Hello from Houston, and welcome to episode two of prest of Magic, titled
from pay per View to Plie. Here on the w W podcast where we
are local for our stay side and we are international checking in once again,
It's me, It's me, It's Rocket Tea. I'm here with the Captain
of the Ship, the second best wrestling podcaster in Louisville, the Peppermaster,
the gardener, mister Michael Gross, and we have a special guest this time
to help us cover this top topic. You should almost definitely recognize his voice.
He is the man that coined the term hill billy soap opera, the
man who kindly asks you to spay and new to your pets. He helps
from mullet manor the voice of our NXT review mister Memphis Mark Fellas, are
we ready to make some magic? How are we doing? Man? That
was a great, great interest. I appreciate that very much. That was
something like David Copperfield would do on pay per view. You know, I
try and USI paper view exactly because that's what you had to do to see
the Statue of Liberty disappeared back in the day. Actually, we got the
free purview later on on ABC and NBC would come on alright, so real
quick before we get started. I don't know if this is a precurshow to
anything, but before we recorded our first show last month, there was bad
weather in Louisville. With you, Michael. Now, this episode was delayed
last week due to the bad weather in Memphis with Mark. A few days
before, there was actually a tropical storm that passed through Houston. Now,
weather here in Houston has a bipolar disorder, so a bad weather here in
Houston can literally change from one minute to the next. But I'm glad we
all hopefully had clear skys today to make this record happening. I agree,
absolutely definitely. I just think that's it's been so weird with the schizophrenic rather
weather that has happened in Louisville. And I know when I lived in Memphis,
it was the same thing. And then I saw what was coming your
year or you know, Houston territory. Yeah, you're probably like that one.
Mark. Just the fact that like this is a terrible, terrible weather
situation for the last probably three or four months, and everybody talks about like
Illnino years and Il Neino years, and I remember, like the first time
I heard the Illnino term was like ninety four and it was the mildest winter
I had ever seen, and this is supposed to be a replicated year.
And then ninety six was one the worst winters I've ever seen in my life.
So we've got great southern semi southern weathern but I pray for the people
in the north. What about you, guys, how are you doing well?
I'd have to say that we're we're on the lookout for not El Nino,
but El Camino. That's the only thing we're worried about her. Alright,
alright, well, there's like I said, I had clearous guys here
in Houston. That's a couple of days after that tropical storm pass. But
to dive into it um basically, So, this idea came to me the
night of the Elimination Chamber after winning sing one of, if not the best
B level pay per view slash Peel League main event of all time with Sammy
versus Roman, I started to remember what other event used to be the buffer
between bumble and mania before Elimination Chamber became its own pail in twenty ten.
And the answer to that is no way out. We had that for a
good decade or so. Besides WrestleMania, I don't always have a sense of
urgency to watch any particular event life because of the world that we live in
now being able to stream any pay per view any time. But this year's
Chamber it was different. I had to watch this B level paree live.
There was too much at stake not to but everything at stake for this match.
It really felt like musty TV and a world where musty TV doesn't really
mean what it used to. Then that made me think of how I and
we as e w W universe consumed the product to get our progressing fixed.
So before we get into the building blocks of how pay per view came to
be, let me tell y'all exactly what pay per view means to me.
Pay per view for me growing up, meant that friends and family were coming
over this Sunday. It meant that pit was lit, pizza was being delivered,
and drinks were iced into coolers. It meant backyard wrestling for me on
the trampoline before the show started. So it was a great time for me
growing up in the Attitude era. How did you guys gather or gear up
for any pay per view back at end today or even nowadays. Well,
you know, back in our day there wasn't pay per view, so we
can start there. Mark and I grew up in a day, And I
mean, I don't really want to speak for Memphis Mart, but I mean
he's a good friend of mine, and we are in the same age bracket.
We grew up in a different era. And that was an era where
you lived in the territory and hopefully in cities where they could wire cable.
That was the big thing about cable, so you could have closed circuit cable.
That was the biggest thing in the world for any kind of wrestling.
And that for me, well it was too expensive. But Mark, what
about you? You grew up in that era before me. How did you
do that? What was it liked? Well, with the close circuit,
you've got usually of some kind of not a bano hall, but you some
kind of banquet hall, or it could be local theaters or whatever it may
be. But if you had to go in, you had to see the
ad on your local grocery store and just to even know about it, or
the radio. But yeah, close circuit was where it was, and you
were really big in wrestling if you had close circuit events in your territory.
You see, we talk about close circuit. I don't have any life experience
with it or much knowledge, and but there's being such a large topic to
cover on. What I mean by that is that it spans over many day
decades and like I said, I've only been alive for the last three and
a half. But Michael, you have a lot of knowledge about WWE,
w GW and Japan, and you and Mark both have knowledge of the territory
days where I do not. So when I figured out more or less what
I wanted to cover on this topic, I knew I wanted to recruit Mark
for this. So thank you Mark for taking the time to make this magical
US. Oh, I definitely appreciate it, Absolutely appreciate it. So in
the eighties there were about one hundred territories across the US, and each had
their own promoter. After buying his dad's promotion, Vince aspired to go national
and international. He wants to expand and the birth of WrestleMania will start to
formulate. Now we've come a long way from closed circuit and vhas tapes in
the seventies and eighties and DVDs and two DVR in the late nineties into the
two thousands. Now operating in a digital age, surfing the digit the highway,
we stream everything under the sun from our phones or our tablets. Now
we have the luxury and not having to watch our shows live and all we
have to do is open one of our shooting platforms like Hulu, Pee conqueror
YouTube TV to watch it on delay. But let's go back and talk about
the early days. So please guys inform you some more about these close circuit
days. And were these close circuit events taking place at mark Go ahead,
because you're gonna take take the king on this one. Well, yeah,
I mean in Memphis we were lucky enough to have probably at one point in
time of the hottest bit of wrestling in the territories, and we would put
twelve I think it was actually eleven thousand, three hundred in the Mid South
Coliseum on a Monday night. So if you got an out of town persons,
say if you had back in the day Nick Bockwinkle, or you had
a Harley Race come in, they could do a closed circuit which meaning they
would film it streaming out live. Also and it would go out to certain
select theaters that paid a fee. Now, Michael, please help me in
here if I get get any of the wheels off the track. But that's
pretty much. No, That's pretty much how it is. And if you
to buy the rights to something like that, that was a pretty big deal.
So, and like Michael kind of mentioned earlier, it was it wasn't
cheap for that time. But if you were something like that and that was
eighties prices easily, yeah, And if you were in that event, that
was cool. Closed Circuit TV. The biggest thing was you had the exclusive.
That's what they meant for everything. And the biggest thing with Close Circuit
TV was it was big with boxing and so Dusty Dusty Rhodes getting the book
over in the NWA and helping out with Jim Crockett Promotions, he said,
we could do latmole with the Closed circuit I'm telling you, baby, could
We could promote close second issue if we syndicate everything, and he did,
and Close Circuit got bigger and bigger. But the idea was sad because sometimes
when it got to the markets, it was already played out in the old
There was times where the Closed Circuit wouldn't work because it was all a very
early digital age of every way that you would communicate before satellites were really doing
what they would and so there was another idea floating around. But the first
closed circuit, really really really big wrestling event was Star Kid. A lot
of people don't know that, but it really is. And that was a
lot of Dusty's idea, and that's why it actually is the nickname of the
Granddaddy Bit. All but one comes down to it. It was all there.
You had to go to these places, you had to go to movie
theaters and you had to pay forty dollars or like in my small market where
I lived in Ashtabule, Ohio at the time, it was like twelve thirteen
dollars, but that was nineteen eighty three. That's like thirty bucks. Oh
yeah, And if you're going to go back, you know, we'll have
to have to go back to the original guy who really made it the big
time made it too must see, and that was that was mister Knebel,
Evil Knevil. Well, that that was the whole thing that Evil was.
He was doing things that a lot of people didn't do, and he made
one of the biggest fans in the world. Do you know who that fan
was? Hm? Well, was that maybe maybe somebody with a new a
new mustache that would say to the name was thought he could promote the world,
and he thought the whole world was going to be on pay per view,
and his whole idea was going to be on pay per view. But
his whole world was on the wings of Evil Knevil, which is the worst
wings that you could probably put them on. And it's not Evil's problem.
But moving forward, closed circuit was like a big thing. So I saw
every time when I was probably watching a black and white television in my bedroom
at nine years old and eighty four, they would talk about go to all
these places, go see closed circuit, and then they would bring up like
other little things like satellite dish. And then a couple of years went by
and they said a different word, pay per view. It was a rod
dance word. So before the days of pay per view, when you were
to go to these close circuit events at movie theaters, were they all movie
theaters or was there maybe like a Bengal har or something else they would use
in the theaters. You could you would have them and anywhere that well,
with boxing they needed certain size. You knew you were going to have this
kind of a draw. With wrestling, a lot of that was you know,
kind of trial and era for just a little bit until they because they
didn't want to you know, of course have a too big of a place.
But yeah, they had. They had them in movie theaters is one
of the most common places. And it would literally they would back up a
satellite that word that Michael just said, satellite and hardwired and damn you had
closed circuit TV and were these theaters selling out that to the point where you'd
have all the seats slit up and then maybe some standing room tickets or or
And I second part B is how much would it cost you know back then
for that I know you were saying a few things in your market, Michael,
but what am I for you? Mark? Well, here you had
it more of an educated clientele with the wrestling being such a so many people
that were in it, so you would have now, of course, my
first closed circuit would have probably been about twenty dollars. That's also when gas
was less than a dollar, so that'll and when I say less than a
dollar, I'm talking fifty cents. We're talking a little while back, and
that like and yeah, it would be in a movie theater, but a
large one. And they didn't towards the end, you didn't have chairs.
It was standing room only. So yeah, and which Rocky also, this
is something that you would not know about, but back in those days they
would out also advertise you don't want to be standing room only, and then
they would always say you can only get this in closed circuit, don't wait
till the eleventh hour. That was a big thing that they would always say
that they carried from the closed circuit to the pay per view realm of life,
because they wanted you to believe that, no matter what, there was
only so much limitation. So when they started berthing the pay per view era
and Vince McMahon's vision, which we're going to bleed into here in a second,
they only wanted you to believe that maybe if you had pay per view,
there was only twelve tickets left and you only had five. Okay,
well, I do have one little fun fact. I do know that for
restume on you too, that in Pittsburgh, one of the receivers was that
working everybody was refunded and then a few days later they broadcasted it and that
TV market for free. And this was the only time that resume any it
was showing for free. I did not know that. Yeah, that's a
new one on me. I mean, that's that's right around the time I
was starting watching wrestling, So I didn't I didn't know that. God,
guy, I know about the Daniel Brian incident where a lot of people turned
into receipts. But let's keep going, all right, So moving on,
we're going to talk about tape trading. Now. This is something I didn't
know it was a thing until Michael, you brought it up to me and
told me that you wanted to cover it. Tape trading was the only way
to see events from other states and cities that didn't air in your local market.
