WWE Notes from the 2/23 Observer

[Enigma 0]

Shawn Michaels suffered a torn ACL, either in his RAW match a few weeks back with Randy Orton, or in his singles match with Ric Flair in Hiroshima. He’s working through it because he’s in a major Mania program.

 

Flair turns 55 years old on 2/25/04.

 

Vince & Linda McMahon are now grandparents, as Shane and wife Marissa had their first child, a nine-pound boy, this past week.

 

We’ll have the complete financial rundown next week, but the quarter ending 1/23/04 saw the company take in $79.1 million in revenue (that’s way down from usual, but misleading since the 1/25/04 Rumble is not figured into these numbers), but due to cost cutting and cutbacks in performer’s fees (payoffs), the company still made an $8.9 million profit. The figure would have been closer to $14.2 million with Rumble figure in. But the profit margin is because they cut back more than $18 million in payroll and administrative expenses. Next quarter will be hugely profitable because it’ll have four PPV events, which make the most money for the company, including probably the two biggest of the year in Mania and Rumble. This profit was achieved with live attendance down 27% for the quarter from bad numbers at the same time a year ago, a decline in PPV revenue and a $3 million decline in TV revenue (of which $2.7 million of the decline was because of Tough Enough being cancelled.) The only revenue increases anywhere came from the Flair DVD set (which legitimately had sold 89,000 copies as of 1/23/04, so the USA Today figures of 110,000 by 12/31/03 were inflated) and the Austin book.

 

The company set another record when it comes to international business, by selling out two RAW shows in Dublin, Ireland at The Point, to the tune of $450,000 a piece. The shows are on 5/26/04 and 5/27/04, and tickets for the first date were sold out in six minutes. A few hours later, they added a second date, which sold out in two hours plus. While WWE has sold out consecutive dates in the same arena numerous times, this is the first time they put tickets for both events on sale on the same day. These are the first two WWE dates in Dublin since 1995, although they did run Belfast (Northern Ireland, as opposed to Ireland itself) in 2002. The next day, they put tickets on sale for the March SmackDown tour of the UK on 3/18/04 in Newcastle, 3/19/04 in Sheffield, 3/20/04 in Aberdeen, Scotland, and 3/21/04 in Glasgow, Scotland. There were some ticket problems, as Aberdeen and Glasgow were listed as sellouts on the first day, but there were tickets available for both shows the next day.

 

Chris “Kanyon” Klucsaritis was released from his contract on 2/9/04. The move wasn’t surprising since the company really hasn’t done a thing with him in the past few years. He had knee and shoulder injuries, but has been recovered from some time. He got great reactions and did some strong dark matches at tapings last year with Shark Boy and Chad Collyer, so his ring work wasn’t the problem. Others in the company didn’t like his doing matches with big moves and near falls in dark matches. He’s about 6’3’’, which they like. His catch phrase is okay, but it’s a relic from WCW, so that didn’t help him. My feeling is they just felt he didn’t look or talk like a star, and it’s his look and accent/lisp that did him in. He posted something on his web site about it, saying he hasn’t been happy for the past year about the direction of his career (how could he have been?). He didn’t hint at what he’d do next.

 

Ernest Miller was given the word in Tacoma on 2/10/04 that he was being released. This one was a little more of a surprise, since Vince himself was a fan of The Cat gimmick at first. I knew his push was done when they did the angle where Vince gave him a low blow and laid him out, with no retribution written in. This is typical Vince symbolic way of telling everyone this is nobody to care about. Since just the week before they had taped an angle to put he, Lamont, and Orlando Jordan together as a prelim trio on house shows (which was cut from the show) against The F.B.I. and later worked them against Tajiri’s team, the decision was more abrupt on this one. Miller’s style is totally different than the style they want guys to use. For that matter, Miller’s style would be different from the style anyone would want anyone to use. I think they wanted him to adapt, and he wasn’t really listening.

 

The company is doing a $5 million ad campaign for WrestleMania, between TV ads, print ads, a four-page ad section in both the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue and the Entertainment Weekly Oscars issue, plus pizza box ads, billboards, and taxis. To make up $5 million, they would have to do 220,000 extra buys. If you figure with no outside ad campaign they’d do 550,000 minimum, to make it worthwhile, they’d have to get that up to 770,000. Of course, this is misleading, because in their contract with Turner Broadcasting when buying WCW, it called for them to spend millions in ads with the company over the next several years. That was the hidden cost. Most of the TV ads will be on TBS, TNT, and the Cartoon Network. Most of the magazine ads are AOL Time Warner property, plus they are buying a lot of online advertising on AOL.

