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Thursday, Nov 26, 2009
Sunday's Wrestlemania broadcast, with its much hyped match between Hulk Hogan and the Rock, might not have been enough to save Vince McMahon's crumbling empire.
Mar 19, 2002 | Nobody does hype like the World Wrestling Federation. The professional wrestling outfit has made braggadocio and gross exaggeration an art form; its overly excited ringside announcers sell the WWF's soap-style story lines as if each new plot twist were shocking, new and world historic in scale.
Sunday night's pay-per-view Wrestlemania "X8" (that's 18 in WWF-speak) was no exception. Pro wrestling's annual Super Bowl event, fans were told over and over again, was "the showcase for immortals" and "the grandest stage of all." And the much talked-about featured bout between the Rock and Hollywood Hulk Hogan ("wrestling's future vs. its past") was simply "the biggest match ever," "a match for the ages" and "icon vs. icon."
But the fans assembled in dens and living rooms across North America who shelled out $40 for the pay-per-view broadcast, not to mention the 68,000-plus who packed Toronto's Skydome (setting a new building attendance record in the process) may have detected some authentic urgency among the WWF wrestlers and announcers.
That's because, coming off last year's disastrous foray into professional football with the short-lived XFL (which sucked not only money but also man-hours out of the wrestling company), Vince McMahon's venerable sports-entertainment dynasty has been on the ropes. Not only that, the attempt to integrate wrestlers from World Championship Wrestling (WCW), the WWF's former rival, which McMahon purchased from Ted Turner last year, has been largely unsuccessful. The WWF desperately needs a hit.
Television ratings are off (last week's "Smackdown" on UPN was the show's lowest-rated non-holiday broadcast), live attendance is down, pay-per-view revenues have decreased, and WWF merchandise is still sitting on store shelves.
Perhaps it was inevitable that the WWF would come down from its pop-culture zenith of 1999. That's when gladiators like Stone Cold Steve Austin, Mankind and the Undertaker were featured in virtually every consumer magazine in America, while McMahon was toasted as a modern day P.T. Barnum, able to magically, and consistently, attack the mercurial younger-male demographic like nobody else in entertainment.
Today, it has all gone sour. Last year, when Austin, the WWF's blue-collar hero, returned to the ring following a long rehabilitation, ratings barely budged. Nor did the arrival of the legendary Hogan make a difference. (He bolted to WCW in the early '90s.) When McMahon bought WCW he apparently didn't get its viewers; at the peak of wrestling's popularity in late 1998 and early '99, WCW and the WWF together attracted 12 million viewers each Monday night for their competing telecasts. Today, the WWF's Monday-night show draws about half that number.
Ratings for MTV's reality-based wrestling show, "Tough Enough," are down 30 percent in its second season, while its Sunday night "Heat" broadcast is well below what the WWF used to post on Sunday nights at the USA Network before bolting to Viacom-owned MTV.
Against that uncertain backdrop, the WWF will unveil a risky scheme later this month to help boost its TV ratings and extend the shelf life of its wrestlers: splitting its roster into two separate camps. One group, likely led by the Rock, will appear only on Monday nights on TNN's "Raw," while the other, with Austin at the helm, will make its living exclusively on UPN's "Smackdown," according to Dave Meltzer, publisher of the Wrestling Observer.
This shift is a huge roll of the dice, which is one reason the WWF has postponed it several times over the past few months. If wrestling fans revolt (they're accustomed to seeing the Rock, Austin, and all the other wrestlers both nights of the week), the ripple effect could be devastating.
Then again, the move could be a stroke of genius, a way for the WWF to create two distinct brands and hook in fans to a pair of wrestling roundups. "The next six to eight weeks are extremely pivotal," says Meltzer.
It will be the consistency of the bouts, plotlines and rivalries that will determine the future of the WWF, notes Meltzer. A great "Wrestlemania" can't guarantee strong TV ratings for the weeks that follow; last year's pay-per-view event was considered a classic, yet wrestling ratings dropped for nine consecutive weeks afterward.
Still, Wrestlemania "X8," with its Hogan vs. Rock matchup, offered the WWF an enormous opportunity to win back casual fans and those whose interest has flagged recently. Unfortunately, most of Sunday night's broadcast came off as a four-hour version of a typical Monday night "Raw." The heavy metal band Drowning Pool performed live for the Skydome crowd, but little else seemed out of the ordinary, memorable or in any way worth $40.
