Scott's Blog of Doom

http://whosslammingwho.podomatic.com/entry/eg/2010-03-01T10_52_21-08_00

I just wanted to post this audio interview with Matt Borne to bring up the subject of rumors and the internet.  Because yeah, the so-called “Internet Wrestling Community” has been guilty of spreading bad info over the years, but I think part of the problem comes from the source.  Wrestlers themselves are just as bad for gossiping and hearsay, and even if someone on the ‘net gets actual verification from someone inside the business, odds are that the info is just as tainted.  Case in point, Borne here is talking about his time as Doink in 1993, and has the following exchange with interviewer Tommy Fiero (I’m broadly paraphrasing here, so no one quote this on Wikipedia or anything):

Fiero:  So how was working with Crush at Wrestlemania IX?

Borne:  [blah blah blah wonderful experience]  But originally I was supposed to be working with Hulk Hogan and he refused to work with me, so they called it off.  Then it was Davey Boy Smith, but he also refused to work with me and got fired over it. 

Fiero (later in the interview, following up on the original question):  I’ve never actually heard about the Hogan thing before.  What kind of angle did they present to you?

Borne:  Oh, no one actually SAID that I was going to be working with Hogan, Shawn Michaels told me about all this after the fact.  I never even spoke to Hogan about it.

Point being, these guys do the exact same sort of telephone game that us lowly internet fans do, except it’s worse with them because then you get silly backstage drama and political games coming out of all the “I heard so-and-so refused to work with me” stuff. 

So remember:  The only truly reliable source of information is Wikipedia.  Of that I’m 100% certain.

Yo Scott,
A certain ex-colleague of yours wrote a couple weeks ago that Randy Orton could save wrestling. This is probably a common opinion amongst people in the business seeing as he's been earmarked for success since he was a teenager, but I'm just not seeing it. He's been in the WWE for what...eight years now? I don't think there's precedent for someone becoming a mainstream success after eight years of exposure.
What say you and the denizens of the BOD?

 

Ric Flair didn’t even become World champion until he’d been in the business for eight years, and then it took him another 6 to become a significant draw on a national scale.  The business is different now, but the lesson is the same.  Wrestling is the snake that consumes its own tail to survive, and you can never say that someone isn’t going to be the next superstar just because they haven’t done it yet.  Absolutely no one earmarked Steve Austin for what he became.  I was one of his biggest fans in his WCW days and I would have been happy had he achieved IC title level success and made some good money in WWF. 

However, it’s silly to say that wrestling needs “saving”.  Vince is making hundreds of millions of dollars a year and the WWE will continue to do just fine no matter who he pushes. 

These days, whenever a popular wrestler returns after a prolonged absence due to an injury or whatever, said wrestler tends to receive a sizable welcome-back pop. It doesn't usually even matter whether the wrestler in question was a heel when he left; absence makes the heart grow fonder, and fans appreciate these performers, and there's no clearer sign of that than the welcome-back pop. Triple-H received one of the most overwhelming welcome-back pops of all time when he returned after an injury a few years ago, for example. And though Jericho was a heel when he left a few years ago, he was greeted as a face upon his return.

But consider this: if Ravishing Rick Rude or Bad News Brown had been injured during their respective WWF peaks and returned a year later, there's no way in hell they'd have been cheered. Fans woulda been like, "Oh, right, this guy. I remember him. Total dick."

What caused this change? Does it have to do with the fall of kayfabe? Is it the simple fact that fans are "allowed" to recognize the talents of heels now?

Also, are you ever going to comment on Bret Hart's return? I'm not implying that you owe it to anyone, I'm just surprised that you haven't really said a word about it. For my part, I think they should have kept his return top-secret, and the entire program should have been Vince interfering in some match at Mania, Bret's music hits, he comes out and beats the crap outta Vince, leaves to disbelieving cheers, then visits Raw the next night to do the confrontation with Shawn pretty much exactly as it happened. Ah well, hindsight is twenty-twenty; I'm just sad for Bret that he waited so long to return that a majority of the fanbase had moved on. Worse still, what would theoretically be the most amazing program ever (Bret returns to confront Vince!) has been limp and uninspired, and overshadowed by (among other things) Shawn Michaels's latest program; that's gotta hurt.