 

In WWE’s lawsuit against 37 Canadian bars for illegally airing PPV events, there is belief that the total damages could come to more than $1 million. Damages will be calculated by a combination of $1,500 for every illegal showing of a PPV by a bar, plus a rate to be determined, believed to be $10 to $20 per patron at the bar, times three (treble damages), as well as WWE’s court costs.

 

Sherma Huffman, the aunt who raised Maven and who he refers to as his mother, passed away on 2/12/04 after a long bout with bone marrow cancer. There was an episode of “Tough Enough” where Maven visited her in the hospital.

 

The SmackDown! tour of South Africa, with shows on 2/26/04 in Cape Town, 2/27/04 in Durban, 2/28/04 in Johannesburg, and 2/29/04 in East Rand are all sold out.

 

There is nothing new on Bret Hart and WrestleMania. It appears unlikely anything will happen.

 

Linda Miles got even more heat on her this past week. The feeling is that she doesn’t take wrestling seriously enough. Unlike most on the roster, she didn’t grow up a fan. She was a good college basketball player who sent in a tape to “Tough Enough,” and her natural athletic ability and look got her picked. They want to move her from being a valet to being a wrestler, as noted, and are trying to train her before the matches. The feeling is she’s not taking the business seriously enough. Well, after being a college basketball star that was almost good enough to go to the WNBA, and then being put in many situations where they have her model lingerie and give her a boob job, you can see that if you didn’t grow up respecting wrestling, it may be hard for her to do so. On 2/9/04 in Regina, she was supposed to train, but (not her fault) it took forever to get through customs and they barely got people there in time to start the show. She promised to come the next day for a session with the Bashams, Haas, & Benjamin. They all came, for her benefit, but she no-showed. She got mad at being fined, which also didn’t go over well, and complained she wasn’t making enough to afford it. They have asked her to watch every match on the show and study them.

 

WWE Originals fell to No. 57 on the charts this week to 20,961 sales. Total sales up to this point have been 123,155.

 

The actual ticket prices for the 4/3/04 show in Monterrey, Mexico, the company’s first-ever show in that country, are going to range from $155 down to $9. It is part of a RAW loop which will include shows in border cities Hidalgo and Laredo as well as a Houston RAW that week.

 

The heavily-hyped “Monday Night War” DVD is off to a strong start, as it sold out at many retailers, as well as Amazon.com, that are awaiting new orders.

 

SmackDown as of late last year was averaging $34,333 for a 30-second ad. Out of 124 shows on prime time network television, it was in spot No. 121, ahead of only the dying Rock Me, Baby, the nearly dead Mullets, and UPN Night at the Movies. The upside is the cost of the show is far less than just about any show on television, so it is profitable even though it’s 3.4 rating delivers ad rates of a show that would do well below a 2.0

 

Percy Pringle III (Paul Bearer) on his web site suddenly announced he was no longer taking independent bookings, which is going to fuel the rumor mill.

 

The Angle line to Big Show on the 2/5/04 SmackDown show about eating crap for breakfast was taken from the “Happy Gilmore” movie, and originally said by Adam Sandler. So anyway, the credit for the line shouldn’t have gone to the writers as much as credit to whoever happened to see that movie.

 

Matt Morgan is going to be given hands-on training from Tom Pritchard from this point forwards. Morgan is very well liked among just about everyone, but the reality is he was not ready when he was brought up, which has often been a broken record about guys when it comes to big guys. There is also some dissatisfaction that he isn’t picking up things quicker, but I don’t think they realized how far from ready he was when they brought him in.

 

Ron Simmons, who turns 45 in May and is the company’s oldest active wrestler aside from Flair, is once again talking about retiring. There had been talk of him becoming a road agent at some point back in 2002, but it never happened, and he ended up coming back.

 

There was some heat with Torrie Wilson from the other SmackDown women. Apparently, Wilson asked Jim Ross and John Laurinaitis backstage at No Way Out to change the Tiny Teddy deals at the house shows to tag team matches with Sable & Wilson wrestling as a team, since it makes more sense for them to be teaming than fighting each other with the Playboy pub, and she’s right. They agreed, but the word never got to the other three women. Wilson got to Stockton and told the other three women about the change, and they were mad about not being told, and that Wilson went to management without talking with them. Then, when everyone was upset, Wilson called RAW and got Laurinaitis (since Ross was on the air), which got her more heat. Paul Heyman, who is working with Laurinaitis and Ross in booking the house shows now, tried to compromise by having it be a Tiny Teddy tag team match, but came up with spots to pacify Dawn Marie and Nidia, since they had to lose. It all worked out by the time they got in the ring. The new deal is that Wilson and Sable win, and then are about to kiss when they are jumped by Dawn and Nidia.

