the rumble order as my betting pool/poker friends saw it

we had 3 pools. Winner, fastest elim and most elims.

Normally, there are lots of cell phone videos of PPVs after they go off of the air. Batista allegedly went nuts on the crowd and I can't find a damn video. Anyone else notice this?

Vince in cahoots with the NSA

Eh, I don't really expect that either. Mid-90s Vince was in the middle of a war with WCW, and so he took a gamble by listening to the crowd and riding the wave of popularity resulting in SCSA becoming a megastar. Current Vince has won that war, has no competition, and therefore has no reason to gamble. Why "risk" his biggest show of the year (where the vast majority of his yearly profits come from) with an unknown quantity at the main event level when he can just continue banking on Cena + big names from the past? The last time he tried giving the main event to a new guy, the Miz/Cena WM was rather poor. The Rock ones the past two years have been financial successes.

My only hope is that when the profits shift from the current model of the vast majority coming from one show to an evenly distributed one (via the network), there will be more incentive to take a "risk". Even then though, idk.


I'm pretty, pretty down.

Actually, that WM performed perfectly OK in the buyrate category. This was due in large part to The Rock's involvement, but still.

The WM buyrate that actually freaked WWE out and caused them to resort to the re-hashed superstar model was WM XXVI, starring...you guessed it, John Cena v. Batista for the WWE title.

I stand corrected

i think 'shafting' bryan in the rr worked great. i've hardly paid attention to wrestling for years, but i saw the bbc article and now here i am watching raw at 2 in the morning b/c i'm interested in the bryan situation.

30 years ago they could create great theatre by having a heel hit a face in the nads while the ref's back was turned because no one knew any better. 15 years ago they created it by having vince 'fire' foley, corportation vs the main attractions etc, few people knew what was really going on. people were so damn mad that stone cold/the rock were being cheated out of their rightful title.

and now they're doing it with more subtlety, no one knows whether it's real or genuine, and when he triumphs over all this adversity it'll be the most explosive wresting moment for decades.

genius!

Well, there's a couple of things from that PPV that should have created a higher buyrate. One of those things was that big match between HBK vs Taker (Career vs Streak) and it was well done in terms of the build-up.

A thing that did affect the buyrate was that there was a UFC PPV, the day before. I know the WWE has said that the UFC is not competition. However, there are people that may be fans of both that would most likely pick UFC over WWE since they feel that they would get better entertainment of the two.

didn't get to watch this. can't really complain from what i've read

Would love to see one of the crowds pick up the DBry pre WWE chant of "You're gonna get your f'ing head kicked in". That's sure to get noticed.

Stick to WAFC!

Missing out imo....

When it was good, it was very good.

When it was bad, it was either unintentionally hilarious (cena did an rko), or a spectacle just due to the red hot crowd ****ting on it (rey at #30)