From 1985-1990, or 1986-1989, Hulk Hogan almost never said or

>>1030790
>being American
>not patriotic

Also, to clarify, the European smarks are the precedent for the smarks the day after WrestleMania and at some PPVs.

>>1030790
I wasn't watching WWF at the time, but I think Hulk's patriotic turn was due to the Gulf War.

>European smark crowds
Unlikely in the early 90s. Giving Ultra-American faces a heel response isn't smarky, it's a natural mark response.

>Was the early 90s the beginning of the end?
No. It was a down-turn in the business. WCW was doing very poorly, Vince was struggling himself, and Jim Cornette thought it was a fine time to set up in competition. Things picked up again in the mid-90s either because of or to the benefit of Bischoff and Heyman. Whatever the reason, millions of wrestling fans were made in that decade. The problem really arose in the 2000s. Very few new American fans have been won to wrestling since the closure of ECW & WCW - a point eloquently made by the average year of birth of WWE's domestic audience staying pretty stagnant since 2000. (The average American E fan is now in the mid-forties.)

But that may not be a devastating blow. WWE is doing good business internationally and so long as they can keep expanding their market they aren't going to go down. (As a point of interest, TNA is in a comparable position given their size. Their domestic market is a fairly small pool of people about the same age as the E fans - presumably ex-WCW fans? - but they're getting over in the UK.)

>>1030983
>Very few new American fans have been won to wrestling since the closure of ECW & WCW - a point eloquently made by the average year of birth of WWE's domestic audience staying pretty stagnant since 2000.

It's almost like the modern WWE product is totally unappealing or something.

>>1030987
If the product was totally unappealing, they'd lose their old base and wouldn't win new fans overseas. You may not like it, I don't like it enough to do more than check in every year or two, but it has an appeal to a non-trivial number of people.

If the question is why they're not expanding in North America, I think it's actually the volume of product more than anything else. When you dump 23 hours of "A-show" material on the market a month, plus B-shows plus NXT, most people won't casually watch enough to become hardcore followers. For a casual wrestling fan, something like Lucha Underground is much easier to swallow. That kind of explanation also makes sense of why the E is doing good business overseas. Their new markets are only getting RAW and the subset of the population that will pick up a thing and rabidly follow it hasn't already been completely exposed to the brand.

>>1031001
>If the product was totally unappealing, they'd lose their old base and wouldn't win new fans overseas

But they HAVE been losing their old base, ratings have been in constant decline since Fall of 2001.

>>1030790

If patriotism is cheap heat then Stone Cold is a whore. Also, Hogan's heat wasn't all red white and blue, he had shirt ripping Hulkamania brother, great feuds, that boot to the head and those big leg drops, hulking up, etc. Of course Vince is going to do anything to keep the WWF going and his creative is deliberate.

I have no idea how you got 1990's WWF as precedent for 2016 WWE. The demographics have changed throughout the years and I don't think they had fruity pebbles in mind while they were going through the attitude era.

WWE has been constantly growing so I don't know what you mean by beginning of the end.

Vince's super football thing was hilarious though.

>>1031034
WWE has an audience of 1 who, coincidentally, is also writing the show as if it's 19, 19, 1985

>>1031023
>they have been losing their old base
When you still have millions of viewers every week, your product is not totally unappealing. As for the decline in viewers, I think most of it is just killing the casual audience (which WWE did themselves).

There's also a slow bleed out to internet viewing, which Nielsen doesn't track. I couldn't guess how many people are watching pirate streams - it's probably bigger in the international markets where this means getting to see the product live rather than waiting to see it on TV. They've also got a million+ subscribers to the Network, some of whom will be watching RAW at their convenience.

None of that says they're amazing, just that they're doing good business still. I mean, contrary to the doom and gloom message that OP began with, WWE's financials for last year were their best ever - hardly the sort of thing you get from a company in decline, let alone one on its deathbed.

