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MERRY CHRISTMAS to one and all and if you don't celebrate Christmas, HAPPY HOLIDAYS! Out of appreciation for my readers and the consumers of LordsofPain.net/WrestlingHeadlines.com, I have prepared a classic "ASK TITO" as I have a large backlog of questions that I haven't used in my columns recently. Usually, I have a section called PHAT QUESTIONS in my columns but because my Opening Rant, RAW is Hulu reviews, and the Last Word have gone long, the questions were cut. Usually after 11:30pm, my eyes get tired and I'm losing steam with my column. Therefore, the questions were dropped... No problem, as I can use them for this special Christmas column. I hope that all of my readers have a great holidays. As I said in my Last Word from my last column, appreciate the Friends & Family that you have and if you see someone who is struggling or appears lonely this holiday season, see what you can do for them... Appreciation and acknowledgement can go a long way... So sit back and relax... Maybe read this column on the new iPhone or iPad that you received during Christmas morning... Enjoy some additional wrestling content on me. --------------------------------- PHAT QUESTIONS Question #1 - Will Dean Ambrose become WWE Champion during 2016? Interesting question... If you look back on the last 15 years, the WWE has had lots of World Title inflation and that was made worse with the RAW/Smackdown brand split. Edge, Randy Orton, and John Cena have 1 title reign per year (or more) for their careers. That's ridiculous. HOWEVER - If you look at the last 3 years, the WWE has seen some lengthy reigns. CM Punk went over a year, Randy Orton was champion for a while, Brock Lesnar had a nice run, and Seth Rollins was champion from Wrestlemania to just before Survivor Series this year. Seems like WWE is willing to have lengthy reigns for the WWE Champion and the title has some nice credibility now (aside from a few vacancies and Money in the Bank cash-ins). We could see Roman Reigns having an extensive WWE Title reign... But you also have Brock Lesnar and/or John Cena maybe getting a run. After all, John Cena will break Ric Flair's World Title record sometime in the future... Then, Seth Rollins will be returning. Anything is possible, as the WWE roster has endured injuries... But, WWE is giving some length to their WWE Title holders now and it might be too crowded at the time for Ambrose. HOWEVER - I place strong odds on Dean Ambrose winning 2016's Money in the Bank and maybe that's how he sneaks in a WWE Title reign during 2016. For now, however, I think that the WWE will give him a serious run as Intercontinental Champion. ---------- Question #2 - Who will win in the lawsuit? CM Punk or WWE Doctor Chris Amann? If you'll recall, WWE senior physician Dr. Chris Amann is attempting to sue former WWE wrestler CM Punk and the host of the podcast (former wrestler himself) Colt Cabana for defamation. CM Punk was on a Cabana podcast shortly after Thanksgiving during November 2014 and shot from the hip about his time in WWE from 2011 through early 2014 when he abruptly left the WWE following Royal Rumble 2014. Punk was very critical of the healthcare he received during that time, specifically the care of Dr. Amann regarding a growth on his back around the waistline. WWE, of course, has denied any involvement with this lawsuit and insists that this is Dr. Amann's own decision. It all depends on the word "documentation". Doctors keep very detailed documentation on their patients because the medical industry is one of the most sued industries around. Doctors have to avoid liability or else their malpractice insurance will keep rising... In the case of Dr. Amann, he's a physician in the WWE which was a place where another doctor was indicted for distributing steroids to wrestlers during the early 1990's (Dr. Zahorian) and Wellness Program questions after the deaths of Eddie Guerrero and Chris Benoit during 2005-2007. It's safe to assume that Dr. Amann keeps detailed documentation on wrestlers he treats because of the environment in which he works (WWE). For Punk to escape liability, it all depends how his words are interpreted on that Podcast AND how good his documentation of treatment is following WWE. What did Dr. Amann miss? If Punk can prove that he received poor care from the WWE physician, then he'll win the case... However, if he lacks documentation from his physicians, he'll have to return some of that severance money to the WWE. The interesting dynamic, to me, for the whole "WWE vs. CM Punk" thing is why the WWE terminated CM Punk. Depending on the wording of his 2011-2014 contract, WWE could have just claimed breach of contract and made his post-WWE life a living hell via that No Compete clause. Ask Brock Lesnar who had to deal with legal troubles from WWE following his 2004 exit. I don't know if WWE had hopes that CM Punk would re-think his decision on leaving and return later during 2014, but something pushed the WWE to terminate Punk. Because of their foolish actions, it forced them to cut a check for severance pay and it allows CM Punk to freely work for Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC). Thus, the best way to that the WWE could get revenge on CM Punk is through lawsuits like the one Dr. Amann filed. But for everything that CM Punk said about