STW - McMahon's Millions + Night of Champions 2008 [Show Notes] (Patreon)

Night of Champions 2008 took place on June 29, 2008 from the American Airlines Center, in Dallas, Texas. The show drew a sellout, announced at 16,151 fans and paid attendance was in the 13,000 range 

This is the 2nd Night of Champions ppv from WWE. The first one by itself, the previous year it was incluced with Vengeance. Night of Champions received 273,000 pay-per-view buys, and was instrumental in helping WWE increase its pay-per-view revenue by $21.9 million 

June 9th Observer - 

Vince McMahon announced details of his $1 million giveaway both on Raw on 6/2 and at a press conference on 6/3.

McMahon came out with $1 million in cash and did a very desperate sounding promo. As noted, this $1 million giveaway in many ways mirrored Eric Bischoff in 1999 when he had cracked under the pressure of declining ratings against the competition. But even more than the giveaway, McMahon’s promo, trying to create an us against them mindset in the fans (the same mindset he has in real life) went off about the negative perceptions of pro wrestling fans, how the “elitists” don’t like pro wrestling and how the “elitists” “don’t like you” because you are wrestling fans. 

It’s the oldest form of trying to rally people by creating an enemy that doesn’t really exist and Vince creates himself as the leader of a group against your common enemy, the snobby wrestling haters. McMahon noted the giveaway was an attempt to boost ratings, which early indications with a 3.06 rating this week doesn’t look good. He said his goal was to bring back the old fan base that had left, as well as bring in new people to Raw, and make them fans. The key for this to work is that on the 6/9 show from Oakland, it’s imperative they put on a great show. 

If the show is just built around giving away money with the product itself as an afterthought, you aren’t going to get people interested in the product, and ultimately, it’ll be useless.

The promo was described as Vince without a filter, with Vince going public with his frustrations at a general public that looks down on his product and he feels doesn’t get what he does. The promo came off kind of scattered, partially because it was very different from what was scripted for him to say.

McMahon is giving away $1 million per week starting 6/9, claiming it is from his own personal funds and not company funds. But even for someone as wealthy as McMahon, it’s going to only take a few weeks before that starts to sting. There is no time frame for how many weeks this will last, and there was no talk backstage at TV of an estimate. The belief is he’ll go with it at least a few weeks, because anything less than three or four weeks would constitute almost an embarrassment. From there, it depends likely on the ratings, because if ratings don’t rise on 6/9, they’ll be out as soon as possible.

McMahon told fans to register on the company web site, which also gives them a huge mailing list for products for Internet blasts. Of names registered, every week at the start of Raw, McMahon will give out a code. Then, during the show, he’ll make at least a half-dozen phone calls to people who registered. If they are watching the show and know the code, they’ll get a prize. If they aren’t watching, they won’t know the code. The contest is only open to U.S. residents. This is going to be a mess for the West Coast, which gets Raw on a three-hour tape delay, so if McMahon calls someone on the West Coast, even if they never miss Raw, during the hour he calls, they won’t know the code. The idea to alleviate that is to also put the code up at 9 p.m. Eastern on the web site, and to somehow encourage West Coast fans to go to the site every week. However, on television on 6/2, the week before this has started, none of this was explained regarding the West Coast or the prize distribution.

The $1 million will be given away each week with one person getting $250,000; two getting $200,000; one getting $125,000; one getting $98,000; one getting $75,000; one getting $51,998, and for Vince’s sense of humor, one person will get $2. You can just imagine how this is going to get over with much of the crew, let alone older wrestlers who helped build the company. The funny part of all this is that even if ratings artificially increase a little, WWE doesn’t get any of the ad revenue in the first place. And as a gimmick, it’s probably only going to work for a short period of time, and there’s no guarantee it’ll work at all. If we go with the idea that USA pays WWE $550,000 per week for a 3.2 rating, that makes the value of a rating point to USA about $172,000 (which is actually one hell of a bargain). But if this increases a 3.2 average to a 3.4, McMahon will be spending $1 million for what USA has valued at something of about a $34,000 value.

From the June 16th Observer about it - 

Even to Vince McMahon, $1 million is a lot of money, particularly if you are giving it away every week. But he’s rich enough that he can afford it.
It seemed a high price to pay to try and jump-start ratings, and no doubt seemed higher when the ratings came in. The 6/9 Raw show, the first week McMahon gave away $1 million, drew a 3.03 rating and 4.59 million viewers.

It appeared McMahon had decided with the economy in the state it is, that being a one-man lottery was a key in trying to up the profile of a product that is not hurting except the prime numbers they internally look at and determine the mood of the company, the ratings, continue to slide. With no advertising beforehand, money being given away was also brought to house shows, with fans being picked out of the stands at the house shows in Redding and Stockton, CA, to be guest timekeepers and guest seconds, mostly picking out children and then giving them $200 each for their efforts. That’s a nice gesture. I don’t know that it encourages repeat ticket selling business when wrestling only comes to cities of that size every few years, but it makes for a cool moment at the shows.

On Raw, McMahon gave away $1 million total to eight different people, in making phone calls during the live show in Oakland, all of whom were watching the show and correctly answered “WWE Universe” as the password. The live crowd got up for it, reacting like they were at a game show, and not booing like some had feared they would due to long breaks in the wrestling event they had presumably originally paid to see. 

There didn’t appear to be any complaints after the show from those watching it live. The reaction we received afterwards was negative to the idea, because it wasn’t going to be a hit among hardcore wrestling fans. The idea sounded desperate in concept but in application, I was ambivalent about it. I thought, wrongly, it would slightly help ratings in week one, but mean little or nothing by the second or third week, but thought any increase would be artificial and not worth that kind of money.

There is a lot of fear of what will happen next and what McMahon’s reaction will be. Many considered the giveaway to be a bad sign, because it came off as so desperate at a time when they don’t need to be. When it didn’t work, the question is what desperate measures will be next. The expectation is numerous changes will be made, many at once, all abrupt, which in wrestling is also something WCW used to do without success.

The negative in my mind is that even if it did increase ratings over the 3.12 average of the prior four weeks, I also thought that it being the priority of the show would mean that the wrestlers and wrestling angles, which the show needs to get over, became secondary and that was my major qualm watching it. Reports from those who attended live weren’t negative on it, like they often are for intrusions like the live Diva Search segments most summers (which is why they went with it as short taped segments last year). The only negative feedback we got from Oakland were the people who saw the early TV commercials and thought they were going to be getting a second taping after the live show.

WWE planned to fly all eight winners to New York to do media with them, including a planned appearance on “The Today Show” (this hadn’t been announced at press time but it was being worked out) and attending a press conference. I suspect they were looking at praising the success of the contest by noting the number of people signing up, but everyone knew the goal was to jump the rating and it’s going to be difficult for anyone to label week one as anything but a failure.

There were clumsy moments on the live show, including McMahon evidently having trouble dialing the correct number. But every caller was watching Raw and all knew the password. 

They were lucky as the first caller was from 29 Palms, CA, and the odds on the West Coast is that people wouldn’t be seeing the show live because it airs on a three-hour tape delay unless you get a satellite feed. WWE did post the code on its web site for that purpose, but on Raw, none of this was addressed and the West Coast includes a sizeable percentage of the country’s population. An idea reader one of our readers, Chuck Langermann, came up with is that instead of having a code at the beginning of the show, they should change the code several times during the show. He noted that he got the code and then switched to watching a baseball game. If it was made clear the code would be changing regularly throughout the show, it would make sure that people don’t watch for five minutes.

