Down time, a bad thing?

[billm75]

I'm speaking from my youth, when Hulk Hogan was a young man, Roddy Piper was the baddest guy out there, and guys like Tito Santana, Ricky the Dragon Steamboat, Macho Man Randy Savage, Jake the Snake Roberts and Brutus the Barber Beefcake were the mid-card, as it's called today.

In the current product, the performers don't get any time off at all, whatsoever, unless they're hurt or negotiating a new deal. There's no down time for the top draws. Zero.

I tuned out of WWF/E in the 90's, through much of the first decade in 2000. I had other things going on, didn't care for the humor, etc. But that's me, and I'm not trying to discuss that point right now.

When I was a die hard fan, at the tender age of 8, 9, 10, 11, etc, we didn't have Monday Night Raw or Friday Night Smackdown. We had a Saturday show of pre-recorded matches and a Sunday show of highlights and commentary. And that was it. It was a rare treat to see something live on TV. For live, you had to talk your parents into buying tickets to a local house show, and even then, you didn't get to see all your favorite "superstars".

Back in the day, the card was headlined by someone who was sort-of a draw. Not Cena, Orton, HHH, Miz, ADR, Edge, etc. It wasn't uncommon to have a main event house show with Junkyard Dog vs. George the Animal Steele.

Anyhow, the issue of downtime. It seems to me that the show went on without Hogan performing on every telecast of the event. He would do a promo, maybe scuffle in a segment with someone, but he wasn't always in the ring, on the mic and in a match. And the show went on, and the company made money.

They're wearing out their stars at an alarming rate. Look at it: Stone Cold Steve Austin was injured in his prime, had to retire. John Cena's working through constant pain, we just lost Edge, HHH is all but done, Taker is on the way out, John Morrison (not a top guy, i know) is out with surgery, Christian just got back from surgery and rehab, Batista was out with injuries.....need I go on?

These are your top guys, your draws, your ass-in-the-seat-money-in-the-box-office guys, and you're trying to kill them.

Again, back in my day, we were lucky to even SEE Hogan, much less watch him wrestle. And it was fine. I don't see where that would hurt today's product so much. Let the guys have a week off between events, they can show up, talk, etc....but keep them out of action so they can properly rest and recuperate.

Do you think it would kill ratings and ticket sales if they did this?

 

[Ayatollah]

i think yes it would kill everything because now it's the Kids era and the kids wants to see always John Cena , Orton etc so yes it would kill everything that's why i think Vince wants theme to go to every show

 

[billm75]

i think yes it would kill everything because now it's the Kids era and the kids wants to see always John Cena , Orton etc so yes it would kill everything that's why i think Vince wants theme to go to every show

It was the kids era back in the 1980's too. Not too many adults were huge fans of the product. Yet, we hung in there because instant gratification wasn't something we felt entitled to.

 

[poppycock]

I think this could benefit certain wrestlers like John Cena who seems to get a lot of stick from a large section of WWE fans because he is main eventing shows every week and they get tired of seeing the same old outcome. It would also mean a merge of brands would work again if wanted and it would keep everything fresh seeing different superstars every week. It could also stop certain midcarders from getting lost in the micard scene and forgotten about.

I am not sure if Cena and Orton were having time off every couple weeks how that would effect viewing rates and ticket sales. Maybe they would take turns with TV time. I think the PPV numbers would have to be cut for this to work because the storyline buildups are already rushed most of the time as it is..if the wrestlers involved had even less time to develop situations it would make the PPV matches even less interesting than they are.

Personally all in all I would be for it.

 

[akrassikauda]

I'm speaking from my youth, when Hulk Hogan was a young man, Roddy Piper was the baddest guy out there, and guys like Tito Santana, Ricky the Dragon Steamboat, Macho Man Randy Savage, Jake the Snake Roberts and Brutus the Barber Beefcake were the mid-card, as it's called today.

In the current product, the performers don't get any time off at all, whatsoever, unless they're hurt or negotiating a new deal. There's no down time for the top draws. Zero.

I tuned out of WWF/E in the 90's, through much of the first decade in 2000. I had other things going on, didn't care for the humor, etc. But that's me, and I'm not trying to discuss that point right now.

When I was a die hard fan, at the tender age of 8, 9, 10, 11, etc, we didn't have Monday Night Raw or Friday Night Smackdown. We had a Saturday show of pre-recorded matches and a Sunday show of highlights and commentary. And that was it. It was a rare treat to see something live on TV. For live, you had to talk your parents into buying tickets to a local house show, and even then, you didn't get to see all your favorite "superstars".