the WWE, especially about Triple H or Ryback, only the Doctor is critical of that November 2014 Podcast and has filed a lawsuit. That is amazing to me. ---------- Question #3 - Did the Economic Recession of 2001 help cause WCW and/or ECW to shutdown? As you'll recall, Extreme Championship Wrestling (ECW) officially closed during April 2001 and World Championship Wrestling (WCW) officially closed when WWE bought them during March 2001. There was an actual Recession declared by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), a board of economists and other financial specialists, who officially date the peaks and the valleys of the Economy. From a peak of an economy, a "recession" begins until the very bottom of the valley is hit and upward growth begins again. According to the NBER, there was an economic recession from March 2001 through November 2001. Coincidentally, both WCW and ECW closed at the start of the recession. But I don't think so... Both promotions started seeing financial issues during 1998-1999, very strong years for the economy... The issue with both promotions was increased expenses at a faster pace than revenues coming in. For WCW, they became too bloated on expenses and their viewership peaked during mid 1998. Fewer people began attending WCW shows, fewer people were watching Nitro/Thunder, and fewer people were buying WCW merchandise and Pay Per Views. Meanwhile, WCW kept giving more money to their existing veterans, kept signing other veterans, and did expensive things like redoing the WCW Nitro set or trying to imitate Jay Leno's set for 1 Nitro segment. Furthermore, WWE was causing WCW's costs to increase because they became a valid competitor who could now steal WCW free agents. That early 1999 signing of Big Show was brutal to WCW and little things like WWE stealing the THQ video game contract. Those EA Sports WCW games were awful but those new THQ games for the WWE were amazing. Expenses were rising at a much faster pace than revenues for WCW. Ditto for ECW... WCW and eventually WWE kept raiding its talent. In order for ECW to keep core wrestlers around, they paid them more. Worse yet for ECW, they could never obtain a strong national television contract. Sure, they were on TNN (now SpikeTV) for 1 year, but that deal was not lucrative to ECW (reportedly broke even). ECW had problems obtaining revenues from Pay Per View companies as well. ECW paid their wrestlers more, upped their production costs to make the shows look better on television, but they did not have revenues coming in as expected. If the economy did anything, it convinced AOL/Time Warner executives to be a bit more expense driven on their financials and maybe that caused them to ultimately cancel WCW programming on TNT and TBS. That's it... But the problems that WCW created for themselves began when they became successful and thought that the gravy train would never end. It did... The 2001 Recession may have hurt the WWE more than anyone, in my opinion... They went public and began selling shares of stock during late 1999 just as the stock market was peaking... It took a tumble via the dotcom bust and the 2001 recession. WWE mostly used that new capital from selling the stock to fund the XFL professional football league that only lasted 1 year. Thus, when the stock doesn't grow as expected, the expenses from that XFL failure hurt much more... Lucky for the WWE, they convinced NBC/Universal and Viacom to invest in that league. But I also think that the 2001 recession kept the WWE away from investing in any WCW veteran contract. With a lower stock price and therefore less capital to play with, the risk of taking on a highly paid WCW veteran compounds if they don't draw. ---------- Question #4 - How long will TNA survive? As long as the company funding TNA, Panda Energy, is willing to keep providing resources to the wrestling company to stay afloat... We could be talking years. I think the new deal with Pop TV will probably extend their lifespan by 2 more years, but it's pretty evident to me that the Carter family aren't in the wrestling business to make money. Otherwise, they would have folded after the SpikeTV deal expired because being on Destination America did them no favors. But overall, their TV deals haven't paid them much and their Pay Per Views haven't seen massive buyrates. When you're worth billions, sometimes you take on pet projects for fun even if they lose money. There are many sports teams that operate at a loss but the owner doesn't care... They get to participate in the process of providing a massive sporting event and they use those sporting events to court clients or just rub shoulders with other business clients. It's a hobby for many and I would guess that's what TNA is to the Carter family. TNA, like the WWE, will live and die when nobody is willing to put them on television. As seen with TNA lately, there's always a channel willing to host content. Now, what I think kills TNA is the fact that their television deals are cheap and eventually, the Carters have to be tired of absorbing losses. But then again, it's a hobby to them... As long as the Carters and Panda Energy want to keep spending money, TNA will exist in some form. Quite sad when the transition from Days of Our Lives to TNA Impact actually loses 100,000 viewers on Pop TV. But again, Pop TV isn't losing that much money