Then again, it really doesn’t matter because this didn’t bring in new viewers.

There was a great deal of hype leading to this show, and a gimmick like this is more likely to mean something in week one and tail off as opposed to catch steam weeks down the line. They are committed to doing it next week in Salt Lake City. For whatever it’s worth, there were those internally who before the rating came out tabbed the week two rating as the key ones because it would take a week for the word to get around. But now the question becomes how many weeks does Vince continue this. There is probably no point in continuing after next week.

Whose idea was it? Was everyone on board for it or did anyone try to talk Vince out of it?

Vince himself has had less personal interaction with much of the creative team in the past few weeks, which has the team frustrated and in some cases, even freaked out because they are working without much of an established direction. With the draft coming, literally, nobody knows what is going to happen. The Undertaker leaving was something kept from the team until the addition of the stipulation to the match. They weren’t given any details, only that Vince told them he needed to be written out and then asked people on the team for ideas of how to do it. Vince didn’t want to do an injury angle, because Undertaker has been out a few times in recent years with real injuries and doesn’t want to give the perception he’s breaking down. 

Stephanie continues to push the team to come up with long-term storylines, but nobody wants to come up with a long-term idea, knowing Vince changes things every week. .. Some fun stuff at the company press conference on 6/3. Cena talked about how much the company has grown, claiming it did better in its first 20 years of existence then the NHL, NFL, Baseball or other sports did in their first 20 years of existence. So I guess WWE is now 20 years old. His explanation is WWE first went national in the mid-80s. HHH noted that Vince was his father-in-law and that people wonder if Vince is crazy, and he can personally attest to the fact Vince is crazy. 

He said he asked Vince to give him the $1 million and he’d spend all his time promoting the product, but Vince said he’d rather give a way the money since HHH would still go around and promote the product. HHH noted that some wrestlers get big ovations and some get 50/50 reactions, a knock on Cena, who he faces in the main event of the 6/29 Night of Champions PPV. Vince claimed WWE practically invented PPV. I think his father invented television and his grandfather invented electricity. You never heard of Thomas Edison McMahon? HHH almost single-handled won the wrestling war for their team (remember when Eric Bischoff had to do that scripted promo claiming that?) and Stephanie, well, I’ll have to think about that for another week. Oh yeah, she invented John Cena. 

Flair will be appearing on 6/7 at the NWA show at the Phillips Arena to be inducted into the NWA wrestling Hall of Fame with the Midnight Express, Tommy Rich, Nikita Koloff and Iron Sheik. Jim Cornette will be giving the speech to induct Flair so even if there won’t be many fans at the show (although if the word gets out about Flair being inducted into the NWA Hall of Fame by Cornette, you’d think it would get some interest in the show), it’ll probably still be a cool moment. The NWA has put together a huge deal for Flair to appear in a farewell tour at their events and WWE must have approved of it this week because Bob Trobich’s office (Trobich is one of the leaders of the NWA and has known Flair for decades) sent a letter this week to all NWA member promoters. 

The NWA promoters can book Flair for two-and-a-half hour meet and greet sessions for a maximum of 200 people, and they want to limit it to 200 so Flair has personal time with every fan. Flair would appear before shows where the NWA is taping its Showcase show for the Dish Network. 

Trobich has lined up sponsors for these events to help defray the costs. The letter said Flair’s guarantee is $10,000 plus a hotel suite and limo transportation to the event. Flair will pay his trans to the event and bring merchandise bags with T-shirts, autographed photos, NWA merchandise and sponsor merchandise. Flair will also appear at all the tapings, coming out after the third match on the show and doing an interview talking about the city the show is being taped in. 

The way the deal works is they are encouraging promoters to charge $100 for the meet and greet, so that would generate $20,000 with 200 people, which gives them nearly a $10,000 profit on the deal and that Flair appearing at the shows will help sell some tickets. Trobich proposed a 30-date deal with Flair, which would mean Flair would get $300,000 (although we’ve also heard Flair is actually getting $225,000). Not sure what WWE’s cut would be since Flair is under contract to them for an amount believed to be in the $500,000 per year range as a retired goodwill ambassador. 

From the June 11th Observer - The Flair NWA deal fell apart right after press time for the last issue. Essentially, the deal written about was sent by the NWA to its member promoters. The only thing officially advertised by the NWA was the 6/7 Atlanta date for the Hall of Fame. It was a Vince McMahon call, not wanting his wrestler to give credibility to a Hall of Fame other than their own, and they also don’t want one of their biggest stars appearing at non-WWE events, even if he’s just there to do autograph signings and a promo. Bob Trobich, who negotiated the deal with Flair, noted WWE pulled him from the appearance (I’m not sure if it was ever cleared because I was very surprised it was advertised as my impression was WWE wasn’t going to clear it although Flair did want to do it). He wrote, “It is truly a sad action on their part, as the main people injured by the WWE’s seeming petulance is the wrestling fans.” He noted Flair was a legend in the NWA long before WWE was anything but a regional promotion in the Northeast and has earned being the NWA Hall of Fame. 

Duggan is getting his contract restructured. He is being switched to a Legends deal, which doesn’t provide for a weekly downside, but can work on a per-show basis. It would enable him to take indie bookings and book his own appearance without clearing them with the office which full-time wrestlers aren’t allowed to do. 

June 11th Observer -

Raw on 5/26 did a 2.91 rating and 4.25 million viewers. It was a holiday rating, and last year’s Memorial Day Raw did a 3.2, which was the third lowest rating of the year (behind a 10/8 show that did a 2.8 and the Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve shows). But in 2005 and 2006, Raw did 3.8 ratings each year over Memorial Day.

In the quarter-by-quarter, Hall vs. Melina and Vince backstage with Jericho and Cryme Tyme gained 321,000 viewers. Holly & Rhodes vs. London & Kendrick lost 73,000 viewers. Piper training Cousin Sal and Vince backstage with Mickie James and JBL gained 350,000 viewers. Cena & Jeff Hardy vs. Umaga & JBL lost 44,000 viewers. That’s amazing, because the 10 p.m. hour usually gains 300-500,000 new viewers. Kennedy vs. Carlito lost 234,000 viewers. Michaels vs. Jericho lost 15,000 viewers, which is completely ridiculous for a match of that caliber. Vince’s announcement about the draft and the money gained 803,000 viewers, doing a 3.43 overrun.

Raw on 6/2 did 169,000 viewers (about a 1.8), Smackdown on 5/30 did 148,000 (1.6), ECW did 152,000 (0.9), while TNA Impact did 71,000 viewers on Spike.

For 5/26, for Canada, Raw did 167,000 viewers (about a 1.8 rating), Smackdown on 5/23 did 153,000 viewers (1.6) and ECW did 72,000 (0.4).

Final Smackdown number for 5/16 was a 2.4 rating and 4.17 million viewers. The show did a 4.0 and 729,000 viewers in the Hispanic demo and a 2.2 in non-Hispanic homes.

For the 5/5 Raw, if you include DVR viewing and other tape viewing within a week of airing, the rating would go from 3.20 to 3.42 and viewers to 4.85 million.

June 16th Observer - 

Smackdown on 6/6 did a 2.4 rating and 4.08 million viewers. One would have hoped the Undertaker retirement storyline would have helped a little for at least one week. It was very slightly up. 

