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When the World Championship changed hands on Nitro I at least felt like there was the chance of the title changing hands on free TV every once in awhile... we haven't had a title change on Raw that was a non MITB Cash In or Vacancy Filling Match in ages. Makes me feel like when we do get a title match it will just end in DQ or something.
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Aug 23, 2013 05:14
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Ah, thanks for the explanation. I should have known it was just a ratings pop thing. Seeing it listed like that though... good grief.
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Aug 23, 2013 05:23
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Astro7x posted:When the World Championship changed hands on Nitro I at least felt like there was the chance of the title changing hands on free TV every once in awhile... we haven't had a title change on Raw that was a non MITB Cash In or Vacancy Filling Match in ages. Makes me feel like when we do get a title match it will just end in DQ or something.
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Aug 23, 2013 09:30
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Basic Chunnel posted:This is definitely something I noticed. The midcard belts should, I think, be in play in non-PPV shows at least. I don't know if that would work but when both the US title and the IC title were defended on NXT it added 0% of anything (besides the fact that the US title challenger was still in NXT and not that close to a big league debut). The problem is that the PPVs only really have time to focus on the two World titles and maybe the tag title. Not even putting your US title bout on the show says a lot. Just de-emphasize their reliance on the PPVs. Throw the free TV viewers a bone. It's all about balance. You don't want to throw away a title that people would pay to see on free TV, but at the same time, you NEED to do it occasionally, or every viewer will catch on "Well, it's not on PPV, so of course the challenger won't win". You need to retain the jeopardy.
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Aug 23, 2013 10:05
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VogeGandire posted:It's all about balance. You don't want to throw away a title that people would pay to see on free TV, but at the same time, you NEED to do it occasionally, or every viewer will catch on "Well, it's not on PPV, so of course the challenger won't win". You need to retain the jeopardy. WWE definitely has a policy of focusing on PPVs, building up to PPVs, and having a class of matches you'll see at a PPV, and matches you won't (Chris Jericho vs Ryback you could see at either, CM Punk vs Brock Lesnar you'll see at a PPV). WWE has had PPV buyrates ebb and flow over time, but they are to my knowledge the only major company to have a succesful PPV model (for example TNA loses heaps of money on running PPVs; I'm not sure about how well WCW PPVs did). If you don't have a PPV model that works, you need to just do different booking.
Wazzu fucked around with this message at 14:58 on Aug 23, 2013 |
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Aug 23, 2013 14:51
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The biggest problem is that "anything can happen" can eventually turn into "nothing means anything" through over use. I've been thinking about putting together an effort thread about the different booking philosophies from Memphis to Calgary, mid south and the WWE across the decades. Yet everytime I start giving it some serious thought the words "Russo" start sounding in my head as I know I would get bogged down in talking about his craziness. One of the more interesting trends that Russo was connected to was the move towards the first show post PPV's being top heavy and eventful. Before the Raw post Survior series 95, the first show after a PPV was normally a write off because they wanted to avoid spoiling the results from the night before in order to get people to buy replays. Russo wasn't really involved in the first show that broke that trend with Dielsel's tweener turn and Shawn's injury angle, but he was one of the driving forces behind that shift to making sure that week one of any PPV build was always the most captivating. He also broke the cycle of announcing the next PPV main event on the PPV or in the post show, thinking that was one of the things you had to get on TV. I said something almost nice about Russo in the WCW thread. What is wrong with me today.
