What was the point of the last segment...

[Guest ManKinnd]

This is going to get ugly. I'm just sayin'...

[NoCalMike 0]

The fact that the crowd didn't care about JR and were basically dead silent during the entire thing, shows one, that putting JR in a match is a fucking stupid idea, and two, even smarky-mcmark could predict what was going to happen to end the segment, so the excitement factor was on the low side.

[tominator89 0]

I think the same could be said for the HBK/Hassan match. Who didn't know that Hogan would be coming out to make the dramatic save?

[Guest Hass of Pain]

I mean, that 21 years line is too whacky to ignore.

 

The AWA - Gone

WCW - Gone

ECW - Dead

Smokey Mountain - Dead

The Mid-South - Gone

The UWF - Gone

Texas Wrestling - Dead

The USWA - Gone

TNA - Living on Borrowed Time

 

World Wrestling Entertainment - A publicly traded company, routinely amongst the highest rated shows if not the highest rated show on cable, probably made $20,000,000 + when all is said on done on Wrestlemania 21 alone, and is the lone survivor in American wrestling on a national level.

 

If you can't look at the last 21 years since the first Wrestlemania and call it anything but a success, you need to come down off of your high horse. Sure WWE has had its up periods and its down periods (just like MLB etc), but it has remained in business at worst and extremely profitable at best since the company went national and there is nothing "whacky" about that.

[Guest Salacious Crumb]

The WWF is not a success right now. They've loped off entire limbs to stay profitable. They've done house cleaning on talent twice in less than a year due to cost cutting. They continue to have a smaller fanbase and the last attendence report from their own stock holders conference was 4000 people. They're falling into indy territory with that figure. Most business people would laugh at you if you pointed the WWF out as a currently successful company. They increased prices and started paying talent a lot less. They lost money during one of their quarters last year as well as they had to pay share holders.

[iggymcfly 0]

The HHH/JR match was all right in theory, but it was waaay too slow, and they really didn't execute it well at all. I think they didn't want to do too much with the Batista confrontation because HHH is still hurt, but if HHH wasn't sitting around doing nothing with JR for 20 minutes like it was a WCW match, they might have at least been able to build up a little drama.

[Guest animal!]

I thought it was hilarous how batista was driving the strech limo to save J.R., what is this dumb and dumber?

[Guest Hass of Pain]

The WWF is not a success right now. They've loped off entire limbs to stay profitable. They've done house cleaning on talent twice in less than a year due to cost cutting. They continue to have a smaller fanbase and the last attendence report from their own stock holders conference was 4000 people. They're falling into indy territory with that figure. Most business people would laugh at you if you pointed the WWF out as a currently successful company. They increased prices and started paying talent a lot less. They lost money during one of their quarters last year as well as they had to pay share holders.

Oh ok, if you were referring to WWE not being successful at the current moment (not evaluating the 20 year history as a whole) I would disagree far less strongly. The company is still slightly profitable, and the one losing quarter recently was almost entirely due to paying a huge lump sum to break their lease with the building WWE New York was occupying if I recall correctly, but I would agree that their business model lately hasn't exactly been one I would follow. Thirty million dollars on filming movies and huge losses on things like WWE New York and the XFL isn't exactly helping their bottom line either, and the company is still operating in the black with an enormous cash reserve. I don't think cutting talent is really indicative of any kind of financial panic though, they are mostly guys whose salaries will be replaced by new guys being called up from OVW anyway, and paying the talent less has as much to do with WWE's borderline monopoly as it does with cost cutting, but I definitely see your point and agree in part.

[Guest Salacious Crumb]

I have to think in my head. Help me if I'm off.

 

84-89 were highly successful.

 

90-91 was moderately successful

 

92 was like 2001 with things going downhill

 

93-96 were failures for the most part

 

97 was a disaster financially

 

98-99 were successful

 

2000 - best year for the WWF financially

 

2001 - like 92 were things just went downhill slowly, though X-7 was successful

 

2002 - financial disaster

 

2003-now - not as bad as 2002 but nowhere close to be great successes

 

 

So they run about 50/50 on good/bad years. The cash reserve has actually taken a horrible hit. I saw some report awhile back and they had burned through roughly 50% of it in about 2 years. That was 2003 though so maybe they've built back up a bit. I actually think Vince Sr. did far better at consistently making money for the WWF though. Sammartino and Backlund were the kings of selling out MSG.

[CBright7831 0]

I think the last segment was WWE saying:

 

"LOOK HOW POWERFUL, AND MEAN SPIRITED TRIPLE H IS! *beats every fan over the head with a club*"

[iggymcfly 0]

Yeah, those silly PPVs don't make any money. They should go back to just running house shows.

[Cherry Blossom Viscount 0]

I hate how no one ever gives Haas of Pain any props, just shit, for his coherent and informative rebuttals to the usual smark ramblings of people such as Ravishing Rick Rudo. Whereas most anti-smarks come off as illiterate and foolish, he shows intelligence and poise with his responses. Kudos to him.

[EricMM 0]

yeah but successful business or not, that segment went WAAAAAAAAY overlong.

 

It wasn't good, that's all we're saying.

[RavishingRickRudo 0]

If you can't look at the last 21 years since the first Wrestlemania and call it anything but a success, you need to come down off of your high horse. Sure WWE has had its up periods and its down periods (just like MLB etc), but it has remained in business at worst and extremely profitable at best since the company went national and there is nothing "whacky" about that.

 

This is all completely, totally, and utterly irrelevant when it comes to Vince McMahon "knowing what he is doing" when it comes to booking. The amount of booking failures Vince has made in the past 21 years must outweigh the amount of good booking decisions by a 20:1 margin. It's just with wrestling, and his business support model, he is able to get a helluvalot out of that 1 good booking move. Plus, wrestling fans tend to be forgiving for those 20 bad booking moves, more than any other fan on the planet. The "21 year" thing is whacky because rather than just looking at his booking moves you decided to rest your hat on the companies success as if that's a satisfactory explanation. It isn't. Being the only company left standing isn't because his booking was superior to other companies, it's because his marketing and business model was. It also didn't help that most wrestling promoters are retarded when it comes to having good business sense.