Wrestling questions thread

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Bandit
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Re: Wrestling questions thread

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No major name. Even those that rarely lost like Bruno or Inoki still lost.

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Re: Wrestling questions thread

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Has there ever been a funnier fan chant than "Beat The Traffic" last night during Reigns/Joe?

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Big Boss Man
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Re: Wrestling questions thread

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Question about WrestleMania IV.

Coming off the highest ever rated SNNE for the Hulk/Andre angle why didn't they go for a big money rematch to capitalise on the angle. Maybe have Jack Tunney hold the belt up and present it to the winner of the match.

Also Mania III was in the Silverdome so why did they host it at the Trump Plaza where they could have gotten a bigger attendance. As I'm assuming business was still booming by then. Although was there lack of interest in the tournament?.

Another question how does WM IV rank in terms of WrestleManias?. I've read it's not very favourable thought of and in fairness it plods along but it's not a bad card per se.

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Re: Wrestling questions thread

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Hogan took time off to film No Holds Barred and Andre wasn't healthy enough to be champion. Plus they'd probably already had the great idea about the Mega Powers Explode angle since Vince and Pat thought stuff out far in advance in the 80s.

Donald Trump paid WWF a ton of money to be there in 1988 and 1989, so they made what they'd make on a stadium before they sold a single ticket. Trump lost money on the shows but viewed it as advertising for the casino. WWF was one of the hottest things on TV and they were endlessly plugging him for months on 3 highly rated network television shows and 4 cable shows. Plus when WWF advertised the show in PPV ads that was another plug. It was pretty smart.

It's not thought of well at all. It's pretty bad, but not as bad as 9 and 11.

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Big Boss Man
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Re: Wrestling questions thread

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Thanks. Been ages since I watched Mania IV. The VHS version came on two tapes. Made sense then to get a guaranteed big fee in case ticket sales weren't up to scratch.

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Re: Wrestling questions thread

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They weren't concerned about ticket sales since they were red hot. What was in it for them was the association with Donald Trump since he was at the height of his fame (pre-presidency, obviously.) So it made them look a little higher brow to be associated with Trump and his casinos since Atlantic City was getting most of the big boxing matches at the time. It made WWF wrestlers look on the level of Tyson and Sugar Ray instead of the TV show for poor white people the media thought the WWF was.

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Re: Wrestling questions thread

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Thanks. Yea Vince changed that whole perception from wrasslin to it being family entertainment.

With talk of the best match of all time & best event, what are the worst matches & events? The Carmella/Christy in WWE and Sharmell/Jenna are often in the discussion.

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Re: Wrestling questions thread

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Worst show ever is Heroes of Wrestling in 1999.

WCW's worst show was Great American Bash 2000

WWE's worst show was either King of the Ring 1995 or Backlash 2018

ECW's worst show was November to Remember 1997



Worst match ever could be Sharmell vs Jenna Morasca, Hogan vs Warrior in WCW, Sid vs Night Stalker (Adam Bomb/Wrath), or the Doomsday cage match with Hogan and Savage vs Dungeon of Doom, Four Horsemen and Zeus and Jeep Swenson.

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Re: Wrestling questions thread

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New Jack and Mustapha had a grudge match at an ECW PPV where not one single thing went right. I have seen backyard kids with no training run spots and make shit look more real than how it looked in this match. My worst ECW match ever pick.

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Re: Wrestling questions thread

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I can't pick a worse TNA PPV. All of the ones in 2009 probably tie. How is it possible to have Kurt Angle, Samoa Joe, AJ Styles, Christopher Daniels, Nigel McGuinnes, Doug Williams, Jay Lethal, Motor City Machine Guns, Bobby Roode, LAX, and others on your roster and not be able to have a single good PPV? Only if you're Vince Russo can you screw that up.

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Re: Wrestling questions thread

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Thanks. I don't think I've seen the Night stalker/Sid match. I vaguely recall the New Jack/Mustapha match too. Yea Russo era TNA sucked considering the roster. They had the Young Bucks a little later and done nothing with them either.

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Re: Wrestling questions thread

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I was watching the Brusier doc and they were talking about a New Japan vs All Japan war. I had heard they were competitive with each other but didn't know they were taking talent off each other etc. It was mentioned about both being backed by network money also.

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Re: Wrestling questions thread

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It was as nasty as WWF vs WCW, but imagine if Vince and Bischoff had been friends for 10 years and had a nasty falling out so started two rival companies to fight each other with. And that's how Inoki and Giant Baba were

The only thing that stopped the feud was Baba died so Inoki didn't want to attack his widow out of respect. And then Misawa opened NOAH and became #1 so they eventually did some shows together to try to fight back against NOAH doing so much better business than they both were. But it didn't work so NOAH was #1 until 2008 when people got bored with them doing the same matches. Plus New Japan then had Tanahashi and Nakamura start to become great so people got interested in them. And then Misawa died a year later and that ruined NOAH. And of course by 2012 New Japan had a big revival and are where they're at today.