(As a last point, they are playing a risky game going against the live audiences. Crowd reaction has always been a big part of wrestling, and I think it still makes a big difference to the casual viewer. Someone who watches RAW for the first time and hears the crowd totally at odds with the announcers is not going to be impressed.)

>>1031034
>WWE has been constantly growing


They've bled out over a quarter of their regular viewers in the past 2 years.

>>1030790
It was a gulf war cash-in, nothing more. You're overthinking it.

>>1031050
>WWE's financials for last year were their best ever

I, too, take whatever a company says about itself when doing marketing + publicity at face value.

> millions

In case you haven't been keeping up, millions of WWE's viewers are deeply, deeply stupid. Just look at their social media pages if you don't believe me.

>>1031034
Stone Cold was never a "patriotic" gimmick. You're posting outright revisionism.

>I have no idea how you got 1990's WWF as precedent for 2016 WWE. The demographics have changed throughout the years and I don't think they had fruity pebbles in mind while they were going through the attitude era.

WWF 1991-1995 was like a live-action cartoon.

>WWE has been constantly growing

They've done nothing but decline since 2001. Ratings have never been lower than they are now.

>>1031050
>WWE's financials for last year were their best ever

This is made up out of thin air.

> ib "Ratings don't matter"

Ticket sales are way down, too.

Apparently RAW hasn't even sold out an arena once this year.

>>1031051

And their stock has increased 50%. The shows are just there to whip up sales for toys and merch.

Also, does that loss account for people switching over to the WWE network?

>>1031055

I never said Stone Cold had a patriotic gimmick. I'm just saying chugging beers and give me a hell yeah is a lot cheaper than that.

>>1031056
It's not. See http://finance.yahoo.com/news/wwe-reports-strong-fourth-quarter-133000601.html

>"Revenue increased 21% to $658.8 million, the highest in the Company’s history, including record levels of revenue from WWE’s Network, Television, Live event, Venue Merchandise, and WWE Shop businesses."

>>1031061
>The shows are just there to whip up sales for toys and merch.
WWE earns more than twice as much from selling TV rights as it does from all of its consumer products. The Network spins them almost as much as that again. They're still very much led by their media wing, though other segments are important to their bottom line.

>>1031061
Stocks? Stocks? You're gonna fuckin' give me STOCKS as proof of success?

Ever heard of Enron? Or Lehman Brothers?

>Also, does that loss account for people switching over to the WWE network?

You mean their Network that doesn't get RAW uploaded onto it until a month later?

>>1031074
> revenue

That's like bragging about your paycheck before you do tax.

>>1031084

You're accusing WWE of accounting fraud?

They might upload slow but people still subscribe which is all that matters.

>>1031094
I'm accusing a publicity puff piece of being ingenuine which it very clearly fucking is.

Ticket sales have been down for a long time now, with live events headlined by Reigns drawing well below even Orton vs. Sheamus house show loop.

ORTON
VERSUS
SHEAMUS

>>1031084
The article goes on to show a profit of $68.7 million for the year. I'm not sure if that's their best year ever, but it's good by their standards. In 2010 they reported 2007 as their best year to date with a profit of roughly $60 million, so at worst 2015 is the E's fourth most profitable year ever after 2011, 2012, and 2013. (2014 was a loss year.)

>>1031096
You're accusing them of accounting fraud. The article you got linked to details WWE's financial reporting. It's not a publicity piece and they have legal responsibilities to present their financial situation honestly and accurately.

At this stage, I do wonder if you're false-flagging. One would think that a smark who really disliked WWE would bother to read dirt on them in order to sling it accurately. I mean, the whole reason I know about their financial position is so that I can rubbish the fanboys who declare that TV doesn't really matter to Vince anymore because of all that sweet merchandise money.

>>1031102
>>1031080

My statement about the shows and merch was a figure of speech which involved an exaggeration of ideas for the sake of emphasis.

>>1031102
>It's not a publicity piece and they have legal responsibilities to present their financial situation honestly and accurately.

Oh yeah, like they did with their subscriber numbers after the Royal Fumble 2.0: Electric BOOOO-galoo last year.