on the deal. ---------- Question #5 - What do you think of WWE Hall of Famer Donald Trump's chances now? Look at the polls right now... Sure, WWE Hall of Famer Donald Trump is ahead in the Republican polls right now against the GOP field, but if you specifically look at Trump against Hillary Clinton, he loses. She has been consistently beating him in head-to-head polls. Why? It's a simple matter of Demographics in polls. For years upon years, the Democratic Party has been courting two specific demographics: Single Women and Hispanics. Trump started off his campaign with some controversial comments on Immigration while he's taken his shots at various women throughout the years. He actually reiterated that Rosie O'Donnell was a "fat pig" at a political debate! His shot at GOP candidate Carly Fiorina's looks just piled on... With the GOP losing their grip on Florida and Virginia in the Electoral College recently, they seriously need to "run the table" in swing states like Ohio, Missouri, Colorado, Nevada, etc. When you have a candidate that takes rude shots at women, they'll come out in droves to elect the 1st female president ever. To quote Vince McMahon, Donald Trump has "No Chance in Hell" if he runs against Hillary Clinton. Besides, Trump invited the Clintons to his wedding, donated to Hillary as a candidate, and also donated to the Clinton Foundation. Lots of low hanging fruit on Trump if he's against Clinton. --------- Question #6 - What ever happened to the AKI Corporation and their involvement in pro wrestling games? AKI was company that developed the Virtual Pro Wrestling games in Japan that would later serve as foundations for WCW and then WWE wrestling games during the late 1990's and early 2000's. THQ would first convert the games into WCW wrestling games during 1997-1998 and then into WWE games during 1999-2000 with the last WCW/WWE game that AKI worked on being WWE No Mercy for the Nintendo 64. After that, THQ went on their own for wrestling games, now that they knew the formula for success, and AKI would venture into other wrestling games. First they tried the Def Jam Vendetta series, which was fun (CPU cheated badly, though), then they produced a handful of M.U.S.C.L.E. wrestling/fighting games. Remember those MUSCLE toys? Loved those... AKI Corporation renamed itself to "Syn Sophia, Inc.", and they haven't really tried producing wrestling games since or at least they haven't released much to American markets. Because WWE has abandoned them since 2000 and no other wrestling promotion has success selling wrestling games, the AKI wrestling engine remains on the bench. However, if I were WWE or even Syn Sophia Inc., I would look at the Nintendo 3DS for a AKI engine like game. The 3DS is essentially a pocket Nintendo 64 and it has a 50 million+ install base. Maybe the next TNA wrestling game could use it? How about Lucha Underground? But in the end, what happened to AKI is that they stopped producing wrestling games after a few attempts after the WWE just didn't sell well and they now concentrate on other types of video game production in Japan. ---------- Question #7 - Do you believe that Daniel Bryan will return to a WWE ring? Nope... I believe that the WWE is (a) legitimately concerned about Bryan's neck and head injuries but (b) using the injuries as an excuse to not bring him back. Bryan has had too many head injuries and the WWE has seen enough of how bad neck injuries have limited the careers of Steve Austin, Kurt Angle, Lita, and Edge. Here in 2015, there are increased liability issues for the WWE and I believe that the WWE is legitimately looking out for Bryan's health interests. Maybe if he just had a concussion issue, they'd give him extensive time off like Dolph Ziggler and then clear him. The neck injury is very serious. However, I believe that Vince McMahon and Triple H are NOT sold on Daniel Bryan as a character. Both Vince/HHH tried to sabotage him with booking during late 2013 and early 2014. The fans, however, fought back. I believe that Vince hates Bryan's short size while Triple H didn't like when Bryan chewed him out for ending that match on RAW early due to an injury. Either way, I firmly believe that both HHH/Vince don't want Bryan as a talent and they are using their physicians to NOT clear Bryan of concussion issues. As you can see, Bryan has received a second opinion and he has been cleared to wrestle. For whatever reason, he cannot pass the WWE's test. Yet, the WWE can bring in Tommy Dreamer who has openly admitted his problems with memory loss. I think the WWE wants to pay to keep Bryan on the sidelines with a WWE contract and use the injury clause (Rey Mysterio) to keep Bryan around for a while so that he doesn't join a competitor. WWE would rather pay him to be on the sidelines than become a legitimate threat for TNA or another promotion. ====================================== THE LAST WORD I very much enjoyed Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Director J.J. Abrams deserves all of the credit in the world for capturing the "spirit" of the original Star Wars trilogy. The shot Force Awakens on actual film, used more models like the original films, and utilized more sets instead of green screens. Better yet, the film uses the veteran actors mixed in with the new actors perfectly. There is more attention to detail in the film and much better