Yes, but you can't also disagree that great wrestling shows or great wrestling pay-per-views didn't had good results even though they were great.
That's irrelevant to the discussion.
The discussion is about the entertainment level of the product, not specific shows. Once we establish that people turn off the product, we have to establish why, and one of the major factors which cause people to quit watching is lowered value for their resources, whether that resource is time or money.
Specific events is irrelevant to this discussion, because we're looking at the product as a whole.
He is really saying that.
He really isn't saying that, as he himself as said. It's not his fault you don't understand what he's saying.
The most entertaining for whom?
The wrestling audience as a whole.
But they are not the most entertaining for me, so what, I can't have an opinion?
You can have all the opinions you want, but your opinion means exactly jack shit when we're discussing the objective quality of the product. Your individual opinion means absolutely nothing, just as much as my individual opinion means absolutely nothing. It's the collective opinion of the entire wrestling audience which is what determines who is entertaining.
A guy can be entertaining without being popular... Believe it or not, I strongly believe that Yoshi Tatsu has fans that find him entertaining, so he's popular now?
But he's entertaining to specific individuals, not the wrestling audience as a whole.
This isn't a difficult concept to understand.
Actually in those years it really did as WCW died and stars like Austin and Rock starting to lose some space for people like Kurt Angle, Triple H and Brock Lesnar sometime later.
No, it really didn't.
You talked about being a college student, surely at some point you've heard of the difference between constants and variables, right?
We're trying measuring the overall entertainment value of pro wrestling in the year 2001 and comparing it to 2002. The constant is the media landscape. There wasn't a significant increase in Internet streaming, nor a noticeable difference in cable channels, or spoilers, or any other factor which is not controllable by the pro wrestling business. This, then, is our constant.
Finally, we come to our variables, which you've mentioned. The death of WCW would actually IMPROVE ratings and PPV buyrates for the WWF, as it would remove a competitor and bring additional audience to the WWF and not lose any of their core audience. So that would be a net positive for the WWF. But as Austin and Rock begin to wind down their involvement (as you mentioned with other guys getting more time), the entertainment value will change. And in this case, the entertainment value changed negatively.
So when you compare the WWF from 2001 to 2002, when you know the media (and economic, for that matter) landscape didn't change but the indicators of entertainment trended downward, you know the entertainment value of the WWF/E was lowered because the popularity of the WWF/E was lowered.
Good for you, and yes I don't believe that the fact you have a wrestling forum makes you more wiser about the product
I agree completely. Me being an Administrator doesn't make me inherently wiser about pro wrestling. However, the fact I AM an Administrator suggests I do have a greater knowledge of pro wrestling. I may not be wiser about wrestling because I'm an Administrator, but there's a great chance I'm an Administrator because I know more about pro wrestling.
The fact of the matter is your understanding of pro wrestling is incredibly limited, and is basically the typical "smark" understanding. You've never been exposed to the deeper concepts, and so you say things which the more knowledgeable fans see as being silly.
There are no wrong opinions... That's why they are opinions.
The idea that opinions cannot be wrong is completely false. If, in my opinion, I say Tensai is a better draw than Cena, I'd be 100% wrong.
Oh really, how can you say that CM Punk is the best promeur if there are people that think Cena is the best on the mic?
I don't know that you can make such a claim when you have two such highly skilled mic workers.
But if someone thinks Shelton Benjamin is the best promo guy and another thinks CM Punk is, are you telling me you can't tell the difference? From the way they deliver their lines, to the impact of what they say, to how they build the feud and deliver the message, you most certainly can distinguish a good mic worker from a bad one.
How can you say that CM Punk is the best wrestler in the world, if others believe that Daniel Bryan is?
By measuring drawing ability. You measure merchandise sales, you measure ratings garnered in the minute by minute ratings, you measure PPV buys relative to economic conditions, etc.
I mean it's SUBJECTIVE OPINIONS.
No, no it's not. If it was "subjective opinions", why is Hulk Hogan the greatest draw ever? Why was Steve Austin so popular? Why is John Cena undisputedly the #1 guy in the WWE today?
It's not subjective opinions. Just because you lack the interest or intellectual ability to delve into the reasons for why the guys on top are the guys on top doesn't change the ability of other people to do so.
So you are actually saying that nobody could think that Austin and Rock were boring back in 2002? Because I watched a show some time ago that you can clearly hear a fan saying "Oh not that crap again, we've seen it TWO TIMES" referencing Rock vs. Austin at WM.
Please see my earlier lecture on the difference between specific fans and the wrestling audience as a whole.
