411 Fact or Fiction 5.31.07: The Draft, Saturday Night’s Main Event, Joe as Champion and More!

Welcome back to another week of 411 Fact or Fiction: Wrestling Edition! This week, two 411 Wrestling standouts and enemies collide as Truth B. Told’s Bayani Domingo faces off with 411 veteran Steve Cook!

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Let’s get to it!

1. Giving away John Cena vs. The Great Khali the night before they face on PPV is a bad business move.

Bayani Domingo: FICTION. It used to be that building a great feud meant keeping the two participants away from each other as much as possible. One reason was to keep the fans hungry for the big payoff matches and the other was just in case the matches were so bad on free TV that the fans wouldn’t be hip to it by the time the PPV came around. By the time that 3 Night Stand comes around we will have seen Cena and Khali physically interact about 5 or 6 times by now, way too much considering this is only their 2nd PPV hooking up. So far the reviews for their first match have been somewhere between “passable” and “not that bad”, my hope for their second encounter can’t be much better than the first, even considering it’s a hardcore match. While this logic points to a “fact”, the biggest consideration is that no one is buying 3NS for Cena/Khali. I highly doubt seeing these two face each other on SNME is going to hurt the buyrate because Cena fans will watch the PPV no matter what to see Hulk Cena win. Cena haters aren’t going to watch anyways because everyone knows Khali won’t get to wear the title no matter what. Simply put, although logical booking says this is a bad move for the “e”, the reason it’s a FICTION is that this isn’t going to hurt the buyrate and in the end, THAT is what makes a business move good or bad in the short term, at least in Vinny Mac’s eyes.

Steve Cook: FACT. I say this mostly because I read the spoilers and the match sounds like it sucked a donkey dick. If something sucks the first time, and it’s free, why would you want to pay for it the second time? Also, I have to disagree with Bayani’s contention that nobody’s buying the show to see Cena vs. Khali…what the hell else on that card are people paying to see? Lashley vs. Vince? This is something that WWE’s been doing a lot lately…especially on the ECW & Smackdown shows, they’ll trot out their main event on the TV show right before it goes on PPV, and I don’t think it does a damn thing to help the buyrate. If you can see something on free television, why would you pay to see the same match on pay per view? This has never made any sense to me, and probably never will because I’m a cheap S.O.B.

Score: 0 for 1

2. Christian Cage signing a new deal (2-3 years) with TNA shows that that he has faith in the company.

Bayani Domingo: FACT. Well he has at least faith that TNA will be around for 2 or 3 more years. It’s a great business move for both sides. TNA needs Christian for the next few years as a top heel and Christian could use the credibility of being a top heel to either renegotiate a good deal once his new contract is up or depending on if he wants to jump back to the “e”. Right now TNA is very, very slowly making all the right moves towards becoming a real National Company from doing more House Shows, to holding more PPV’s outside of Orlando, and eventually getting that second hour of TV. TNA needs Christian as much as he needs them because Christian has proven he can be one of the proven main event players for them and TNA is the best option for Christian at this point in his career. Sure the money isn’t as good as it might have been in the “e”, but the working schedule is good, and not having to job to Snitsky’s boot and Orton’s concussions has it’s advantages. Christian is no idiot, so one would think that if he saw any major cracks in the foundation of TNA he wouldn’t have signed up a “long term” contract so quickly.

Steve Cook: FACT. Would you sign a new deal with a company that you thought wouldn’t be able to pay you throughout the duration of the deal? Not unless you’re the worst businessman of all time, and I don’t think Christian Cage is a very poor businessman. I don’t know how his TNA deal compares to his WWE deal, but I do know that he gets to spend more time at home, not as much time working, and he wins a hell of a lot more than he ever did in WWE. The numbers don’t lie…in WWE, Christian was an under appreciated jobber that was always on the road and had no chance of being a main event star. In TNA, Christian is the top heel and always in the thick of the World title picture, and still hasn’t actually been pinned or submitted. Yeah, that’s a pretty markish way of looking at it, but it’s that simple sometimes. I’ll be the first to say that I don’t like a lot of what TNA’s been doing with their television and booking, but they are doing a lot to further themselves as a company. Should they manage to get to the next level, Christian’s in a great position to be one of the top guys that will get the credit for taking them to that next level. Sometimes it’s better to help build something great than it is to just maintain it.

Score: 1 for 2

3. With the amount of “Wrestling Product” on TV these days, Saturday Night’s Main Event isn’t as valuable a show as it once was.