D-Lo Brown (Accie Connor), who worked for the company from 1997-2003 (although he was largely kicked to the curb by 2001 as far as being on the regular roster), was signed this past week. Most likely this is part of Vince’s wanting African-Americans on television. Part of it is because of a decrease in that demo in the ratings and part with Booker and Lashley leaving and any racism controversy stemming from having Hayes on the creative team makes them a sitting duck for future controversy if they don’t push African-Americans. Whether justified or not, WCW was taken to the cleaners and it wasn’t justified there any more or less than it would be justified here now that Hayes is a public target and is being brought back. 

The WWE’s settlement to Cory Maclin in the lawsuit against WWE for pulling Jerry Lawler from the Memphis show and pulling all talent at the last minute from his others shows was sealed and neither side is allowed to talk about it. The figure was said to be fairly significant. WWE evidently realized they would look bad in a court case where you had a small local business owner in court in Memphis against an out of town Goliath, who basically by pulling talent from the Sam’s Town show at the last minute, cost Maclin his sold show deal, not to mention the pulling of Lawler from the match with Hulk Hogan after they had spent months building it up which WWE was fully aware of. It was all done because Vince McMahon was mad at Hogan at the time, which is ironic since Hogan appeared on the 15th anniversary show later. There’s nothing new this week on Maclin reopening his promotion on a new station using the money he received in the settlement. Ch. 30, like Ch. 5 before, decided against taping any new shows due to the cost of hiring a crew on Saturday morning (in Memphis, because of the history of ratings, the station had always paid for production) and liability issues. 

The best selling DVDs so far this year are the Steve Austin DVD, which has shipped 177,000 units, and the new HHH: King of Kings, which has shipped 202,000. Shows what not being on television means although Austin’s numbers are still high-end for WWE DVDs. What’s interesting is that this indicates most stores ordered heavy for Austin and haven’t reordered (only 2,000 units were shipped in April). For HHH, they thought the demand would be slightly higher than Austin. For Mania, particularly due to Ric Flair and the Hall of Fame ceremony a lot more then Floyd Mayweather, I expect this to be the best selling wrestling DVD in history. The current record holder is the 2006 Mania, which shipped about 415,000 units. 

Joe Hennig was moved from Harley Race’s school, where he was originally trained, to Florida Championship Wrestling. Hennig is the son of Curt Hennig, and was under a developmental contract but allowed to train at Race’s school because Race and Larry Hennig have been friends for 45 years and were one of the best heel tag teams in the world during the 60s. He greatly resembles his father, at least when it comes to look. If he’s half the wrestler his father was in his prime, then he’ll do well for himself. 

June 23rd Observer -

Vince McMahon did an interview on The Score in Canada on 6/16 regarding the draft. He said he thinks they’ll do it annually going forward. “It shakes things up. It refreshes the product and we have some major moves planned. It’s a good thing. I think everyone looks forward to that because you don’t know where the superstars or your favorite ones are going or which ones are coming, which issues are resolved, which ones are left open, so it’s an exciting show.” Host Glen Schiller then lobbed a softball saying that the media only covers WWE when there is a tragedy but doesn’t cover things like Tribute to the Troops. Actually, WWE gets tremendous pub every year from Tribute to the Troops. If the host is thinking that show should have gotten a similar level of publicity than the Benoit murders, that’s just embarrassing. “Well, the media can go screw themselves,” he said. “Having said that, we’re making an effort to be more media friendly, but I don’t know, I think we’re a little too defensive.” 

Carlito is once again unhappy with WWE and his lack of push, particularly after he and Marella lost to Cryme Tyme on the 6/9 show. It seemed a lock that they were going to get the tag titles, and it never materialized even though they had the best out of the ring chemistry of any team in the company. When the decision was made to put the tag title on DiBiase and a mystery partner, he was upset, although it goes back more than a year. He gave notice at the end of last year but Vince talked him into staying and that he would get a bigger push. When that push never happened, he got upset. The Raw creative team has given him conflicting stories about his long-term future and he was sensing Brian Gewirtz wasn’t looking at pushing him more. 

With ratings falling, Gewirtz is apparently pressured to devote more time on the show to face time with the money players. Friends had apparently suggested Carlito try and make a play to move to ECW, where he’d be a headliner, or Smackdown, which has less depth and the huge Hispanic television audience that they try and market toward. The positive of ECW would be he could be champion-level and with his mindset toward the business, he’d probably be happy as one of the main guys on the brand. The negative is, with ECW still planned (as of this week plans were still on, and you know how things change) to move to Monday, the competition for spots on the house shows is going to be fierce. On the Smackdown side, without the ECW guys touring with them, he wouldn’t have to worry about limited shows. 

Plus there is the feeling Michael Hayes in getting him would at least start him out with a push and give him an opportunity to sink or swim (eyes will be on him to perform at a high level in the ring, because the knock on him has always been he works well enough to get by, but not well enough to headline and excel) , and the heel side on Smackdown is pretty bad when you’ve got Chavo Guerrero and Mark Henry seemingly as the top heels behind Edge and MVP. The negative in all this is if Vince takes a different tact toward him than last time, and if he asks for a release and gives it to him, that means he’ll wind up in WWC (or TNA, which I’m virtually certain would take him). 

WWC he’d be the star of the company but it would be such a huge step down. TNA, he’ll fall into a mix maybe at a slightly higher level than WWE, but he’ll also be earning a lot less. He went to South America over the weekend to promote the July tour since he’s one of the few who speaks fluent Spanish. While in Chile, he was asked about HHH being married to Stephanie and he said that in his opinion it was a smart move by HHH because that’s why he’s champion now and has been in the past and said that the reset of the wrestlers don’t have that benefit and have to deliver to get a title, while he gets it handed to him on a plate. He said he had it harder being Latin, and noted HHH never comes to places like Chile or Paraguay to do promotional work. He’ll be back in the dog house for sure because even though a large percentage of the roster privately say it and probably most have strong feelings about it, it’s one of those subjects almost everyone is smart enough to never talk about publicly. 

The producers meeting referred to a few weeks back here regarded a feeling from the older wrestlers that Raw’s declining numbers were due to too many pre-taped scripted promos and less in-ring. Of course wrestlers are going to come up with that. I don’t think that’s the answer, although personally I think both companies overdo the scripted backstage promos. Getting ratings turned around is very difficult in the modern environment, and won’t happen without the creation of one or two new hot stars who are headliners challenging for the main title. Adding more wrestling and less talking if it builds angles stronger may lead to slight buy rate increases, and it’s not going to turn around ratings. As far as the idea of doing it, to me, I think shows should be different each week and less predictable. I think it shouldn’t be so cookie cutter of every match 2-5 minutes except when main eventers are involved.

There is a lot of internal admission of late of things nobody would have ever said, and that is the feeling the company made huge mistakes in its quest to run everyone out of business in the 80s. The feeling is they paid the price as wrestling got boring to U.S. fans with a lack of competition and that instead of killing the territories, they should have bought a few of them and kept them afloat as developmental. They recognize the limitations of doing a U.S. developmental territory because they can only draw 100 to 200 people, and guys don’t learn things like how to work and do promos to build programs and build gates and the newer wrestlers have no instincts in that direction because they’ve never had to learn. The feeling is the economics make it impossible to do it in the U.S. and they want to establish territories overseas, particularly in Europe, but the time hasn’t been there and the right people aren’t in place to put it together.