How can you know that WWE wouldn't create better stories without Cena and CM Punk?
Why can't they now? Do you think the WWE says, "Well, we COULD make more money, but I think we'll just settle for less"?
Even though they left, the guys that I mentioned could have a BETTER product than when they actually had them in the company. Take Bret Hart, after he left, WWE just started to be actually cool to watch.
Completely false, it was actually Bret Hart which really helped the Attitude Era take off, by providing the perfect foil for Steve Austin to grow his badass "don't give a fuck" character that would be perfected in his feud with McMahon.
It won't for me since I find Cena and CM Punk rather boring, so what now?
What now? Your opinion still means jack shit, that's what's now.
Luckily? I couldn't give a flying fuck to be honest.
Truly a shame, because it's very clear your knowledge of pro wrestling is incredibly limited, and if you'd put your ego to rest and just listened to what I'm saying, you could learn a lot.
Because no one is popular without being entertaining. To say someone can be popular and not be entertaining defies logic.
And I replied with facts, logic and proofs so you just think you are right for the sake of it.
No you didn't. You provided me nearly an entire post of what YOU like. No one gives a rat's ass what you like, your opinion is irrelevant when discussing the opinion of the wrestling audience as a whole.
And before you say something stupid, yes, I know you are part of the wrestling audience. But you're one in 5 million, so using your personal opinion to try and prove anything is as worthless as trying to say your father voted for Mitt Romney, so clearly Mitt Romney won.
I said it earlier and I'll say it again. Do yourself a favor and check your ego at the door. Your knowledge of pro wrestling is extremely limited. This doesn't make you unique, there are many IWC fans who think the same way as you. The problem with your thinking is that it can never explain WHY things happen the way they do.
Spend less time talking and more time listening. You could learn quite a bit from many of the posters here.
Because I was alive when it happened.
Furthermore, don't underestimate the impact the recession had on entertainment expenditures in the early 90s. Not to mention the easy availability of cable and satellite descramblers.
Steve Austin is the greatest draw in the history of Wrestling.
No, no he's not.
And the whole point of this thread is one simple question:
Does ratings and PPV buyrates mean quality in wrestling? The answer is no, because NONE of you can disagree with the fact that good shows sometimes have really bad ratings and that great PPV's sometimes have shitty buys.
That is an absolutely asinine argument.
No one is claiming that PPV buys from BEFORE a show begins indicates the quality of that PPV. We're saying that the trend of PPV buys over the course of several shows and/or years shows the possibility of change in quality of the product itself.
WrestleMania 28 was the most sold PPV by the WWF, does that mean that WM28 is the best wrestlemania of all time? NO and that's the whole point of the thread, you're idiotic opinions about Hogan and Warrior being more over than other are just that, idiotic.
You just proved what I've been saying.
No, the fact that WM 28 was the most sold PPV ever does NOT show the actual wrestling on the card was good. However, what it DOES show is that the BUILD to the show, the quality of the product leading up to Wrestlemania, was of exceedingly high quality.
That's the point we're making.
So okay, WrestleMania 28 is the best wrestlemania of all time... If TLC gets less than 200.000 buys I'll have to say that I didn't enjoy the show, even though I did - so fuck it right?
No one is making that argument at all. Please pay closer attention.
Steve Austin sold more merchandice between King of the Ring 1996-2000 than Hulk Hogan did in any year of his career.
And I'm sure the fact that the merchandise machine that Austin benefited from, which saw WWF merchandise in every retail/department store had nothing to do with that right? The fact that you used to have to order WWF merchandise out of mail order catalogs when Hogan was on top had nothing to do with that right?
The merchandise machine which Austin benefited from was built by Hogan. To use merchandise sales as an argument for Austin over Hogan is ignorant at best, and completely dishonest at worst.
The match in which Steve Austin won the WWF championship from the Undertaker on the June 28th 1999 Raw is the most watched segment in history of pro-wrestling on cable television. It drew a 9.49 rating with 10.7 million viewers.
That's higher than any statistic involving Hulk Hogan.
Except for 12 of the Saturday Night Main Event's which featured Hogan, you'd be right.
Jan 4, '86 - 10.4
Mar 1, '86 - 10
Nov 29, '86 - 9.7
and so on. I'm not going to list all 12. You can find them in my Wrestling Information zip file in the General Wrestling forum.
Why are you trying? KB has WWF Financial Documents that he refuses to share with us.
I've been providing those documents on here for years. All you have to do is go to the General Wrestling forum.
