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June Wrasslin' |OT| Break Out Naan And Do The Needful, It's Time For MaharaJEEEEEZUSS

B

Blood Diamonds

Banned
Bronx-Man said:
Lana Del Flop couldn't even carry Carly Bae's bags. Homegirl had to beg Abel for a feature just to stay relevant in 2017 😂😂😂
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i'll just leave this here so you feel ashamed:
ZKiE6uw.gif
 
S

SallyIsNow

Banned
Blood Diamonds said:
Hi, I have been summoned from POPGAF into this hellhole by fellow wr*stlingGAF member Professor Beef and I've been informed that you attempted to shade Elizabeth Woolridge Grant, better know by her stage name Lana Del Rey. Now listen, honey, Lana Del Rey's "Ultraviolence" is a critically acclaimed masterpiece that segmented her place as one of the better artists that has popped up in the last decade. Her impact is large and she will be remembered years from now not only by her stans but by critics for her ability to rise from the ashes of getting dragged by the critics early in her career only for her to captivate them with her lyrics, melodies, and her ability to portray a story in a 3 minute song. Meanwhile wrestling is literally falling apart and it's only a matter of time before it crumbles as it rightfully should for being generally awful.

In fact, wrestling's latest desperate attempt at relevancy being inspired by her album title and iconic track "Ultraviolence" is a testament to Lana's legacy and the impact that she will leave behind for the rest of history. While wrestling continues to fall into the deep dark abyss of irrelevancy and wrestling fans continue to embarrass themselves, people like Lana continue to put in effort to leave behind a mark on America and on the world.

And that's that on THAT. Farewell, John Cena GAF.
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william-regal-280.gif
 
F

Fox318

Member
Blood Diamonds said:
Hi, I have been summoned from POPGAF into this hellhole by fellow wr*stlingGAF member Professor Beef and I've been informed that you attempted to shade Elizabeth Woolridge Grant, better know by her stage name Lana Del Rey. Now listen, honey, Lana Del Rey's "Ultraviolence" is a critically acclaimed masterpiece that segmented her place as one of the better artists that has popped up in the last decade. Her impact is large and she will be remembered years from now not only by her stans but by critics for her ability to rise from the ashes of getting dragged by the critics early in her career only for her to captivate them with her lyrics, melodies, and her ability to portray a story in a 3 minute song. Meanwhile wrestling is literally falling apart and it's only a matter of time before it crumbles as it rightfully should for being generally awful.

In fact, wrestling's latest desperate attempt at relevancy being inspired by her album title and iconic track "Ultraviolence" is a testament to Lana's legacy and the impact that she will leave behind for the rest of history. While wrestling continues to fall into the deep dark abyss of irrelevancy and wrestling fans continue to embarrass themselves, people like Lana continue to put in effort to leave behind a mark on America and on the world.

And that's that on THAT. Farewell, John Cena GAF.
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Can she shoot for a single?
 
S

Sinatar

Official GAF Bottom Feeder
Professor Beef not only eats Little Caesars but he has to summon PopGAF to fight his battles?

God damn man, no wonder you ducked me for the Pizza in the Bank match.
 
P

Professor Beef

Banned
Sinatar said:
Professor Beef not only eats Little Caesars but he has to summon PopGAF to fight his battles?

God damn man, no wonder you ducked me for the Pizza in the Bank match.
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I just pulled the classic WWE heel maneuver of "pretending to get ready, then walk out of the ring at the last moment."
 
S

sf2fanatic

Member
Hex said:
Yes because Mike Ross and Gooteks , the two most ride the coat tails and profit of the dying bones of the fighting game community would miss the opportunity to try and have what even though some no life having wrassle gaffers in their gimmick rolls can not conceive was a huge event for them.
IGNORING the fact that Gooteks with is 0-10000000000 Street Fighter V pro record is a huge wrestling mark.
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Lol
 
F

Fantomex

Member
I'm buying tickets to G1 in Long Beach. However I think I'm gonna pay extra to go to the Saturday show. Would hate for someone to get hurt Saturday and then not perform on Sunday. 3000 people limit. I think it's gonna be hardcore.
 
H

Hex

Banned
My fam, the Shell station near me I have found has boiled Cajun Peanuts.
They are f'ing spectacular.
 
H

Hopeford

Member
As far as silly wrestling references elsewhere go...I'd just like to note that Yugioh just introduced a main character who is a wrestler. His gimmick is to pretend to be losing so he can John Cena it up at the end.

The episode had the following quotes:

(like, not paraphrasing. Those are actual quotes)

"Is Go Onizuka turning from babyface to heel?"
"2 v 2? It's like a tag team wrestling match!" [crowd cheers]
"Pro wrestling is my specialty. The audience will count "one, two, three," and I will knock you out!"
"His shoulders have touched the mat, and the referee will be tapping the mat soon!"
"He got his shoulder up at 2.9!"