Tape trading is certainly a thing of the past. Before the boom of
the internet in the late nineties, before there was ever a w Debe network
to stream, we all operated on a thing called a VCR. And you
know, more so than that, you would need to to make copies and
w's events. So you know, for all the young bucks out there who
don't know what a VCR is, enjoy the luxury of having every pay per
view and documentary in a video library at your fingertips. And if anybody needs
a visual just imagine the size of the first xbox. Pretty heavy, pretty
wide, and you know that's what those things were. So if you knew
somebody local to trade with, the all the better. But if not,
you have to find somebody online that had an event that you wanted and you
had wanted they wanted, so you would make a copy for yourself, then
send them one and then they would send you a copy back in a return.
So did either of you do any tape trading in those days? Yes,
I mean yes, probably not to the extent of Mark, But I
can tell you that I would always love to video record if I could.
If I could afford it a tape you know that six bucks would you would
be like twenty dollars now to see magnum Ta wrestle somebody on TVs, WTBS,
excuse me my time. And it was. It was amazing stuff.
But there was also like the underground where everybody started getting stuff. And then
when you had that closed circuit which hadn't built pay per view yet. He
said, we had these events in Minneapolis. We had these events down in
Oklahoma. We had these events in Dallas, we had these events in Florida,
we had these events in New York. Did I miss anything yet,
Mark, any major territory? No, No, you nail them. And
all those tapes had to be traded to other people because the tape trading,
and something that we did not talk about before, was not only for the
spectators, it was for the promoters and for the actual performers, the workers,
because that's how they got all their work around. The tape trading actually
came and started from the workers showing what they could do when they found a
cheap way in VHS to send out their work to other people instead of relying
upon promotors to save others things to promotors and hoping that they had nothing bad
to say about them. So it was a different time. That was the
birth, but it got really crazier and more important, and it bursts a
lot more things and need a lot more things better Later on, Well,
Mark, what do you remember about the tape trading era? Well, I'm
gonna go a little bit further back, further than that xbox looking thing.
I'm going to go back to how I got my knowledge and that came from
wrestling magazines. You would go and that's each week when that truck stopped and
dropped them bundles, you waited for the guy to put the Wrestling Illustrated Pro
Wrestling there were there were several and you immediately opened it up and you went
to the top ten and you would go, is you know to find out?
Me being a Jerry Lawler fan growing up, I was always looking for
the king on there. So where was it? Yet? Was he going
to get a title match? So yeah, that's that's a little bit before
tape trading. I remember having a w subscription, yearly subscription. I will
good a new magazine every month in the mail, you know, with the
bios and you know actually whoever was on the cover, whether it be either
it ain't by ten or like a sixteen by twenty poster of the wrestler that
was featured, and a couple of other ones. So my bedroom wall was
literally filled from subsiding to the floor of all wrestling posters growing up as a
young kid. Yeah, fair Foster, no mine u. You know now
that I think about it. My older cousin had to have been heavy,
heavy into tape trading and Devin tapes. So real quick, a little story
about me. Um. My first pay per view event that I saw,
I was wrestling A twelve. I remember asking my dad's to bias one for
me, because you know, h became bread with my guys. I knew
there were eleven Rossomanias before that one, but I had no way to access
to watch these past events, So Resumed twelve took place in April of ninety
six, when I was nine years old. That summer, I went to
my uncle's to visit for two weeks and come to find out that there were
stacks and stacks of VHS tapes that my cousin had, and now he did
have most of the previous eleven Russomanias, some of the Rumbles, Summer Slam,
Survirus series events, and a few of the in Your House events as
well. Up to this point in the summer of ninety six, I had
been to a handful of house shows down here in Texas and had watched as
many Monday Night laws as possible. The passion that burns inside me for this
industry was set on fire as an eternal flame that could never be extinguished.
That summer after I was able to trace back and watch some of the most
significant matches in DEBI history. I got to see things like Hogan versus Warrior,
Hogan Slam, Andre, Steamboat versus Savage Red versus Own Win. I
got to see HPK's two Rumbo wins, Flair Win the Title, and ninety
two, you know, Undertaker's debut. You know, big moments like that.
So imagine being a baby when the Attitude Era began, flourished and passed.
Then by the time the Rutus Aggression era was ushered in is when you
started to really become a wrestling fan but didn't know about or hadn't seen the
best of the best from the Attitude era. Then you go over to a
friend or family member's house and they have all of the Attitude Arab paper reviews
available for you to go back and watch. It was it would be like
finding a pot of gold. So after realizing that my cousin was a total
bootlegger and how he must have got all these events on tight on tape,
I started to think of the Terror Tories and the Independent and how they would
get their product out without a TV deal. How would they survive and how
would they make a profit. So my question is to you too, is
which, if any promotion had there been that's solely dependent on tape trading to
get their product out. Oh wow, that's interesting. Quick, Well I
would have to ask which era, I mean, AWA could have survived another
five years off of it. We look at I mean, I'm sorry,
I'm Mark, I'm I'm gonna you know me, Jim Crockett promotions. If
they knew what their library was worth. The fact is they couldn't sell to
people who weren't born yet. So some of a fish. And then we
look at I mean, you look at a modern day. So Mark,
take me over because I'm dominate this conversation. Well, no, I was
just I was going to throw in, you know, you've got to ECW.
You know, got a lot out before they got on TV when and
actually I think they for a little while they called it something a little different.
I'm not even sure when they were trying to do some of the tapes.
But yeah, you had in the old days, you had the wrestlers
that were selling some of these things that were big time. You had wrestlers
that were selling VH test But that was at the end of the merchandise style.
It was like the most expensive thing there. But go ahead, I'm
sorry, no, I was gonna say, well, I don't mean to
interject. But ce ECW did have their roots in tape trading because a lot
of their production was done by Gabe's Pulsky and it was also done by Rob
Feinstein. And of course we all know that Rob Finstein was the king of
tape trading and he still had a lot of stuff online or things like that.
But Gabe Paulsky is a brilliant man and he was his backup. I
bought a lot of tapes from them. But that was like the right place,
right time for anything that was happening. Any ECW wasn't called indie,
but it was indie. It was recognized as a world title at one point,
which is weird, but I mean it was an aftermag So how really
recognized is it? But brass tacks and baseball bats. When it comes down
to it, everything that was going through there was done by a couple of
kids who were doing a lot of tape trading and doing a lot of stuff
that they were filming at ringside, and I think that they are brilliance was
what really was the nineties tape trading as opposed to the eighties, which is
what you and I would see, which is getting really garbage tapes from like
mid Cell, like Ted DBAs taking on you know, Steve Williams in a
blood bat that lasted half an hour and it broke up versus you know,
Feinstein gave Spolski doing something that's like the best you could do with VHS in
nineteen ninety eight. There was a difference there and that that made a really
big difference in the style of wrestling and how wrestling became more prominent with other
promotions that were outside WW outside WCW, ECW very much was prominent. Smoky
Mountain didn't benefit from it, but New Japan and all Japan did at the
time. Everything in Japan that was that was the only way you got it.
You know, before cable that the only way to find out who the
Great Baba was. Then if you don't know who the Great Baba was,
go look him up. I remember my first DVD that I bought on my
own was in ECW, like most violence Match Matches DVD. Um it must
have been I think it was right after r VD must have debuted. Um,
because when I saw this ECWM DVD, when I saw his name on,
you know, on the back of the match list, I just knew
I wanted to buy it right away. You know. I looked back at
like every time I would sit there. Well, I only went to a
few shows, okay, because I didn't have a whole lot of money,
that's pretty honest. And one ECW show, I think it was ninety nine
something like that, and I wanted to go Take and Whiz and my friend
Don did instead of me, but I didn't. And it was a premium
live show because it was ECW, so every show was a premium live show
for them. And I come back and I'm just spending time at the merch
table which was our video and was looking all these tapes and everything else,
and I'm like, wow, I just want to buy all this. So
I would ask him like should I get this one to that one? And
they just buy the DVD just by this, just by that, and I'm
like, that's not cool. Now. I remember, I know what Gabe
Zapolsky looks like. He wasn't there. I think it was probably Rob Feinstein.
I don't care. The point is like talking up a little bit.
If you want to sell something like, if you really want this, do
this. If you really want to do that, do that. But I'm
in a different industry. Mark was in a different industry. You're a different
industry. You don't just say get it. Imagine if somebody walked onto a
car line and said, well, I don't know, get it. That's
where you think get it. So that was my experience. I think with
Rob Binstein, I really think it was so. But so let's move forward,
all right. So moving along into the nineties, WWD was going through
a metamorphosis. The steroid era shook up the foundation of what a prototype championship
look like. Who huge stars like Hogan Savage, Lex Lucas, Scott Hall,
and Kevin Nashwood jumping ships to ww plus the silly gimmicks made the WWE
two cartoonish. The first half of the decade had wb looking like it could
not keep up with the times that were changing, and the company was on
the brink of bankruptcy. Ww needed to make some changes and needed to mature
as a company. As we would see in the latter half of the ninety
WWE would propel itself who unforeseen heights with the birth of the Attitude era during
the first half of that decade, What do y'all think played the most significant
part and the changes that ww would have to make to stay on our TV
screens and to keep us fans buying pay per views? They yea, yes.
The basic of this was the WCW was listening to the fans at that
time and writing according accordingly, and wwe had gotten so like you had mentioned
Rocky a comical and unbelievable and uh, you know it just it took WCW
beating them in the ratings, of course, for them to actually see their
mistakes and they corrected them, though they did correct them. Look, I
looked back into history, and I look back at like what pay per view
buys were, and we get a look at the nineties after the steroid era
and the new generation and what we were going into. We only had like
a few top stars and then they were trying to buy out younger territories or
younger territory talent Chris Candidos, which they burned out. And I bet if
he is in a room with Sean Hell and Michael or Sean Michaels in Hell,
He's going to beat the hell out of him, and Michaels will never
get out. You gotta live. Hey, it's my show. I could
say whatever I want. You got to look at the fact that they were
borrowing from ECW. But they made dirty, dirty deals with ECW. They
made dirty deals with well, they made public deals with Smoky Mountain because Cornett
does pretty much bub but they were seeing who was left. They were buying
stuff out. They were doing really poor pay per view by race. I
mean, we used to call it like the Yonner and Yonkers. When you'd
find like the godwins versus the Body, Donna is like, yeah, you
want me to buy something like that. So everything is going through a downward
spiral, and it's I hate that term. What I prefer is a tornado.
It's a tornado because it's a downward spirals being flushed down the toilet.
