Mookie's Wrestlenomics Round-up (and a quarter of a parody article)

I couldn't help but giggle when I read Ryan Dilbert's opening line in "Examining Parallels Between Current WWE Product and Hulkamania Era".

Friedrich Nietzsche (and Rust Cohle) seems to be right that time is a flat circle, as we've seen with how WWE has circled back to the days of Hulkamania in many ways.

I follow what he's saying, but it always seems a little goofy when we start throwing around Nietzsche in our articles.

I even started on my parody article, but I got distracted....

Avicenna (and Galileo Galilei ) seems to be right that Venus is closer than the Sun to Earth, as we've seen with how WWE has circled back to the days of Brooklyn Brawlermania in many ways.

It's been 31 years since Steve Lombardi first teamed up with Barry Horowitz and launched the jeans and torn Yankee t-shirt into a new orbit. Even with all the changes fans have witnessed WWE go through since then, one can't help but notice that Abe "Knuckleball" Schwartz is consistently ignored by the Wrestling Observer Hall of Fame voters.

WWE's central loser, its Northeastern dynamic and the jobbertastic nature of the product all remind one of 1989.Perhaps those parallels speak to how much wrestling relies on goofs and who will work cheaply. Maybe it's a testament to how winners need to crush jobbers, and how we continue to get pinned and get paid.Either way, to watch a crowd boo Heath Slater is to flash back to when Brawler was jobber king. 

Reprise of a Zero 

The biggest jobber in today's WWE is most certainly Slater.Heath Slater was a one-man band with red hair and possibly JBL's long-lost relative. He told kids to worship him and and respect West Virginia. His charisma compliments his ring skills. That description could just as well be about Brawler. Replace the Red Hair and vitamins with oddball accent, questionable grooming skills and musical prowness, switch out a bandana for a ball cap and the similarities are even more obvious.

I did actually finish something and publish a piece over at Voices of Wrestling: "12 Months. Five Feuds. #wrestlenomics" looking at matches that have been repeated extensively in the past year. (If you've got time on your hands, look at the alternative text for the images.)

The delay of the WWE Network in the UK has caused a lot of eyebrows to raise. I wrote about on Tuesday at Bleacher Report: "Delay of WWE Network in UK Underscores the Importance of WWE's TV Rights Deals".

I found myself scratching my head when I read the BBC report about the WWE Network UK situation which included this line, "It is available in more than 150 countries around the world including the key markets of India and China, although in Canada it is only available through cable TV firm Rodgers Communications." Huh?

Calling out the "key markets" was something I did in my piece. Weird coincidence. However, as I've explained in other pieces, the WWE Network is not available in either India or China. Even more baffling BBC.

Lastly, I've updated the 2006-2014 PPV numbers log. It's pretty dramatic how much the North American numbers have dropped since the WWE Network has launched (-70%; 2006-2013 the average B-PPV from March to August was 136,000 buys; in 2014 it was 40,000 buys) while the international numbers are very different (-30%; 2006-2013 average B-PPV from March to August was 85,000 buys; in 2014 it was 59,500 buys). Interesting.