The Katz Files – Arnie Katz
What about a Wrestling Super Bowl?
The Kingfish Arnie Katz takes time out from the Super Bowl pre-game show to ponder the question of whether professional wrestling could, or even would, have a Wrestling super Bowl.
Does Pro Wrestling Have a ‘Super Sunday’
Every so often, which WWE is really feeling its strength, they will refer to WrestleMania as the “Super Bow of Wrestling.” It’s a nice ad slogan, but like so many of them, it just doesn’t happen to be true. WrestleMania is US pro wrestling’s biggest show, but it’s luster is several orders of magnitude dimmer than the football game that practically created its own holiday, Super Sunday, (It isn’t an official holiday, of course, but check out how many people don’t go to work the next day.)
“Super Bowl” claims for WrestleMania are so much wishful thinking, just as were similar claimed made for WCW”s big pay per view. In other words, however much the people behind those promotions wished it was true, the reality was still a long way from the two weeks of media frenzy that precedes the Super Bowl.
Could Pro Wrestling Have A super Bowl?
It’s important to remember that it took 42 years for football’s Big Game to acquire its current position as the most-watched TV event of the year.
And pro wrestling has a lower ceiling than pro football for a variety of reasons, including:
1. A lot more people like pro football than enjoy pro wrestling. Enough people have a negative attitude toward what they incorrectly view as a “fixed sport” that there’s no way a Wrestling Super Bowl would attract the attention and TV viewership of the Super Bowl, not even if it offered Lou Thesz versus Ric Flair in their primes.
2. The fuel that drives pro football, especially the Super Bowl, is gambling. There are a lot of people who don’t bet on anything else all year but the Super Bowl. This year, Las Vegas had a betting handle of over $100 million – ad that’s just legal gambling, just the tip of the iceberg.
3. The Giants and the Patriots are playing for a prize that remains their for all time, a prize that the public believes is worth something – the championship of All Football. The way promotions slide around titles, most fans understand that any victory achieved at a Super Bowl of Wrestling could be undone a day later at a house show.
So the question is really: Could pro wrestling create an event that would be significantly greater than WrestleMania or Starrcade or Slammiversary?
The answer, I think, is a qualified “Yes.” Qualified, because the intrinsic appeal of even the greatest pro wrestling card can’t match the
The professional wrestling world has had opportunities to scale up an annual event. The best chance was when WCW was still doing record business, before it fall off and got bought by WWE. Wrestling missed that window of opportunity, as it has others in the more distant past.
The way to create a bigger event, a more “super” attraction is to give people something they don’t get the rest of the year. WrestleMania is a fine show with good matches, but it is largely more of the same.
The rise of TNA has, perhaps, created a new opportunity for pro wresting to produce a mega-event. TNA is far less successful than WWE, but it is successful enough, because it has a roster of performers that is international known through cable TV and pay per views.
To create the Wrestling Super Bowl, WWE and TNA would have to put aside their petty competitiveness and create a jointly sponsored card in which champions fought champions and promote inter-promotional feuds.
Done the right way, embellished by mainstream star power from the entertainment world, such a WWE-TNA showdown would have the potential to pull at least a 50% higher buy-rate than any present wrestling pay per view.
It still wouldn’t be like football’s Super Bowl, but it would be well above the level of any wrestling event that currently exists.
Will There Be a Wrestling Super Bowl
Never say “never,” but it’s damn unlikely.
WWE doesn’t play well with others and would probably refuse to do anything, let along a joint promotion, that would seem to raise TNA to its level in the fans’ eyes.
Sad, but that’s the truth.
Looks like we’ll have to be content with our WrestleMania 24 and Slammiversary 6…
… And, of course, the Giants and Patriots.
That’s it for today. I’ll be back tomorrow with another installment of the Internet’s liveliest daily wrestling column.
– Arnie Katz
Crossfire4@cox.net
(2/3/08)
This is column number 18 in a row as I return to daily frequency.
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