Okay, it's gone. A tornado creates a path of destruction that you have
to learn from, and that's what that was setting the path for. And
so they were looking at a lot of indie talent, but they the pay
per view producing at that point was sub level. It was subhuman. It
was sub so with that, you know, a nice little segue of sub
premium. I want to talk about the quote unquote B level pay per views.
After all, the B level pay per views make up two thirds of
the year. First of all, I don't like that we call them B
level. After all, it is the main roster. You know, rosters
all over the world dream of making it to the WW main roster. When
I think of B level, I used to think of NXT, But even
the NXT roster wants to make it to the main roster of SmackDown or Raw.
And my eyes, if you made it to WW, then you made
it to the main roster. If you're featured on a main roster pl E,
then again, in my eyes, you are on a level pay per
view. After all, WW is the mech of sports entertainment. Agreed,
absolutely, Okay, so there's always spend the pillars what we call the Big
four, which is Royal Rumble Wills, Lmania, Summer's Landman, Servirus Series.
But back in the early nineties it was actually considered the Big five,
with the King of the Ring being an established and respected pay per view in
those years. The In Your House series was brought to you fruition in ninety
five to be the quote B level pay per view that will take place between
the major pay per views. Then the in your House shows would continue until
February of ninety nine for the Saint Valentine's Day massacre event. This would also
be the final in your House held as the company moved to install permanent names
for each of its monthly pay per views, which began with backlash in April
of ninety nine. So the in your House pay per view was the original
be level pay per view. So let's talk about some of these quote unquote
level pay per views. First, I would like to ask Yad's opinion on
the gimmick pay per view events that we have like elimination Chamber and a sale
and money in the bank. I hate them all, to be honest with
you. It's a lazy booking. You can quote me as the number one
best podcaster in Louisville when I said it, okay, let's just make it
one of that and do that. No, I don't like that. That's
that's why you have to build stories. That That was the whole thing with
getting rid of actual story writers who made things event Four times a year was
better than twelve times a year and I mean, I'm old, I get
it. But you know what, my favorite movie in the whole world is
The Wizard of Oz. And if you gave me every segment of the Wizard
of Oz in a year, I would not really like it as much as
I do in one movie, and that should be so mania, So how
do I build to that it was the yellow bit brick road. I don't
get that anymore. I get every little side road and every little character that
we never cared about. So that's how I feel about all those little d
level papers used and everything that they kind of broke up. I understand why
they did things back in the day, but it's really bad that it's fallen
so far from what it really could be. It's not Yeah, they when
they took the building of the storyline out of it, that kind of watered
it down. And then yeah, you got it every month, and they
didn't. They did the short pound, they did the like a week or
two before, and they it was just it's not the same and they're still
using the same template as they did back in the day, and but the
product has changed and they haven't caught up with that. So that is what
we're going to be force fed. I believe guys. I believe you guys
are right. Um, hopefully they do do away with you know, these
domain pay per views. I think maybe her themsell I was gonna be first
to go. Um. I believe that's what the rumor is. But you
know, time will tell. Hopefully Triplated stays in charge long enough to implement
these changes and make the permanent. But back to the Big five that we
used to have, with King of the Ring being you know that in that
fifth spot. This was one of my favorite concepts. But for the last
five years or so, the only thing royal about this tournament is that it's
been a royal pain in my book. Why well, let's look at the
past few winners. The last successful king that we had, in my opinion,
was King Booker, and that was all the way back in two thousand
and six. Four years past to twenty ten, we get King Shamas,
nothing said. Five years later we get King Wade Barrett not too significant.
Four years down the line in twenty nineteen, King Corbin, and then,
of course, you know, probably one of the worst kings of all two
years ago and Xavier Woods now like really like Xavier Woods was our last king
with no significant you know, push, no title opportunity, and Romans stopped
the crown and dispected the whole concept, and that that kind of take me
off. I mean, what the f capital endpoint of crowning the new King
of the Ring if with you know, no significant push. I honestly think
it was. This was nothing more than a consolation prize for Woods because KOFE
and Biggie got their title, Notch and I don't believe Woods ever will get
that push. You never will. It's too small. I mean, look,
everyone talks about like Ballard being too small. The guy could also like
quit today, be a model and make multimillions of dollars. But he's also
multitalented. He's also the guy that you wouldn't have a w if you didn't
have thin ballor people don't know that, but people are idiots because they follow
WWE sometimes. Okay, so let's talk about realism and what the King of
the Ring means to me. And never met a thing I've censored myself.
I've always saw it as a BS crown. It's it's always garbage to me.
And I'm like, I love because we're going to go back and forth
on this one and Mark you, I definitely want to hear this one on
this one, but I've never thought it's anything but defecating on the under titles.
And it's like, well, we've got somebody who's going to be between
the innerco Oinental and the heavyweight champion, but we don't know how to push
him, so we're gonna give him this King of the Ring. Come on,
That's the way any wrestling historian I thought saw it, and then anybody
who was an actual champion, it was backwards because watch a man, Randy
Savage was already a world champion. Then it becomes King of the Ring and
he has to celebrate. What what do you really have to celebrate? Let
me challenge you with that. Let me ask you what you really have to
challenge after you've already been a champion and now all of a sudden you have
nothing, but you get to be carried to the ring. So it's garbage
to me. But yeah, it's supposed to be above Oh no, let
me go. It's supposed to be above the Intercontinental. Now, those are
the best workers in the world, and then you look at some of these
Kings of the Ring and the best disappointment ever everybody knows is probably Nabel,
obviously Nabel, and then the other one is Billy Gunn. And I'm sorry,
Billy Gunn. If you're gonna beat my ass, go ahead. If
you're astronomy, you're gonna beat the hell I mean, I don't care.
I'll segmenthis mark on you. Sorry, buddy, But brass stacks and baseball
bats, what does it really mean? You don't have the speaking everything.
I hate that pay per view. I'm sorry. I am glad. It's
not celebrated. It doesn't mean anything. It was just something for them to
do. An I grab to say, look at this person too, But
everybody they did it with minus and those three or four people who they were
hoping that's really why they created, like we hope these guys do it,
but anybody else were great. You didn't need a pay per view organically,
right, So let me ask you this, what would you do different with
the winner with the winner of like the the Oh yeah, well, if
you won the King of the Ring, I give you the thirtieth spot in
the Royal Rumble. But I want to get away from stipulations and stuff like
that for pay per views. But it makes the most sense to make it
the most prestigious, so you have something means something else something later, and
then you can have people kind of feud over it and well, I'll bet
it for you and bet it back. But at least you can create a
storyline that way right now, like storyline pay per views are just whatever?
Okay, that um you know, the king get returning. It's usually held
in the last quarter of the year or so, so you could have the
winner, you know, come out with the crown and scepter, maybe for
a couple of months, even if they were to keep on with the accent
up into the rumble, and then they would know, quote unquote catching the
opportunity for the thirtieth spot, and then after the rumble, they could,
you know, more or less drop the gimmick. They could still keep the
moniker, but they don't have to keep up the gimmick. But yeah,
I like that idea. What do you think, Mark? Yeah, I
can go along the spot definitely. But you know, I'm a little funny
about this because I come from a city that had our own king, King
Jerry Longer, so I was a little different on that. And they've taken
when they take somebody like Harley Race a freaking a legend, and they make
him do these stupid promos with Andre and stuff and over in Europe and just
it was wrong. It's wrong. The whole concept of that is wrong.
And UH match okay, spot okay, all of the Malarchy and the Shenanigans
craps that they pull off, No, no, totally against it all right,
well, so let's just keep the training rolling. Um I do want
to talk about some other legacy of pay per views. Um I have an
honorable mention here for Vengeance two thousand and five, and I give credit to
Anthony D. Marco for his retro show on his pay per view that he
released on me first, So if you guys haven't heard it, go back
and listen. You know what I really like about his retro show and our
Wrestle Magic show is that they're not weekly weecaps, so they're good to listen
literally anytime of the year. But that that particular event saw you know,
HBK versus Kurdeingo and then the heading a sale match when it mean something between
Batista and Tribal ch which was their the capop for the third UH for the
trilogy. So I woant to honorable mention that one, and I would like
to honorable mention um the Invasion pay per view in two thousand and one.
I was fourteen at the time, and I thought when ww you know,
w like, it was so huge. You know, I didn't have the
business mind too to understand that there was only going to be one place to
work and they were gonna have to cram everybody you know on the roster um.
But when guys started showing up on w WTV, I was it was
just a very very exciting type of me as a teenager. Um. Either
you guys like that yourselves or that that was a different time. It was.
I never wanted anything just to be completely bought, and I was in
a different mode of my life saying, well, I'm gonna step away from
wrestling because it's all gonna be Evinces now and I'm out of Vince Fan and
so that's basically the way it went. And so I knew that everything that
was produced at that point was going to be sports entertainment versus wrestling, and
it was also prior to than that. But it wasn't what I wanted.
It wasn't my praying that my family could make some money so I could watch
war games when it meant something. When I had the Road Warriors and Nikki
to Koloff and Dusty against yeah, the four Horsemen and a war Machine which
was big Bubba. But you know, honestly, the first one was better
with g J. Dilly. It was just it was great. That was
so much musty TV. And I knew when all that happened that some kind
of die. I see where you're coming from with that, and it would
be a couple of years before we got the big names like the nWo and
Goldberg and so forth and so on. But um, I don't know.
I guess. I guess for me being strictly a w WF guy, a
raw guy, you know, during the Monday Night Wars, it just felt
good for me knowing that my team won. So let's keep this again,
just keep on going. I'm gonna just do some rocket Cheese rapid fire here
with some of the legacy pay per views. If there's anything significant you want
to point out to stop me. So we had fast Lane, Cyber Sunday,
fully Loaded, Armageddon, m Forgiving, Taboo Tuesday, Battleground Taboo Tuesday.
That one was cool. Yeah, very interactive for its time. We
had Judgment Day, No Marcy Breakdown, no Way Out like we mentioned earlier,
Great Balls of Fire. Oh yeah, you know what you did?
Tell me that you're right, I should have took that off, okay,
Um, bragging rights over the Edge, great American badge, breaking point American
for nostalgia alone for Dusty. Yes, and I really loved that they brought
it back to n XT right. And then we have a New Year's Revolution
um, which was a big well, the two thousand and six one was
big for me because I was the first money in the bank cashing with Edge
over Sena and I just very very much Despisinga at the time. Uh.
Then there's Bad Blood, which was the very first head in the sale match
between HPK and Taker, which also had Kane's debut. And then we have
some of the UK tours, you know, like an Insurrection, which was
the grounds for the plane right from Hell that happened on this tour. Do
you like Insurrection? Yeah? Did I say that wrong? No? You
did? Okay? And then um, another one of my favorite concepts is
Knight of Champions. Now, I really like this concept of this pay per
view because of course every Championship is defended on this night, you know,
in my opinion, if not all, but it came from WCW right.