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Aug 23, 2013 16:52
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Wazzu posted:I'm not sure about how well WCW PPVs did WCW pay per views did well when they were hot and probably enough not to wreck the company TNA-style in the earlier, uglier days. The last year or two were awful, though: they apparently went from a 1.15 for SuperBrawl 1999 (Flair vs. Hogan) to a 0.15 for the 2000 edition (Sid vs. Hall vs. Jarrett). Using data from prowrestlinghistory.com, I put together the average buyrate for WCW events per year below. Keep in mind that while the business was pretty strong in the late 80s, they were running far fewer PPVs, keeping the average up. code:After that, things went: code:After this, buyrates would never go over 0.50 again. The next PPV was Mayhem; buyrate was 0.45. Bret beat Benoit for the vacant title. The semi-main was a 6 minute Goldberg-Sid "I Quit" match. After this, buyrates would never go over 0.4 again. The next PPV was Starrcade 1999, with a buyrate of 0.32. Bret Hart beat Goldberg in yet another match centering on the Montreal Screwjob, which happened in 1997 and had already been called back on at 1998 Survivor Series and the Sting-Hogan match where the debuting Bret Hart got his "revenge" by overruling another "screw job," which Patrick just counted normally in what was, depending on who you asked, either another case of Hogan politicking to preserve his own heat or the greatest referee gaffe in history. After this, buyrates would never go over 0.3 again. The next PPV was Souled Out 2000, where Benoit beat Sid for the vacant title. Benoit quit and left for the WWF the next night, and the title was vacated (again). The buyrate was 0.26. WCW would surpass 0.2 twice more. In fact, the remaining buyrates went 0.15, 0.13, 0.25 (Spring Stampede 2000 - Jarrett over DDP for the vacant world title), 0.14, 0.19, 0.22 (Bash at the Beach 2000 - Hogan laid down for Jarrett, who then lost to Booker T for the belt), 0.18, 0.16, 0.15, 0.12, 0.11, 0.17, 0.15, and 0.10 By the start of 2000, WCW's fate was virtually assured. WCW was ahead of WWF in average buyrate in 1997 and behind by just 0.1 in 1998. By 1999, the gap had widened to 1.25 WWF to 0.56 WCW - a big gap, but WCW was still putting out numbers that they could survive at. For comparison's sake, ECW rates peaked at 0.26 and averaged 0.22 (so, yes, ECW was competitive with, if not outright beating, WCW in 2000). The totality of the damage done to WCW from 1999 on is essentially comparable to the collapse of Enron. Enron went bankrupt in, appropriately enough, 2001; according to Wikipedia, "By December 31, 2000, Enron’s stock was priced at $83.13 and its market capitalization exceeded $60 billion, 70 times earnings and six times book value, an indication of the stock market’s high expectations about its future prospects." In 1997, WCW was the leading wrestling company in the U.S., if not the world. Again, Starrcade 1997's buyrate was only beat by a handful of shows after the PPV expansion of the mid-90s, and practically every single one above it from that era is a WrestleMania. In less than four years, the company was completely eradicated. Punch McLightning fucked around with this message at 17:30 on Aug 23, 2013 |
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Aug 23, 2013 17:03
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That is a fantastic post, thank you. In late 99/2000, the mood between watching shows was such a contrast. The WWE had insanely hot capacity crowds and just "felt" like a hot product. Turning on Nitro felt depressing in contrast, and I wasn't even a "WCW guy". That must've been really tough for long time fans to swallow. I would always watch the first hour of Nitro before RAW started and WCW just looked minor league.
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Aug 23, 2013 17:24
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Skinty McEdger posted:The biggest problem is that "anything can happen" can eventually turn into "nothing means anything" through over use. I've been thinking about putting together an effort thread about the different booking philosophies from Memphis to Calgary, mid south and the WWE across the decades. Yet everytime I start giving it some serious thought the words "Russo" start sounding in my head as I know I would get bogged down in talking about his craziness. I would love to read this post, even if you avoided Russo all together. I'm not sure it's worth the headache. quote:One of the more interesting trends that Russo was connected to was the move towards the first show post PPV's being top heavy and eventful. Before the Raw post Survior series 95, the first show after a PPV was normally a write off because they wanted to avoid spoiling the results from the night before in order to get people to buy replays. Russo wasn't really involved in the first show that broke that trend with Dielsel's tweener turn and Shawn's injury angle, but he was one of the driving forces behind that shift to making sure that week one of any PPV build was always the most captivating. He also broke the cycle of announcing the next PPV main event on the PPV or in the post show, thinking that was one of the things you had to get on TV. There's the on-going idea that Russo was a good idea guy who just needed a filter. I disagree with that, especially if you consider his miniscule run with the WWE around 2005 (guy gets hired, comes in, refuses to work with the existing staff and wants to instantly do another one of his reboots, gets fired). That's not to say he was without any good ideas whatsoever - the general concept of "have the midcard involved in feuds" was one I liked from his time period with WWF prior to going to WCW, and certain aspects of the crash TV era were good - every week, it felt like Austin was going to be involved in something momentous against McMahon, and you'd want to keep watching to find out what it was. But for all the occasional hot shots that happened at that time, it wasn't like WCW (which I'll have to expand on later). Russo always seemed like a guy who stumbled into a good idea or two, but was overall not good at booking and should not be allowed anywhere near a booking committee, even if it was for Mountain State Wrestling. His greatest skill may have been selling himself - somehow he spun himself out as the genius of the Monday Night Wars, and no amount of loving up - be it in WCW or the long march towards death of TNA - would let him be recognized by his bosses as a bad hire.
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Aug 23, 2013 17:37
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To here Jim Cornette tell it, Russo's greatest weakness while booking was his inability to learn from anyone or to even want to learn about the wrestling business and how to work in it (what to do, what not to do etc.) Any mistakes he made in the late 90s were basically never improved on and things just went downhill from there.