Bayani Domingo: FACT. The ratings don’t lie. I believe SNME has pretty much sunken to the point where this might be either the last or second to last SNME we’ll ever see. Right now we have wrestling on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, and usually Sundays for PPVs. Saturday is almost universally a “date night” for most people (yes, even some wrestling geeks) so staying home to watch Khali vs. Cena just isn’t much of a draw, especially since we can see it again the next night. I think that televised wrestling isn’t the only culprit here as recently the Indy scene has hit a renaissance and a lot of fans are going out to watch live wrestling more and more on weekends, most of those shows happen on…yes, a Saturday. For my money WWE and TNA will always rule the weekdays, but when it comes to the weekend I’d rather watch even ‘mediocre’ Indy wrestling than a 4th straight day of Lashley vs. Vince any day of the week. Sorry Vince, but sometimes, “less is more”.

Steve Cook: FACT. What the hell’s a date night? Any who, Placido pretty much hits it right on the money, though I’m not sure Indy wrestling’s doing as much to hurt SNME ratings as the fact that WWE just isn’t that popular in the mainstream right now. John Cena’s a nice star, but he isn’t on Hulk Hogan’s level as far as being able to draw millions and millions of people with his name alone. Every business student knows about the laws of supply and demand…the fact is that the demand isn’t there for the supply of wrestling that WWE puts out on a weekly basis, and putting another show out there late on a Saturday night isn’t going to change that. Not to mention the fact that SNME can never be as important as it was back in the late 80s because cable television is viewed by a much greater percentage of the population now than it was back when Hulk was taking on Andre for the WWF title in 1988. I’m not saying there isn’t a demand for WWE’s brand of entertainment…but you’d have to be a fool to say that there’s the same amount of demand that there was during the Hulkamania era or the Attitude era. Another thing to take into account is that NBC isn’t the network it once was. Hell, it’s not even at Fox’s level anymore! Saturday Night’s Main Event isn’t what it used to be…but neither is Saturday Night Live, so WWE shouldn’t feel too bad.

Score: 2 for 3

—SWITCH~!—

4. Even though he doesn’t always make sense, Scott Steiner is currently the best promo man in the business.

Steve Cook: FICTION. After much thought and deliberation, my top 5 2007-interview list goes as such:

1. Konnan
2. Jimmy Jacobs
3. Scott Steiner
4. Mr. Kennedy
5. John Cena

Konnan gets the top spot with his awesome mike work as manager of LAX…it’s a shame he didn’t cut promos like this when he was still in his physical prime, if he did he could have been as big here as he was in Mexico. I haven’t seen most of Jimmy Jacobs’ work this year, but his “Prom Night” promo was the best promo I’ve seen so far this year. He really has his character down to a tee, and hopefully he won’t lose any steam due to being on the shelf with a knee injury right now. Steiner’s stuff is hit or miss, but when he’s on, he’s on. His portion of the in-ring promo on last week’s Impact with brother Rick & Team 3D was awesome, and it was nice to see Brother Ray on the other end of a burial for once. I also enjoyed his portions of interviews alongside Cage, Styles & Tomko, which were usually borderline coherent. Kennedy’s going to be pretty huge once he comes back from injury, and his promo work did a lot to get him to that point. Cena rounds out the list because he has flashes of brilliance that sometimes get overshadowed by poor crowd reactions and poop jokes. Honorable mention goes to Iron Sheik and Ultimate Warrior.

Props to Steiner though, because I thought TNA was making a huge mistake when they brought him in last year and he’s ended up being one of the highlights of their shows. His promos have been entertaining, and he hasn’t really had any bad matches that I can think of off the top of my head.

Bayani Domingo: FICTION. I actually agree with some of Big Stevie Cook’s list, but right now I would put Steiner at around 4th or 5th best in 2007 because he tends to have either really good promos or almost impossibly incoherent ones, like listening to a drunken Khali karaoke to “Sweet Child of Mine”. I tend to think Christian’s mic work gets overlooked in TNA as well as Edge, Christopher Daniels, and Alex Shelley. Hell, even Kevin Nash and Black Machismo have managed to entertain me this year, albeit on TNA Today, which very few people watch. Steiner’s work on Impact! last week was great and was the kind of “well meaning heel” schtick that really brings together a great feud, but he’s far from a constant perform and that’s what you need to be the top guy on the stick. So while he’s probably dangling at the end of the Top 5 for 2007 Steiner is definitely not the king of the mic yet.