Git wurkd, mark.

>>1031106
You seem like a reasonable person and that's a reasonable thing to do. To be honest, I wouldn't think any worse of you if you'd just said that other people had said that on the internet and you'd believed them. If that's never happened to you, you're a better person than I am!

>>1031112
Here's your .5 replies.

(this is the OP)

>>1030983
I may have forgotten that was contemporaneous with the Gulf War for a moment when I thought of this.

>Unlikely in the early 90s. Giving Ultra-American faces a heel response isn't smarky, it's a natural mark response.

It wasn't just Hogan that was booed (which was probably mostly in America anyway), but Savage was booed against Warrior in Britain during a moment when it was suggested he was the good guy - a clear case of the crowd 'choosing' the hero as they do now. Besides the booing and cheering, I was thinking of how they would ocassionally make noises that are unrelated to what's going on.

The booing of Hogan and censorship of it is reminiscent of Cena today, and there are several other slight similarities between then and now that I can think of. By "the beginning of the end" I mostly meant quality-wise.

>>1031034
I meant the pre-Attitude Era part.

File: 027_SHOW_2102016cm-3569039581.jpg (1MB, 1600x1600px) Image search: [Google]

1MB, 1600x1600px

>>1031145
>(this is the OP)

>>1031145
Britbongs being Warrior marks isn't smarky, get over yourself

>>1031150
>>1031145
also look at the segment at WM5 where Sean Mooney is in the audience, there's a sizable portion of Savage fans vs prime Hogan

Sid was cheered and Hogan booed at the 92 Rumble

Midnight Express got cheered over the Dynamic Dudes, during a heel turn

Flair got cheers over Steamboat

etc, etc

>>1031145

Everybody gets booed and cheered and the crowd makes unrelated noise, even in the 50s and 60s.

Obviously they will muffle sounds that hurt the presentation in post production, that should be expected.

I think overall the quality of program was higher in the attitude era than classic wrestling, except for Cactus Jack and Terry Funk cutting monster vignettes and the flesh and blood Japanese wrestling, but that's my opinion.

Pre-attitude I don't think they had plans past booking the next couple of events. They were basically flying by the seat of their pants rather than decades in advance calculated genius planning.

>>1031156
>Pre-attitude I don't think they had plans past booking the next couple of events.
If you mean early 90s, maybe. It wasn't a good time for the industry and a lot of people were kinda flailing around. But Vince definitely has a pattern of looking for a long-term "face of the company" at least as early as Warrior's big push. (I think it goes earlier, to making Hogan the new Bruno, but I'm not 100% on that.)

>>1031156

I was referring to what I thought was the suggestion of decades of planning of how the company itself would be ran, but yeah.

I think the big stars was pretty modular depending on who is getting the most heat until the Wrestlemanias where Hogan was able to cement his position as top card/earner by gaining favor with Vince. I wasn't backstage, but I believe in the years to come the crowd reaction mattered a bit less and the wins and pushes started to get political, with "who do we owe a push" rather than "who is hotter" although obviously they wouldn't push someone who couldn't get over.

>>1031201
>but I believe in the years to come the crowd reaction mattered a bit less and the wins and pushes started to get political, with "who do we owe a push"

Well you're half-right: it became a case of "who does Vince want to push"

>>1031210

Some wrestlers had Vince's ear.

Hulk vs. HBK Summerslam 2005?

Everyone knows backstage politics has been a part of the game (HHH says "hi"), obviously Vince is the commander, but wrestlers can get a lot of influence in the script.

>>1031280
> in the script

Hi babbysmark.

Shit up

How did hogan die

>>1043680
He called his daughter boyfriend a. Nigger

>>1030983
>I wasn't watching WWF at the time, but I think Hulk's patriotic turn was due to the Gulf War.
Or was the Gulf War a fiction created by Vince to get the Hulkster's new gimmick over since people were starting to get sick of him?

Illuminati is real, also Half Life 3 confirmed.