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Aug 23, 2013 18:25
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I think Cornette is right, but in a way I would argue that Russo never learned from his successes either. A lot of promoters and bookers fall prey to attempting to recreate what has been successful for them in the pastm trying to recreate a hot angle or a moment when everything clicked into place. A lot of time things don't work when they try to do so, but Russo is probably the biggest example I could think of of a guy who's tried over and over again to recreate his biggest successes, without being aware of why they were successful in the first place. Russo loves his tournaments, probably with good reason as his booking highpoint was probably the deadly games tournament at survior series 98. If you rewatch the show now it's nothing special, probably even verging on being pretty bad. The matches are short, there are too many things on one card, and theres never a moment to catch your breath but at the time the show was brilliant because of the context of it. Russo managed to weave in so many threads from months of storytelling, giving each match it's own context and making the show probably the best narrative ppv of all time. The problem for Russo is that he was never able to move on from this. His first act in WCW was toopen with a tournament, his first move after the "reboot" was to have two tournaments occur at the same time. In TNA he's had god knows how many tournaments which have all sucked. The tournament has almost become his go to booking staple. The thing Russo never got about what made Deadly Games work was that it was a climax of months of storytelling that had gotten the fanbase engaged with how the story would play out. It was the final act of one story that set up for what would come next. Every single tourny Russo has booked since then has always been the first act, without any context behind it so that no one was invested in anything. By comparision Gabe completely got this in his booking of early ROH. He held off on doing a title tournament until the main players had been introduced and established so the fans gave a poo poo. NXT did the same thing when it came to setting up the tournaments for its titles, with the added wisdom of not doing too much at once. Russo never had the patience to do this however, partly because he has ADHD and partly because he's never understood the importance of context to anything he's booked independent of the watchful eye of wrestling people like Vince and the WWE booking committee.
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Aug 23, 2013 19:25
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Going back to PPV buys for a second, WWE breaks even or makes at least extremely minimal profits on basically every show and then cleans house on some others, especially Mania, right?
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Aug 23, 2013 19:29
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Rodney the Piper posted:WCW pay per views did well when they were hot and probably enough not to wreck the company TNA-style in the earlier, uglier days. The last year or two were awful, though: they apparently went from a 1.15 for SuperBrawl 1999 (Flair vs. Hogan) to a 0.15 for the 2000 edition (Sid vs. Hall vs. Jarrett). Using buyrates is very deceptive. WCW's business wasn't strong in the late 80s, they were losing tons of money. That's why Turner bought them in 88. The average was up in the first few years because the PPV universe was incredibly small. Despite that, wrestling fans bought wrestling PPVs in nearly equal real numbers in 1989 as they did 1998 in terms of the biggest PPVs despite PPV being available in many more homes. Buyrates are based off the percentage of homes buying it, so as the universe increased, the buyrates fell. Business was in the shitter in 90 and 91, but just looking at buyrates hides that. So looking at buyrates it doesn't look like 95's buyrates were much lower than 96, but 96 was a better year on PPV following the nWo angle. 97 and 98 were ungodly good, but it doesn't show in just looking at buyrates. The numbers are fine for 99-2001 because PPV didn't expand that much during that period so buyrates aren't that deceptive to look at. It sucks that there isn't an archive of total buys instead of buyrates. The numbers are out there, but it would mean going through Observer after Observer and finding the final numbers.
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Aug 23, 2013 19:37
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MRP's right, but that's the best data that's available since total buys isn't readily posted anywhere. I probably should have just omitted anything prior to 1992 or so, but. And the growth PPV access had a big effect on the numbers of the late 80s and 90s. I still think that the numbers from 1996 on gives you proof of the general path of WCW business from 1996 on; business was great in from 1996 to 1998, but started to fall apart in 1999 and completely collapsed in 2000. As always, WCW sucked.
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Aug 23, 2013 21:23
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Whilst we are whinging about Russo. I think his main problem was that he had no sense at all of moderation. "Swerves" are cool, they keep the fans guessing. But when everything and it's brother is a swerve, then it is not so cool. Tournaments can be cool, if booked right. I always loved the King of the Ring being able to say they beat 3 guys in one night and earned the crown. But again if you do tournament after tournament, and only 2 guys out of 16 have any chance of winning, then it is not so cool. And so on and so forth with all the mistakes and idiocy that Russo would book. It could be cool, and indeed was cool the first time, but by the time we had seen it 273 times, it was stupid, and sapped any fervour we had in the product.