In my opinion, if not all, most championships should be defended at any
given pay per review. But you know, news just broke recently that King
and Queen Paper or pre Lee has been changed to Night of Champions. So
what do you guys think of WWD actually reviving the Night of the Knight of
Champions pay review or pere lee for romans, I was in day celebration.
Well that I can almost I get behind, and I agree every event that
you're paying for or used to pay for, you should get some championship matches.
That is what it was supposed to be like. And where it got
changed and when it got changed is kind of stupid, you know, stupid
to me, but there is just my opinion. So you're ready for Grandpa
to take off as slippers ready, alright? So Nine the Champions was something
special and it was something that you should hold, so they want to give
it away. They don't want to always use key elle with it, but
they associated with it because None of the Champions was really the first free per
view it was on TBS at like five o'clock on a Sunday or a Saturday
or Friday or something like. It was it was white trash delight. I
was it, So I can honestly say that, and it was it.
So they are revisiting this, and I love the fact that they're gonna,
like say, deal with it. Well, we'll see how long it actually
sticks around for maybe it's another one officers for the celebration. But speaking of
one offs, we have had a few one off pay per views, like
the Insurrection one last year, we had Clash at the Castle. When I
was checking the PL events for this year, Raw thirty was actually on the
PL list for twenty two and three, so you could consider that a one
off. But one of my personal favorite one offs of all time is the
one i'd only in Birmingham, England, with the main event of HBK versus
the British Bool Dog for the European Championship. This happened in ninety seven.
I remember this match feeling like a big, big deal. I was ten
at this time and I could literally feel the animosity of the crowd towards HBK,
you know, keeping him mind HBK. It's my guy. I knew
I wanted HBK to win, but I honestly didn't think it was going to
happen. And then I was totally surprised when he got the one, two
three. Well, my things with that were there was so much backstage politics
at that time and all that kind of goofy stuff going on that if you
read the dirt sheets and everything else, that it didn't really matter as much,
whereas like, it was really cool. It was really I'm not gonna
lie, it was really really cool. Side. You got the way Rocky
was looking at it. He's a young kid seeing this and just taken back
by Now, that is something that is cool. The backstage and all that
that was going on at the time, I totally agree with, But I
didn't. You see it kind of in history that if your birthday or you're
in your home city, you're going to lose that match that night. It's
like the Wicks it to you. Yes, it's it's like a weird taboo
thing that they do that like if it's your your home city, usually if
it's like a raw or a SmackDown or something like that, but if you
yeah, you lose. There's a couple of exceptions, like a cempung get
the money in bank in Chicago. Yeah, but it's also the same idea
that whoever sets up the table is the one that's going through it. Yeah,
good way of putty. That's really good. Like my son just noticed
that with the the submatch between Edge and Fin. He's like, why did
Ed set up the table and then he goes through it. I'm like,
that's just the way it happens to home, Like, yeah, yeah,
that was He's about to be nine, but you know, I got him
thinking that he's going to go to book a cheese wrestling school when he's a
teenager. So but anyways, um so a couple of other one offs.
We had a Capital Carnage stopping ground the Greatest War Rubble, which was not
great at all. And then this is a one that I didn't know what
actually happened, and I'm glad that it happened in my home state. And
I know, Mike, you can talk about this is this Tuesday in Texas
and ninety one where Hogan versus the Taker for the title would happened here.
Yeah, you know, that was a strange one, apparently, I mean,
being a Russell Fin back then w CW wasn't necessarily on the ropes,
but it was just like kind of floating out in the middle of nowhere.
And so I watching WWE and Mark Mark Calloway comes in as Undertaker and everything
else, and we've got title changes. So they say that there's gonna be
this special Tuesday pay per view and I'm like, I thought, who that
is going to watch it on a Tuesday, And of course me, Doug,
Yeah, exactly the wrestling plan. So I went and I watched it
at a friend's house, Mark Jones. It was his name, still his
name because he's not dead or anything. But the fact is I was like
this really was like, why did I do this on a Tuesday? And
the thought process was, it's the same reason that we have wrestling on Monday.
There's nothing else to do besides football season on Mondays. So you watch
wrestling on Monday, you have all week to talk about it until next Monday.
And then if you have a pay per view on Sunday, do you
talk about it more on Monday and you can't wait to watch what happens on
Monday. When I screwed up is putting wrestling on Friday, because if You're
demographic is nails. Do you think they really want to hang in to watch
wrestling on Friday? That's why I worked better on Thursdays. But brass Saxton
baseball, That's like I always say this Tuesday in Texas. I remember watching
it and the whole thing kind of fell flat. But it was it was
their experiment, and the by rate was so low it was unreal, and
the results were garbage, and people were actually booing it out of the building.
But I watched it live because I'm a wrestling fan. Well, another
thing I'm assuming it was an experiment because we haven't seen another one since,
was the All Women's Head Review Evolution, which happened in twenty sixteen, I
believe, Yeah, so yeah. So Then one other thing I came across
that was interesting to me that I'm sure either one of you could speak on
was it was called the Wrestling Summit, the only time New Japan, All
Japan, and WWA did a three promotion show together. This was headlined by
Bret Hart versus Hygermask and Whole Cogan versus Stan Hansen. Either you too speak
to that never promoted in America? Yeah, yeah, the Hogan uh Stan
Hansen actually have seen that match, and be thankful that most of you haven't,
because Hogan definitely looks like Hogan U in that match. But yeah,
that's that. I believe that was the only time that's ever happened. And
you're getting back to the women's pay per view. Um, if that pay
per view would have done better, I believe in the you know, as
far as box office, you would have probably seen uh whatever she calls herself
now, Mercedes still in the WWE because that drawing power. But I think
that they just went back to the regular staples of Charlotte Oscar in your basics
after that. Well, a lot of it also had to do with promoting,
um, what was that terrible No holds Barred Dunkeys? And then who
Stan Hanson was in that movie? People forget it? So that's that.
That was a big part of it. But god it was. It wasn't
a bad show. It's just the fact that w WF at the time doesn't
want to be shown up and they don't want to be outclassed, and they
really are in the talent when you're not showing a WWF guy versus a New
Japan guy. And you had Savage who could work against somebody, and you
had Steamboat maybe in the time back. I can't remember everybody on the pay
per view, but you had certain people who could work against the Japanese style
of fast paced impact whatever became the attitude era of ussling, Whereas then you
have Hogan now now now now, Michael, I will have to interject this
one aspect on Hogan's behalf. If anybody has ever seen Hogan work when he
was in Japan, he was a different type of wrestler when he worked just
Japan, before the w unit, before the Big Day, It's a different
whole Kogan. You just have to go back and check it out for yourself.
We we we covered it with mudas the only evidence that I've seen it
was a Muda match that I've seen him work like that, and I was
blown away that anything he could do, anything besides the body slam, clothesline,
and the leg drop. Anyways, So yeah, well, when you're
making that much money just to do those three, I guess he just decided
that's all you're gonna get. Yeah, um, all right, So moving
on with to B level pay per views. You know, speaking of B
level pay per views, the ICY Title is considered the quote unquote B level
or secondary title, even though it's usually postled upon the ord coast of the
company. This reminds me of when the IC title was actually considered a more
high profile title than the WW title match. It's in itself now, this
took place at summer time ninety two. Bread versus Bridge Bulldog was the only
time that I've been able to uncover that the Innercardinal Title was the main event
over a WW title match. This one was a classic. It blows.
It really blows the mind to think that the Innercardinal Title was so respected and
so prestigious at this time that it was the main event of in that show
over the title match featuring ultimate ware watching that can either view. Guys,
remember a time where the Icy title was the main event over THEW title match.
Oh, it's gotta be with Pat Patterson. I can't think off the
top of my head of that. But I want to say there may have
been a couple of times with Pat Patterson, but I don't want Yeah,
but that's how far you got to go back, though, right, And
I didn't go that far back in their research, I stop, you know.
But and then Honestly, I'm gonna say WrestleMania three, everybody talks about
Hogan slamming Andre, but what was the match that saved the whole thing?
Steamboat and Savage for the Intercontinental title. It didn't headline, but it did
theoretically that's the show. Yeah, yeah, I mean there's that. And
then you talk about like yours stuff with King of the Rings. I mean,
is there any title online? No, there's not, and that somehow
jumped over the Intercontinental title, which is not cool in my opinion. And
so that, yeah, you look at your King of the Rings what they
did, and oh the King of the Rings list, the King of the
Ring is that, and you have to minus a few people who wanted that
didn't have to use the British accent act like a goofball and they got pushes
out the frame. Mightus Mabel get rid of Mabel? Right? So speaking
of how bad Mabel was, I want to I want to cite some of
the worst main events on that paper view of all time. Now this is
there's an extensive list, but an extensive list, but in the sake of
time, I's going to cite a few. Um one that means you Michael
had talked about before was the Battleground main event in twenty seventeen, which was
a twenty seven minute Punjabi prison match between Gender Mahall and Randy Orton went on
like twenty six minutes to exactly, and then to the point of King Mabel.
Another terrible main event was the Summerside mighty five main event between him and
Diesel, and Diesel would also have another stinker they was it the year before
I Believe and in Your House four which was titled The Great North, where
he defended the title against the British Bulldog. Now, this match was so
bad that Davey Boy and his manager Jim Cornett went backstage after the match and
personally apologize to Vince for how bad the match was. Yes, I've heard
of this. First of all, Kevin Nash put on a bad match.
You gotta be kidding me. He's only the person that they coined the five
Moves of Doom. And I don't care if he listens to this, and
if he wants to say anything, then he's seven foot tall. He's a
big tough guy. You can't beat up a baseball bat. So no,
I'm not I'm not like that. But when it comes down to it,
like Kevin Nash was just terrible. He was entertaining, but that's what they
wanted time entertaining him big. But God, he was gone off of the
ring and he couldn't He had no chemistry. What the voice? No Greco
Roman was never going to be mentioned in the same sentence with Kevin. I
don't think you. I would love to see what his three point average was
when the draft him from the Hawks, because I bet it wasn't in that
great either when he played for Tennessee. But getting back to it, all
h main events that were stinkers. Well, can either of you remember a
main event where the crowd was starting to walk out because I cited backlash eighteen
Roman versus Samoa Joe that that wasn't their fault. Yeah, for another time
before where either it wasn't there for the guy's fault or the fans were just
into it and they just started to walk out on a main event. You
know, I might have to go back to your boy, Uh, Michael
Adrian Adrian Street. Uh. There were some people at times that were so
his He was so good at what he did that he pissed so many people
off that I can. I don't know if it was a pay per view,
but I know locally that he had He made some people so mad that
they left early, but they still paid their admission fee and got their coke
and got their program. Uh, and they came back next week to see
him get you know, get destroyed, they hoped. But that's about it.
