2014 Pro Wrestling Thread

The first day of broadcast, Raw is in Green Bay. Somebody make sure R-Truth doesn't get it confused with Milwaukee again.

 

That's about what they did with "Are You Serious", their YouTube show hosted by Road Dogg and Josh Matthews.

 

I usually buy three PPVs per year -- Wrestlemania, the Rumble, and Money in the Bank. Total cost: around $150.
A year's subscription to the Network will be $120.
If you're a wrestling fan who does order the occasional PPV, how can you not go the Network route? Even if they end up raising the price eventually, it's still a long, long way to go before you're getting ripped off.

 

its an interesting business move. with the pricing, they are pretty much trying to drive people away from pay-per-view.

vkm was right in the 80s with the push to pay-per-view. will be curious to see if he is ahead of the curve again.

 

I canceled my cable in Sept. 2012, so all my wrestling viewing has been Raw and the occasional NXT on Hulu Plus, along with a bootlegged big-four PPV if I'm not working. I'm absolutely ecstatic about the fact that the WWE Network is available online and on Roku (we have a brand-new iMac next to our TV with a Roku) for $10/month. Even if you're just a big-four person, you're saving a ton of money.

 

It's Gooker time!

http://www.wrestlecrap.com/inductions/gooker-2013-time-to-vote-for-the-worst-of-the-worst/

Nominees: Miz being Miz, Dixie as TNA's top heel, Yodeling Antonio Cesaro, Great Khali and 3MB take turns trying to charm Santino's cobra, CM Punk steals Paul Bearer's ashes before his WM match with Undertaker, Brooke Hogan existing and Total Divas.

Dixie leads with 31 percent of the vote, with Miz and Divas at 19 percent and Brooke at 14.

My vote went to Miz. One of the most irritating, hateable characters in professional wrestling, which is great and all ... except he was a face. Honest to God, he might have been the worst face ever, or at least on a short list. There was nothing remotely cheerable about him. Then they seemed to finally get it and turned him heel ... except they didn't, really, because he had that shitty Christmas movie on ABC Family about to air, so they walked back his logical, straightforward turn on Kofi and reimagined it as some sort of competitive juices-fueled rivalry. I honestly don't know what the fuck Miz is right now, and I don't rightly care. The only way I could see enjoying him unironically is if they brought back John Morrison and re-established The Dirt Sheet as a thing, but it may be too late for even that.

I can buy Dixie as lead heel as a winner, because it's another desperate heave by death-rattling TNA and in typical fashion, it's a mediocre Xerox of Stephanie McMahon: Alpha Female Naughty Part Redacted. Even this could have worked if they had dialed her atrociously-acted character back by a factor of nine and let her be spoken for by a crew of syncophats. Instead, they let her D-grade caterwauling dominate the screen week after week. At the rate TNA is going, you may have to vote her in now because there may not be the chance next year.

Total Divas is stupid, but it's not as though anyone has given a shit about the Divas division since the Trish-Lita glory days. It's tedious and I can do without it, but it falls short of Gooker-level crap to me.

Yodeling Antonio only lasted a few weeks, then they found him something somewhat better with Zeb's We The Midcarders. The cobra thing was a one-shot deal with a bunch of comedy wrestlers. Brooke Hogan was pretty awful, and the only thing that saves her from getting more consideration is that she helped in a small way to bring us long-overdue top-card heel Bully Ray. The Punk thing is probably the most worthy entrant by old-school Gooker standards, but it seemed so forced and anticlimatic that nobody cared enough to be offended. We knew good as well Undertaker was kicking his ass at Wrestlemania no matter what.

Little surprised we didn't get The Authority as a candidate, until realizing that anything that touched on
Daniel Bryan's treatment would end up completely dominating the vote. And it might be really frustrating if you're a big Bryan fan but at least they're trying something and it's not as though he's getting treated like Dolph Ziggler. If anything, the screwy way they treated the top titles, all the way to the seemingly on-the-fly unification match, should have gotten a nod. Surprised at no Aces and Eights inclusion, though I guess it didn't get much traction last year, but the same issues applied -- sound and fury, signifying nothing. Firing Jesse Sorensen/general backstage LOLTNA deserved a nod too, as did WWE trying to force Fandangoing instead of letting it develop or fail organically.