 

WWE.Com said that Todd Grisham, the Arizona-based announcer hired three weeks ago, would be starting on RAW within the next few weeks. One of the reasons Grisham got the job is he did an interview at his regular station with Eric Bischoff, and the two set up a scuffle to air on television. I guess WWE TV people liked that kind of guy.

 

Zach Gowen did an interview on “Get in the Ring” radio after being fired. He had nothing bad to say, just saying he made enough money to pay for his college and he’s going back to school and doing some independents. He said the past year was the best year of his life, and admitted he was rushed into main events before he was ready. He said his goal was to become a high school math teacher. Gowen’s con man side came out as he was asked about the story about meeting Hulk Hogan in the hospital. He claimed Mike Tenay made it up and he just went along with it. And the moon is also made of Swiss cheese. Gowen said he’d love to return to TNA, but they haven’t called.

 

With RAW having the weekend off, Jonathan Coachman worked the 2/14/04 Memphis TV show for Jerry Lawler.

 

If I were Vince McMahon, I would be 100 stages of furious over this one. The World Wildlife Fund has sold the rights to the WWF.Com web site name to a group calling themselves Web Wrestling Forum, which is a pro wrestling message board. Granted, Vince asked for problems when he agreed not to market the WWF initials outside of North America and then did so. But if the Fund really believed the web site was such a major issue in market confusion, it wouldn’t have sold the domain name to a pro wrestling group.

 

Superstar Billy Graham was released from the hospital on 2/12/04 and doesn’t have to undergo surgery, so it appears he’s a definite for both the Hall of Fame banquet (already sold out) and Mania.

 

2/2/04 RAW TV taping in State College, PA drew 4,100 and 2/3/04 SmackDown taping in Cleveland drew 4,600.

 

Only house show of the week was 2/16/04 in Stockton before a second straight legit turn away crowd of 2,200. They played the old-time Civic Auditorium instead of the 5,000-seat college gym they used to run at.

 

CREDIT: Dave Meltzer & the Wrestling Observer Newsletter

[Nighthawk 0]

Flair turns 55 years old on 2/25/04.

That's younger than I thought. I'd always assumed, cause I read it somewhere, that he would be 58 this year.

[RavishingRickRudo 0]

I'd say from July is when he had ME level heat, but remember, they were still running the Brock/Angle program. They hesitated on pulling the trigger, but I think it payed off in that he's more over now after beating Chavito

 

Since they brought him up so quickly from the mid-card, it makes it very easy for them to bring him back down. Had they used that 6 months to build him up to the spot rather than shooting him up, it would have been harder to bring him down. Building Eddie up wouldn't have hurt the Brock/Angle program, infact I think that Angle would have been the perfect buffer to bring Eddie up into a feud with Brock. Instead they had him fight Cena (win), Big Show (loss), the Bashams (loss), and Chavo (win). That's not exactly a _strong_ record to be going into a championship slot with. They could have still done the Chavo feud (except not spending months building it to finish it off in one match), but *before* an Angle feud. They have it backwards, Angle first, Brock second. Right now it's more like correcting the mistake rather than enhancing the champion.

 

And my complaint that they never showed anything of Eddies drug addiction still rings true now. They're basing Angles whole heel turn on this concept that "Eddie is an addict" and the basis of it is still on word alone.

[The Ghost of bps21 0]

Whether he was booked weak early on or not, Jericho flopped as champion. When you're in there beating the likes of The Rock and Steve Austin and still cannot get over, something is up.

 

Jericho still wrestles like a cruiserweight in a heavyweights body, I never thought his style really worked in the main event scene of WWE, i.e. one where the most important trait you can own is the ability to brawl.

 

Triple H didn't kill Y2J's run, Jericho was dead as champion long before HHH was involved.

 

UYI

Due to outside circumstances...Jericho's title reign outdrew anything since, and many things before it.

 

He may have looked weak...but due to HHH's return, NWO coming in, and Rock vs. Hogan...

 

his title reign saw 3 of the best ppv buyrates the company has done in years.