Score: 3 for 4

5. With tri-branded PPV’s, and the brand extension not exactly being enforced, WWE bringing back the draft isn’t needed.

Steve Cook: FICTION. Actually, something like a draft is just what WWE needs to re-establish the fact that there are three different brands of sports entertainment. Weren’t things a lot better when you had Smackdown being the “wrestling” show, Raw being the “entertainment” show and ECW being the “crappy” show? Right now they’re spreading everything all over the place…you’ve got Hardys flying around all over the place, Edge being champion on Smackdown and jobbing to HBK on Raw, Bobby Lashley wrestling 5 times a week on Raw despite being an ECW guy because apparently his feud with McMahon is soooooo goddamn interesting that it has to be on Raw because it’s the A show. Speaking of Raw being the A show, that’s another reason to bring back the draft, because they need to take all the top talent from Smackdown & ECW because their guys are on the shelf. Do you really want Cena defending the belt against Great Khali all summer? If you do, I do not find your opinions interesting and would not like to subscribe to your newsletter.

Bayani Domingo: FACT. I was going to say “Fiction” originally, but even I couldn’t follow such a Baldwin-esque rant. Actually I think the Draft is fairly dated considering that right now the brand split concept is more convoluted than G-dubya giving his reasons for vetoing the Iraq withdraw Bill using only lyrics from Fall Out Boy songs. I always wondered how it could even be considered a “Draft” when basically the GM’s are supposed to randomly pick out ping-pong balls or what not from a tumbler and get a wrestler for their show. Only the original RAW/Smackdown draft when Vince and Flair picked wrestlers could be considered a real “Draft” after all. considering the WWE just floats guys to whatever show they want and use the “contract expiration” excuse all the time, then they don’t really need a set date to move 2 or 3 guys/gals from each roster to another. I would also say that each brand is supposed to have a “GM” meaning they could theoretically trade wrestlers from one show to the other like an NBA or NHL team, but it seems only SD has a GM now a day. What the hell happened to the GM search Vince kept pimping and who the hell is running ECW now? My guess, a monkey. No, not a trained monkey, a monkey intern…an ESL monkey intern. Who’s autistic. Really The “e” needs the draft as much as TNA needs another ex-member of DX who doesn’t have a capital “H” in their name. The only reason to possibly do this right now is to try and spike a one-time rating in June and to shuffle around a few guys that creative is too lazy to come up with a good excuse to have jump brands in the first place. “How can we figure out how to trade Orton to ECW for Snitsky for an upcoming Cena feud this summer? Hey, let’s just use the draft and we’ll throw in one of those Hardcore Ho’s we make dance each week!!” , “BRILLIANT!!”.

Score: 3 for 5

6. Samoa Joe should win the KOTM match at Slammiversary and take his spot as the first TNA World Champion.

Steve Cook: FACT. I was going to say “Fiction” and argue that Joe hadn’t been built up enough yet…but who gives a fuck? I’m a Samoa Joe fan and I want to see the big man win the title. To hell with being an IWC critic and talking about who’s over and who needs to be put over and who doesn’t need the title yet and what’s good for business and blah blah blah blah blah. I wanna see Samoa Joe as TNA World Champion. If that makes me a mark, I really don’t care. Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Placido!

Bayani Domingo: FACT. Eh, I’ve smoked some “Tijuana Brown” before in college, I’m sure a little Samoa Joe would have to be better. No stems or seeds though Cooker T. Right now everyone is hot for Samoa Joe to be the champ and going into one of the biggest shows of the year for TNA, there is no better time then now. If you want to really brand the first ever “TNA World Champion” (and I use that term loosely till the Puerto Rico tour), then you have to go with the man who represents what TNA should be all about, and that man is Eric Young!! I mean Samoa Joe. I’m a huge Joe fan and I think this is just as good of a way for him to win the title as it would have been to beat Christian clean because it’s shaping up to look like Joe will end up going over 4 other legit main event level guys for the title.

As far as Joe not being built up enough I’ve come to realize that the booking thus far has been done to keep pretty much all of the main event level guys on the same level going into Slammiversary and BFG. Joe’s title win would set up possible feuds with Angle (who has the 2-1 win advantage on him), Christian (who has never been pinned for the title and owns a “win” over Joe), Sting (who still owes him for walking out on him during a beat down), hell even Tomko has a win over Joe. While some people would rather Joe be booked almost to Cena-like levels of invulnerability, TNA has kept most of the main event guys booked at around the same level. Even if most of it comes illogically and seemingly randomly. A Samoa Joe title reign presents the most possible match ups, while satiating the fickle Orlando fans, the majority of the IWC, and could even spell a possible mega push for CM Punk as a knee jerk reaction by Vinny Mac. Everyone wins.

Score: 4 for 6

These two finish 4 for 6! Join us next week for more Fact or Fiction!