What the fuck was the point of this show? I DVR’d it out of curiosity and was assaulted by an hour of video packages hyping nothing and advertising nothing. Hey, John Cena won a title that he no longer has from a guy who’s not even currently wrestling, that’s nice. The show was only 4 months ago and already all the storylines have no connection to anything here, except of course that HHH is still fighting Randy Orton in an infinite time loop of suck. Since there’s no WWE show on NBC, I don’t really understand what this is supposed to make me watch. I’m guessing it was just a contractual obligation on NBC’s part to burn off the failed SNME experiment, but why not just show the Shawn v. Undertaker match to hook new viewers instead of using storylines that mean nothing to the current product?
I’m guessing the idea was to make Wrestlemania look exciting and interesting (neither of which it actually was, of course) and thus make viewers interested in tuning in to a different WWE program. If anything, the show had to have been better than the later SNME shows which consistently made me want to watch whatever pay per view they were hyping even less.
They did this same crap last year, and it was such a waste of time. I think that if they’re going to do this, pick the best match from Wrestlemania and show it in its entirety, and then do video packages for the rest of the show. By showing the best match in full, it gives people an idea of what they might be missing out on by not ordering Wrestlemania.
From one of the NEWZ sites:
–WWE will air the WrestleMania 25 match between Shawn Michaels and Undertaker in place of ECW on SyFy tomorrow night. I wonder if they were worried someone in the audience would put up signs about Rey Mysterio during the ECW taping.
So, if they don’t mind showing the match on free TV, they easily could have taken your suggestion, c_d and had a much better show.
Not sure how it all works, technically, but if I were NBC I would give the boot to Vince so fast and replace it with a monthly/bi-monthly UFC show.
Speaking of UFC, I don’t know if this is old news but I just saw that UFC 100 pulled a 1.72 buyrate. That’s f’n amazing. Lesnar’s probably set for life based on that event alone.
Apparently if you add the UFC 101 buyrate then it will almost reach WWE’s predicted PPV buyrates for the whole year. I know the UFC/WWE comparison only goes so far but it does suggest that WWE could make more money if they cut back on their PPVs.
I would also suggest WWE try to cut back on how often the top guys wrestle on free TV.
If the main eventers wrestled one televised match a month (on PPV) with their free TV appearances done in the form of promos and angles instead of actually wrestling, it could possibly help buyrates.
Exactly. What’s the big deal about seeing Cena/HHH/Orton wrestle each other on PPV when we see some combination of it every damn week? I remember when seeing Hulk Hogan wrestle on TV was a huge deal that you told your friends about beforehand to make sure they were watching.
‘Less is more’ certainly applies to the HHH-Orton feud. All it needed to consist of was: Orton attacks each McMahon; the segment where Legacy annihilates HHH and Orton kisses Stephanie; a PPV match where HHH beats Orton for ‘revenge’; a rematch on PPV months later where Orton beats HHH and wins the belt. The rest can just be promos – no home invasions, no need for hundreds of tag matches or brawls involving both wrestlers. If they had not fought over and over then I probably would have bought the PPV with their rematch.
I call this “monday night wars syndrome”. They got so used to booking main events featuring the top guys on RAW and Smackdown trying to out do WCW, that they simply never went back to just running the company differently because they think that they’ll lose ratings or something. Instead, they just keep dropping in the ratings, house shows continue to falter and PPV buys are pathetic (the last two is where the real money is at).
If we know one thing about Vince McMahon, it’s that he is very, very stubborn. Look how long it took for him to finally break away from the Hulkamania era…he didn’t let go until 1996.
He will continue his Raw is War “Monday Night Wars” approach to making money until a disaster happens. With no competition and enough wrestling fans out there to make him money, he’s not changing anything. I think we unfortunately need to accept it.
And start rooting for some real competition. Not you TNA.
It’s not just the Monday Night Wars; TV is a much bigger part of the whole revenue pie than it was during the Hulkamania era (it’s about even with PPV’s and larger than house shows). That programming revenue is dependent upon their ratings and such, so I think any attempt to scale down the TV product is just going to hurt them more than it helps them.
The crux of the argument is, what would happen if RAW went to a 1993-96 approach. I’m don’t think they should entirely book RAW with jobber matches; just don’t give away main event matches on free tv habitually. Don’t get me wrong, I loved seeing the Punk-Hardy match for free; but was it necessary? Until they try something new for a determined time frame, they will not know what will happen business wise. What we do know, is that RAW is stale as hell. It could simply be the writing (probably), the main event players (most likely) or because it’s been the same damn show for how long now…10, 12 years?
Disney buys Marvel for $4 billion. Damn.
http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=22747
Yeah, this is pretty big.
Especially intriguing is the theme park battle as Disney’s competitor Universal Studios has rides based on Spider Man and Hulk. I’m not sure how that’s all going to work out……
Well, obviously Spidey and the X-Men get traded to the Disney brand for Clarabell Cow and all the Ducks, where Cyclops fails to get over and is written out, and Greg Land manages to lightbox Daisy Duck from a Jenna Haze image.
Cyclops is wished well in future endeavors cause creative had nothing for him.
They made this WrestleMania special look like the Sunday night Heats from 2000. Waste of time!
Honestly, I’d rather watch any random episode of Sunday Night Heat from the beginning of the decade than try and sit through Wrestlemania 25. Back then the storylines were good(for the most part), I liked most of the wrestlers, and the crowds were actually awake for the matches. Unlike WWE for the past four years
If you would rather watch Scotty 2 Hotty Vs. Val Venis than Shawn Vs. Undertaker than you have something seriously wrong with you.
Hey Scott and Russo haters, thought you’d get a kick out of this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8WwLQMzZhc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nn86Dw5abC0
I’d love to see people come to Impact! with signs depicting Yoshi just to get his goat.