That's the only thing I can't think of. Well, you look at
men events like that though, I mean, we don't know really who if
you can remember who, if Adrian was wrestling, and I love you Adrian,
if you're listening, um, that's that's a really big thing. Whereas
like I look at it, like looking back, a lot of people say
WrestleMania too was terrible and it was shown through three different venues. It was
first I think Starcade did it through a close circuit before WrestleMania did. But
Rustlemania two definitely did three different venues, and they did Hogan versus Bundy and
they said everybody just said it was the DSS. I'll tell you about that
off air, Rocky. But it was not a good thing. And basically,
like everybody hated it and I watched it and I was a kid,
and I was this is when I was becoming like a hard fan. So
I was like, why didn't Bundy beat him up? He's way bigger,
and so I remember that falling flats. Yeah, like I said, Roman
versus Samo Joe wasn't their fault. It was the fact that it was the
Roman bush and everybody hated that. So it's not the draw, it's the
result that you already knew. I would say anything anything from TNA Slash Impact
from twenty o nine to now. I hate to say it like that,
but they're I mean, they try, They've done a lot of stuff.
But yeah, that's that's that's that's fall and flat anytime anything with a celebrity
falls four yea. So let's stop there because we have a celebrity talk coming
up. So on the other side of the coin of worst main events of
all time, I want to talk about really solid matches, classic matches on
a really bad card. Now I've I've cited um. The Ussos had two
battleground matches twenty fourteen and twenty eighteen and fourteen the Ussos versus the Whites,
Redbeard and Harper, and a twenty three fourth match, and then there are
twenty eighteen match versus The New Day for the tag titles, which was one
of the best matches of the year and one of the best future of the
year. Another one would be Triple Aged versus Taker at resumeating twenty seven on
an unremarkable card, and then the Triangle Ladder match at Resume in two thousand
and then you could also throw in Bred versus s Don't Cold the Restume in
thirteen, which was the unofficial birthplace of the Attitude era. So that's the
few that I sighted, and then actually one that you might not like.
If anybody's out there is looking for a decent, very good mismatch, then
check out Black Last twenty eighteen. Now, the reason why it was good
is because Seth Wallin carried him through the match and it was for the ice
title. This was that at the Backlash twenty eighteen. So if you're doing
any homework on miss check that one out. And if you are, please
get some help because you know what I'm about to say, Well, yes,
yeah, definitely doing something that he should do best, which is cutting
promos. He is not a great pro wrestler. I love the fact that
the fall one Crispin one made him change outside the dress room because he wasn't
good enough for it. Scrutiness. Okay, all right, so let's circle
back to the celebrities. Now, celebrities are broad and checking, more eyes
on the product, and mostly you're brought out on pay per views. It
makes sense most eyes are on a pay per view. If you have a
celebrity, you know, debut when are coming out for a match, then
you would assume you give him a pay per view, buy some more views.
Two pioneers of the celebrity variety are City Lauper and Mister T. They
helped the crossover with w W and pop culture. Now, over the years,
we've had you know, many celebrities, um, just to name a
few, um, besides the ones that we've had recently that have been pretty
decent and at least in the ring wise, which between back Buddy and Logan
Paul Um. One of my favorites was the Mayweather match. Was the big
show. Um. I enjoyed that a lot. Um and then also Mike
Tyson the rest of Man in fourteen. What were some of you guys' favorite
celebrity appearances or ones that you hated? M Man, I'm gonna jump straight
in here, Pete Rose getting in tombstoned or vaccine or slam. That was
great. And and I know a lot of people are not gonna know who
this is, but Bob Yuer Bobby was freaking great because oh he was doing
the commercials. Remember he would be sitting they'd move him out of his seat
and he'd go, I must be sitting in the front road And that was
always a skit. Well they'd used that on the advertising commercials leading up to
that, and it was absolutely great. And he did a fantastic job because
when Andre grabbed his throat, it looked like he was coming unseen. So
that's just a couple of mine. I'm gonna go at the best of all
time, the guy to just run into the whole fame Andy Coulston. Ah,
wow, that's the whole. That was. It was the greatest angle
of all time. When you look at it, it lasted thirty plus years
and it was never on pay per view or pl e. How could you
have something that beautiful? But what they did was something more important. Is
that you look at the fact that you don't have pay per view or p
by rates that Dave Letterman had in nineteen eighty was it two or three?
Yeah, with Kaufman on the show and Jerry Lawler coming out and slapping a
living snot out of him, and so that was that that that's that's my
best celebrity involvement ever, because you're not supposed to go over and and it's
it's like some of the historians say, are you gonna be here tomorrow?
Probably not? So why why are you destroying the talent now? Unless you're
the minutes to go ahead and destroy him? I would also say, um,
you know, I look, I never cared for celebrity involvement. I
looked back at some of the celebrities, like when they did U involvement,
like guest hosts and they had the muppets on. The muppets would talk to
like Shamus and like, you guys, wonder why I hate Shamus. He
talked to a muppet like it was a real human being, So yes,
he sucks um. And then I also look at well, they had Jared
Vogel on how's he doing? By the way, Oh, I haven't heard
that. I haven't heard that so long. I was gonna respond, I
was, I'm choking. Excuse me, I mean I just speak it the
way I see it, in the way I see it is the way like
my wrestling historian mind is. And just the fact that, yeah, they
had a guy that turned out to be a pedal on the show. Ne
did I say more? No? More so. I enjoyed the storyline,
the comedy store line between Sammy Zane and Johnny Knoxville. I was a fan
of the match, but I really didn't think Knoxville was going to go over.
There was no point to it. But for Sammy to be able to
bounce back to where he is now, you know, a year, one
year and a half later, um really speaks to the volumes of how good
he is just all around. Um. Can either of you think of an
the wrestler that took a loss but to a celebrity or with an embarrassed by
celebrity and was seen in the light that sent me is seen now Piper?
Yeah, okay, that's gonna be about the only one though, that I
can think of every time it's an embarrassment. But Piper was Piper. You
couldn't stop him. He was like punk, He's like he was the most
unstoppable machine. Piper was Piper Man. You didn't. You did not mess
with Piper. He could take a whist to anybody and just pay it back
the next week. It was so amazing what Piper could do. So whenever
he did on pay per view or peel least, it didn't matter because he
was going to be just promoting and destroying the product the next week. I
like that, all right. So this next little subtopic is can be everybody
has their vias opinion. It's debatable in a lot of different ways, but
the top of this one is best Resumania match. Now, I'm very biased
to the subject because I was an attendance for my two top picks, which
was Wresumanian seventeen Austin versus Rock Again. I give credit to Anthony DeMarco.
He did a retro episode on this a while back, specifically on this WrestleMania
I took. I went back and took a look at the matches, and
every match on this card had at least one Hall of Famer in it,
not to mention the triple third TLC match, which had six Hall of Famers
in it. It broke the attendance record with sixty seven thousand fans in the
Astrodome. I was opposite the hard Can that was my view of the stadium.
And then my second one of this Restumania twenty five of HPK versus Undertaker
that was also another attendance breaker was seventy two thousand plus in Reliance Stadium.
I was actually stage left for this event, so I could see behind the
stage area and was able to see the wrestlers walking into guerrilla position. This
one, well, another one for me real quick that was larger than life
for me as a kid was the Hogan versus Warrior match with both the titles
on the line. And then a little cool fact. I know you know
the answer to this, Michael, for that wrestlemaning a sixth match between Hogan
Warrior who was in an attendance that would be a future w restuator Mark,
you have any idea man, no on the future like that? No,
please tell me. It's two best friends. It was at one. It
was two people. It was Edging Christian right. Also Landstorm was there and
Renee yup. A lot of people who are really really touched by WrestleMania.
I don't know if that touches me as much as old NWA events, but
I can tell you like the crowning moment for me in WrestleMania was Eddie hugging
falling one at a Madison Square garden. There was no better moment. That
was the perfect WrestleMania. Everybody knows it. Everybody knows it was and for
emotion was down point. Yes, I understand where you're coming from. In
ring in ring, it was the best matches that. It was everything that
you wanted. It's just we have to look at everything else that happened with
it, and we can't talk about that. But we are wrestle Magic.
We can talk about anything. Um that's gonna be a different topic for a
different day, but that was that to me was Yeah, how about you
mark best their favorite WrestleMania match. Man, You'll have to put me with
anything with Eddie Guerrero or anything with HBK, because it seems like HBK showed
up at those events. What you say, what you want to about him,
the guy put on WrestleMania moments, h And that's for sure, it's
my favorite of all time. Yeah. So, and man, I get
a lot of flat to that. A lot of people apparently are Sean Hayters
now, but you got to consider man, any guy that could come out
and call himself a boy toy and pull it off. You were a bad
boy. You were a bad man. Oh okay, okay. So you
know, I look back at some of those events, I mean, Taker
and Kane. This is something that people sweep on the rug. But it
was a two year few and they put on great matches and they had a
few that spanned well over year. Everybody knows I'm a really big Glenn Jacob's
fan. And to find the perfect foil and then just to make it revisit
the whole year to do it again, that's pretty awesome. And I don't
really know, We've had a couple of you know, WrestleMania matches revisited,
but for him to go from one to another, that's that's pretty awesome,
you know. So I always like that, and I love the fact that
we actually watched like two big men put on what a lot of like the
new modern crowd would say is athletic wrestling. I think that's really cool.
So that that definitely sticks out in my mind, that that that is I
forgot all about that. That's a great point. And Michael, I think
we got to have to start calling a mayor king. Well, yeah,
we'll call him mayor, We'll call him mayor, but you look closer to
him. So I got two honorable mentions with just Manya Tan's match between brother
versus Brother, Bret versus all In. Uh, this is one of the
matches I saw that summer, um and I was has gone away with the
fact that it was brother versus brother and then the wrestling clinic that these guys
put on. Um. Another one was the hbk Razor Icee ladder match Resume
at ten. Now, this was a first ladder match in the company's history
and a little fun of fact, also was the first five star about rating
that Dave Meltzer ever gave out. No, did not know that. Yeah,
uncle uncle Dave gives out a lot of ratings. So I mean it's
it's past Davy nine, which he already gave six stars to h to Steam
Bolton Flare, but it's it's he is what he is. Um. No,
that's a great match. That's a phenomenal match. And like we look
at like overlook some of the stuff with with perfect and and and Brett.
That was great and and people don't realize like Henny was hurt a lot when
he was wrestling those matches. And I actually did a live chat back in
the nineties with Larry the Acs which was really cool, and yeah, I
marked out really bad and I asked him, I was like, who do
you wrestle most like? And He's like, my son, you know.