acting and dialogue than the Prequel films. And would you look at that... Force Awakens is a strongly reviewed film by critics and the film broke opening day and weekend records and could legitimately become the first domestic film to break $1 Billion to smash Avatar's all time record. Compare that to the Prequels... Completely bloated on CGI special effects, shot mostly in front of green screens, poorly chosen lead actors (especially Anakin in the 2nd and 3rd films), and some of the worst dialogue that you'll ever see in movies. George Lucas became intoxicated with computer generated effects that he forgot what made the original Star Wars films great... While the original Trilogy had great effects, they weren't generated from a computer... There were real human beings controlling puppets and models to pull off those movies. Lucas got lazy and thought that the computer would WOW audiences... It didn't, and after the first burn on the Phantom Menace, older Star Wars fans got smart and walked away... But now they are back. Where am I going with this? Consider NXT, the WWE's developmental brand that has a weekly show that airs on WWE Network or Hulu and Pay Per View events quarterly. Right now, they are SELLING OUT shows quickly and filling arenas at full capacity. Currently, the WWE has to tarp off much of their arenas, even for RAW shows, while the live audience for Smackdown tapings has been rather scarce lately. The demand to see WWE events live in attendance has dropped, other than Pay Per Views and certain places for RAW, while the demand to see NXT live is increasing significantly. NXT's Takeover events, especially, have delivered nothing but quality matches and payoffs for their storylines. At those events, NXT fans are fully engaged and hot for much of the night. Why is NXT doing so well? It's exactly parallel with why the Force Awakens is better received than the Star Wars Prequels. WWE has become a bloated mess with too many graphics, over the top entrances, backstage soap opera segments, 20 minute in-ring segments that still use Vince Russo's playbook, and consistently choosing the WRONG wrestlers to lead their company. As I described in my 12/16/15 Column, WWE has legitimately tried to push Roman Reigns to become their Top Guy for 2 years now. That's in addition to many attempts to get Miz, Sheamus, Alberto Del Rio, and Randy Orton over as the top guys. George Lucas could have picked a top-of-the-line actor to play Anakin Skywalker for Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith. What did he do? He selected Hayden Christiansen based on his look, "needed an actor who has the presence of the dark side". Sound familiar? Roman Reigns is pushed to the moon because of his look... NXT has taken pro wrestling back to basics... Storylines are well thought out and deliver payoffs at Takeover events. There is care and attention towards the midcard as it complements the main event well. Watching all of the Takeover events for 2015, the shows are top to bottom strong from all participants. There less graphics used, reduced entrances, and the arena rarely has LED screens flashing all over the place as WWE does. NXT is getting over because it's giving fans what they want... GOOD wrestling that resembles a legitimate athletic contest. It's hard to describe what WWE actually is right now... Oh wait, I can... Bloated. Overproduced, poorly written, and the wrong individuals are pushed to be stars. Sound familiar? That's the Star Wars Prequels in a nutshell. TNA should really take note of what NXT is doing... "LESS IS MORE", as TNA does the same mistakes as the WWE with overproduction, poor writing, and wrong individuals pushed to be stars. NXT is providing other wrestling promotions with the roadmap on how to defeat the WWE. NXT is what many hardcore wrestling fans want right now and if another promotion can reproduce that, the WWE could finally have some real competition. Should be interesting to see if the WWE does another NXT talent raid out of pure fear that NXT is growing too strong. However, NXT is beginning to prove that it's able to restock the talent pool with new talent. Lose Becky Lynch, Charlotte, and Sasha Banks... No problem! Just develop and create new stars with patience. Less is more, folks, while pushing what makes you successful. Star Wars was made great because the chemistry among the characters and how real the effects felt. The prequels had no chemistry among their actors and the films look bloated from excessive CGI effects. Force Awakens will be more loved among Star Wars fans than the prequels could ever imagine. Lots of parallels between Vince McMahon and George Lucas... Stuck in their ways, lack of regard for what the fans want, and trying to force something bad down our throats. Then, when others take the ball and run with it, Triple H with NXT and J.J. Abrams with Force Awakens, fans of Pro Wrestling and Star Wars are very satisfied. Funny thing about HHH and Abrams is that they are using the same ideas but presenting them in a better light and catering to the simple needs of fans. MERRY CHRISTMAS! SO JUST CHILL... 'TIL THE NEXT EPISODE! Comments and feedback are welcome. Follow and Tweet me @titowrestling or login in below to post comments. © Mr. Tito and LordsofPain.net/WrestlingHeadlines.com - 1998-2015
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