Back in the day, the card was headlined by someone who was sort-of a draw. Not Cena, Orton, HHH, Miz, ADR, Edge, etc. It wasn't uncommon to have a main event house show with Junkyard Dog vs. George the Animal Steele.

Anyhow, the issue of downtime. It seems to me that the show went on without Hogan performing on every telecast of the event. He would do a promo, maybe scuffle in a segment with someone, but he wasn't always in the ring, on the mic and in a match. And the show went on, and the company made money.

They're wearing out their stars at an alarming rate. Look at it: Stone Cold Steve Austin was injured in his prime, had to retire. John Cena's working through constant pain, we just lost Edge, HHH is all but done, Taker is on the way out, John Morrison (not a top guy, i know) is out with surgery, Christian just got back from surgery and rehab, Batista was out with injuries.....need I go on?

These are your top guys, your draws, your ass-in-the-seat-money-in-the-box-office guys, and you're trying to kill them.

Again, back in my day, we were lucky to even SEE Hogan, much less watch him wrestle. And it was fine. I don't see where that would hurt today's product so much. Let the guys have a week off between events, they can show up, talk, etc....but keep them out of action so they can properly rest and recuperate.

Do you think it would kill ratings and ticket sales if they did this?

Great post.

I'm under 30 and I remember those days the only time you would ever see Hogan was cutting a promo on Superstars or Saturday Night Main Event. I was ok with that because guys like Bret Hart, LOD, Demolition etc. those guys had time to shine.

Now a days everyone has to work their assigned schedule. WWE is in Mexico I understand that Cena has to be there but does he have to be at a house show later this week. At times it could be difficult for these guys to travel. This is also the concept TNA uses they don't have a killer schedule but at the same time today's young fans don't know about how it was in our day. Not knocking it because consumers dictate product, if they want to see all the top guys they get the top guys and the main consumers right now are kids and tweeners.

 

[Minecrafted]

Well being 17 i never experianced it like the OP did but it doesn't sound that bad. I would still like seeing both brands and the usual set up but i seriously wouldn't mind having less ppvs, or not seeing the same people in the main even scene all the time. If they gave the midcard guys some decent storylines and somehow managed to make the usa and ic straps mean something again then it wouldn't be that bad seeing different superstars every week.

 

[AntiChristDeicide]

Well i'm about the same age as the op, so i can relate to what he is saying but there is one thing. That thing is ratings. Imagine if Cena isn't on Raw one week, the ratings will go down the drain and Vince would have an heart attack. The same thing for Smackdown, imagine they barely get decent ratings (doesn't help thats its pretaped and spoilers are on the day after), imagine if orton isn't on, might as well cancell the show because nobody will watch it. Thats the reason there is no down time for wrestlers because the minute a wrestler is not on people complain and bitch about it. Look what happened last week on Impact, Anderson wasn't there and people went insane. If that happens in WWE you can bet that the world would be in total chaos.

 

[Seanjburkey]

Well other than the fact that many believe that Vince doesn't really care about the human beings he parades around the country day in and day out, the WWE doesn't have a midcard capable of drawing anybody to a house show. Would you want to go to a house show headlined by Chris Masters vs Drew Mcintyre? I know I wouldn't.

 

[poppycock]

I agree somewhat with the above post.. I dont feel the midcard as enough developed superstars who can draw as many viewers as Cena or Orton right now. I personally don't care for either Cena or Orton so if they were not on a house show it would not effect whether I watched it or not but I know this is not the case in general and the current WWE target audience want to see those stars each week.

I think this can change in next to no time though because the midcard is full of above average stars who just need to be developed better and be allowed to grow into interesting wrestlers who the majority want to see each week as much as the top main eventers. I feel it's in the hands of the creative team whether or not these stars full of potential actually become worthwhile viewing or just get forgotten about along the way.

With a bit of work Wade Barrett, Tyler Reks, Drew Mcintyre, Sin Cara, Daniel Bryan, Dolph Ziggler plus many more could get to a stage of pulling as much viewers in each week without Cena or Orton around in my opinion.

 

[The Brain]

I understand what the OP is saying, but the facts are way off. The travel schedule was even worse in the 80s than it is now. Everyone was constantly traveling for house shows, including big name guys like Hulk Hogan. If you didn’t see Hogan on a house show in Cleveland, for example, it’s because he was headlining the show in Detroit that same night. The WWF used to split their roster into separate house shows in the 80s just like they do for Raw and Smackdown now. The only difference is there weren’t definitive rosters for these shows. Not only that, but oftentimes guys would wrestle a house show on a Saturday afternoon in one town and travel to another town for a house show that same night. We may not have seen Hogan on tv every week, but the fans who went to all those tapings saw him that night. Keep in mind each night was about three or four weeks worth of shows. An entire month of Superstars was likely taped in one night in the same arena in front of the same fans. So even if we only saw Hogan every three weeks the people in the building who paid for a ticket saw him that night and went home happy.