 

I think that the “welcome back pop” became a thing in wrestling around the same time that storylines started going by the wayside in favor of characters being all obsessed about their legacies.  I think it also has to do with the mentality from the Monday Night Wars, where fans become conditioned to equate surprise with excitement and so someone coming back means that it’s time to cheer.  X-Pac got a monster reaction in 1998, for instance, despite clearly playing a heel character and in fact being one of the most universally despised wrestlers on either show.  And since we no longer have rival promotions to draw true heat from (oh, except for TNA….BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA, sorry, couldn’t write that with a straight face) and you’re not going to see UFC guys suddenly popping up and going “I went three rounds with Shogun Rua and now I’m here to make the WWE tap out, brother!”, the injury return is really all we’ve got.

As for the second point, I haven’t commented because I ceased giving a shit about following weekly TV outside of internet recaps many years back now.  I don’t mind watching the occasional PPV, but the product just doesn’t make me want to go out of my way to watch it now.  It’s too much material to follow anyway; I much prefer the UFC model of one show per month with countdown specials in between.  As for Bret, I don’t think he’ll get what he needs out of this, but if he wants to try then more power to him.

The SmarK DVD Rant for Jake Roberts: Pick Your Poison

- This was one that I skipped when it came out because it didn't really appeal to me for $25. But for $6, hey, why not?

We start with a poem, written by Jake Roberts, so I'm already getting a bad feeling going into this.

Read the rest of this entry »

Charlie sez…

Since your blog was interested and I have NO life, here's all the figures I could pull up on WWE DVD sales numbers.  These are for North America (possibly the United States) only.

Only THREE WWE DVDs have sold over 100,000 units at the Manufactures Suggested Retail Price.  This does not factor in bundle sales, clearance, etc.  It WOULD factor in store sales, such as Best Buy which always has the movies on sale the first week they are released. 

The top three are...

#1: The Rise & Fall of ECW (aprox 165,000 units at MSRP)
#2: Hulk Hogan: The Ultimate Anthology (aprox 125,000 units at MSRP)
#3: The Ultimate Ric Flair Collection (aprox 110,000 units at MSRP)

That puts it in perspective of what the very top of the ladder is.  I'm guessing wrestling fans thought these things sold millions.  They don't.  BUT understand that they're the WWE's most profitable division because all the stuff contained in them is just archival footage.  It costs pennies on a dollar to produce these sets.

The average set sells around 25,000 units.  Here are the ones that are above average performers.  If a DVD released after 2008, I did a rough guess based on removing the overseas stuff using sales data from older stuff.  And since you can take it with a grain of salt, I put a * next to any such set.

Bloodbath: Wrestling's Best Cage Matches (about 85,000 copies)
Tombstone: The History of the Undertaker (About 70,000 copies)
The Road Warriors (about 55,000 copies)
Bret Hart (about 45,000 copies)
Shawn Michaels: From the Vault (about 45,000 copies)
Greatest Stars of the 80s (About 35,000 copies)
Shawn Michaels: Heartbreak & Triumph (about 30,000 copies)*
John Cena: My Life (about 30,000)*
Chris Benoit: Hard Knocks (about 25,000 copies)

And these are the under performing ones...