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Re: Wrestling questions thread

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Interesting, thanks. What was the deal with Misawa starting up NOAH and taking most of All Japan with him. Did they have heat with Giant Babas widow as if not that was really uncool bailing out and leaving her in the lurch. Surely they should have regrouped and put Miwasa in the office and made AJPW stronger. As just walking away made no sense.

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Re: Wrestling questions thread

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Baba and his wife were like how HHH and Stephanie McMahon are today. Baba/HHH is the wrestler people respect and handled booking and everyone liked him. Mrs. Baba handled business and was the one who gave out unpopular decisions and they kind of ran things like a good cop/bad cop way.

So after Baba died, you were just left with her running everything and everyone was miserable because her longtime nickname was Dragon Lady. Misawa was now handling duties Baba did, but she was more hands on and they were butting heads every day. So Misawa got some businessmen together and made her an offer to buy All Japan. She turned it down, so instead he used the money to open his own promotion. And since everyone loved Misawa and hated Mrs. Baba they walked out with him. Except Stan Hansen and Toshiaki Kawada, who said they wanted to show loyalty to Giant Baba by helping his widow by staying. And then NTV, the network that had carried All Japan since the late 70s, suddenly announced they had canceled their contract and were going to show NOAH instead. So All Japan never recovered, although apparently this year they have been rebounding a little bit.

And her decision to not sell All Japan to Misawa was dumb because when she actually ended up selling it in 2012, it was for a fraction of the price the businessmen behind Misawa offered since All Japan was still huge in 2000 but was almost worthless by comparison in 2012. Especially since they didn't get any archival footage since she'd sold that to a cable television network years before to get money to stay afloat. And it's the reason why you don't have any classic footage on the All Japan streaming service but New Japan World has stuff going back to their debut show.

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Big Boss Man
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Re: Wrestling questions thread

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OK thanks. I thought Misawa and co would have stuck around out of loyalty for Giant Baba. But if Mrs Baba was tough to deal with and they were unhappy why not go to her first and air their grievances. As them walking away was catastrophic to AJPW. Didn't Muta come over from New Japan to try and turn things around?.

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Re: Wrestling questions thread

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They did, which was why Misawa offered her all of that money to leave.

And yes, he joined in 2002 as a wrestler and a booker. And it did spike business for 2 years (but they were still #3) because you got Mutoh vs Kawada dream matches. But NOAH was too strong and the New Japan audience only cared about New Japan so they didn't care.

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Re: Wrestling questions thread

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OK thanks.

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Re: Wrestling questions thread

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I imagine this scenario has been discussed before but what if WCW won the Monday Night War and Bischoff did run Vince out of business. What would happen next?. Would Austin, Rock, Taker et al jump ship or stay loyal to Vince in the event he got everything up and running again. Does Vince turn up on Nitro like EB did and work for WCW?. Somehow I can't see that happening and he'd most likely regroup with the talent who stuck around.

Also how close to the edge was the WWF really to going under?. On Wrestling with Shadows Vince basically tells Bret they can't afford him so he goes to WCW. That of course inadvertently creates the Mr McMahon character which up against Stone Cold wins the War with WCW and he ends up buying them at a massive knockdown price in 2001.

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Re: Wrestling questions thread

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They'd all go to WCW if WWF lost because Bischoff would have bought their contracts if he bought WWF.

It's hard to say if Vince would do what Eric did as Nitro GM or something. I'd say no because it would hurt his pride. But he'd also need the money more than Eric did when WCW closed. Eric was still getting Turner money for a while, whereas Vince personally owning WWF would leave him with nothing like Paul Heyman when ECW went bankrupt.

They weren't as close as Vince made it out. He was trying to get sympathy in the press so was exaggerating some of it. The worst year was 1996, but they lost way less money than WCW did. I think Vince only lost $10 million in 1996 and $5 million in 1995. Which is a hell of a lot less than what WCW dropped in 1999 and 2000.

But Vince was never close to selling the WWF. The big scare for WWF at the time was USA Network considered dropping them, and that would have probably killed the company if they didn't have TV. But they restructured their deal to get paid less to stay on.

As far as Bret goes I think he just wanted him gone because he regretted the deal. As soon as he signed Bret up Steve Austin got huge and he was paying Steve less than half of what Bret made. And Bret was slowing down and injured a few times in 1997. So he just used the bad year of business as an excuse to get rid of him for cheaper stars, also HHH, Foley and Rock were making much less than Bret.

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