 

It sure seems like the launch of WWE Network is an admission by the WWE that the PPV business that they were one of the pioneers of is now on death’s door. Sure bad booking has played a roll but ever since Summerslam the WWE PPV numbers have dove off a cliff. It has become far to easy to find illegal streams of PPV events and with the price point of them rising like a bar going out of business’ drink prices the writing has been on the wall. Even the UFC has seen its PPV numbers drop in a significant way and with major stars being either out of action or retiring it seems like they will be hard pressed to last on PPV. The exception might be UFC 168 but by and large the days of million buy PPVS seems fairly unrealistic. When you look at the year as a whole the only true PPV winner in terms of buy rate was the Floyd Mayweather fight in ironically the sport of boxing that many see as dying as well. But Money Mayweather convinced 2.2 million or so people to tune in to cheer him on or in more cases than not watch him lose.

In addition most people have said the WWE Network launch in the UFC’s backyard in Las Vegas made them look fairly bad. UFC Fight pass looks like the poor step child to WWE Network.

In the end the landscape of both WWE and UFC is changing and it would seem the WWE at least at first has a better foot hold on the new wave of technology.

Also interesting is with the WWE’s T.V deals up this year and a decision to be made sometime in March we could see both WWE and UFC land on the same network in Fox Sports 1. Back in the early days of UFC they actually were promoted on WWE events like Raw. You saw a few UFC Stars make the transition to pro wrestling. Not the same as Brock who started in the WWE and went to UFC before returning back to WWE.

It all makes for an interesting landscape in many ways. Now that WWE has changed the focus to a network does what does this mean for the product? Do we see even more watered down PPV events now that the price tag of revenue they bring in will be far less? Is WWE going to basically become a one-trick pony with Wrestlemania being their only true Marquee event? While the UFC looks to embark on a somewhat crazy expansion of fights will they in effect water down their product?

Obviously both companies are marketing this as a step forward to a brighter and greater future but in reality is that where we are heading. Let’s face it the WWE went out of their way to point out how on their VOD you can relive the past like the attitude era and without saying it when wrestling was different and based on viewers more popular than it ever has been. UFC also on their fight pass pushed this concept of reliving old fights in their history as well as Pride.

I just wonder if the future of either sport/company is heading in as a positive a direction as the companies would like us to believe.

There is a lot of stuff in here but figure it should be the catalyst to a great discussion. So chime in with your thoughts on all of this.

 

I think WWE makes a lot more money off Wrestlemania and off the USA Network than it does on PPVs. Sure that's different than many years ago....I suspect this is true for the NFL and other non-combat sports, too. The league makes the bulk of its money off the TV deal, not from attendance or merchandise or whatever might've been bigger years ago.

The PPV people probably won't be thrilled----as we've discussed that they might not be if WWE did what's probably the right thing creatively and cut from 12 PPVs a year. I'm mildly surprised that the cable companies didn't up their offers to get WWE Network a more traditional spot to protect their PPV business....so maybe PPVs are less important to them than they once were too.

 

I'm pretty sure that PPVs are mostly a cash cow for the cable industry - I think they get a cut off the top for something that they don't really help facilitate at all. I think that's mostly why the WWE is so eager to get off them, especially since there is a good alternative available in the form of streaming and Netflix-like services.

 

DirecTV is already threatening to stop airing WWE PPVs in response to the network:

http://tinyurl.com/nvunyv9

 

I read today that cable companies get 60% of the money from PPVs, WWE 40%. If so, that makes the economics of a streaming network make a lot more sense.

 

I'm watching Smackdown for the first time in a LONG time tonight and tune in for a decent match between Orton/Big E (why are they giving away Champ v. Champ on a B show when there are only two titles?). Orton's still essentially acting like a face when he's in the ring. He was hamming it up for the crowd and is always doing is signature pound the mat move...It seems like a majority of the crowd is still cheering for the guy.

Oh, and LOL, Daniel Bryan is definitely turning on the Wyatts ASAP.