Starbuck owns this thread. LMFAO. Grade-A trolling. :cool2
(You'll be hearing from me in the next 24 hours or so, S-buck, lol.)
***
Agreed with the point by JasonLives, I believe it was, about the Lord Tensai match being saddled with that fairly sizable loss (which wasn't really that huge considering how we were seeing nearly million-viewer drops only a few months back, at least things are much more stable overall now with even the midcard pulling its weight on a consistent basis, although some of that is because the top programs aren't drawing as well as they should be in the first place and right now that is namely Cena/Lesnar) isn't entirely fair, as it was ensconced between commercial breaks and fluffy backstage skits and video packages in a weak quarter hour anyway. Way too early to say that Lord Tensai is a bust or anything.
***
That Q1 number for this week's Raw is legitimately devastating. And what makes it suck even worse is that it was by far the best quarter hour of the entire show. The whole feel and vibe of that segment was unlike anything we've seen in WWE in a long, long time. It felt unpredictable and fresh. Cena and Lesnar both looked like intense badasses coming out of it. I can't believe WWE's booked this match for Extreme Rules but that's another matter, I guess. Wouldn't be surprised in the least if they don't actually go through with an actual match, but then again it's not like them in this era to reflexively cut to a bait-and-switch.
***
JasonLives making some good points backed up by facts regarding house show business in 2004. This segues nicely into Lesnar, because WWE in general was in much more dire straits back in 2004 than it's been ever since. The Cena/Batista "mini-boom" as we may like to call it spearheaded WWE into a much brighter era, overall, and its business model has changed to a significant degree in the subsequent years. If the picture of WWE's landscape seemed bleak roughly a year or so ago with HBK retiring, Batista retiring, Jericho taking another leave of absence and Edge being forced to retire, in terms of undeniably needing new stars, 2002-2004 was much, much worse. It really caught up with them in 2004, in spite of the Eddie Guerrero push which was arguably instrumental in at least keeping Smackdown viable throughout that otherwise dismal year for that brand in particular and WWE overall, and by the end of the year, in the wake of Orton's failed babyface push, the necessity of Batista and Cena becoming huge stars was irrefutable.
Average house show in 2011 averaged about 6,000 or so, I've read. Obviously WWE reaching into new, relatively untapped markets recently gives their live gate numbers a major boost but the house show business for WWE is quite healthy these days. March is usually one of the strongest months for the entire year in house show business for WWE, and it's almost entirely because of The Road to Wrestlemania, naturally and most reports indicated that the crowds this year were almost always very large at just about every house show WWE ran in the month of March. Most workers in WWE should be pleased with their payoffs right now. The international tour in April will intrinsically buttress that month's house show business as well.