2014 Pro Wrestling Thread

As of now they have the past three weeks. Not sure how far back they'll go. It'd be nice to go far enough back to see the evolution of the Wyatts, Big E and Cesaro.

Speaking of Cesaro: That match with Sami Zayn is worth $10 bucks a month alone. Sick workrate and a hell of a story told here. Order the network and watch the replay, wait for it to go up on YouTube for 8 minutes before it gets yanked, torrent it, whatever you have to do. An absolute fucking classic.

A really fun show, one of the best WWE-related things I've seen in a long ass time. Paige and Emma put on a really good 13-minute match that ended with a ridiculous finish. Won't spoil who won, but the finisher was appeared to be a cross of a Texas Cloverleaf and a double chicken-wing. Best moment: Emma hits a sitout power bomb, and the crowd chants "better than Batista!" Yeah. Don't watch this and Raw back to back or you'll be sad that WWE has defined down Emma as Santino's dorky dancing squeeze.

Only troubling part was a complete pants-shitting by the stream for a bit in the second hour. They're going to have some kinks to work out between now and Wrestlemania.

 

I've heard those Cesaro/Zayn matches are great as well, but I haven't seen them. I'll have to check Youtube.

Speaking of NXT, I love Bayley's "No. 1 Fan!" gimmick with her headband and ponytail. She did a vignette with A.J. in which they played off each other really well, with A.J. acting like her psycho self and Bayley being the oblivious admirer. She has some potential with her gimmick.

 

Instant classic.

 

I'm not going to lie. I watched the Cesaro-Zayn match and it was great.
Oh, and did I mention I just picked up the Network on a trial basis? My wife and I are going to subscribe for the live PPVs alone but so far it seems pretty awesome ... assuming it works on a regular basis.
Now, the tough thing is what do I watch? SOOO many choices.

 

The servers are much faster than they were on Tuesday at launch. Haven't has an issue since.

I caught NXT Arrival and enjoyed it. Paige and Emma are already better than two-thirds of the current Divas, not that the bar has been set so high as of late. Cesaro/Zayn was great. The Neville kid's shooting star corkscrew press is sick. I still don't understand how he does it, even in slow motion.

 

Regal called it the Scorpion Crosslock. The name's as awesome as the move. Pretty sure I screamed, "HOLY SHIT!" when it was locked in.

The women's title match and, of course, the opener seemed so fresh and athletic compared to the regular WWE product. And Adrian Neville had a hell of a 15-minute match with a ladder. Bo Dallas was there, too, I guess, but he's a bum.

 

I was a bit disappointed in the ladder match. It didn't help that it happened on a show that included potentially the WWE'S MOTY and arguably the best WWE women's match since whatever Trish and Lita's last great match was, but part of it was that for a ladder match, there weren't many high spots. I get that Bo is Bo and there's only so much he can do, but The Man That Gravity Forgot should have at least one spot that makes you pick your jaw up from the floor. The Red Arrow on Bo while he was laying on the ladder was nice, but it wasn't Jeff Hardy doing something ridiculous either.

One thing I really liked about the big two matches was how they tweaked the last-gasp sequence. When wrestlers kick out of a finisher or a move that by all rights should finish the match, we're trained to think that the guy who thought he was going to win will lose his shit and eventually makes a mistake that opens the door to a comeback or a surprise pin.

In Cesaro-Zayn, Zayn kicks out of a filthy European uppercut, a move Cesaro has used to win matches, at ONE. Place goes nuts, everyone's thinking "holy shit, Zayn has one more comeback in him!" But rather than panic or do something he's not used to doing in a desperate attempt to finally get this kid out of his hair (and invariably have it backfire), Cesaro just hits an even filthier rolling European uppercut, follows quickly with the Neutralizer and that's that. It's logical -- if something that usually works doesn't, try something and a half.