WWE extended its relationship with Ten Sports in India through 2014. WWE promised then nine hours of programming per week for the station which covers not only India, but Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, Afghanistan and the Maldives. 

Here’s a scary stat. Every Smackdown world title match on PPV since 2006 has had either Batista, Edge or Undertaker in it. What makes that doubly troubling is that all three have been out during that period for long stretches of time with torn muscles. Even sicker, since the 2002 creation of the second world title, every Raw title match but two had either HHH, Cena or Orton in it. 

And in both of those two shows, HHH was in the actual main event as his matches were pushed bigger than the title match. 

Pro wrestling and MMA DVDs in the best selling sports list as of the 6/21 issue of Billboard: 1. Wrestlemania 24; 2. WWE Backlash HHH vs. Orton vs. Cena vs. JBL; 3. UFC 81 Mir vs. Lesnar; 4. Twist of Fate: The Matt & Jeff hardy story; 5. WWE Tagged Classics: Backlash/Judgment Day 2003; 6. WWE Tagged Classics: Royal Rumble/No Way Out 2003; 8. Elite XC Renegade Frank Shamrock vs. Renzo Gracie; 9. HHH: King of Kings; 10. UFC Best of 2007. 

July 1st Observer – The draft

Vince McMahon wasn’t killed this year, but instead the Raw set collapsed on him and they did an attempted murder angle to end the 2008 draft show on 6/23 in San Antonio.

They made sure to go off the air noting he was breathing, but indicating his legs couldn’t move as parts of the stage collapsed, although it was clear nothing actually landed on him. It was, besides a new cliffhanger to attempt to build ratings, the end of the McMahons Millions angle after three weeks. Even though giving away the money didn’t move the ratings to the level they liked, using the lure of a $500,000 payoff at the end of the show to both finish the idea and use it to, at least in theory, get the maximum number of eyes watching the company’s next big angle at least made business sense. The fact that the payoff structure was changed the day before the show to building the $500,000 payoff instead of doing 12 smaller payoffs indicates the final decision to end it was only made a few days before the show, even though the plan of how to end it was said to be worked on ever since the ratings came back badly for the first week.

The idea was this angle is designed to shake up the business and improve ratings and web site hits like the McMahon death angle did last year. But it overshadowed the draft, which with major moves like Batista, HHH, Jeff Hardy, Jim Ross and Rey Mysterio, should have been left to stand on their own.

It was one year to the week of last year’s angle being scrapped due to Chris Benoit, on a three-hour special designed to be McMahon’s mock funeral. There was almost a weird apropos of that anniversary.

One year ago, management swerved the wrestlers by not letting them know that Benoit had almost surely murdered his wife and son, and then doing the show, once again management kept everyone in the dark regarding the draft.

Presumably the angle will build to the payoff of “Who tried to kill Mr. McMahon,” the play-off of the 80s “Who shot J.R. (and because, no doubt, J.R. will likely be discussed as a payoff)”

This also came two weeks after the real-life death of Kevin Sinex after the TNA Slammiversary show when scaffolding he was on while taking down the lights collapsed shortly after the show ended. I’d like to think it was coincidental and that the group that not only came up with this, but green lighted it through, didn’t do it in this way because they just heard what had happened and were playing off it. But the best case scenario when it comes to class that you can come up with is pretty weak even bending over backwards. 

The death of Sinex came on 6/8, after the rating came out for week of the giveaway, which was the 6/2 show in Oakland. If during that week, they came up with this scenario, which meant it wasn’t a copycat, but simply a coincidence, it also meant that everyone key person in decision making would have been aware, because how could they not be when something so close happened, and in the end, Vince decided to do it anyway. I can buy an argument that one person like Vince could be so insulated to not make the connection, but not a team, and not on a decision that was made weeks ago. Again, the worst case scenario is that they heard about it, and thought it was a clever way to kill two birds with one stone and were directly playing off it.

Either way, only time will tell if shooting an angle that in many ways resembles last years angle will move people enough to increase interest in the product as a whole. And even though there was some early ratings bump last year for the McMahon death, there was no indication that curiosity bump was going to have any effect on actual business. 

It’s simply the company mentality that both WWE and TNA live with which is everything is focused on the Raw and Impact rating. In UFC, ratings never seem to be anywhere near the priority, as the office mood goes up and down the week after a big show when the buy rate comes in. Within the WWE office, buy rates are rarely discussed unless it’s Wrestlemania, SummerSlam or Rumble, as compared to the Monday night rating, and in TNA, with the exception of the Joe-Angle match that did well, the subject never comes up, while they live and do with a .1 variation in the weekly rating.

HHH, as WWE champion, moved to Smackdown. Batista moved to Raw. They did an announcers flip-flop with Jim Ross joining Mick Foley on Smackdown, and Michael Cole moving to Raw to work with Jerry Lawler.

The other changes were Rey Mysterio moving from Smackdown, where he has been his entire WWE career, to Raw. Jeff Hardy, another Raw lifer, moved to Smackdown. C.M. Punk and his Money in the Bank briefcase moved to Raw, but his stipulation theoretically is that he can still challenge for any of the three titles at anytime, and with ECW moving to Mondays soon, they still may use that to pay off because it’s hard to believe Punk would be getting the Raw title at this point. Matt Hardy, as U.S. champion, moved to ECW from Smackdown. Umaga, the one person that everyone expected to move to Smackdown, did so. ECW champion Kane moved to Raw. But for this draft to mean anything, he shouldn’t be working both Raw and ECW, which either means the ECW title moves to Raw, which is silly and confusing, or he drops it soon. The problem is, his two built-up contenders, Big Show and Mark Henry, are both Smackdown wrestlers who in theory wouldn’t even be appearing on ECW TV within a few weeks because of the move to Monday. Mr. Kennedy also moves back to Smackdown.

The draft was done based on a series of interpromotional matches. It opened with HHH (Raw) vs. Mark Henry (Smackdown), and when HHH won, that meant Raw would get one wrestler from Smackdown, which turned out to be Mysterio.

With the exception of HHH and Umaga (who likely wasn’t told directly but everyone had known for months), it’s doubtful anyone except possibly Batista had any inclination they were moving. It’s possible Batista because of his level of stardom, may have been given a heads up, although he did an interview just days earlier saying he didn’t want to move and if he’d have been told in advance, it’s more likely he would have said that it was a company decision and he’s happy either way but would prefer to stay. Mysterio had been in Mexico doing promotional work for the company when he was given a late call that he needed to get to San Antonio for Raw.

It was theorized that part of the reason for HHH accepting the move, putting him as a Smackdown regular for the first time since the brand split, is that it’s actually more convenient for him after wife Stephanie gives birth to her second child. He’d work a Saturday through Tuesday loop where he’d only be away from his family (Stephanie will bring a nanny and her children on the road with her every week after recovering from giving birth) on Saturday and Sunday, because Smackdown rarely books Monday night house shows. He’d get to go home on the corporate plane with his wife and children every week. Plus, going in, the main focus of the draft was to strengthen Smackdown. 

While this seems implausible for a number of reasons, most notably the whole idea MyNetwork would spend the money it did for Smackdown to use it to build its network around, would then lead to the show moving to a different network. The company’s goal is that they would go on MyNetwork, draw big ratings (very iffy) and because MyNetwork is owned by FOX, use that to get the Friday night slot on FOX, which would make Smackdown on its most powerful outlet to date. 

