Thanks again for clicking on the link and/or brightly colored picture, and welcome to “The Pay Windah”, where we take a look at ghosts of wrestling past…good, bad or otherwise.
Normally when I talk to people about the “good old days” of wrestling, I’m often times greeted with eye rolls or sarcastic comments. They say I’m behind the times, or my entertainment tastes haven’t caught up to the real world and I’m stuck living in the past in my own little bubble. But I usually just put on my headphones, turn my Walkman all the way up and listen to some Dire Straits as I walk away.
If you don’t like “Money for Nothing”, I don’t think we can be friends.
But in all seriousness, I realize that with today’s technology, and with instant access to all of the world’s info with just the drag of your finger, we can never really go back to the golden years or territory wrestling.
The days where you could disappear from one territory to be the fresh new face in another are long gone. The internet and hours of television programming has made absolutely sure of that. But just because we don’t have a wealth of smaller wrestling organizations scattered strategically across the country doesn’t mean we can forget the same basic principle that made those territories so successful in the first place.
Ring rats. LOTS of ring rats.
One of the major gripes over the past few years towards the WWE is their lack of new stars. Now, while I’ll definitely give them credit for building new stars over the last couple of years, building the next generation of superstar hasn’t really been their strong suit over the past decade.
While they’ve done a tremendous job with Roman Reigns and Bray Wyatt, but it seems that those two guys are exceptions to the rule. Whether it’s pushing guys the fans don’t care about, or the constant stop-start pushes that have plagued the likes of Dolph Ziggler or Damien Sandow, it’s just not something they’ve been good at.
Like how to properly emote.
Part of the issue is that, as Parks and Recreation’s Jean-Ralipho Saperstein would say, they are “Fluuuuush with Caaaaa-aaaash!” The McMahons are swimming in green right now, more than ever. With TV licensing deals, merchandising, and now the WWE Network, Vince and Co are raking the duckets in hand over fist. At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter if he only sells 50% of tickets to his show, he’s still turning a profit.
…not quite what I meant.
I think it goes without saying that, 30 years ago, an on-demand wrestling network didn’t exist, and having your own line of T-shirts was something reserved for only the highest of main-event players. And the only TV most of these guys had was an hour-long shot on the weekends on a regional rabbit-ears channel.
So how did the promoters make money? Ticket sales. You want to make money? Well then mister, you better try to fill the house! And to do that, you need to create some stars.
If a promoter sees potential in one of his workers, he’ll start him out small, having him pick up some squash victories over a couple of jobbers, or maybe even a few curtain jerkers. After he’s got a nice little run going, he’ll really give him a test, maybe giving him a minor feud to play around with. And if it looks like the fans are buying what he’s selling, he’ll keep moving him up the ladder. And maybe, just maybe, if things work out for the best, he’ll be headlining shows and drawing money.
That is, so long as you keep HHH away from him.
Sometimes, the guy may not get the crowd reaction the promoter wants. Instead of shrugging his shoulders and saying “oh well” and tossing the worker back down to Jobber Hell, he works to see how he can fix it.
Does he need more help with his promos? Or is his wrestling style not meshing with the workers I’m putting him in the ring with? These guys didn’t have the luxury of time that Vince McMahon has today. If a push failed, it cost them serious money. And if you lose money for too long, you’re out of business.
You can probably add TNA’s logo to that picture soon.
I think it goes without saying that a promoter didn’t take his rising star and say “Well, you didn’t get as much heat as we expected during your match, so you’re going to do jobs to JoJo the Circus Boy for the next four weeks”. They were given every opportunity to get the guy over. Now sometimes, the push just doesn’t work, and at some point a promoter just has to throw up his hands, admit his mistake and move on. But at least the worker was given a fighting chance to prove his worth.
Unless he’s Paul Roma, who is completely worthless.
With no real competition on the horizon and the overwhelming popularity of the WWE Network, it’s likely that we won’t see an end to the stop-start pushes that we’ve wearily been accustomed to anytime soon. Maybe someday TNA can rise up and co-AAHAHAHHAHAHAAA! Oh…oh man! I almost made it through that sentence with a straight face! Oh well!
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