In Paige-Emma, Emma kicks out of Paige's heretofore unkickoutable finisher. Announcers go berzerk (even though the fans don't pop that hard) and Paige looks like she's about to lose her mind. I was thinking "oh God, this is where they turn her into another shade of AJ going forward". Instead, she collects herself and immediately wraps Emma up into aforementioned Scorpion Crosslock, and that's that. It's logical -- if your A move doesn't do the trick, pull your A+ move out of cold storage.

In both cases, the loser used the last bit of gumption they had to escape ordained doom. In wrestling, that's the bat signal for a comeback. Last night, it was the last gasp and there wasn't anything else they could do. Real life works like the latter and lot more than the former, and while I don't want to always see matches end that way, a little variance in the troupe is nice too.

 

I assumed the Zayn comeback was coming, but Cesaro just beat him up to the point where he had nothing left. It was a finish that really protected both guys — you can't have Cesaro pin the WWE champion, then job to an NXT guy. The Paige-Emma finish was solid as well.

I agree to an extent on the ladder match, but that's what we're going to get with developmental talent in the PG Era when one guy's legit and the other kind of sucks. The Red Arrow on the ladder is as risky as they'll probably go. I was OK with it because Neville bumped around a bit, hit an intensified version of his finisher and won. It was maybe more wrestling match with a ladder involved, but for me it worked.

 

You mean workers aren't supposed to kick out of finishers, look like the living dead, then mount an insane comeback to win the match? You, sir, will never book a Cena match.

Anyway, doing some of my own figuring on how the WWE can practically tell people to abandon the PPV model and sign up for the network and not give two shits about the cable and satellite companies losing their share. Here's what I came up with, based on information on buy rates and projections from a few sources, including WWE earnings reports, etc.

2014 projections
Break even
2014 subscribers: 1 mil
2014 gross: $120 mil ($10 per month for 12 months)

Low projection
2014 subscribers: 2 mil
2014 gross: $240 mil ($10/12)

High projection
2014 subscribers: 4 mil
2014 gross: $480 mil ($10/12)

History
2013 buys: 2.37 mil
2013 gross: $142.3 mil (at approx. $60 per show)

2012 buys: 3.8 mil
2012 gross: $228.9 mil ($60)

2011 buys: 3.58 mil
2011 gross: $179 mil ($50)

Unless my math is completely wrong (and I was a crime reporter, so don't assume I can do much more than add and subtract), the WWE only needs 1.5 million regular subscribers to match the gross PPV revenue (and the company doesn't see the full $60) from 2013. It'll be interesting to see the numbers a year from now. If this succeeds, it's only a matter of when and not if the UFC is the only regular sports PPV revenue stream for cable/satellite. And how long until Dana White follows suit?

 

The problem is UFC doesn't have the extensive library the WWE does (Few companies do).
I've been watching the Network a lot today and it really is a brilliant concept. As a lifelong wrestling fan, I can't imagine anything better than this.
For instance, right now I'm watching WrestleMania 23, one of only two WMs I've never seen. (Yes, I'm going to skip the Trump-McMahon match because, fuck that).
I watched the MITB match and it was amazing. In fact, I'm confident enough to say taking MITB out of WrestleMania is one of the worst decisions the WWE has ever made. Not only did it open your show in the best way possible, it was an incredible elevation of talent.
Don't get me wrong, I love the PPV each year but there was something so incredible about this match being a WrestleMania staple.
Personally, I think when Taker does retire, this match needs to be put back in its rightful place as THE marquee event of every Mania.
It just doesn't get any better than that.

 

Another idea I just heard mentioned for WrestleMania: An eight-person NXT MITB-style ladder match where the winner gets a contract ... not for a title but for a one-year contract to the main roster.
Make that an annual event at each Mania and it could be DAMN incredible.

 

Meh. Right now, I think they're struggling to get midcarders involved in Mania, nevermind the low card and enhancement guys. I'd rather see a ladder match for the IC or US belt at Mania as an opener each year, whether it's between just two guys or a bunch of them. I mean, there is history for that - Razor vs. HBK was for the IC belt.