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Aug 25, 2013 15:47
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One of WCW's biggest mistakes was trying to book to cater to the internet. I've been on the internet before, we're a divided bunch. It's impossible to cater to every internet fan. Yeah, a few insider jokes here and there work, but as a writer, Russo should never assume that the casual fan knows what he's talking about when he brings up scissors or swerves or politics.
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Aug 25, 2013 16:21
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Russo seemed to massively overestimate how many fans were internet savvy as well. He seemed to believe that if you attended a wrestling show, you surely know all the ins and outs of the business and know every story that ever happened. The Death of WCW put it this way; Russo would book to fool fans who read wrestling news on the internet but because they read that news, they wouldn't be fooled. Meanwhile, the casual fans who didn't read news on the internet would have no idea what was going on and would just be confused. People know that wrestling isn't on the level but they don't need or want to be told by the performers as they're watching the show. Russo didn't seem to understand that.
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Aug 25, 2013 16:52
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I think it's been documented many times that the only reason Russo had any success at all was having Vince there filtering his ideas and dumping 99% of the kind of poo poo that ended up on WCW and TNA television. The guy is his own worst enemy.
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Aug 25, 2013 16:54
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About Russo and moderation: I think Vince has the same problem. The WWE always pushes one style too much, and then does an overhaul, however gradual said overhaul may be. From the Golden Age with Hogan and Macho to the New Generation when Hogan and Macho were too old and even spoofed in skits, to the Attitude Era, which was pretty much based on ECW's stlye with the WWF's cartoony gimmicks. Then, Ruthless Agression with many excellent, but brutal and bloody matches, as well as raunchy angles. And after that, the super clean PG Era which had to end by MITB 2011, and now we're in a new phase which is actually interesting to follow, as it somehow caters to both the IWC and casual fans. I mean, to me, Bryan is Austin for this generation. Back on the subject of WCW. I started watching it in '97, on European satellite channels, and stuck with it, even though I was a WWF kid. Why? Because of variety. They had veterans which I grew up with, and the nWo gave those guys totally fresh personas, they heavily featured wrestlers from Mexico and Japan, and those guys showed me styles of wrestling I was never exposed to. And for a while, Sting, DDP, Raven and Jericho were the poo poo. But I watched both Nitro and Raw. Yesterday, I stumbled upon some episodes of Raw from '97 (on YouTube) and realized that the WWF always felt like home. Not too many matches, but there's a consistency about the whole show, it has a nice flow to it, it makes sense. Nitro was always chaotic. I guess their time to shine was the nWo angle, and that was it.
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Aug 25, 2013 16:58
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Does anyone know how much Russo was paid by WCW?
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Aug 25, 2013 17:03
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BrigadierSensible posted:Whilst we are whinging about Russo. Cool post.
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Aug 25, 2013 17:04
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oldpainless posted:Does anyone know how much Russo was paid by WCW? Unknown but it would make the most sense if it was an insane amount of money. Like the kind he's been living off of since then.
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Aug 25, 2013 19:03
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I'm probably remembering wrong but didn't he brag in an interview or on air once about how much he was being paid and if he was as bad as people thought then he wouldn't be making (x money)? It's hard to remember anything specific from mountain of woe-is-me bullshit Russo has said over the years though.
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Aug 25, 2013 19:15
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oldpainless posted:Does anyone know how much Russo was paid by WCW? I want to say he did a podcast interview a few years ago in which he said that defecting to WCW changed his annual income from six figures to seven figures.
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Aug 25, 2013 19:31
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There's a Timeline WCW 2000 with Russo coming out next week, and Kayfabe Commentaries is promoting it as "explosive", and saying that Russo admits that he was less than truthful in earlier shoots and comes clean/names names in this one. KC generally don't overhype their releases, so I'm pretty interested. This is their writeup:quote:"Timeline WCW 2000 told by Vince Russo" is cutting amazingly. In what Vince has publicly deemed his last wrestling interview ever, he empties himself completely. Lots of never before heard stuff, he pulls no punches, and really transports himself emotionally back to 2000. It ain't always pretty, and some un-Christian words fly from his lips, but he's got no bridges to burn. We promise you...you are going inside WCW at the dying days in a double DVD like no other. Russo...Hogan...Flair...Seigel...Goldberg...Sullivan...WCW...2000...oh baby! Comes your way August 27th! Lots of sneak previews and trailers coming soon. This is the big one this year kids! and quote:-@KayfabeComment 13 Aug Cromulent fucked around with this message at 21:53 on Aug 25, 2013 |
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Aug 25, 2013 21:32
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For as much as we relate wrestling to comics, the DC thread in BSS is a WCW refrence. WCW being terrible crosses into different types of media.
