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Jeff Hardy is an Idiot I was recently watching the 2-21-11 video on youtube and I saw a link to a Jeff Hardy promo from the Royal Rumble in 2008. That quite possibly was the best 6 week build up of any star in the history of the WWE. Jeff Hardy was made to look like a HUGE star and that promo video featuring the song “Rooftops” was the perfect complement to that time period. I got to thinking about Jeff Hardy and how the WWE started building around him as a key star and World Champion when he got in trouble with the law and ended up going to TNA. I got to thinking about how the WWE still gave him that chance after he got suspended right before he was about to win the 2008 Money in the Bank ladder match at Wrestlemania 24. How that following up his Rumble 2008 build with a MITB win and subsequent first World title run would be great. Jeff Hardy really screwed the pooch. He could’ve gone down in history as a great story in the business…a modern day Bret Hart or Shawn Michaels to go from tag team success to Intercontinental glory to World Champion. It didn’t happen. I look back at Mania 24…had Jeff won MITB in addition to all the other memories, then WM 24 might be considered a contender for the best Wrestlemania of all-time (and I think it would’ve propelled to that place, since I think it already challenges for top Mania of all-time). He could’ve main-evented Mania 25 had that happened…could’ve done it again throughout the next several years had he not gotten in trouble with the law. What ifs…crazy to ponder? Come Back to WWE, Kurt Angle I recently, on my day off, decided to watch some Kurt Angle Wrestlemania matches to help me in writing a couple of his matches for my Road to Wrestlemania series. Angle vs. Lesnar – I sometimes forget how amazing a performance this was for a guy with a serious neck injury that postponed surgery to wrestle in the main-event. I also sometimes forget how crazy good these two guys were despite not having pro-wrestled for very long. Angle vs. Guerrero – Sometimes this match gets knocked for being too slow in the early going, but I think my tastes have changed because I thought this match was phenomenal in its storytelling. Angle was so fluid in his amateur moves that he used so often in the pro matches. Guerrero was a great babyface opponent for him and such a great wrestler that it was like watching two artists. Angle vs. Michaels – my favorite match of all-time, personally. I think that there are very few times in history when a match completely lives up to all of your wildest expectations. They blew me away, performing every spot that I wanted to see and really leaving everything they had in the ring. Bottom line – I “friekin’” miss Kurt Angle. Perhaps next year he can come back and finish his career with the WWE…or some day…any day… Wrestlemania Match of the Night Competition Wrestlemania Match of the Night Competition – I watch a lot of old Wrestlemanias during this time of year and I make it no secret that I’m a huge fan of workrate. That’s really why I watch wrestling. Ultimately, I like to see the wrestlers go out there and tell a story with back and forth drama. I want to see everyone trying to steal the show. The best of the best of the Wrestlemanias have featured a legitimate competition for match of the night. On the Show of Shows, a fire gets lit under the rear ends of the wrestlers and they all try to outdo each other. Wrestlemania VII – You think Randy Savage didn’t go to the back to the dressing room after his stellar match with Warrior with a ton of pride and confidence that everyone had to follow him and that they’d struggle to do it? You think Shawn Michaels and Bret Hart weren’t trying to top each other during their heydays? The Rock, Stone Cold, Undertaker, Triple H, John Cena, Kurt Angle, Batista, Edge, Chris Jericho, etc…they’ve all taken part in these competitions in the past. Wrestlemanias 17 and 19 respectively provide excellent examples of top stars trying to outduel each other while the young guys tried to up the ante in the under-to-mid card. That’s why I think that the last two Wrestlemanias get too much heat. Mania 25 was a very good PPV. The MITB guys really delivered a unique match, prompting Jericho to try and top them. He and Steamboat nearly did with their sequences. Jeff and Matt Hardy did their damndest to make the most of their 15-minutes and deliver a memorable brother vs. brother. I thought it was a damn good stunt match. HBK and Taker went out there and shut the lid on the competition with their match of the history in wrestling but Cena, Edge, Big Show, HHH, and Orton all tried to go out there and keep that top quality going. You watch those matches without watching HBK vs. Taker first and they’re much better. Last year was the same type of deal. Money in the Bank came at match #3 and did its usual crowd pleasing stunts to up the ante. Triple H and Sheamus went out and held the title thru an atrocious match between Bret and Vince before Edge vs. Chris Jericho took things to the next level. Batista and John Cena pretty much matched their effort if not slightly exceeding it before Taker and HBK went out there and stole the show in the main-event. I hope we see that same type of competition this year despite the new faces… Faces and Heels You know what I think wrestling needs more of? Groups. On-air cliques. They don’t even need to be stables with a common purpose, but just groups of so-called friends that are allies. I’ve been thinking lately about a brainstorming column where we discuss what could trigger the next big wrestling boom. One idea floating in my head was to make it more real. That’s where the groups come in. I have a patient that is about 18 years old, and it’s fun to listen to his stories about what he and his friends do at that age. Some of the stupid stuff that they do is amusing because I used to do a lot of the same stupid stuff (in variations). He was also telling me about some drama with one of their friends who, essentially, turned heel on one of the other guys. It was one of those situations where everyone is friends in the group, but a series of events causes two of the group to have a falling out. One guy, as it turned out, was more popular amongst the rest of the group than the other, so people start gravitating toward the more likeable kid. The other guy, meanwhile, goes from being in the crowd to being an outsider. What a perfect wrestling storyline? That doesn’t seem to happen often enough as a means to creating a top star. Wrestlemania Buyrates I think it’s fascinating to look back at Wrestlemania buyrates since the WWE started doing PPV in 1987. A PPV buyrate is 1 for every 400,000 buyers. So, last year’s Wrestlemania drew 890,000. That’s a 2.2 buyrate. The first PPV Mania – Wrestlemania III – drew a 10.2 buyrate (meaning 4 million people bought it). AMAZING! Andre vs. Hogan was the strongest drawing pro-wrestling match of all-time. I’m not sure it’s possible for those numbers to be duplicated. Mania buys dropped steadily from there until they bottomed out from 1994-1997. It drew 2.6 million in ’88, then 2.3 million in ’89. It dropped to 1.5 million for Hogan-Warrior at Mania VI and then down to 1.1 million in 1991. Mania 8 dropped below a million for the first time. ONLY 920,000 people ordered it in 1992. Sort of interesting when you put that into perspective, isn’t it? The best buyrate of the last 20 years was Mania 23’s 2.97 (1.2 million buys). That’s just a smidge above the worst buyrate of the first five years of Mania being a PPV. From ’93-’97, Mania buys slowly dwindled from 800K to 672K to 520K to 480K to Mania 13’s pathetic 308K (the least successful PPV Mania in history). The Attitude era picked it up for a few years with buys over 900,000 between ’98 and ’00, but dipped back down to 872K in 2001. Manias X-8 and XIX, respectively, saw interest in the event drop back down to the tune of 640K and 560K. Mania XX came back with close to 700,000 buys, which brings us to the modern era. I have long argued that Wrestlemania has become its own brand. It’s just one of those things that people will watch now. In a good year, it’ll draw over a million buys, but it should be able to bank on 800-900K or more with relative ease based on its brand name. That theory will get put to the test this year, but the lowest buyrate in the Cena era thus far has been last year’s 890K figure. I expect that number may drop this year, but how low will be the question…
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