important feud.

Stuart Carapola: FACT. I say this for precisely the opposite reason as Justin. Though this will mean absolutely nothing to the ECW Originals in the long term outside of almost certain weekly squash losses, it is what the fans who started tuning in to ECW On Sci-Fi in the beginning were hoping to see: Sandman, Tommy Dreamer, Sabu, and the others kicking ass like it was 1998. I do think this angle will draw enough people in that they have a CHANCE to turn the rest of the product in a good enough direction that they can keep the fans around. In that sense, it is the right direction for ECW, but it remains to be seen whether they’ll do what they need to in order to capitalize on it, or if they’re just going to squash the originals every week and then be sitting there in two months going “Why didn’t it work, Fred?”

Score: 3 for 4

5. Goldberg will never wrestle for a major American wrestling promotion again.

Justin Pelletier: FACT. Goldberg has made his disdain for the WWE quite apparent and, unless Vince decides to open the vault to Goldy, his outside interests will preclude him from lacing the boots up in McMahon land. As far as TNA goes, Goldberg still believes that his 15-minutes of fame puts him on a higher plane than the Orlando-based company and I doubt TNA pay him the money needed to sway that opinion. And now he appears to be pissed at TNA for using his name to boot.

Stuart Carapola: FACT. WWE certainly isn’t going to bring him back. TNA might like to, but may not be able to put together the money since they’re already paying a lot for Sting and Angle. They’ll need MORE help from Spike to bring in another big name of the past a) who has been nothing but backstage trouble and a prima donna almost from day one in the business and b) after the acquisitions of Sting, Christian, and Angle had little to no positive effect on ratings and PPV buys. I think he’ll definitely work in big Japanese promotions in the future, if for no other reason than name value alone, but if he prices himself out of the business, he’ll be in the same ballpark as Randy Savage.

Score: 4 for 5

6. Right now, the WWE product is the best it has been in the past three years.

Justin Pelletier: FICTION. When I originally read this question my initial though was, “of course not.” Then I began to research the last three years and realized that hardly anything good has happened in the last three years. I wasn’t sure how to feel about that. Does that mean that the WWE is on the upswing or has it just been so bad lately that there was no place to go but up. The fact is that the brand split has left the rosters so thin that people like Hardcore Holly and Snitsky are headlining. I realize that the purpose of the brand split was to get more people exposure but when Holly and Snitsky are in the main event, something has gone wrong. The WWE roster is definitely talented enough to perform at a level higher than any in the last decade but the roster spit hurts that. So until the rosters are recombined, I’ll have to go with the era around Wrestlemania XX and John Cena’s subsequent rise to stardom.

Stuart Carapola: FICTION. I wouldn’t say this is true at all. I’d believe you if you told me they’re raking in more cash than they were in 2004, but is the product better? Hardly. Go back to the Wrestlemania Corridor of 2004. Chris Benoit goes an hour in the Royal Rumble, starting at #1 and winning one of the best Rumble matches ever. He, Shawn Michaels, and Triple H had two tremendous matches at Wrestlemania and Backlash. Benoit put on clinics with both of them in singles matches. And that was just the main event picture! You also had Guerrero winning the WWE Title, Lesnar and Goldberg on their way out (which I consider a big improvement in hindsight), and you also had the intrigue of whether the Undertaker was going to come back as the Bikertaker or the Deadman at Wrestlemania 20. Oh yeah, they also had a huge buildup to the twentieth anniversary show. But you know what else was much better back then? The undercard actually meant something. Christian and Chris Jericho had one of the best storylines of the year as they fought over Trish, hell, even the Women’s Title meant something back then and was being fought over by two women who *GASP* can actually wrestle! And that’s just all the stuff that was going on three years ago right now. There’s lots of other great stuff that has happened since. What about Shawn vs. Hogan and the great build to it? What about Batista’s surprise main event push back when he actually got over? What about the original One Night Stand? What about Trish vs Lita? There’s been plenty of stuff as good or better than what they’ve got right now over the last three years, but to me the biggest reason for the difference is that the undercard is meaningless. You can’t have a good overall product unless the undercard means something.

Score: 5 for 6