According to information from the writers meetings before the show, the draft was a very hot political topic over the final few days. Michael Hayes had just started back and apparently he had a lot of influence in some late changes that were made. Brian Gewirtz did not have McMahon’s ear as much, and the decline in Raw ratings have made it so McMahon is not soliciting Gewirtz as much and the producers have been critical of Gewirtz for writing shows with so much backstage.

As of Thursday, the Batista move was strongly considered and HHH discussed at meetings a Batista heel turn to build for Cena vs. Batista at Wrestlemania 25. That match at one point was discussed for Mania 24 and when it didn’t happen, because a kinda sorta plan for next year. Bam Neely and Kofi Kingston were both talked about as switching to Raw, but neither happened. From the announcing standpoint, the idea of switching Mick Foley and Jerry Lawler instead of Cole and Ross came up and Vince was negative toward it. Kevin Dunn brought up what would be Ross’ reaction to doing it the way it ended up being done, and that amused Vince to no end and it was done. The decision was made already by that point that the women wouldn’t be touched. 

One of the big focuses right now is to make Lance Cade a main event heel, linking him with Chris Jericho. There has been a lot of talk about how to repackage him.

Gewirtz had an idea where Ted DiBiase would buy a draft pick somehow, but that was shot down.

HHH for Batista is, in the WWE pecking order, a positive for Smackdown since internally HHH, Undertaker and Cena are regarded as the company’s big three, with Batista and Shawn Michaels right behind them. This also means the end of DX as an occasional gimmick. Jeff Hardy is currently hotter than Mysterio, but because of the ethnic make-up of the Smackdown audience, Mysterio is far more valuable to that show. A major part of the decline in ratings overall is the huge decline in Hispanic ratings (down 29%) on the show since his injury and there is nobody to replace him on the show. There is substantial reason to believe he’s actually the No. 1 ratings draw in the company because of how much his presence as a regular character and his storylines mean to that demographic. Whether that demographic would follow him to USA is an unknown, but it’s certainly possible.

Jim Ross for Michael Cole is on paper a plus for Smackdown, but there are real questions now as to the longevity of Ross in the company, as Ross publicly stated he contemplated quitting on Monday because of how it was handled and not going to Houston for his first Smackdown taping. He said he was on the phone with his wife until 6 a.m., and she and him decided to stay with the company for now.

More than anyone, he was taking the move harder and more personally, like it was a slap in the face, even though he was told it was not.

“I can’t predict how long my Smackdown tenure will be, but I can promise that no matter how long or short it is, that I will do my utmost best while sitting at ringside. I am not the kind of man who will phone in a damn thing.”

It’s no secret of the strange McMahon/Ross relationship that has its ups and downs, but Vince loves to humiliate Ross. Several in the company who contacted us after the show were hardly talking about this as a business move, but essentially, Vince getting to humiliate Ross on TV because Ross made it so clear he didn’t want to move brands. Ross has about a year-and-a-half left on his contract. It’s also become a running joke because McMahon has taken Ross off Raw probably a half-dozen times, always as a permanent move, and then always gets frustrated with the replacement and brings him back. But the company has always been about youth and faces, and with Lawler at 58 and Ross at 56, well, it’s a lot easier to blame the ages of the announcers on a product being stale than years of ignoring developmental and cutting off every rising star, and then blaming them for not getting over.

There were already people joking that in a few months, McMahon will change his mind when ratings keep falling, and then want Ross back on Raw and probably book another double-switch at next year’s draft. In fact, the running joke is the last few times McMahon has replaced Ross on Raw, that the only people who believed he really did were McMahon and Ross, as everyone else that knew McMahon knew he’d end up hating the replacements and calling Ross back. Still, the recent Mike Adamle hire was to replace Ross, but that turned into a complete disaster, and there was talk one year ago about Michael Cole doing both Raw and Smackdown and phasing Ross out after his Hall of Fame speech in 2007. That talk ended in Chicago when Ross was announced for the Hall of Fame, and the reaction, while expected to be big, stunned literally everyone involved, and at that point, all talk of taking Ross of Raw stopped in its tracks until the past few weeks.

Two former major insiders with the company who worked closely with both, but more directly with Vince, contacted us immediately saying that Ross should have understood how Vince’s mind operated and that by publicly saying he wanted to stay on Raw, it was almost a guarantee, because of how Vince loves to humiliate him, that he’d make the move in the manner he did.

There reportedly was an exchange after the show when Ross turned down the invitation to fly on the corporate plane from San Antonio to Houston for Smackdown, which he was suddenly broadcasting, and where McMahon told him that he (Vince) risked his life on the show and how he ruined his son-in-laws life (a line that everyone was laughing about because it took people all of five minutes to figure out how the move greatly benefitted HHH’s personal life) for the company.

There is also the issue that Ross and Mike Adamle are both believed to be making essentially the same money (in the $300,000 per year range; and far less than WWE offered Mike Goldberg to jump from UFC to Raw in 2005), even though Ross has been announcing since the 70s and has been regarded as the best in the business on-and-off for more than two decades. Of course Adamle, coming from the real sports world including a lengthy tenure as an NFL announcer for NBC, it was going to take considerable money to get him to work in pro wrestling, while Ross gladly works in the business with no qualms, even putting up with the way he’s treated because of his lifetime ties to wrestling. But this is guaranteed to add salt to the wound for Ross in what he clearly sees as a demotion from being the company’s announcing face on the lead show.

Ross publicly making it clear on his web site that he wasn’t happy at first was going to do him no favors. You don’t need to know that the name Carlito starts with a C or hear a year’s worth of big pops for Matt Hardy before they’d let him get out of prelims to know about people who go public with their unhappiness. Ross said, “I should have detected something with the demeanor of certain individuals (the writing team and a few of the top brass, which did know) either through their plastic, poker faces or the perceived smirk that I thought I might have seen on some of their faces during the day.”

The show did a 3.40 rating, although over the usual two hours it was a 3.71. Last year, without giving away $1 million, the show did a 3.79 overall number, which at the time was considered a disappointment, and 4.17 in the traditional two hours, so it was a decline of 10% over what was considered a bad number last year. But it was still the best number for Raw since the day after Wrestlemania. The 2002 draft did a 5.41 rating and the 2004 draft did a 4.53, but even though 2004 was during a period where WWE overall business had declined greatly, it was still a lot stronger four years ago as a television property. WWE sent out a press release the next day, noting how successful the McMahons Millions promotion was, crediting it for the rating, without actually noting the rating in the release, only saying the audience was up 25% over the two-hours from the start of the promotion (the 6/2 show in Oakland which did a rock bottom 3.03 rating).

When dropping the Million Dollar Mania promotion after four weeks, the company sent out a press release saying it increased web site traffic 28% over the prior month. Of course, that’s largely the people who signed up. It will be interesting to note what kind of an increase that led to in purchasing on the web. In April, total web purchases were $1.35 million. It’s also likely the traffic will decline by the similar amount it rose during July, rendering the short-term boost as essentially meaningless. Company stock closed at press time at $15.25 per share, and remain well below what it has been most of the past year. WWE stock price increases and decreases are more tied to the market in general than ups and downs in its own business.

