Post by Pennyroyal_Tea (admin) on Dec 27, 2004 8:29:53 GMT -5
The following are excerpts from ImpactWrestling.com's 'The Interactive Interview' report, to read the rest of the report, and to listen to the show go to www.impactwrestling.com/content.aspx?snum=4355.
-- Pat feels Paul [Heyman] brought a lot of stars to America. He mentions Benoit, Guerrero, Taz, and several others that Paul introduced to America and made valuable stars. He goes on to say that wrestling is a star oriented business and you need to find the guys who will get ratings, sell merchandise, and accumulate buy rates. So, as Taz, Raven, The Sandman, The Dudley Boys, and others left the company, Paul didn't build new stars to take their place. The luxury that sports teams has, in Pat's opinion, is the fact that the fans discover the next big star by team loyalty. He mentions a line of stars from the Yankees though the years as to the chain of stars that followed thanks to the franchise loyalty. Wrestling, though, doesn't have that to rely upon and as such new stars must be created. James mentions how after Hogan, Vince made Bret. After Bret, Vince made Stone Cold, and so forth. Pat agrees.
-- Pat thought the XWF would have worked. He feels the production was off the charts and that if the backers had stayed with it, it would have had stayed with it, the XWF would have had legs. He then mentions why the backers back out of wrestling promotions so quickly. Making up numbers, Pat says if you spend $1,000,000 on 2 days of TV tapings and you sell $4,000 in merchandise, backers are going to look at the fact that you're $996,000 in the hole and tell you, as James put it, to "take a hike." Pat says it takes years of work to make a wrestling company profitable and points at Vince McMahon as the perfect example of someone had to borrow to the hills to make his money but now that he has, he's a billionaire.
-- Pat feels Paul [Heyman] brought a lot of stars to America. He mentions Benoit, Guerrero, Taz, and several others that Paul introduced to America and made valuable stars. He goes on to say that wrestling is a star oriented business and you need to find the guys who will get ratings, sell merchandise, and accumulate buy rates. So, as Taz, Raven, The Sandman, The Dudley Boys, and others left the company, Paul didn't build new stars to take their place. The luxury that sports teams has, in Pat's opinion, is the fact that the fans discover the next big star by team loyalty. He mentions a line of stars from the Yankees though the years as to the chain of stars that followed thanks to the franchise loyalty. Wrestling, though, doesn't have that to rely upon and as such new stars must be created. James mentions how after Hogan, Vince made Bret. After Bret, Vince made Stone Cold, and so forth. Pat agrees.
-- Pat thought the XWF would have worked. He feels the production was off the charts and that if the backers had stayed with it, it would have had stayed with it, the XWF would have had legs. He then mentions why the backers back out of wrestling promotions so quickly. Making up numbers, Pat says if you spend $1,000,000 on 2 days of TV tapings and you sell $4,000 in merchandise, backers are going to look at the fact that you're $996,000 in the hole and tell you, as James put it, to "take a hike." Pat says it takes years of work to make a wrestling company profitable and points at Vince McMahon as the perfect example of someone had to borrow to the hills to make his money but now that he has, he's a billionaire.