That character's voice actor mentioned he wants to pull off that role as the "Shawn Michaels of Yugioh."

EDIT: Catching up on New Japan(didn't watch for like a year due to time), Naito is the greatest douche ever.
 
S

serenewarfare

Banned
Great article from Meltzer about ratings. Much better than the PWInsider bit from earlier. I think it draws more logical conclusions than the speculative nature of the PWI bit.

With Raw on Memorial Day doing the second lowest rating in the history of the show, and that includes holidays and shows during football season, on a week when all signs were that there should logically have been a strong bounce back, it asks a ton of questions.

Before people start making excuses about cord cutting, cord cutting can’t effect ratings more than one or two percent. The rating is derived by the percentage of homes that get the station, in this case the USA Network. If people no longer get USA Network, they aren’t figured into the percentage. You can argue that wrestling fans are cutting the cord, a term that is almost a joke the way it’s overused, greater than the public at large, but even then that’s a joke.

One year ago, USA Network was in 92.7 million homes. This past week USA Network was in 91.8 million homes. Yes, it is down and cord cutting probably is fair to account for maybe a one percent decline in audience and a zero percent decline in ratings, since those 900,000 homes aren’t figured in to begin with on the ratings. One would also think, with the wrestling audience being more hardcore than ever before, and fewer fans who are more loyal, that if anything, they would be the ones most likely to keep cable since they are willing to spend more money per capita on the product than any audience of wrestling ever. There are just fewer of them than ever before, probably even dating back to the dark ages of 1992 to 1995 when nobody was making money running wrestling companies in the U.S.

Now, to be fair, the business of pro wrestling is doing well with those hardcore fans. WWE attendance is mixed, but it was strong in March, although fell in April and May. WWE ratings were actually not that bad in April. The combination of WrestleMania and the Superstar shakeup saw Smackdown way ahead of last year, and Raw behind last year, but not by a lot.

Ever since the second week after the Superstar shakeup, both shows having fallen to a significant level. Some of that is the NBA Playoffs, but the NBA Playoffs take place every year at the same time.

There is also the argument that there are more ways of consumption of the product. You can subscribe to Hulu and watch the next day. And it is true the need for immediacy is way down. More people by percentage, are DVRing Raw than in the past, although that’s also misleading. If Raw was doing 10 percent increases from DVR viewership at 3.2 million last year, that’s 320,000 more viewers. If they are doing 12.5 percent now at 2.6 million, that 325,000 more viewers. So essentially it’s the same. People do watch YouTube clips, but looking at those numbers is misleading because most of that comes from India and 80 percent is outside the U.S., and in markets the company derives little revenue from.

Is this trouble? It’s not good. But generally, television ratings are down. Raw and Total Divas are both down well more than the decline of television on average. Smackdown is up, but Smackdown is an unfair comparison given its move to Tuesday live and having an exclusive roster. Perhaps you can argue that the increase in Smackdown is part of the reason for the decline in Raw, and that the combination is relatively even. Come July, when Smackdown is the same as it was a year earlier, as would be Raw, measuring the decline or lack thereof will be notable. My gut says that Raw will continue to decline, and Smackdown’s numbers will be well below the previous year.

Still, aside from cable news shows and major sports, both Raw and Smackdown do better than almost anything on cable most weeks. And the cable news shows that were beating it, on Fox for the most part, have taken a major hit with the loss of Bill O’Reilly. No, pro wrestling isn’t near the force it once was, but it’s still good.

The problem is that it’s also not cost-effective. At 22 cents per viewer per show, if Raw does 3 million viewers per week and Smackdown does 2.5 million, numbers that both shows are unlikely to be reaching on a consistent regular basis unless there is a turnaround, that’s $1.21 million per week or $63 million per year. Wrestling costs USA in the range of $160 million.

Still, there is other value. USA gets money per home from the cable companies. Would the cable companies want to cut back on USA without wrestling? USA’s big claim is that they are consistently top five in prime time ratings, and have been No. 1 most recent years. Take away the five hours of WWE, they would not be top ten.

But benefits of other programming is it can be replayed over-and-over, and USA can also sell original programs overseas. They can sell the rights many ways and have digital distribution as well down the line. With Raw and Smackdown, they don’t have those revenue streams since WWE owns the shows and derives the revenue for any of those type of usages.

From a cost-effective standpoint, a show that does one-third the audience will do more advertising revenue than WWE.

As far as 2019 goes, when the USA contract is up, are these ratings going to pose a problem?

There is no way of knowing. Most stations won’t drop their top rated show, and with USA’s other programming falling badly and the station unable to make new hits like they used to do regularly, wrestling is farm more valuable than ever before, at least for total ratings. There is the argument that USA can also advertise its new shows before more eyeballs if they keep WWE. Plus, generally, programming rights have been going up even with audiences declining.