And I looked back at when I saw him in the old a Wa territories
in Minnesota, how much more crisp he was, and when he came in
he had the perfect look. I knew who he was, so I already
knew his pedigree, but I don't think that WWE f fans ever got to
see really what he was capable of. The man was hurt all the time.
So I mean he was a true professional. He was a really true
professional. So getting back to it, you know, maybe another match mightel
I mean always, I still always go to back the Savage Steamboat because I
love the psychology between it. DBS put on a lot of matches that were
really great. They were just always against not that great opponents. Is that
a fair assessment? Yeah, But oh he was man. Everything he did
in Mid South was just so great. I wish more people would see that.
But anyway, I'm getting rabbit hole. Yeah, so speaking of the
B level again, UM, I know I said earlier, I don't like
how we say B level payer review. Also, I don't like the term
between when talking about rosmcdown B show. Um when considering rossmcdown. To me
again, if you make it to WW, then you've made it to the
A level. And in this industry, I feel that people look at NXT
brand as the B level. Then when the talent from NXC gets called up
to the main roster, it's not seen it's seen as a big deal.
But to me, it should be seen more of a bigger deal. Uh,
it just seems like not enough people make it a big deal. Um.
Would let me ask you this question real quick. Would you rather be
on that main roster but not featured on TV every week? You rather be
an annext showcase in your craft every Tuesday? Oh, I'm definitely wanted to
get my my my image out. You want to get yourself out. That's
only why you make money. And and I agree with you. When you
make it to the w W, it's almost like you're you made it to
the major league. You're either in the American League or the National League.
Yeah, you're still in the major leagues exactly. So, like I said,
I used to think of NXC as the B level, but then I
start thinking about it. It's just it's just the NXC brand. If you
it's because it's under the w w M. Fella, if you made his
WWE, you've made it to the big time. You just on a different
tier. So not necessarily B level or Triple A or like you said,
that's a good reference between the American League and a National league. You know,
you're just on a on a different tier. That's all. Well,
this is very interesting that you bring this up, because honestly, about five
years ago, six years ago, the NXT was the closest thing the old
school in wa Mark am I right. Absolutely, they got the hottest talent.
And what Triple H did is that he bought everybody who was feuding against
each other, who had a rivalry. That was beautiful. Sammy Zane,
Kevin Owens, Johnny Gargano and what's his name that I get a picture with
the ball guy Toamaso Champo, Yes, yeah, exactly. I couldn't give
his name. And he was just getting rivals. And that's the same thing
that Vince did with the national expansion. No one saw it because people aren't
watching the indies and people weren't paying attention. So you had instant classics that
were already built in rings before they ever touched theirs. So all you have
to do is put it on a pay per view or premium live event and
put your production on it and make it that much better. Absolutely, it
was beautiful and what Vince is doing, Vince's idea of it, like the
bron Breaker, Carmelo Hayes and I mean all the UK guys are great.
I love the UK guys. Aside from that, you don't have anything coming
out. Everybody that he's trying to sign who are like collegiate athletes are not
going to turn out. I got I got news for you. They're never
going to turn out. And they were talking about you'll love this. The
fact that oh we're announcing another draft. I wonder I have a Gable Stevenson
being part of a draft. Have we seen him? It's been like two
three years, yeah, yeah years. So I don't want to see more
people through Vince's system as adverse through William Regal and Triple H system when they
were getting established stars with people who already had a following. That's why it
got hot, and that's why it got a TV deal. So and it's
it's the TV deal was on the WW network, which was pay per view.
That's right now. We're gonna get into that here in a second.
Um, I want to cover I want to go back real quick to NXT.
Now what I what I like with the new NXT so to speak,
is that they are recursurrecting some of these legacy pay per views. They've resurrected
the vegetate pay per view, the in your House monitor, they use that
as a pay per view title. Now, the Great American Badge like we
spoke about a while ago, and they've been resurrected in old WCW pay per
view in Halloween Havoc. With all these pay per views being resurrected, with
all the paid legacy pay per views that we've had over the years, and
pay per review changing with the digital age, I want to talk about a
little bit about some some of the events that broke or set records, pay
per view buys and things like that. So, before WW launched its subscription
channel, the success if any pay per view was monitored by itself. The
individual pay per view sales was determined by the success of each pay per view,
I mean each ww event. Pay per reviews were one of the biggest
revenues revenue generators for WWE, and buy rates were one of the biggest indicators
of the company's success. So let's look at some of the most selling rescue
pay per views of all time, and oddly enough, the top ten or
all WrestleMania buys. WrestleMania twenty eight had a one point two million Restumeentia twenty
three had one point two and then he had most of those WrestleManias in the
twenties had been a million, just over a million, rounding out the top
ten. WrestleMania twenty two in the ninth spot only had nine hundred and seventy
thousand pay per view buys, and restle Mania twenty five, which I was
at again, had nine hundred and sixty So I want to give everyone an
idea of how WrestleMania pay per view buys stack up against other sports. Now,
other events that surpassed one million pay per view buys eight months after the
upset of Mike Tyson Buster Douglas versus the abandoned. Holy Field had more than
a million pay per view buys. The Bernard Hopkins versus Oscar de la Hoyo
match, Um they brought lesser. UFC versus Randy coltur match had a million
buys. Um even Amanda Units versus Round the Rows they had a million pay
per view buys and Logan Paul versus came Inside back in twenty eighteen also drew
one hundred I mean a million of pay per view buys. So wabs up
there at the level with Boxing and UFC for most pay per view buys of
all time. And that speaks volumes to the company the promoted the matches,
just the talent and how global, like how much of a universe this company
really is? Um, what do you guys think about that? It's it's
all about the buy rates because that money that it comes from them and from
that revenue stream was revolutionary in the eighties and nineties. It's not revolutionary now
when you can launch your own channel and make all the money. But that's
why it all comes down to a person I said earlier, evil can evil
and like I said, we'll get back to him at the end of the
show. But it brass acts. It's he is. Vince was genius with
the way he marketed. However, the marketing and the marketing children and everything
else is what killed every wrestling fan out there after a while. And that's
that's why we didn't care about Hogan holding the belt and things like that after
time, because WrestleMania didn't mean anything when every baby face won. There was
no storylines coming out of it. There was nothing. There was a time
where it got really complacent, really just boring. And so you know when
they jettison, well, Hogan jettison himself and and WCW became a competitor and
actually gone on pay per view and started making some revenue stream out of that,
you know, there was a little bit of a difference, and then
that's when you know, you start the Attitude era and everything else. But
knowing that they could compete with those numbers were great, But look what you
had the time. Then you look at current product, and you have to
also look at all those gaps between those years, all those gaps and what
sold them out. It's kind of crazy, like we live in an age,
at digital age where people are that they have no attention span, So
of course logan, Paul is going to get something because they think it's gonna
last only a couple of minutes. And how much do I really believe it's
legit? And how much do I believe it's bus fifty fifty? I really
think it's fifty fifty. But I also live in an age where I wouldn't
fight him. And we look at our current products, we haven't really had
great writing or storylines or anything that we want to sink our teeth in two
besides two or three different storylines between two or three different companies. So that's
why we're not selling out pay per views the way it used to be.
But to go against the boxing, Boxing was the king of pay per views,
and that's I mean. Vince wanted always to touch that. He always
wanted to put his dirty little fingers on them. So to touch those numbers
is great, But what else has touched those numbers on pay per view?
Did you ever look at it like when pay per view was for movies?
No one ever looks at this. You look at a movie like say Braveheart,
but it would be on the pay per view channel and you'd have to
buy it. Do you know how many buys they got I guarantee Wrestlemanian ever
touched those numbers. Yeah, you're right, one thinks about the real,
the real statistics out there versus what you're really against. And that was a
little surprised. I hit you with an ipolgos for that, Rocky, But
it's all good. You know, any Mark, did you think about things
like that? Well, yeah, you make a great point on that,
and uh, and I truly think as far as the WrestleMania's go, you
know, of course, I was distinctly watching all the first and all the
way all the way through, so the first say five to seven of them,
it was a spectacle. It was an event. It was it was
you just wanted to see who they were going to bring out, what was
going to happen. Then it got to be, uh, kind of you
it wasn't quite the event. They brought everybody out. They kind of dumbed
it down and dulled it up, and like you said, the gaps came
in there, and I really think they were so new and so cutting edge
they didn't follow it up for a while. And when they did, that
was the attitude era, or you know, in that era, and now
it seems like they're ashamed of it. They love to talk about it,
But if they went back to something like that, I think there would be
a lot more interest, just you know my opinion. All right, well,
let's close out that part. But the pay per views, um so,
manias, I do want to cite two little facts here. Uh,
and let's see if either one of you can guess the answer. Highest WW
pay per view win percentage with at least one hundred pay per view matches.
Who do you think it is? Hm? Undertaker? Uh yeah or Big
Big Match Bob John Cina holds the record for the highest pay per view win
percentage in history as of today, His overall pay per view record sixty one
three and forty one, with sixty of being wins. All right, second
one, and then we're moving on most w W paper matches in history.
UM get to go see that after that? You can't? Yeah? Yeah,
you Randy order, so you, Mike, you had your you had
your your answers crossed. Undertaker holds the record for competing in the most pay
per view matches in debt history with uh of course with the Undefeated Street but
he has one hundred and sixty pay per view matches in his career, HM,
workhorse, Yeah, yeah, all right. So uh so moving on
here. Now, something that ties directly into pay per view buys and how
we watch the product is the demo, the audience, and the ratings.
So before the Peacock deal, WWW was in about one point five million homes.
Now that they've merged with Peacock, WW is considerably in about twenty million
homes because about twenty million homes half Peacocks. So without being said, you
know, more eyes can be on a product in that sense to help the
diffuse, the metrics that we followed throughout the last few decades of wresting television
history have changed. Reports dwell on TV ratings, which is a number with
one or two decimal places. Those numbers measure a program's total audience. Keep
it in mind that the demographic that is most desired is the eighteen to forty
nine year old bracket. This is the audience that is most desired due to
the fact that this demo are the working class and have money to spend.
And it's so important to the networks because this is the age group that most
ad cells are targeted for. Key demographics, very bad outlet time of day,
programming type. You know things like that. Now this is such and
an in debt profit to cover that, we just don't have the time.
So just let me give you a little scratch the surface with a little bit
of info, a little bit more. INMPLO TV ratings, what exactly does
that mean? All TV ratings are basically percentages, but how do we determine
this? We use a denominator which is what we which is what the rating
is actually a percentage of. And this also varies, so this means that
there are different kinds of ratings depending on the desominator being used. We have
a national rating, which is essentially a percentage of the national population as viewing.