On CNBC, when Vince was asked by Darren Rovell, “First, it was boxing that was going to hurt you, now it’s UFC. To what extgent are you competing with them? “We don’t compete. We’re entertainment. They are boxing. They haven’t hurt us at all.” Well, he can’t admit to it publicly. I can tell you on the MMA side, that one person after another believes the MMA audience is largely teenage pro wrestling fans who hit 18, or 20, get tired of wrestling, and switch to MMA. . . Privately in WWE these days, there is a belief they compete for PPV buyers and UFC has hurt WWE badly when it comes to establishments showing WWE PPV events, as UFC has taken over in that regard in most of North America with the belief they draw more people and draw a higher spending audience. But that’s the extent of competition. 

Even though there is a crossover, I think each’s success and failure, like with boxing, is completely independent of one another. Boxing isn’t down because of UFC and UFC won’t be down because of boxing, and wrestling is up or down depending upon what wrestling offers, not because of what UFC or boxing is offering. Although UFC is far more competition to WWE than TNA is. Of the almost 600,000 buys that the Lesnar-Mir PPV did, UFC people tracked that nearly half had never ordered a UFC PPV event before, and you know where all those new viewers came from. There are a few who also understand they are hurting when it comes to getting the kind of athletes that used to get into pro wrestling because those people are gravitating toward UFC. 

JBL is releasing a second energy drink through his Layfield Energy company. This one, called “418 Energy,” is aimed at golfers, saying it’s a combination energy drink and anti-inflammatory that will help your golf scores be relieving pain, improving focus and adding energy. He’s pushing to get the product placed at golf courses and golf retail shops. His company has a sales staff of 30 reps.

There is also some talk regarding JBL’s future. His back is still in a lot of pain and there is frustration that he can’t perform at the level he’d like. While I don’t know that it was discussed, I was actually surprised he wasn’t drafted back to Smackdown because for some reason he came across as a far bigger star on that show, and he’s floundering as a top heel on Raw. Part of it is because everyone should be booked to their strengths. JBL should do a gimmick where he’s too good to wrestle on television because he’s a Millionaire, come out with his entrance, always in the suit and tie, and cut promos and do cheapshit angles. Every time he’s on TV and he’s a guy in his 40s, presumably not on any chemical help, and hurt bad enough that he probably can’t train as effectively as he’d like, and it just kills him. He was never a great worker to begin with, so showcasing him on television as a worker now only makes him less effective. But he’s still a major league promo guy.

Vince McMahon morphed into Mr. McMahon when getting a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Promax/DBA Conference for his work in global marketing, advertising and promotion. “I truly deserve this,” he said at his speech. “(It’s) probably something you won’t hear anybody else say.” When asked how he came up with the Million Dollar Giveaway idea (the people at the conference actually thought it was a good idea), he said, “That process is called insanity.” He did say that ideas sometimes take more than three weeks to work, and said that you can never dictate to your audience, but rather you have to give your audience what it is they want, and not be afraid to take risks. 

That’s so funny because in creative, everyone is of the impression that they dictate to their audience, and use audience feedback to a degree, but virtually everyone in creative has said their job is to create what they think Vince McMahon wants, and not what they think the audience wants. My opinion watching wrestling and other promotional events of its type for so many years is a great promoter is someone who can sell the audience on what the promoter wants. 

It’s about the ability to sell your product. In fact, every successful promoter I know has ignored market research. They’re either good at selling their version of the product, or not good at it. Anyway, Vince said the WWE could be the biggest and greatest marketing juggernaut in the world. I guess that means they’re already bigger than World Cup soccer and the NFL.

Analysts that cover the WWE stock are predicting $528 million in revenues and $59 million in profits for 2008. The 2007 numbers were $485.7 million in revenues and $52.1 million in profits.

July 7th Observer -

Raw on 6/30 was probably the first genuinely positive ratings news the company has received since Wrestlemania, with a regular show, albeit opening with a World title change, doing a 3.51 rating and 5.15 million viewers. We’ll have more of a breakdown next week. The show did a 3.19 in Males 18-49, up 4% from the prior week. The major increase came from women 18-49, which did a 1.59 and the show did 35% female viewers, extremely high for a modern wrestling show, with the average viewer being 35 years old. 

Smackdown on 6/27 did a 2.2 rating and 4.05 million viewers. You could say that was a disappointment for the first show with HHH and Jim Ross, but I wouldn’t read anything into a Smackdown rating until 7/11. This show aired on Saturday night in the New York market, which cost it substantial viewership (on a national basis, the moving of the New York show to an unfamiliar time slot would only take the rating down from a 2.3 to a 2.2). Obviously the 7/4 show will be lucky to do a 1.6 or 1.7 and you can throw that number out. The 7/11 show would really be the show to start to judge if anything is going to change. 

As the wedding, you would have expected above average numbers since weddings always do ratings in WWE, but there was an apparent change of plans 

The 1.18 rating for ECW on 6/24 was 1.5 million viewers, so actually viewership wasn’t up all that much even though the rating was up from the rock bottom number the week before.

Including people who watched on tape within one week, the 6/9 Raw would go from a 3.03 rating (this was the first week of the Million Dollar giveaway) and 4.59 million viewers to a 3.20 and 4.85 million viewers. An amazing stat was the show on USA called “In Plain Sight” that they advertise the hell out of during Raw did 3.64 million viewers live and 4.94 million viewers including those watching on tape within one week.

Michael Hayes first show with the Smackdown crew was 6/24 in Houston. The first thing he did was get together with Henry and apologize to him, and also apologized to all the African-American wrestlers. He blamed it on his drinking and told the wrestlers that he was now taking antibuse, a drug that makes you vomit if you touch any alcohol. That and Jim Ross were the main topics of conversation in Houston at the tapings. Ross arrived at about 5 p.m., a few hours before show time, and had a private meeting with Vince and everyone seemed to be fine when the meeting was over. 

There don’t appear to be any significant issues any longer regarding Ross. Ross was apologetic about his web site writing. Ross was told by McMahon that he was moved because they were making Smackdown more of a priority. I think the history where McMahon has a half-dozen times dropped Ross from Raw, only to go back, made it seem to Ross like this was another part of the broken record, which it may or may not have been. I think HHH moving and then on the first show putting over Ross’ so strong as the best announcer in the business soothed everything. Higher-ups weren’t thrilled about what he wrote on the site, but in a follow-up, he changed his tune and blamed himself for writing something that he should have waited a day to write. 

He noted working Tuesday instead of Monday had its advantages because no more traveling on Sunday which is a big deal to him as a sports fan, particularly during football season. It does mean a day on the road on Monday without working on PPV weeks, but all the non-Raw announcers have done that and Smackdown talent has been doing it regularly. He arrived late in Houston for his first taping because he had to go to Men’s Warehouse and by a new suit, and there were people concerned he wasn’t going to come, particularly the people on the writing team because they all knew he was asked to fly to Houston in the private jet and didn’t. Vince gave him a speech about how everyone makes sacrifices for the team, saying he had just given away $4 million and risked his life in a stunt to try and get business turned around. 

The draft was all about strengthening Smackdown, and the feeling is they either could have let Smackdown whither away on MyNetwork, or tried to elevate it because without strengthening it, the move to the new network was going to be a big negative. Even though many saw this as his golden opportunity, Michael Cole was said to not be happy about leaving Smackdown either, but he was more quiet about it. They are installing a line to his home so he will be able to do any clean-up or post-production work from Oklahoma. This isn’t something new being done for him as Cole had moved from New Jersey to McAllen, TX (where his wife grew up) and he had been doing the “clean-up” commentary via a line from his home to the Stamford studio and was no longer going to the studio itself. I thought it was pretty much a sure thing he would never walk out on a show itself. At this point, he looks to be there for as long as they want him there. 