UFC is counting on a huge increase in rights fees at the end of 2018, and if they do or don’t get it may be a barometer for WWE. UFC was, and still is hoping for a bidding war, and perhaps winding up like the NBA, NASCAR, the NFL or Baseball, where they make deals with multiple networks. But the problems with ESPN, a station counted on to bid for UFC programming, if they aren’t interested given their declining number of homes due to cable bundling (far more than cord cutting which is still only four percent from the peak of U.S. cable, and cable homes right now are 24 percent ahead of where they were during wrestling’s popularity peak) and thus loss of revenue, the UFC leverage is gone.

Similarly, if multiple parties see WWE’s numbers as a way to put their networks on the map, because WWE does give you a consistent solid audience very Monday and Tuesday, WWE could get much bigger numbers even with the steep decline in audience.

If nobody else wants it, and there is a change at the top (Bonnie Hammer, who runs USA and several other NBCU cable networks is a major fan of Vince McMahon) like what happened with TBS and TNT in 2001, and they think bottom line rather than fighting for No. 1, WWE could be in major trouble. With the WWE Network, they will survive in that situation, although will have to make major cuts, and it will be much harder to create new fans. Still, the Internet is a strong way to reach and maintain hardcore fans. This also may explain the attempt to reach out and try and create local stars in foreign markets. In the dark ages, when the U.S. wrestling scene was struggling badly, WWE did lose money, but they still did well in Europe and Canada.

The reality is that most revenue streams are strong. Attendance, which is in many ways a far better barometer to judge real interest than TV ratings, especially today, is only down a little, and with price raises, is more profitable than before.

But people who make the argument that ratings don’t matter are as shortsighted as they come. Ratings matter far more today than in the days of the Monday Night Wars. In those days, for whatever reason, both companies got sucked into a battle of hotshotting. Wrestling in 1998 was on fire, and WWF was on fire for a few years after that as WCW collapsed. Did the hotshotting long-term lead to another decline after 2001? Or was it the lack of competition? But the key was, in 2000, no matter what the ratings were, WWE made its money by presentation of live shows, licensing and PPVs. They only grossed $5.5 million in the U.S. from television in 1999 which grew to $28 million because of the bidding war between USA and Spike in 2000, because the attitude of television was that wrestling needs us so we don’t have to pay for it. Today, WWE’s television rights are closer to $160 million, a huge percentage of overall revenue. While there are many other factors in play, ratings are the No. 1 factor besides multiple bidders wanting the product when it comes to the No. 1 profit producing revenue stream.

Now, are ratings not as big a deal when measuring actual popularity than before? No doubt, but they were always misleading. There were companies like Mid South and Memphis that did ridiculously high ratings while they struggled at the gate. Even with WCW in 2000, while overall business collapsed, ratings did fall, but not to the extent of PPV and house shows. People would watch the train wrecks out of fascination or loyalty or habit, but they were don’t paying money for them. With WWE, that’s not the case. People just aren’t watching the TV, perhaps because of too much product, sameness, or lack of stakes, but still will pay for the network and go to the live shows. And another point is that WWE live shows are good. The talent is very good at what they do, and they are better athletes and have a far better work ethic. The mentality of conning people into the seats and doing as little as possible past conning them back, and it being an excuse to stay in high school, do copious amounts of drinking and drugs and have access to far more women as television stars has been completely overhauled by a performer base that is there because they love performing. If they can be criticized, it’s for working too hard for their own good and taking risks that lead to more injuries. They are paid well enough, although not nearly what they deserve, so the always hustle for every buck mentality isn’t there. It also creates less individualism, which makes it difficult to create real stars.

PPVs have mostly been good, although of late WWE big shows in quality have fallen well behind the competition and many have been average or even below average. But at $9.99 value, nobody is going to feel ripped off like the would at a higher price point. From a fan perspective, because the TV revenue, the No. 1 stream, is guaranteed, and the PPV revenue isn negligible and the network revenue is seasonal and barely at all affected by quality of shows, the incentive is just there to churn out product. The money is rolling in whether good or bad. Technology changes may hurt them, or may help them. No matter what anyone says, nobody knows what the landscape of media will be in 2019, and until then, WWE doesn’t have a thing to worry about. But in 2019, it’s the media landscape, not quality of product, that will be the difference maker.

