2015 Pro Wrestling Thread

Agreed. They need to have more shows as good as last night's in order to bring the audience back. Expectations have been low for a long time. Give the fans a reason to want to watch.

 

That E60 on NXT was great. Very much a Beyond the Mat vibe.

As a father, I've got a newfound respect for Adam Rose.

 

I don't suppose they'd be willing to blame the ratings dip on no Miz-Dow...

 

LOL

 

Between last night's E:60 and the WWE24 special on Roman Reigns, Vince is trying very hard for me to care about characters I either hated or was indifferent to.
Now how am I suppose to boo Adam Rose?

 

Wonder if the E:60 special will be on the Network at some point? I've heard nothing but great things about that.

 

I'd pay at least $15 for video of this:

Bob Backlund Interrupted Verne Gagne’s Funeral With A Heel Promo

 

I smell a new show for the Network.
Backlund shows up every week at a different random funeral, somewhere in the country, and just starts cutting promos on the deceased.

 

Meanwhile, to balance out Backlund's lunacy, another 80s wrestling icon (and his son) is doing some good works.

http://www.vicksburgpost.com/2015/05/07/wrestling-star-chips-in-for-wbp/

 

Saw this pretty sweet graph on reddit earlier showing WCW vs WWF houseshow attendance from 1995-2000.



There's several factors that should be taken into consideration:

There's several factors that should be taken into consideration:

- How many house shows did each company have month by month (More shows = more fan)
- What sort of arenas were they in? (Again, a bigger arena = more fans, even if the smaller arena was completely sold out)
- What were the ticket prices? (High attendence numbers is nice, but ultimately it's all about how much money you actually make from the show rather than how many fans were there)


Really though, WCW always sucked for house shows. In the early 90's, they really struggled. Shows got cancelled due to low ticket sales or even poor management that caused the ring not to be at the arena (Happened more than once according to old Observers). There were some shows that legitimately didn't even draw in the three digits. When Bischoff took over, there were periods of time when he stopped running house shows entirely due to costing the company more money than they were bringing in (Likely pretty similar to TNA). Once the Monday Night Wars began, it's difficult to convince the fans to come to a live event other than just seeing the brand. Especially in the case of WCW where they were giving away PPV level shows on every Nitro. The advertising was never as strong for live events in WCW like it was in the WWE. There were times when WCW would have a couple of title changes on house shows and then ignore it on TV rather than use it to hype the fact that if WCW is coming to your town, you need to go due to the possibility of a title change. Then there were all of those no shows.

It's sort of amazing WCW ever had a big spike in their live event business, to be honest.

 

That graph has to be per show average and not total monthly numbers right? WWF must have averages 10k in those days.

The money they raked in from t-shirts at those events was probably enough to offset whatever was going on ratings-wise before the war ended. WCW's business model was terrible, all it cared about was ratings which don't always translate to cash, according to JR anyway.

 

Elimination Chamber is coming back. Sweet.

Just announced on Raw, it'll be a Network-exclusive PPV on May 31. Wonder how much of an experiment this is, and how much they'll do it going forward. Maybe the next step in the Network's evolution is offering the off-brand PPVs as exclusives to draw people in. Perhaps an every other month thing?