A funny Mike Goldberg story related to 2005 when he was recruited by WWE to take over the lead announcing role on Raw for when they went back on USA Network (and coincidentally on a night where Raw and UFC went head-to-head on TV). He said that even after he turned the offer down, Vince called him personally and left a message and even though it’s almost three years, he was so thrilled to have Vince call him (Goldberg was a pro wrestling fan during the Hogan era but not so much today) that he’s never erased the message. But he did say he wouldn’t have no-showed the UFC date for any amount of money in the world because UFC was always good to him. 

There have been a lot of complaints coming from the local promoters in Peru because they did all of their promotion around HHH coming to the country as the big star on the show, and then they were told because of the shift, that he wasn’t coming. They feel they should have been told in advance and given the courtesy of building up others as the big attractions. 

That brings us to Night of Champions

• Thumbs up 73 (45.9%)

• Thumbs down 20 (12.6%)

• In the middle 66 (41.5%)

BEST MATCH POLL

• HHH vs. John Cena 85

• Edge vs. Batista 48

• Kofi Kingston vs. Chris Jericho 14

WORST MATCH POLL

• Henry vs. Kane vs. Show 93

• DiBiase & Rhodes vs. Holly 46

The first major post-draft shows, with the WWE Night of Champions on 7/29 from the American Airlines Center in Dallas, and Raw the next night in Oklahoma City, ended with this scoreboard of champions:

RAW: World title held by C.M. Punk; Intercontinental championship held by Kofi Kingston; Tag champs of Ted DiBiase & Cody Rhodes and Mickie James as Women’s champion.

SMACKDOWN: WWE title held by HHH

ECW: ECW title held by Mark Henry; U.S. title held by Matt Hardy; Smackdown tag titles held by The Miz & John Morrison.

A. Jeff Hardy pinned MVP in the dark match with a swanton. Hardy got one of the biggest reactions of the night and this was said to be better than most of the matches that aired on the PPV.

The Miz & John Morrison retained the WWE tag titles, beating Fit Finlay & Hornswoggle in 8:46. Even though the first two matches involved talent on the ECW roster, they had Jim Ross & Mick Foley announce them. I’m not complaining, and I guess the logic behind it is they are Smackdown titles even when held by ECW wrestlers. Ross actually referred to Leo & Gino Garibaldi as the first father-son tag champs when pushing the idea Finlay & Hornswoggle could be a father/son team. Finlay worked most of the way. Hornswoggle tagged in and did some Lucha Libre spots before a beat down period. Finlay hot tagged in, even doing a missile dropkick off the middle rope on Morrison. The finish saw Miz shoulderblock Finlay off the apron. Hornswoggle was on the top rope for a tadpole splash, but Morrison slammed him off the top, taking the Flair trademark bump, for the pin. Decent opener. *3/4

Matt Hardy pinned Chavo Guerrero in 9:21 to keep the U.S. title. A basic solid second match on the show. Guerrero worked on Hardy’s left knee, including wrapping it around the ringpost. Hardy came back with a side effect for a near fall. Guerrero came back with a half crab, but Hardy escaped. Finish saw Guerrero going for the three amigos, but after suplex No. 2, Hardy escaped and hit the twist of fate for the pin. **3/4

The next match was for the ECW title. A 3 way match where Kane defended against Mark Henry & Big Show. Leading up to the match - 

At One Night Stand, Big Show won a five-man Singapore Cane match including CM Punk, Chavo Guerrero, Tommy Dreamer, and John Morrison to earn a title shot against Kane at Night of Champions. On the June 23rd Raw, Kane was drafted to Raw, making the ECW Championship exclusive to Raw. During the supplemental draft, Henry was drafted to ECW. It was announced on WWE's website that Henry would be added to the title match, making it a triple threat match.

Mark Henry won the ECW title in a three-way over champion Kane and Big Show in 8:17. They announced Kane at seven-feet tall and then for some reason Mike Adamle claimed Henry was 6-1, and there looked to be 3-4 inches difference between the two and that’s with Kane having the thick lifts in his boots. The only real Adamle of the night was when Kane was in front of the table, and Adamle said “Kane, down in front of our broadcast thing,” and Tazz then said, “Mike it’s a table.” The crowd died almost immediately. The match was bad but the crowd died before the match fell apart. I hate to say it, but Henry is a negative factor because I don’t believe a Kane vs. Show singles match would have died anywhere close to this level. Kane did a knee injury spot and was out for several minutes. This left Show vs. Henry. The match fell apart here including Henry taking a bump for a shoulderblock that didn’t happen. Kane came off the top into a choke slam by Show for a near fall. Kane used a superplex on Show but as they landed, Henry splashed onto Kane for the pin. ½*

They did the first Cena-Batista tease for Wrestlemania here. Both vowed to win the title tonight, but as it turned out, both failed. C.M. Punk came out and said he hoped both would win so he could use his briefcase to challenge for it.

Ted DiBiase & Cody Rhodes ended up as World tag team champions beating Bob Holly & Cody Rhodes in 1:27. DiBiase came out to a song called “Priceless,” that may help greatly in the long run in him getting over. He claimed his partner hadn’t arrived and he needed ten more minutes. His request was denied. So they started the match. DiBiase told Rhodes he wanted Holly to start. Holly tagged in and Rhodes then kicked him in the guts and gave him a DDT. DiBiase used a cobra hold, essentially his father’s Million Dollar Dream, into a foot sweep and pinned Holly. DiBiase then announced Rhodes was his secret partner and they were the new champions. There was nothing wrong with the execution of this but the place was dead and didn’t care.

Todd Grisham interviewed JBL in the luxury boxes. His gimmick is that with Vince McMahon out of commission, he is now the richest man in the WWE. Not when you’re factoring in potential inheritance and merchandise sales, he wouldn’t even be close. He ripped on people for spending for things they can’t afford and getting foreclosed on. He ripped on Mark Cuban, who as best we can tell, was not at the show. I guess he was busy. He said Texas hasn’t had a sports winner since he left the state and put over how the Cowboys choked (flash to Tony Dorsett in the audience although his last year with the Cowboys was 1987) and brought up the New York Giants winning the Super Bowl this past year. Then he’ll go to New York and do the opposite speech.

Kofi Kingston won the IC title from Chris Jericho in 11:00. Match was exactly like a textbook of them telling the story that the underdog face has no real chance and is overmatched, and then gets the slip-on-a-banana peel title win. In the 70s and 80s this kind of scenario used to make stars in one night. In recent years, and I think partially it’s because the value of titles is almost non-existent, it has almost never worked. Jericho did a promo before the match trying to get the crowd to turn on him. They’ll boo him when he rips on them but there is none of the venomous hatred that JBL get in his promos (although JBL of late hasn’t gotten it in the ring) or like Edge and Vickie Guerrero are getting. His gist is that the fans don’t appreciate all the sacrifices he’s made and missing his kids’ birthday parties. His promo delivery is strong but unless he’s with Michaels, another face that the people really like, or thinking of specific heel spots where the crowd does natural booing for the spot, the heel turn is being difficult at least in the short-term. 