Ratings will decline as long as there is too much product. There’s a long history of overexposure when it comes to television, but now, because the expectations are lower, and wrestling in theory will always have a competitive sized audience, plus the increase of money spending by hardcore fans, this current product is doing well with the overexposure. A key is the lack of appearances in markets. I believe if this product was to run monthly as opposed to being an annual or two or three times a year special event in most cities (and New York is the exception to this as they run often, and while they don’t sellout unless it’s TV or PPV, they do well), the situation would be different. But it doesn’t have to be and it’s not.
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TL;DR: Everything outside of ratings is doing really well (house shows, Network subs, merch sales, etc.). TV is very important, but it's not a life or death scenario for WWE.
 
P

Professor Beef

Banned
No matter what anyone says, nobody knows what the landscape of media will be in 2019, and until then, WWE doesn't have a thing to worry about. But in 2019, it's the media landscape, not quality of product, that will be the difference maker.
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Meltzer taking shots at Anth0ny's five year plan.

I also find his position on talent interesting. Basically saying that while everyone is extremely talented (and possibly work too hard/have too much work ethic), there's more difficulty in making stars due to everyone being more comfortable.
 
B

Bluekaveli

Member
Professor Beef said:
Meltzer taking shots at Anth0ny's five year plan.

I also find his position on talent interesting. Basically saying that while everyone is extremely talented (and possibly work too hard/have too much work ethic), there's more difficulty in making stars due to everyone being more comfortable.
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Everyone is just happy to be there. No competition and stepping on toes or else you won't be able to play video games.
 
S

serenewarfare

Banned
Dalton Castle’s contract is up this month. WWE has shown great interest in him so it will take a major offer to keep him. Castle is a tremendous live show performer and would have superstar potential in WWE.
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Add another one to the list.
 
S

serenewarfare

Banned
WWE notes from the Observer:

Indies on the Network

CFO George Barrios strongly indicated that the company would be working with ICW and Progress in the U.K. There are deals in place for both where they would be on the WWE Network as soon as Vince gives the okay.
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Like husband, like wife

Brie Bella is now talking about returning as a wrestler now that she has finished her pregnancy.
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Hojo starts in the next week or so with WWE

There will be a new international class of women’s wrestlers starting together in the next few weeks of Kairi Hojo from Japan, Evie from New Zealand (Cheree Crowley, 29, a ten-year veteran who has worked in the top U.S. and Japanese women’s groups since 2013), Nixon Newell from the U.K. (Steffanie Newell, 22, who has been on the international scene the past few years) and Demi Bennett, 20, from Australia.
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Viper is in the Tournament

The reason WWE will be using Viper in the upcoming women’s tournament is that several of the ITV wrestlers asked out of their deals since there are no plans for shows.
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Io Shirai is not in the Tournament

Right now it appears the plan is for Io Shirai, who is also coming soon, to not be in the Mae Young Classic, as she’ll be finishing up in Japan first.
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New signee from the CWC

A new signee that has gotten no mention by WWE is Raul Mendoza, who is also known as Ronnie Mendoza and Jinzo. He looked really impressive in his first round Cruiserweight Classic match but was only brought in to lose at that time. He’s wrestled independents around Mexico City and did a 2014 tour of NOAH as Jinzo. He started wrestling on NXT shows this past week but has been in Orlando for a while.
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S

serenewarfare

Banned
One other little Observer note is that Braun vs. Brock is still the planned main event for Summerslam.

And also he reiterated that Toni Storm is expected to be a major pushed star in the Women's Tournament.
 
P

PHOENIXZERO

Member
If Io isn't in the tournament then dammit they should give it to Kairi and I'm sure Toni Storm will be in the finals, then when Io comes to NXT have her show up and immediately turn on Kairi. Though it'd probably be better to have them not work against each other right away.


Jessie McKay/Billie Kay vs KC Cassidy/Peyton Royce from 2010, it's not a great match, it's not a good match but it is a match with a not so great looking finish.
 
S

serenewarfare

Banned
PHOENIXZERO said:
If Io isn't in the tournament then dammit they should give it to Kairi and I'm sure Toni Storm will be in the finals, then when Io comes to NXT have her show up and immediately turn on Kairi. Though it'd probably be better to have have them work against each other right away.


Jessie McKay/Billie Kay vs KC Cassidy/Peyton Royce from 2010, it's not a great match, it's not a good match but it is a match with a not so great looking finish.
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I've said for weeks the finals would be Hojo vs. Storm. Nothing has made me think any different at this point.

And honestly I think the Tournament will be just fine without Io. I think the whole thing would have a sense of inevitability to it with her in it because her winning would be almost a foregone conclusion. Whole thing feels a bit more open now.
 
P

PHOENIXZERO

Member
serenewarfare said:
I've said for weeks the finals would be Hojo vs. Storm. Nothing has made me think any different at this point.

And honestly I think the Tournament will be just fine without Io. I think the whole thing would have a sense of inevitability to it with her in it because her winning would be almost a foregone conclusion. Whole thing feels a bit more open now.
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True.

And d'oh! I meant not have them work against each other right away.
 
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