I don’t think it’s the actual schedule that makes the difference as I’ve said it’s probably lighter now than it was in the past. It’s more the style of matches. Twenty years ago matches had a much slower pace. Rest holds and stall tactics were frequently used throughout the majority of the match. And guess what. Those matches were every bit as entertaining, much more so in my opinion, than the fast pace, break neck style today. The guys in the past knew how to tell a story and hold the audience’s attention without having to go out there and kill themselves every night. You want to prevent injuries and burnout? Forget reducing the schedule. Teach these new guys ring psychology.

 

[czar76]

I agree that the mid-card can put on a hell of a show if handeled right. I've been a fan of the business for around 30 years and I've seen alot of changes in the business during that time. I have been lucky enough to get to know a few people who worked in wrestling in the 70's and 80's. They were not huge stars but a few reached a level of stardom and they all agree on one thing, there was no down time. WWE(F) wrestlers worked anywhere from 300 to 325 days a year in the 80's. NWA wrestlers woked around 340 days and the NWA champion worked a full 365 often doing two shows a day on the weekends.
Hogan and the other "Superstars" of the day were often on the road doing PR work when not in the ring. The idea was to use ur T.V. to get people to buy tickets and later PPV's. The main reason not every star was at every house show was due to the number of shows being run at once. In most cases WWE(F) would run several shows a night in different areas. The bigger towns would get the bigger shows. This lead to many of the wrestlers getting burnt out. Which in turn lead to some leaving WWE(F) and hurting their drawing power other places.
Should there be down time? Yes. Would the product suffer? Maybe. It all depends on how the lower card talent is used. The down time for the big stars would be the time to build the lower talent. Fan would basicaly have the choice of accepting what they were given or not watching. Sadly in today's market most wounld not watch.
In a perfect world the companies, WWE/TNA/ whoever, would in a sense take turns letting the upper card talent have time off. An example would be WWE runnning all the top talent through the summer and then backing off of them during the winter months. TNA could then do the same only pushing the biger stars durning the winter and backing off during the summer. It won't ever happen but it would at least give the fans a better choice then all or nothing.

 

[Jack-Hammer]

Ideally, the WWE would be able to have something of an off season of 3 or 4 months, come back and the audience would still be there. Cold hard reality is something much different, however, and that's what Vince has to go by.

Wrestling isn't like basketball or, especially, football in the sense that it's become part of the American consciousness to nearly the degree as those two sports have. For example, Monday Night Football is on ESPN and they broke several cable tv records in terms of ratings this past season. It wasn't uncommon, nor has it been uncommon, for MNF to draw 25 million viewers or more for some games. I know it happened a number of times this past season because I read the ratings reports talking about them. One game that aired this past season, I can't remember which, was the most watched program in the history of cable television. Even games on MNF between teams that aren't the biggest or most popular pull in, for them, weak ratings. You know, something along the lines of a 10 or 11 Nielsen Rating, which is somewhere around 14 or 15 million people. That is considered to be a "weak" number for MNF while anyone and anything else on cable would sell their mothers to a brothel in Amsterdam to draw that kind of audience. My point is that football has become part of America and there are literally millions upon millions upon millions in the United States that will watch it every single week even if they don't particularly care about either team that's playing. Wrestling fans, the majority of them, are far more fickle. Wrestling fans have shown time and time again that if they don't like what they're seeing, they'll stop watching in significant numbers.

The 2011 yearly average for Raw & SD! are audiences of about 5.3 & 3 million viewers respectively. If WWE suddenly went off the air for 3 months, there's a distinct possibility that a very large chunk of that audience wouldn't be there when they returned to television. The WWE is paid a certain amount of money by NBC-Universal for Raw, Tough Enough & SmackDown!. I'm not sure how much exactly but I know WWE gets $600,000 a week to air SD! over on Syfy. Raw is probably much higher. If television viewership died down, the same would probably happen to house shows as well. What could Vince tell them exactly? Tell the roughly 600 employees of the WWE, most of which aren't wrestlers, that they're gonna shut down production for 4 months but that he can't promise that he'll even be able to afford to keep half of them on the payroll if the audience isn't there?