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Aug 25, 2013 21:59
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The 5 trailers will contain everything interesting about the interview so there will be no reason to watch the DVD. This is the case for nearly every KC DVD.
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Aug 25, 2013 22:41
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Russo's real problem was that when he was with WWF he had 2 of the biggest stars in wrestling history and was going through one of the biggest hot periods so everything he did seemed to work. Which leads to the Cornette point: Because he didn't understand wrestling, he didn't know why it was working, and when things weren't on a hot streak he didn't know how to turn it around. I guess it's like managing the 1998 Yankees, no matter what they do they're gonna win games so you could probably get away without knowing anything about baseball.
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Aug 26, 2013 01:59
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HulkaMatt posted:The 5 trailers will contain everything interesting about the interview so there will be no reason to watch the DVD. This is the case for nearly every KC DVD. As someone who has watched a lot of the Timeline DVDs, this is really accurate.
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Aug 26, 2013 02:17
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Cromulent posted:There's a Timeline WCW 2000 with Russo coming out next week, and Kayfabe Commentaries is promoting it as "explosive", and saying that Russo admits that he was less than truthful in earlier shoots and comes clean/names names in this one Like any good burnout conman Russo has to get one last hustle in. After bleeding the last person stupid enough to employ his rear end for all he's gonna get might as well do this. Gotta give him some credit he managed to convince a lot of people he was worth keeping around despite lacking the ability to pass writing classes aimed at 12 year olds. He should be thankful that he worked in an industry with no appreciable writing standards.
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Aug 26, 2013 04:40
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If Russo tells half the truth, is a tiny bit critical of his decisions and you have a shoot that may convince people he's less of a scumbag. He's lied so much a little truth will convince some folk, and maybe even con more shoot makers into doing shoots if he wants money.
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Aug 26, 2013 04:51
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Do you hate minorities? Do hate Japanese motorcycles? Do you hate short people? Do you love leather and denim? Do you love American motorcycles? Do you love facial hair? If so, you need to attend WCW Hog Wild live at the Sturgis motorcycle rally! If not, you should watch it on PSP TV this Tuesday! Benoit vs Malenko (BOO) Harlem Heat (boo) vs The Steiners (yay) Rey Mysterio vs THE ULTIMATE DRAGON (boo) SCOTT NORTON VS ICE TRAIN IN A BATTLE FOR THE AGES Madusa and her harley vs Bull Nakano and her Honda. Ric Flair vs Edward Guerrero Hollywood Hogan (yay) vs The Giant It's all this Tuesday at 8 PM Eastern!
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Aug 26, 2013 06:03
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MassRafTer posted:Do you hate minorities? Wasn't Hog Wild at least half-conceived as Bischoff's idea to build himself personal biker cred, according to Meltzer?
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Aug 26, 2013 06:53
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Russo shoot interview trailer has him misquoting Dave Meltzer and then claiming that was when he just stopped "READING THE INTERNET" and in general I guess no longer acknowledging guys like him. In reality Vince Russo then appeared as a guest on Wrestling Observer Live 2-3 months later. HulkaMatt fucked around with this message at 09:45 on Aug 26, 2013 |
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Aug 26, 2013 09:43
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OneThousandMonkeys posted:Wasn't Hog Wild at least half-conceived as Bischoff's idea to build himself personal biker cred, according to Meltzer? It was basically just Eric thinking "Man, I want to go to Sturgis, but I have to work. Waaaait a minute..."
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Aug 26, 2013 09:59
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HulkaMatt posted:reality Vince Russo
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Aug 26, 2013 10:25
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I actually started listening to the WOL 99 show to see if they talk about the THIS IS YOUR LIFE segment. 7 minutes in and I don't think I can get through this. Nothing really bad said or anything - just generally annoyed listening to Russo.
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Aug 26, 2013 10:41
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MassRafTer posted:Do you hate minorities? No, the podcast thread is where you post questions for the Ten Count.
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Aug 26, 2013 12:27
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Sir Jebus posted:For as much as we relate wrestling to comics, the DC thread in BSS is a WCW refrence.
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Aug 26, 2013 13:59
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Endless Mike posted:Technically that's one of two DC threads. That one is specifically to talk about how stupid DC is as a company. It was created because that discussion was making it hard to talk about the actual comics. The comparison is fun to make, but DC will never be sold off like WCW was for no reason other than their IP being some of the most valuable in the world. DC is also a Viacom property if I understand correctly.
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Aug 26, 2013 18:23
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