[Guest TheZsaszHorsemen]

I'd say from July is when he had ME level heat, but remember, they were still running the Brock/Angle program. They hesitated on pulling the trigger, but I think it payed off in that he's more over now after beating Chavito

 

Since they brought him up so quickly from the mid-card, it makes it very easy for them to bring him back down. Had they used that 6 months to build him up to the spot rather than shooting him up, it would have been harder to bring him down. Building Eddie up wouldn't have hurt the Brock/Angle program, infact I think that Angle would have been the perfect buffer to bring Eddie up into a feud with Brock. Instead they had him fight Cena (win), Big Show (loss), the Bashams (loss), and Chavo (win). That's not exactly a _strong_ record to be going into a championship slot with. They could have still done the Chavo feud (except not spending months building it to finish it off in one match), but *before* an Angle feud. They have it backwards, Angle first, Brock second. Right now it's more like correcting the mistake rather than enhancing the champion.

 

And my complaint that they never showed anything of Eddies drug addiction still rings true now. They're basing Angles whole heel turn on this concept that "Eddie is an addict" and the basis of it is still on word alone.

So basically, you don't like it because you feel they can easily just move him back to down to the midcard?

 

I won't argue that that isn't a legitimate point, but that thinking is just impossibily negative for me to accept.

[RavishingRickRudo 0]

So basically, you don't like it because you feel they can easily just move him back to down to the midcard?

 

There are several reasons why I don't like it. One of which is that it doesn't make Eddie strong enough to maintain his spot like true main eventers do.

 

I won't argue that that isn't a legitimate point, but that thinking is just impossibily negative for me to accept.

 

Chris Jericho and Kurt Angle are two examples of weak main eventers who fell down the card after losing the title. Different circumstances, yes, but the concept remains the same. It's not as impossible as you think. Negative? Of course, whattya expect, Overwhelming optimism that they'll do the right thing with his title run despite not doing the right thing with his title build?

[Scroby 0]

Is the Hall of Fame gonna be televised?

[Brett Favre 0]

Linda Miles got even more heat on her this past week

 

Randy Orton must be jealous.

[Spaceman Spiff 0]

Chris ?Kanyon? Klucsaritis was released from his contract on 2/9/04. The move wasn?t surprising since the company really hasn?t done a thing with him in the past few years. He had knee and shoulder injuries, but has been recovered from some time. He got great reactions and did some strong dark matches at tapings last year with Shark Boy and Chad Collyer, so his ring work wasn?t the problem. Others in the company didn?t like his doing matches with big moves and near falls in dark matches. He?s about 6?3??, which they like. His catch phrase is okay, but it?s a relic from WCW, so that didn?t help him. My feeling is they just felt he didn?t look or talk like a star, and it?s his look and accent/lisp that did him in.

OK, so:

1) catchphrase - Booker's was a WCW catchphrase, too, and they don't seem to have a problem using it.

 

2) accent/lisp - Lita, anyone? Jeff Hardy got mic time. Didn't seem to affect them. His look? Kane ain't exactly Brad Pitt. Kanyon's comfortable talking, so if they're concerned about the lisp, keep his mic time to a minimum, or stick him w/ a manager. It's not like they'd push him as a ME'er, so it's not like he'd be all over TV every week.

 

3) the "big moves and near falls" in dark matches - yeah, can't be entertaining. He hardly got used as it was, so he had to make the most of his time to get noticed.

 

4) good matches and great reactions - that's more than a lot of people on the roster can say.

 

(yes, I'm *still* ticked about Kanyon's release)

[Guest Brian]

I was under the assumption that because of the prices and such people are paying to go to that, they would probably just highlight it.

[Enigma 0]

Can't WWE get in trouble for firing someone based on a lisp? That seems like a touchy subject.

[haVoc 0]

Vince & Linda McMahon are now grandparents, as Shane and wife Marissa had their first child, a nine-pound boy, this past week.

 

The 4th generation begins.

 

Serious, good for them..Congrats...

[Damaramu 0]

that's because we're jaded bitter fucks.

 

We're NEVER happy.

 

Eddy Guerrero wins the title...we bitch because it only had three weeks of hype.

 

We CAN NOT be statisfied. It's impossible.

I was satisfied...........

[DerangedHermit 0]

Vince & Linda McMahon are now grandparents, as Shane and wife Marissa had their first child, a nine-pound boy, this past week.

What did they name that infernal spawn (the antichrist designation goes to HHH/Steph's child)?

[Enigma 0]

Vince & Linda McMahon are now grandparents, as Shane and wife Marissa had their first child, a nine-pound boy, this past week.

What did they name that infernal spawn (the antichrist designation goes to HHH/Steph's child)?

There wasn't a name given.