The first few minutes saw them build spots around Kingston’s leaping ability. Crowd was dead and there were light “boring” chants. Right at that point Jericho did a backward superplex that Kingston reversed in mid-air for a near fall. The crowd did get up when Jericho got the Walls on the first time. Kingston used a huracanrana for a near fall. Finish saw a lionsault and the Walls in the middle. Shawn Michaels came out. This was set up well because during the match Jerry Lawler and Michael Cole noted that Michaels wasn’t there, I think as an attempted throw-of because of the belief too many people would figure Michaels costing Jericho the title as the finish. Jericho released the hold and knocked Michaels off the apron, and then Kingston used his trouble in paradise enzuigiri type move for the pin. Post-match saw Jericho punch Michaels in the eye once, which was a lot more effective than a traditional beatdown as they played it up well. **1/4

Mickie James pinned Katie Lea Burchill in 7:11 to retain the women’s title. Most of the match was Burchill working on James’ left arm, including using a hammerlock back suplex combination and a Fujiwara armbar. James got the pin with the implant DDT. I think that term for a DDT in a woman’s match may need modification. Crowd was dead for this match as well. The wrestling was solid except for a spot or two. **

For what it was worth, 63% thought Batista was beating Edge and 61% thought Cena was beating HHH in their mobile poll.

The next match was Edge defending the World Title against Batista. Leading up to this match -

On the June 6th Smackdown, Batista, Funaki, Nunzio, and Colin Delaney defeated Edge, Chavo Guerrero Jr., Curt Hawkins and Zack Ryder in an eight-man tag team match. A stipulation was placed in the match that if Batista's team won the tag team match, Batista earned a World title match against Edge at Night of Champions. The following week, SmackDown GM Vickie Guerrero added a predicament to Batista's title shot, stating that in order for the title match to occur at Night of Champions, Batista would have to defeat The Great Khali to finalize his title shot. Batista defeated Khali and retained his title shot. On the June 23rd Raw, Batista was drafted to the Raw. Later that night, Vince told Edge that even though Batista was drafted, Edge would still defend the title against him

Edge pinned Batista after a hoard of interference to keep the World title in 16:48. Crowd turned around for this match. Jim Ross said that Batista had Leviathan-like strength, I guess harkening back to his original wrestling name in OVW, which was Leviathan. I still to this day am, well, not amazed, but certainly bemused that Dave Bautista came to the Power Plant at his size (and he was probably 50 pounds heavier then and ripped) and Sgt. Parker saw him as a bodybuilder to humiliate and they joked as they ran him off. Yeah, that was brilliant in hindsight, wasn’t it? 

He used a jackhemmer for a near fall. Edge got the advantage running Batista’s shoulder into the ringpost. Funny spot saw Batista take a header over the ECW announcers table and J.R. saying he went over the Smackdown announcers table. 

I guess it’ll take a few weeks before he gets in the groove of realizing he’s at the Smackdown announcers table. Batista got near falls with both a spinebuster and a spear. Edge escaped from a Batista bomb attempt and used an implant DDT. Edge went for a spear, but Batista punted his head. Batista came off the top rope but was met with a dropkick by Edge. At this point, Vickie Guerrero, Curt Hawkins and Zack Ryder came out. Edge went for another spear, but Batista leap-frogged him, and then hit a Batista bomb. At the count of two, Vickie Guerrero pulled ref Mickey Henson out of the ring. Batista threw Edge’s shoulder into the ringpost. Edge decked Henson. Then Chavo Guerrero’s music played and he showed up sauntering to the ring wearing a ref shirt. Batista press-slammed Vickie and threw her onto Hawkins, Ryder, Chavo and Bam Neely. While this was going on, Edge grabbed the title belt and hit Batista in the head, and Chavo jumped in and counted the fall. ***½

The next match is HHH vs John Cena for the WWE title. Leading up to the match -

 At the Royal Rumble, Cena won the Royal Rumble match, where he earned the right to challenge for the WWE Championship at WrestleMania 24. The next night on Raw, Cena stated that he did not want to wait until WrestleMania for a title match, and decided that he wanted to face then champion Randy Orton for the title on that same episode. Orton declined to defend the title on Raw, but proposed to Cena that they could meet at WWE's next pay-per-view event, No Way Out, in a title match, to which Cena agreed. 

At No Way Out, Cena defeated Orton by DQ, but did not win the title because a title can only change hands via pinfall or submission. That same night, Triple H won an Elimination Chamber match, to earn a title shot at WrestleMania. The night after No Way Out, Cena demanded that he receive a title rematch, following his match with Orton, but Raw GM William Regal, a portrayed match maker and rules enforcer, announced that Cena and Orton would be facing each other in a non-title match, with Triple H as the special guest referee, in the main event later that night, with the stipulation that if Cena won, he would join the title match at WrestleMania, making it a triple threat match. Cena won the match, making him part of the main event at WrestleMania. 

 At WrestleMania, Orton defeated Triple H and Cena to retain the title, after pinning Cena. At Backlash, Orton defended the title once again against Cena and Triple H, this time in a fatal four-way elimination match which also included JBL. Triple H won the match after eliminating Orton last to win the title. On the June 2nd episode of Raw, Cena faced Jeff Hardy, with the stipulation being that if Cena or Hardy won they would earn a title shot against Triple H at Night of Champions. Cena won the match to challenge Triple H for the title at Night of Champions. On the June 23rd Raw, during the draft, Triple H was drafted to SmackDown, making the WWE Championship exclusive to SmackDown. On the June 27th Smackdown, it was announced that Triple H would still defend the title against Cena.

HHH pinned John Cena to keep the WWE title in 19:37. Crowd was definitely pro-HHH here, although Cena did have the kids and women. HHH looked like he passed out in a tanning bed, which made even more of a contrast because Cena doesn’t look like he even bothers to tan. “You can’t wrestle” chant at Cena early. What a weird chant. At worst the chant should be “You can’t punch” because it was one of those matches where early I was having to ignore the cringing at most of his punches to enjoy the match, which aside from his punches, was very good. Then came Michael Cole with the pound & ground reference to Cena that we haven’t heard in three years since he switched to Raw. Cole’s favorite Vegas act is Roy & Siegfried. He feeds his dog Bits & Kibbles. His phone company is T & AT. He shops at the Dime & Five store. 

He owns stock in Gamble & Proctor. HHH did a high knee. I guess no more Harley Race references. He tried a pedigree but Cena escaped. HHH then took the Race bump over the top and sold his left knee. Cena started working on the knee including wrapping it around the post building to the STFU. HHH got out and Cena tried an FU but HHH countered into a pedigree and Cena kicked out. Cena came back with an FU and this time HHH kicked out. Fair is fair. 

The two started throwing punches. Fans did the “yay” when HHH would punch and “boo” when Cena would punch. That stuff started in Japan in Giant Baba comedy matches and guys like it because it’s an easy Pavlovian reaction, but to me it takes the edge off the intensity. 

Cena blocked a second pedigree attempt into the STFU, but HHH made the ropes. He pulled HHH to the middle and went for the STFU, but HHH countered into a crossface. Cena powered out of the crossface into a getting HHH on his shoulders for the FU. HHH started elbowing Cena in the head, and then used the pedigree for the pin. It was real weird after because Lawler started pushing that it looked like Cena had torn his pec. You could tell by how he was saying it that it was a fed backstage line, I guess either they feared he really had, or more likely, they wanted Cena to have an excuse for losing. The next day on TV it was never even acknowledged. ***¾