Eddie Guerrero: Cheating Death, Stealing Life (about 20,000 copies)
ECW Blood Sport (about 17,500 copies)
Rey Mysterio: The Biggest Little Man (about 15,000 copies)*
Mr. Perfect (about 7,500 copies)
History of the AWA (about 5,000 copies)
Roddy Piper (about 3,000 copies)
Dusty Rhodes (about 2,500 copies)
History of WCCW (about 2,500 copies)*
ECW Extreme Rules (about 2,000 copies)*
Brian Pillman (about 1,500 copies)
Superstar Billy Graham (about 1,000 copies)

I tried to get numbers for the 2009 releases but they were all over the place.  More then likely places reporting them made the numbers up based on how much they liked the sets.  The WWE the actual numbers pretty well guarded.  I was told that Kane's release was the lowest single-wrestler set of the last year (released in December of 2008 but they factor it into the last calendar year). 

I think actually the WWE likely has readjusted their expectations for what a DVD is expected to sell.  And mind you, in the music industry a concert DVD that says 5,000 units is considered to be a MAJOR success.  So the WWE isn't exactly hurting from this drop in sales.  This is all stuff that is 'in the can'.

Sources: Billboard, Video Shop Magazine, WWE's pre-2008 sales figures.

Hi Scott

According to 411mania the Fed are finally working on a DVD for Ricky Steamboat. Two questions for you...and my fellow posters.

Will you be in the queue buy this one? On one hand I think it could be ten kinds of awesome, on the other hand a bunch of best matches are on other DVDs and I wonder how interesting an interviewee he is going to be.

Assuming they want new matches for the DVD (meaning no Savage and none of the famous matches with Flair) what matches will they go for? We’ll assume for these purposes one of the Jericho matches is included.

 

I don’t think you can assume no Flair matches, because there’s a bazillion other great ones floating around the archives.  What I really want to see is the original Savage title match from Superstars with the ringbell crushing, which you’d think would have to be a no-brainer this time.  Maybe a Muraco match, the tag title match against Arn & Larry, a ****+ random tag match against the Hollywood Blondes, one of his career-ending matches against Austin…this thing pretty much writes itself.

Hey Scott,

Don't know if you've seen the new WWE PPV schedule but the May event is called 'Over the Limit' now. I think it's too eerily similar to 'Over the Edge' which was also in May 11 years ago. Coincidence or is Vince up to something?

 

He’s planning on reanimating the corpse of Owen Hart and having him job to Sheamus because no one living wants to?

Hey Scott,
Here's the latest. http://bit.ly/9jPUPt  Was tough coming up with a best match.

Really?  I think the Stephanie match is a no-brainer, because it turned Trish into a legitimate superstar outside the narrow mindset of what the “Divas” could do, and it was entertaining as fuck.  You could also go with the Victoria streetfight at Royal Rumble and have a good case as well.  One thing she IS lacking is a great Wrestlemania match, unfortunately.

Quick note, I'm going to hosting some friends of the family through Tuesday so I'm going to post that rant and I'll be in the basement for a couple of days. Probably won't get around to editing XXI until Tuesday night or Wednesday. I hope you guys have a tremendous weekend!

Read the rest of this entry »

Just a question for you...
Being that you have lived in Canada your whole life, what is it like to have socialized health care?  I guess I ask since Obama wants to jam universal health care down the throats of us as Americans (the equivalent of Vince McMahon pushing the steroid freaks as World Champs, and I agree, Ezekiel Jackson probably will be one on either Smackdown or RAW, no matter how bad a wrestler he is).  Is it really effective, or is it really as bad as I've heard?  Just wanted to get your perspective on it.  Thanks.

 

The thing is, we as Canadians don’t tend to think much about health care because we don’t have to.  Thankfully I’ve never had serious medical issues in my adult life, but the times where I’ve had to make trips to the hospital (like the wacky time they thought I had meningitis) I found the system to be perfectly easy to deal with and everyone professional.  Plus I have 100% drug coverage through work, so I never worry about prescription costs either.  Would I want to suddenly be worrying about whether I have coverage in exchange for getting a non-essential procedure done a bit sooner?  Hells no.  Yeah, the system has flaws, but at the end of the day I don’t have to think about where I’m going to go if I’m sick, and that’s good enough for me.