Wrestlemania's worst/oddest booking decisions

https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-masked-man-show/id1211025769?mt=2&i=1000431824758

They do a cool Rewatchable movie series and extended it to a few sporting events. Actually the baseball and football versions were awesome, this isn’t that different from a lot of reviews but I did think the producer they had was good in this

Prediction: this is the year they went too far and in this kind of city with where the venue is, it’s a Sunday, and weather…I’m very curious if ppl are leaving early in droves if the 12/1230 rumors are true.

The PG kids have school the next day. A lot of people have work the next day. It’s easily 45 min back to the city on event nights from MetLife. I’m a pretty big fan and I’m cringing at the idea that I’m not getting home til 1:30am that night after being outside In early April from 5:30-12:30

This might just be the year and venue they realize this is fucking insanity and deminishes interest in the live crowd which will translate on TV for the viewer in hour 4/5/6 on the Network making for a bad Mania.
I still remember Mania in Dallas on the Network watching at home and having zero interest to finish as it was already well past 11 and we’d been watching for 5 hours at that point

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Didn’t Prichard explain in the STW podcast dedicated to Sid that Hogan/Sid was the main event because Vince had promised Sid the main event of Wrestlemania VIII?

I think that if fans are leaving in droves and/or getting restless, that they will cut any buffer matches that are scheduled near the end

What are the buffer matches to cut?
Angle’s retirement?
Roman?
Hunter / Barista?
The three title matches?
Shane?

I doubt the have tag title matches going on late in the card.

What will suck is if my prediction is anything close to being accurate then the concept of a women’s main event will be blamed for not keeping butts in seats. Because it’s never Vince’s fault.

Yup

I’m curious to know why they’ve gone down this road. Like what’s the upside to having such a long show. I must be missing something.

All I can see are the negatives.

  • dead crowd
  • matches that nobody cares about
  • show ends way too late
  • brutal for kids

The last few super long big shows I watched on the network just haven’t been that entertaining. It kinda sucks being on the east coast and having to go to work Monday like a zombie.

At least I can start the show late and FF through some of it but end this crap by 10:45.

I’ve also thought about saving it for the next day but then I think like what the hell is the point…

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This might be why aew gets my money this year and the WWE

Bruce may have said that. But even if he did, this is also the same guy who said they put the title on Hogan at Wrestlemania IX so he could be a champion for the upcoming European tour… which he wasn’t on.

So maybe that’s true about Wrestlemania 8, but I don’t think it’s an undisputed fact.

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In hindsight and at the time I didn’t have a problem with the WM2000 main event and think it’s actually a really underrated match. Rock and HHH had risen through the WWF at the same time. They were seen pretty much as equals and as this was the attitude era, if Rock had won they would have continued to trade the championship back and forth.

Mick Foley deserved to be in the wrestlemania main event after having an excellent run for the previous several months. He was really the MVP at the time.

The McMahon family drama was the biggest storyline at the time and while some found the focus on the McMahons instead of the wrestlers as frustrating, it cannot be denied that the soap-opera feud between them was driving attention to WWE’s product and keeping fans engaged. Having all four involved made sense at the time. So they needed to add a fourth and Big Show made sense.

Being an elimination match was a great way to get all four involved and really Big Show and Foley were eliminated pretty quickly leaving Rock and HHH to jut have a really good 20+ minute No-DQ match to end the show. The swerve at the end with Vince turning heel made sense because he’s Vince. Triple H won establishing him as a major star while Austin and Undertaker were out.

Streaming hours as a metric for investors. That’s really it at this point. Total consumed hours is something they twist into engagement metrics to show value to advertisers, etc. and if they can sell 70-80k seats they already have that money so the impact of a horrible live experience isn’t important because they have the $$ and now focus on the metric. If this was still PPV they wouldn’t even try because of the affiliates costs and drop in buy rates.

HHH going over Booker T at WM19
HHH becoming the first heel to walk out of Mania with the title at WM 2000
HHH going over Lesnar at Mania 29
HHH going over Sting at Mania 32
HHH in the main event at Mania X8 over Rock/Hogan
HHH going over Sheamus in Mania 27

Interesting

I wonder if the added advertising is offsetting the lapsed fans.

By WWE revenue numbers - yes ha!

Now what happens in a year or two when the return on advertising for WWE is eroded by the unbearable length of content? Stay tuned!

Can’t

I barely watch WWE anymore. They cheesecake factory menu’d me. So much content that I just gave up completely.

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Unbelievable reference!!! Love you used that analogy. So true.

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I was thinking 1 of the tag title matches will be before The Main Event.

They could cut out the Elias segment, they could tell him backstage

TBH, AJ VS Orton isn’t filling me with anticipation, I can see that being a slow methodical match.

It seems that no matter where you are in the world and whatever timezone it is. We are all gonna suffer

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While both the savage/warrior and the Slaughter/hogan matches were good, i feel it was a mistake to not do Warrior vs Hogan 2 at mania 7