Wrestling Always Matters Podcast 9/05/11

Check out the Wrestling Always Matters News and Commentary Podcast.

I'll be recapping on some of the hottest news floating around the Internet.

In this episode, I will talk about Kurt Angle, Bill Goldberg, Nikki Bella, and more.

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Feel free to leave your comments regarding any wrestling news

Wrestling Website Spotlight - The Territory League

Territory League

Sun Valley, CA

The wrestling website I’m spotlighting this week is the Territory League which can be found in www.territoryleague.com  This wrestling promotion takes a different approach to sports entertainment.  It is a fusion league based sports and wrestling.  The Territory League is ran by Knokx Promotions and boast that this is the first professional wrestling league. The Territory League is divided into teams representing a particular city.  The cities divided by regions:  West, East, Central, and International.  Each week, two teams will face off against each other in a series of matches in either the Lucha Libre Division, Tag-Team Division, Heavy Weight The first Territory team to win the best of 4 matches, wins the series.  The wins – losses are recorded in order to determine the top 4 teams who will enter the Rodney Anoa’i Cup Tournament.  The winner of the tournament will be named that years Territory League Champions.

Currently, there are 7 teams:

The Anchorage Raptures represents Anchorage, Alaska

The Nor Cal Posse represents the areas north of SF

The Bay City Union represents the San Francisco Bay Area

The Hollister Hooligans represents Hollister, CA

The Templars of City of Angels represent Los Angeles, CA

The Las Vegas High Rollers represents Las Vegas, NV

The Reno Scum represents Reno, Nevada

The number of teams will expand as more cities formulate their teams.

Former WWE talents wrestle in this league such as Gangrel, Rikishi, Scotty 2 Hotty, Gene Snitsky also are a part of this wrestling promotion

There are videos of their matches on-line.  Just go to www.territoryleague.com to get your wrestling fix.

Is the "Rawkdown" really the answer for the WWE?

It appears that the WWE has done away with the split-brand concept, with them having some on the Raw roster appear on Smackdown and vice versa. Now, I’m going to play devil’s advocate (well, sort of devil’s advocate) for keeping the Split-Brand concept. It seems that one of the main reasons for combining the two shows, which I collectively call the “Rawkdown” is to get better ratings for Smackdown. Now the fact is the hottest draws will always be on Raw and they will always be on Raw because that’s the WWE’s bread and butter. The hot draws that are thrown to Smackdown are there for the reason is to help the shows ratings, but in turn, it’s to free up space on the Raw Roster to continue hyping the main wrestler Vince wants to center his company around. That is perfectly understandable. If Raw ratings go down, then the business will go down. Because of this, Smackdown will always be the inferior show.

Now if combining the shows is due to ratings, we must take the other factors into account which is why they are low. First of all, Smackdown is on the Sy-Fy channel. Over all, the Sy-Fy channel does not have the same ratings as the USA channel. So, comparing the RAW ratings versus the Smackdown ratings isn’t really fair because they both are aired on two different channels.

NXT 2.0?

With NXT not showing any sign that it will come to an end and have a definitive winner, is it time to move on to the next level of NXT?

THE HISTORY:
When Vince McMahon and the WWE conceptualized the NXT show, is it possible that they had no end game in sight? NXT started in February 23, 2010, replacing ECW. After a 4 year run, ECW was not producing the same ratings, which prompted Vince McMahon to make a decision that ECW was going to be replaced by a new show which would be the “next evolution of WWE; the next evolution of television history”. On February 9, 2010, it was announced that the title of the new show was going to be NXT, and that the last ECW show will be on February 16. So on February 23, the world was introduced to NXT.

NXT is a hybrid of reality television and WWE scripted programming.

Be A Bully… oops, I mean Star!

In recent news after Summerslam, on August 19, 2011, Lisa Wright, Managing Director of Council for Unity, wrote a letter to the be a STAR Alliance (beastaralliance.org) questioning their affiliation with the WWE.  The letter was sent after she received an e-mail, which pointed out the “fat jokes” regarding Vickie Guerrero, apparently referring to Monday Night Raw when Vickie Guerrero was at the announcer’s booth and Jerry Lawler was making fun of her weight.  Ms. Wright was showing her concerns because the Council for Unity is one of many companies which affiliated with the be a STAR Alliance.  The following is her statement:

Wrestling With Character

I love “sports entertainment”.  The term “sports entertainment” was coined in the 1980s by the World Wrestling Federation (now known as WWE) as a term referring professional wrestling.  Understanding this term is important for those getting into professional wrestling and much more for those transitioning from the independent wrestling circuits to the nationwide televised wrestling companies like WWE and Impact Wrestling.  In the Indy circuit, the wrestling character may or may not be depictive of a person being heel or face.  The entertainment value in the indy circuit deals more with in-ring skill and psychology on how one person was able to triumph over the other person.  Many independent shows are not done frequently so building a story-line arc between shows is not that important.  In contrast, being on television shows on either WWE or Impact Wrestling, the audience remembers the last acts that were done in the previous show, so continuity of the characters in the storyline is vitally important.  Sad to say, though some wrestlers have been put into storyline, their character is so dry that the story does not get over, and much more, the wrestler never ascends to the next level.

For WWE to grow, they need to...

INTRODUCTION

The WWE (formerly known as the World Wrestling Entertainment) is a wrestling company juggernaut.  In the 1980s to 1990s, Vince McMahon swooped up the hottest talents from the various wrestling territories, which led to the demise of these territories.  Not being able to match the then-known “WWF” money to keep their talents and being limited to a small portion of the American market, many of these territories closed shop.  In the 1990s, WCW became the biggest challenger to the WWF/E with ECW being the alternate wrestling show for the wrestling fans.  ECW was the first to fold and the company eventually was bought by the WWE.  WCW followed after losing ratings, corporate management changes, and bloated payrolls for their talents.  It too was eventually bought by WWF/E.  By early 2000s, the newly named WWE became the only wrestling show to watch on TV.  Due to the lack of variety, the TV ratings for WWE slowly dwindled, and have maintained that constant number over the years, only slightly going up or down weekly.  Since moving from private-ownership to a corporation