Mecca
Wade Wilson
Posts: 25,174
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Post by Mecca on Feb 16, 2019 13:45:57 GMT -5
The WWE blamed it on Seattle not being a big enough city to handle it right...no joke.
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Post by Tea & Crumpets on Feb 16, 2019 13:46:54 GMT -5
I love Mania XIX, and in my personal opinion its the overall best Mania ever (despite the disaster of the finish to Booker/HHH). It could have been improved, but the stacked lineup should have done monster business.
One thing that would absolutely have saved buyrates- Advertise Rock/Austin III as a Retirement Match, whoever loses must retire. Rock going over would probably be surprising to a lot of people given he was shifting into movies and Austin wasn't.
In an ideal world post-match you could have Goldberg run-in and spear the Rock (much as I love his Raw debut segment, just recreate that on the PPV). Or alternatively, when Jones is taken out as Undertaker's partner, Goldberg is his mystery partner to do his shtick before then jumping to Raw the very next night to face Rock. Saves that entire dud segment.
Booker should absolutely have beaten HHH idealy with the Houston Hangover (he barely ever did it in WWE). And if Lesnar hits the Press too then man..
I have a lot of fond memories of this Mania and think it's still a great show and my personal favourite Mania, but it could so nearly have been out of this world.
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Woo
Hank Scorpio
Posts: 5,317
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Post by Woo on Feb 16, 2019 14:28:16 GMT -5
They build all the wrong matches. HBK/Y2J and Austin/Rock should have been the main events. The only two matches that had fantastic build leading up to Mania.
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Cranjis McBasketball
Crow T. Robot
Knew what the hell that thing was supposed to be
Peace Love and Nothing But
Posts: 42,350
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Post by Cranjis McBasketball on Feb 16, 2019 15:54:14 GMT -5
The story I've always heard was they list clearance on one of the major PPV carriers and that was what led to the buyrate. I want to say it was DirectTV as WWE was pushing for a 50/50 split vs the 50/40/10 it was with cable carriers. Think the illegal dish I saw it on was DirecTV.
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Post by David-Arquette was in WCW 2000 on Feb 16, 2019 16:17:28 GMT -5
Honestly while I love Mania 19 on the whole, I really have a pretty poor opinion of Michaels / Jericho. The story is supposed to be the young lion trying his damnedest to knock down the older, more worn down one who proves however outmatched he is that he can still pull a clever trick out of his bag when he needs to, I get that, but... Like, the actual match is basically just a parade of Jericho's offense being made to look so completely useless - especially the near count-out after the Walls - that he has to just drop it and start stealing HBK's moves instead, and even that never actually registers as any sort of actual threat. The whole thing just makes Jericho look like he can certainly get moves in on Shawn but none of them are actually doing any damage whatsoever. Like, it's not a disaster of a match or anything, it's plenty watchable, it just feels like it's wasting your time because at no point does Jericho come off like he has a snowball's chance in hell of winning. Jericho and Michaels are two of my all time favourites and yet I find this match boring.
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Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
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Post by Deleted on Feb 16, 2019 17:12:43 GMT -5
This was during the period of a couple of years where my family stopped having satellite for some reason (nobody seems to even remember this period except me), so 19 and 20 are the only WrestleManias I didn’t watch live since becoming a wrestling fan. It was a weird time. The only way I was even keeping up with the product at the time was by watching Raws at my mom’s work. It's actually kind of sketchy how well it did. It was down 100,000 from the previous year's No Way Out, but pretty much all of WWE's PPVs in early 2003 were big drops. Other than Backlash which was only 55,000 down from 2002, but No Way Out both years did far better than Backlash did so it's hard to judge on that one. No Way Out 2002 had the debut of the nWo in WWE, so it was bound to be a bit of an anomaly of a buyrate. Was available on illegal satellite dishes where I saw it. Same. Can’t remember if it was DirecTV or Bell ExpressVu we had at the time. I think Bell. My dad actually got his friend to teach me how to program the cards so he always got free tvVeering slightly off-topic, but a family friend did this with our DirecTV card so we could get free PPVs, but it ended up f***ing something up so that we could only watch the PPVs. I watched Remember the Titans and Bring It On so many times during that time.
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Post by KofiMania on Feb 16, 2019 23:09:39 GMT -5
It’s pretty much the generally accepted reason for the low buyrate. Some could still get it on the analog boxes but a large percentage cannot. That’s why the Rumble buyrate was higher than Mania that year. But what's the source? I think Meltzer reported on it at the time.
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