The Heat and the Shine

The death of pro wrestling territories was authored long ago.  Maybe it's time for a rewrite. Credit Vince McMahon, blame cable television , whatever.  They're gone.  For now. Conventional wisdom is that advances in technology preclude a return to the territory days.  Information technology is too cheap and production technology is too expensive.  The former allows people to explore beyond their local wrestling product.  The latter makes it too impossible for local wrestling to compete with WWE. Perhaps.  Conventional wisdom is often wise, but sometimes it's off base.  (I'd insert a line about politics, but I don't want to be banned by Indy promoters.) Conventional wisdom goes awry when it masquerades as fundamental truth.  Is it fundamentally true that, when people are allowed to sample a "major league" product, they ignore their local product?  Does flashier television production fundamentally disqualify simpler productions from being emb

UFC is expected to set a company record for single-night revenue on November 12, 2016.  That is the night that Conor McGregor chases the UFC Lightweight (155 lb.) Championship at UFC 205 in New York City. In digesting the previous paragraph, three things stand out.  One: UFC's business model is largely based around massive revenue intakes for single-night events.  Two: With rare exceptions, there is little to distinguish one UFC pay-per-view from the other.  A new number pops up every month or so, some fights happen, and the company moves on to the next one.  Three: A man who has never competed as a UFC Lightweight is about to challenge for the UFC Lightweight Championship. Maybe there should be a fourth: UFC fans love it.  UFC is having no trouble making money right now.  Their business model works. Does it work well enough, though? UFC's new owners, WME-IMG, used a very large loan to purchase UFC: $1.8 billion, to be exact.  The new owners are going to have to increa

UFC made headlines in the financial news world yesterday, and not in a good way.  Bloomberg reported that the United States Federal Reserve admonished Goldman Sachs over WME-IMG's purchase of UFC. The story was circulated by the usual cadre of anti-UFC folks in the MMA world, but that doesn't mean that it's benign. Let's go through exactly how the UFC sale went down and what the Fed was complaining about. Some time ago, UFC's former owners, Zuffa, LLC (led by the Fertitta brothers) approached Goldman Sachs about brokering a sale. Approaching a bank about brokering a sale is standard operating procedure when the seller wants to go on the open market in order to attract debt-driven buyers.  The idea is that Zuffa didn't want to limit themselves to selling to only people/companies who have billions of dollars of cash on hand.  Zuffa wanted to be able to sell to people/companies to are willing to take on billions of dollars in debt, and then pay Zuffa with

That UFC 205: McGREGOR vs. ALVAREZ would be a hot ticket is no surprise.  It is the first mixed martial arts event in New York since UFC exploded in popularity a decade ago, and it features Conor McGregor, UFC's top box office attraction.  An attempt at a box office record -- beating the $12 million in tickets sold at Toronto's SkyDome in 2011 -- was expected by Dave Meltzer of the Wrestling Observer, a close watcher of UFC's business since the promotion's inception. Still, the box office level that UFC management has Madison Square Garden scaled for is eye-popping: $18 million.  In an arena with under 18,000 available seats*, the math is simple: UFC is hoping for an average ticket above $1,000. Standard UFC 205 tickets sold through Ticketmaster were at seven standard price levels: $106, $256, $456, $606, $806, $1,006 and $1,506.  As of the time of publication of this article, standard price levels below $1,506 are all unavailable on Ticketmaster. Once UFC 205 ti

CM Punk's journey to UFC Fighter is complete. At UFC 203, he made the walk. He stepped in the cage. To borrow a memorable Arn Anderson promo, he said what he was going to do and then he did it. In many eyes, that was a win. The cynical might ask, "A win for who?". It is a fair question. Victory, after all, is in the eyes of the beholder. Punk surely won. The world can debate his level of self-awareness, but most agree on this: he lives to prove people wrong. 'Fake' wrestlers don't step in the Octagon, and he did. For others, victory is less clear. Wrestlers, fighters, fans, announcers; they hold opinions across a broad spectrum. Some love the effort, some hate the spectacle and many carry ambivalence on those very topics. "What harm was done?" is a common refrain from supporters of this and other spectacles. The injured party can be summed up in a single word: excellence. That concept, which drives so many admirable parts of Western civiliza

Pro wrestling fans know that it's worked. NBA fans think that it's real. Those are two obvious facts, but their repercussions are less than obvious to many.  The NBA can draw from angles that evoke old time wrestling; modern pro wrestling can't. The NBA and its broadcast partners learned the value of old time wrestling booking today.  The Cleveland Cavaliers were subject to something akin to a "Loser Leaves the Playoffs" heading in to Game 5 of the NBA Finals last night.  They needed to win three straight times to avoid elimination. Due to fans believing that the NBA isn't predetermined (which I don't think it is, for the record), the "needs to win out" angle worked.  The 18-49 demographic (demo) rating was 7.6, up a whopping 27% from a shockingly low Game 4 demo rating.  People tuned because there was suspense in whether the season could end. Due to pro wrestling fans believing that New Japan is predetermined (which it is, for the rec

The International Pro Wrestling Commission (IPWC) issued the following statement upon reviewing live reports and video footage from the TNA 'Impact Wrestling' event of June 7, 2016. The following disciplinary action has been assigned in response to the actions of various parties during the June 7, 2016 TNA 'Impact Wrestling' event: MATT HARDY (Cameron, NC, USA) has been fined $2,500 USD for delaying the start of the Impact Wrestling event.  TNA producers Dixie Carter, William "Billy" Corgan and David "Lagana" Lagana were issued a warning for repeated start time delays, along with notice that fines may be imposed for future delays under the IPWC's "lack of institutional control" provision. DREW GALLOWAY (Tampa, FL, USA) has been fined $1,000 USD for agreeing to a Championship match without IPWC performance enhancing drug (PED) procedures in place.  IPWC rules stipulate a minimum of fifteen (15) days of random, twenty-four (24)