There's the coverage rating that's the percentage of the population viewing who has access
to the program's channel, and then a household rating, and that's the percentage
of household viewing. Do you either one of you know any other way that
they manage here or how do they determine how many people are actually viewing the
product? Because we know that they can go off of DVR recordings, you
know how many people watched the events on delay? I would say maybe starting
your own YouTube channel for highlights and stuff like that, not giving away full
matches and seeing how many people look at that. Aside from that, and
of course you know daily motion, but I don't know you know much more
then however you would track it. Yeah, so this was something that I
had to study a few times to try to understand it. There's just a
lot of key components and how they figure out these factors in I think you
mentioned YouTube. That's how I went back to watch old Tama matches after I
found out that Kurt was heading over there. I just had to know,
how, I said, pare athlete every in general like Kurt, why he
would jump to any promotion not knowing at the time of his addiction or the
extended its injuries. But that brings me to something that you had brought up,
which was that T and A would advertise two hour specials that you could
watch for eight dollars a week, making it seem like the audience was getting
any pay per view every week. Tell me where all that was about.
Well back in the day when T and A first came out. A lot
of people don't know this, but when Bob Ryder got together with the Jared's,
Jerry and Jeff govershed your souldierry. They had the idea that we would
launch an alternative to WWE because everybody was fed up when WCW went under that
there was nothing else that you could watch, so it was Vince shoved down
your throat and you did not like it. We really didn't. It was
just it's my way of the highway. And so for eight dollars a week
you could get a pay per view one hour to two hour special sometimes of
TNA Wrestling when they first started, and the idea was, we're going to
bring wrestling back to what it used to be, which is what we all
wanted, was the old NWA, and it was sponsored by the NWA.
It was actually called NWATNA, So we got it, and we didn't get
it because they hired some goofballs like Russo, and I won't talk about that
too much, but what I will talk about is Bob Ryder and Jeremy Borash.
We're really good about responding to emails, and I actually spent some time
sending emails back and forth to them with ideas for shows, and it's kind
of funny how they kind of show up on the shows. But I've never
got any credit for it. It was good, it was great. But
I've never seen a company that can actually start on pay per view, which
is the goal is to get on pay per view, versus to have everything
reversed and have it like in an magnanimous way, in a way I can
really explain that is the first pay per view that ECW ever did. They
if everything didn't go off perfect, it would have been just a garbage show,
because they say that like five minutes after the show filmed that the generator
blew that was running the whole building because they had no money to had no
budget, whereas the Jarrets did and they had everything with TNA and so everything
blacked out. But that made them money, a little bit of money,
at least enough money to pay the talent half their paychecks or whatever. But
whereas TNA starts on pay per view, and nobody ever does that, and
I never thought of a company that could do something like that and start such
a revolutionary idea. Well, speaking of revolutionary ideas, something that would also
you know, into our lives is the network. And I remember at the
time of these announcements, I was just so excited that all my WW programming,
all past pay per views of documentaries are going to be in one spot
for me. So since WW launched in February of twenty fourteen, it's been
streaming WW content continuously for more than four to three thousand hours. This award
winning w network features again, like I said, every pay per view,
passing President, documentaries, and more. But the WW network wasn't the first
of a kind, was it? No. WWN or World Wrestling Network is
an American professional wrestling organization known for and branded after its video streaming service.
It was founded in two thousand and one as a DVD company before it later
evolved into an internet video on demand business. Fast forward to twenty fifteen,
WWN opened a training facility in Trinity, Florida. The same year, Evolve
began a partnership with WWE. Or Evolves talent were featured onwb dot com while
an ext talent like Emmy's and n chackab will keep part in Evolved events.
Then in twenty twenty, Evolved assets were sold to WWE. So you were
actually the one Michael then told me about WW and I had no idea about
it. So this is just a little bit info I found on it.
What else can you tell? Me about it. Oh well, okay,
Memphis smart, you're a smart guy. We've been our industry forever as far
as restaurants and nightclubs. Okay, so we're gonna put all of us in
the same kind of pool. When you see something that you can buy and
exploit and make it better, you would do it. Mark and I had
a boss who would do that kind of thing. And so the WWN was
founded by both Gabe Zapolski and Rob Einstein who started and well they didn't start,
but they pioneered tape trading starting working for ECW and then they got on
the I pay per view business when everybody thought that I pay per views in
the nineties and two thousands were secondary and garbage for the indies. Except they
started this little company called Ring of Honor based all that off all that money.
Who gave us seth Rollins, Sampunk, Daniel Brynson or Brian Danielson.
They gave us everybody who's everybody who's in the industry today. AJ Styles came
through their SMO Joe came through there. Everybody and their brother came through there.
Who became a star or passed through And so I look up what has
happened with it, And it was so funny that they had this internet streaming
service that was five different was four or five different companies. I think one
was a female wrestling company, but it was like Evolved, which was named
by Brian Danielson. People don't know this. Gabe Zapolsky said, we're going
to start a new company. What do you want to call it? And
Brian Danielson said to him, Evolve, because we're going to do something different.
Then you have like FIP, which is like what was there was their
version of an ECW and a few others, and so they were the first
person people to do this. And then ww Network launches at the same time,
like really close to the same time. They buy out Gabe Zapolsky.
They buy out all of his assets with WWN, and then they start the
network, which is eerily similar at the time as just a streaming service.
Would you call that infringement rights maybe or covering? That's a gray area.
It's fluid. There you go, it's fluid, Okay, I mean we
we we worked for a lot of the same people. We we knew a
lot of the same people. It's if you didn't like it, you bought
it, or if you liked it too much, you bought it. That's
it. That's it. If you liked it and they were successful, you
bought it and made it even better, and that's you're you're right, that's
that's exactly what they did. And they let the other person take the risk,
and then when they saw it was worth the reward, they took the
reward. And the thing that was interesting about WWN is that I think it
was per appearance contracts. So at like one point you had like EC three
and Drew McIntire as like tag team champions, when one work for Impact the
other one worked for I don't know whatever, and they were going, yeah,
it's like people who worked for like New Japan and some other indie promotion,
Rig of honor something like that, And so this all gets bought and
then like Gabe gets sucked into it all. It's very interesting how he was
brought into this fold and then with the Nick con era he was released and
all of a sudden, triple Achier he's brought back. But I'd bring that
guy back too, because he's created how many great wrestlers over the years.
It's really funny that there was that meld and people do not pay attention to
that being a very important turning point in life. And you think, well,
I question people to think what would have happened had Gabe Zapolski not went
to work for w W and sold his assets. Would we have that work?
Would we have had a lawsuit? Maybe I don't know, there never
was one, But do you think that maybe you can't say you were the
first wrestling streaming service. It's very very interesting right now we can just dive
deeper into that. But for the second time, we gotta gotta move on,
guys. I do want to touch on Prestomania being two nights twenty twenty,
was the first time they were headed to night WrestleMania for the first time
a resumenias for the first time a resume in is history. Restumentia thirty six
was taped and held across two nights. The tapings occurred on March twenty fifth
and twenty six, twenty twenty, and multiple locations, including the w W
Performance Center in Orlando, Florida. It would then air on tape delay on
April fourth and fifth. This was the only resumeting history with no fans in
attendance due to the pandemic area, and this was the first. It was
the first major even affected by the pandemic. This new format can be looked
at in both a good way and a bad way in the terms of money
and time for the company and for us as defens money wise, ww can
capitalize on selling package deals for two nights tickets, two night's worth of merchant
and two night's worth of concession cells, but that's kind of offset it.
And because w DEBE has to run out the stadium for two nights as well
as for time. I know, I enjoyed the two night format because it
gives us a four day restumening weekend. You got Friday night SmackDown with the
Hall of Fame. Saturday afternoon we got Stating Deliver and Next Tea and the
night one of WrestleMania. Then we have Night two of Mania, and then
we have Raw. So whichever city deb is in really really benefits big time
from weekend and all of this every day universe being in town. Now.
The time factor. The complaint was that resume MANI on one night was running
way too long between the time that you left your house or your hotel drove
to the stadium. Parts waiting in line get into the stadium, had to
pre show and then have been ten to twelve matches and one night. It's
close to an eight eight hour day. So by the time but we got
to the main event, the crowd was winded, tired, and or losing
interest. I can attest to this, haven't been an attendance to resume twenty
five, which had eleven matches. I can also confirm that not just for
me, but for most of the crowd. Energy it was gone for the
main event, especially after how much emotional energy was spent for the Taker HBK
match. So by the time we got to a Randy Orton versus Tripulates for
the main event, I could feel the crowd losing the interest. And that's
a shame because that storyline was done very, very well in my opinion,
and I was so excited to see the match. The only complaint I had
for it was that there was no blood, which I really truly felt that
riber recalled for I was expecting it. So now that we have a two
night Mania schedule dis favors you know the time factor for us and then Ivan
you know the four day MENI a weekend. How do you guys feel about
it. Well, I'm gonna take this from a business aspect because we've done
live events before where we have bands for two days or three day events,
and this is all about the company. The company can take all of these
the amount of video they have, they can cut this up, divide it
up in so many different ways. The crowd on an event like that is
not, in my opinion, is not that big of a deal in those
matches because they're doing so much editing and chopping up of this stuff. It's
it's the as far as being live, yes, I could definitely see it
being a let down on that, but as far as the moneymaking, they're
getting incentives from the city, from the state on taxes, They're getting breaks
on all these different things because they are bringing so much tax dollars in.
So it's a big win for the company, and I think it's it's probably
if you were to break it down, it is the biggest thing they do,
of course, but that's just you know, looking at it from a
business side only. Okay, so this is where I'm gonna interject. First
of all, Rustling, it was getting to be too big of a one
day event for all of us it was boring us to tears, and at
one point the booking was so bad that we just didn't care about it.
So breaking up into two days is good, it's relieving. However, you
always feel which day I'm ne hatch if if you work like myself in my
industry, you don't always have like congruent days off, so you know,
always get to see everything that you want to see. However, on the
flip side, it's what New Japan has been doing for years, and so
it was it was basically, Okay, what's New Japan doing. It's working
for them. So you know, New Japan had like this hot young group
called Bullet Club kind of come up and all of a sudden, like they
actually started a whole other wrestling companies. So maybe we should rip off what's
going on over there for a little bit, because it's easier to digest,
easier to make for the family, make for your time. You can hear
about one day, you can watch the other day, or maybe watch both
days. Like I said, I can't do four days of wrestling in a
row. I'm old. I can't, and and I worked too way too
much. However, some people can. Some people can absolutely digest it and
take it and have it as their whole thing. But getting back to it,
what really came down is it was it was an idea that obviously they
got from New Japan, which was a good idea. Now it would be
better if you took out the celebrities and the pageantry and all the garbage,
made it more about the wrestling and more about what really happened to build These
storylines are supposed to be the biggest things in the world, so there's ups
and downs to both. That's where I am with that. Well, I
think the celebrity involvement is kind can play into part of what pushes those pay
per view buyers back in the day two over the million mark. Now with
the streaming world that we live in, we have what what ww's calling a
premium live event. Now, I do know how some of our counterparts feel
to that. So just a little fact here. January one, twenty two,
Day One was the w's first event to be branded as a Premium Live
Event pl E is a term the company introduced to refer to their events airing
on pay per view and ww's live streaming platforms. With the boom of streaming
and with less focus on given to traditional pay perview channels and due to the
American version of the WB network merged, merging under Peacock and with the W
network still available in in gannal markets in twenty twenty two of the company,
that's when they began, or best when they began and why they started using
premium live event. I don't think I'm ever gonna get used to the same
plea or premium live event. Pay per views just sounds we was off the
tongue better. What do you guys feel about the ple moniker here? I've
had, Yeah, I've had to view this. Yeah, and when I've
described these on the Weekly Show and it's, uh, it's a joke.