When it's all said and done, it's all about money. If wrestlers wanna make the big bucks, if they wanna make the kind of money where they can potentially get out if they want to and have the financial security to do whatever they like with their time, the wear and tear of the road is part of it. Nothing has changed as Vince has always operated the WWE on a similar principal even back in the 80s. If Daniel Bryan, for instance, wants to make a million bucks or so doing what he loves doing for a living, then the wear and tear of the road is the price that has to be paid for it. It might not sound fair but life's chock full of circumstances that aren't fair.

 

[AntiChristDeicide]

Well like i said earlier if it wasn't for ratings WWE could have an off season. I guess Jack-Hammer is right WWE gets paid money when their shows are on the channel that are broadcasting them. That has to be the reason why the only time that WWE is not live on TV is Christmas, and even then the wrestlers are still on the road. Even in TNA wrestlers are always on the road and for some of them its far worse than we know because if you are not a TNA original ( a guy that is in TNA since the start of the company) or an ex-WWE guy that saved up his money you need to travel more.

 

[slapnuts08]

This topic got me thinking back to WCW circa 1997. You had a saturated roster, plus 3 hours of Nitro and Thunder each week (was Thunder 3 hours? I rarely watched it so sorry if I'm wrong on that one!)

Sting, Hogan, Flair, Nash etc. rarely competed on Nitro. They'd always appear for a promo, or a run in or something, but in terms of matches it always felt special to have Hogan strut down the aisle while Michael Buffer gave his long-winded intros.

The only wrestlers to compete nearly every week. People like Benoit, Malenko, Booker T and others put on quality matches without too much emphasis on the storylines.

I don't think this would be a difficult thing for the WWE to get on to. Give time to promos for your top stars, preserving their matches for the ppvs, and leave the wrestling week in week out to the best in-ring performers!

 

[ultramattman]

You could probably get away with having your top guys wrestle a bit less often on television. But they HAVE to wrestle at house shows. A family is not going to plunk down $250 for four tickets to a house show where Randy Orton talks for five minutes.

Not to mention Vince getting an angry call from USA network asking why John Cena hasn't wrestled on their show in four weeks.

 

[billm75]

I understand what the OP is saying, but the facts are way off. The travel schedule was even worse in the 80s than it is now. Everyone was constantly traveling for house shows, including big name guys like Hulk Hogan. If you didn’t see Hogan on a house show in Cleveland, for example, it’s because he was headlining the show in Detroit that same night. The WWF used to split their roster into separate house shows in the 80s just like they do for Raw and Smackdown now. The only difference is there weren’t definitive rosters for these shows. Not only that, but oftentimes guys would wrestle a house show on a Saturday afternoon in one town and travel to another town for a house show that same night. We may not have seen Hogan on tv every week, but the fans who went to all those tapings saw him that night. Keep in mind each night was about three or four weeks worth of shows. An entire month of Superstars was likely taped in one night in the same arena in front of the same fans. So even if we only saw Hogan every three weeks the people in the building who paid for a ticket saw him that night and went home happy.

I don’t think it’s the actual schedule that makes the difference as I’ve said it’s probably lighter now than it was in the past. It’s more the style of matches. Twenty years ago matches had a much slower pace. Rest holds and stall tactics were frequently used throughout the majority of the match. And guess what. Those matches were every bit as entertaining, much more so in my opinion, than the fast pace, break neck style today. The guys in the past knew how to tell a story and hold the audience’s attention without having to go out there and kill themselves every night. You want to prevent injuries and burnout? Forget reducing the schedule. Teach these new guys ring psychology.

You're right, the travel schedules were worse, there's no arguing that. I guess what I was trying to get at is that you could have these guys get a week off here and there from in ring competition, not so much travelling. Let the body heal and they'll last longer and make more money for the company. Plus, it makes their matches even more special because it's not a guarantee you will see them perform EVERY show you attend.

You could have Cena not wrestle for two weeks, yet still be on the show in some capacity cutting a promo, working an angle, etc. Same with all of your superstars. You have a huge roster, and it gives the spotlight to some of your lesser-known talent, thus building a deep, lucrative pool of performers. We can't get to like Drew McIntyre if we never see him in the ring, on the mic and in a storyline....for example.

But I agree with you about changing some of what they do in the ring as well. Guys like Sin Cara, Rey Mysterio, Evan Bourne, Kofi Kingston, have to rely on spot maneuvers because that's who they are. But your other guys, who are more brawler style wrestlers or mat technicians, they could definitely pace their matches and moves to prolong their health. And some of them are good at telling stories with their matches, if given more than 2 minutes in front of the crowd.