I hate it, absolutely hate it. But I don't like change. And
maybe it's just I'm being an old guy and I'm not conforming. But it'll
always be pay per views. I'm kind of the same way, man.
I'm not that much younger than Mark Man. Honestly, you know, I
hated seeing at w W well A WrestleMania too, Mike Rotundo and and Barry
Wyndham defending the you know, WWE WWF at that time tag Team Championships.
Then years later, Mike Rotundo comes back and he's known as I RS don't
rename things. Don't do that to me. And it really defecates on anybody
who buys a ticket to any house show or any other show, because you're
saying it's a sub premium show. That's not fair. And that's part of
why the reason why I don't like the B level you know name for those
shows, because like I said, any pay per view is supposed to be
a big deal. You're supposed to have the best stor lives, the best
matches, title matches. So to your point about its being subpremium, if
you're at NWW, you are premium just playing simple, your premium athlete.
You're a premium talian U. With the different tiers of NXT, your on
SmackDown, you can, you're featured on a premium channel. So that's just
where I stand on it. It's it's it's it just it. It definitely
defecates on the product to say that you're on any other show besides a premium
live event. And so what are you gonna say, Yeah, I'm gonna
see a subpremium live event to your friends. They're gonna look at you like
you grew through the dironeball and that's silly. There's so many different terms you
could have used. Why change the term? It makes no sense, like
the medical facility versus hospital. There's so many things that do not make sense.
But but the fact is, like I don't care about the verbiage there.
You know, I'm gonna tell you honestly, I've never been to a
pay per view. I've never actually witnessed one in my life. I had
the opportunity to go to an impact one a few months ago, and Matt
and I talked about it. At was like, you know, if you
do it, you can cover it for the show. But I knew nothing
about what was going on in the product time, so it wasn't fair.
So I can tell you though about a friend of mine who passed away a
long time ago. He was he knew more about wrestling than me. Was
his name was Scott Blair, And he told me about how he won tickets
to a Survivor series in Cleveland, got his nineties, and he told me
how redneck it was, and he was he was sitting up there and this,
I mean, this guy was a red like he makes Mark and I
look pretty not basic, but he could put us in our places and definitely
correct us on stuff. So he was telling me how he's sitting in the
stands and Savio Vega is like putting gold dust in an armbar and someone screams,
break it for real, Savio do it for me. I don't like
that, and uses an explicative that I can't use on the show for a
gay slur. Then he talks about how, like another guy just had a
kid next to him screaming at invader cheater and cheater for like three and four
probably he said it went on for four minutes or five minutes, but it
felt like an eternity. And so I know, like some of those are
like really difficult to deal with when you do it and see it live,
And kind of one of the reasons I never have gone to one live because
if I'm not going to do it, I'm well, if I'm going to
do it, I'm not gonna sit I have to sit ringside, or I'm
not going to do it as one I'm trying to say, and I am
not going to spend a thousand dollars a ticket. And that's another thing we
should probably dust off and talk about right now. I mean, what look
at the ticket prices these days. They are absolutely insane and just for raws
and smackdowns, But those aren't premium live fence, So why would you want
to spend that much money for a sub premium life of that? Mark?
Would you spend to go to the Memphis calls him to see a banger that
would sell a place? Well, um, I would cut a yard and
take two coke bottles and exchange them and pay my two dollars and two twenty
five to get in. You paid a nickel for the program, and you
bought a fifteen cent coke and uh and if you were really cool and they
were really busy and you helped them empty, some trash guy coffee would let
you eat all the popcorn and about four extra hot dogs. So that's that's
that's my my upbringing. So you could go to a show for less than
what it had costs today's even park. Oh absolutely, yeah, yeah yeah
inside. Now here's here's the thing. When we talk about like pay per
view, premium live events and everything, we got to bring it back to
Evil caneval So, Mark, do you know why I bring his name up?
The King of closed circuit TV? Is evil Knevil And do you remember
what he was going to do pay per view? If you're referring to the
Snake River Canyon, that that is the biggest event that I can remember,
if that's what you're referring to. And it was a failed attempt, right,
absolutely failed if you look at it. And as far as him jumping,
but as far as sales and everything else, no, not a failed
event. So nobody bought anything after that. Well that's that's that's true,
that's true. But it was freaking evil caneval In. You had to see
it. Could he do it? He's broken every bone in his body?
Could he do it? And who was trying to fund all that? Oh?
Man, well now you're getting to you're gonna get me on that one
I had that. I had to change studios, as you remember, and
my notes are in the other room. Vince is Vince wanted to do nothing
more than to start pay per view as we know it as events, So
Vince his idea. When it failed with that and seeing the money loss and
potentials, he bought out his dad's company. And his dad said doing he
said, don't take it national, You're gonna step on other people's toes.
And he only had the idea of grandeur of pay per view because of the
revenue st and you would get out of it. We have pay per view
today because of Vince, and we have premium live events because he wants to
change the world. And gross mustache and thank you somebody else, but go
ahead. I was just wondered when the mustache was gonna. Okay, were
it's ugly face, mister mustachio. But I mean, let's let's let's break
it down, guys. The realism is if you read sex, Lives and
headlocks or death the territories, Vince wanted to be in the pay per view
business. He never wanted to be in the wrestling business. It's failed ventures
that brought him to where he was. And that's why Evil Knevil's name is
really important. You base it off of one venture and then you can't make
another venture. Wow. Well that seems like another in depth topic for another
day, but we have to recap and sign fellas today. We started with
the title of pay per view to p E. We covered the early days
of wrestling before wrestling was on TV. We covered the closed circuit days,
the tape trading days, the new generation steroid era, the B level pay
per views. We covered the network and streaming, the w w N,
which was the first online streaming company. We covered fifty year history here,
Fellas. UM. I know we had to condense it due to the time.
UM, and there's just so much we could just go in depth about.
UM. I think we covered a lot of the media potatoes of it.
UM. So let's let's sign off, Fellas. I know, Mark,
you're gonna be on tonight doing your NXT review. It is Tuesday.
You'll be doing that. UM. Tell our listeners where they can find you
on social media going forward. Oh, you can find me on Twitter at
Memphis. Mark for you on Twitter, and of course every Tuesday night on
the next review and generally other than that, I'm hiding from everybody for a
little while. Rock cast I'm just gonna hide for a little while. Rocky,
I've been there. What about you, Mike, as we all know
on Twitter, Captain one four four four or one one four four captain,
it's four captain. You know you can find me. You want to talk
wrestling, you want to do anything wrestling related, just reach out to me.
Man. This show isn't for us as much as it is for you
guys, because if you're getting fed up with Den's being back ter mustachio,
which I've gotten a lot of credit from that one, I want to make
more shows for you folks. So let's talk about the things that no one's
talking about. We have beautiful shows like this today was great. Yes,
thank you both for coming on giving your input. I can be reached at
Rockies Club zero zero seven on Twitter. That's my dedicated resting page where everything
resting. Anybody you want to hit me up between an inbox we can talk
to something further. Mike, Well quick, do we have a topic or
we have a list of topics that where we're considering for the next show.
Well, you know, I really liked the idea of Calgary Stampeda. Somebody
has sent me some requests about, hey, why don't you cover all the
greats that he came out of the heart territory from up north. So I
really like that. But it's you know, you and I have to decide
together. This is our show, it's not just mine, and so that's
that's one that's out there. I've also heard best brawlers ever because people liked
when I did my show, and I talked about Bruiser Brody, and I've
recently become a fan of Bruiser Brody. People want to actually hear more about
like some of the best brawlers. They always say like, oh shame,
this is great, And I'm like, you don't know what great is.
Don't You've never seen buzz Sawyer, You've never seen Brutes Brody. And so
some people are like asking fans listeners, I don't know what to I don't
want to call you seedlings because Rockies here, Mark's here, It's it's not
just my fan, but when you reach me, I want to hear your
voice. So that's that's another good one. I thinking about maybe talking to
a couple other people, some wrestlers, some retired wrestlers, but it's it's
it's all a work in progress as far as what you and I can condra
a little bit of wrestle magic with. I also want to tell people a
song in a movie. Yes, go ahead, okay, so everybody.
The song I'm going to give you is called No Fair Fights by the band
Prick, and the movie I'm gonna give You for Everybody is Brotherhood of Wolf.
It is a Spanish movie. It's a lot of fun to watch.
It's very long, and it's not Spanish, it's a French movie, excuse
me, but it's a fun movie, has a little something for everybody.
I wouldn't have the kids in the room because there's a little bit of nudity
in it. But it's just a great movie. And you know you want
to kill a couple of hours and you have nothing to do at the end
of the night. Sure you have to read the subtitles, but you'll love
the movie, all right, Mark, you got something for us, man,
I'm just gonna in this with real, simple and sweet man. Be
nice to everybody because you don't know what they're going through. And if you
can rescue, there's animals out there that need some help. And always spay
your New Year, all right. And for myself, I don't have any
new shows to put out there right now. The last few movies I saw
was Chapter four of John Wick, so if you've seen those, definitely check
it out. It is a lengthy movies, almost going three hours, but
it's very good. And for all the families out there, if you haven't
already, get out there and see the do Mario Brothers movie. I Took
My Kid last Week is very good. This movie is definitely going to be
a trilogy, maybe even more. And a little a little saying for people
out there. Love being the target of enemy. It means you're winning.
But if you're living on the slope where you slip, where you slope,
stop doing rain dances. And one last thing, and I quote, hard
work pays off, dreams come true, Bad times don't last, but by
guys do Yeah. I love this show. All right, fellas, I
guess that's gonna close it out and we'll talk to everybody next time. All
right, it's right bye, guys. Thanks for listening to the w w
E Podcast. Don't forget to subscribe on your favorite podcast app so you don't
miss a show, or head to WWE podcast dot com and for all of
these shows ad free head over to Patreon dot com SLASHWWE podcast. Until then,
we'll see you next time.