Thread by @gauravsabnis

LOL, this is such a tri-state area thing! Even Catholic bros doing noora kushti fundraiser. Giving like 3 new meanings to the phrase Turn the other cheek. 🤣

But seriously, NY-NJ-CT has a very long and storied history of small scale pro wrestling. Why WWE was born here.

I often use the Monday Night Wars as a Marketing case in class. One student, who came from a family of wrestlers, nailed it when he said the tri-state market being so solid & lucrative is why even Ted Turner could not defeat Vince McMahon. "rasslin can never beat wrestling".

The story of the rise, fall, and rise of the WWE is such a classic Strategy case, where a lot of textbook business and economics principles play out.

When wrestling goes from regional models to one big national behemoth, oh course it's the richest market whose player grows.

Until 80s, wrestling was an almost entirely regional thing. Divided into a bunch of markets. With separate TV deals in 100 different markets.

Sure, there were some marquee national events and belts and promotions, but largely, pro wrestling was regional.

Then cable came.

Cable creates the opportunity for a national behemoth that can consolidate best talent and also wrestling audiences, especially kids who are a lucrative customer base for the rehearsed wrestling business.

Many tried. Vince succeeded largely cos NY market is hard to beat.

If you watch WWE documentaries, of course Vince is lionized as the visionary genius. And he did make a lot of gutsy moves and had a lot of wins.

Why in class, my focus is the bigger picture, with history and socio-economics and even technology.

Pro-wrestling in the US was first & foremost an industrialization thing.

It was made on the backs of and wallets of blue collar factory worker largely immigrant populations. Pro boxing, similar story.

Anyone can follow and enjoy fight sports, even if you don't know English.

Tho southerners & Canadians make a big deal of the rural popularity of pro wrestling, it's the big cities and industrial suburbs, whose wrestling companies created the phenomenon.

Textbook resource based view of the firm.

Same in Mexico, where the Mexico City promos rule.

It's hard for young students today to imagine the kind of market power that Ted Turner had in the 90s. He practically created the cable TV business. And he personally loves pro wrestling. And he decided, I wanna buy WWE or put up a competitor that drives it out of business.

Given that WWE (previously WWF) had managed to outshine other wrestling companies mainly cos of a TBS deal, and the T stands for Turner, people justifiably thought that Vince's goose is cooked.

Turner's attack on WWE was also very textbook business strategy. Why I love this case

Pro-wrestling on the labor supply side is very much a diffused tour based and short term contract based gig.

Vince attracted the best talent cos NY market gave him deepest pockets.

Turner had way deeper pockets. He started throwing cash at WWE talent, poaching them easily.

As a kid in India in the 96-97 years without internet but with WWE on cable, it was a confusing time cos top stars kept disappearing! Hulk gone. Razor Ramon, gone. Diesel, gone. And wait, even Bret the Hitman Hart?

We didn't get WCW on cable cos Turner wasn't as into India then.

Turner's bet was, what is WWE? These big stars. I poach away the big stars and what can Vince do? No one gives a shit about Vince. Most fans think he's just a color commentator.

Hulk, Nash, Hall, Hart (and a few others) was quite a devastating exodus from a brand perspective.

With hindsight, we can say that Turner's bet was wrong.

He got Scott Hall. But no one knew Scott Hall. His popularity was as a pretend Latino from Miami called Razor Ramon.

Terry Bollea, no one knows. Hulk Hogan in yellow made wrestling popular.

Vince still owned the IP!

This is where Resource Based View comes in.

It's not like those characters were random successes. They came from a creative team. Which, as it turns out, was able to create even more fascinating characters.

Stone Cold. The Rock. And the biggest twist, Mr. McMahon!

One man who rebuffed Turner's huge paycheck offers despite being arguably the biggest brand in the business then was Mark Callaway, who played The Undertaker.

He revealed later that he got really good advice from people he respected, which resulted in his storied "loyalty".

It was this gold rush mindset with Ted, full on enthu to take down Vince, was literally offering double, sometimes triple of what they got in WWE. Mark said he was very tempted. So many people had switched and were happy. So he went to some older wrestlers for advice.

And they very frankly told him, bro, you are a good wrestler but not that good. But people aren't going to pay to watch you wrestle outside the Undertaker persona, which you can't take with you to WCW.

So he wisely decided to stick with Vince. Paid off a lot in the long run.

Here we have a discussion about Intellectual Property, Copyrights law, etc.

Cos in a country with weaker IP protection, Turner could have just used the hulk, Ramon, Hitman characters.

Turns out Bret Hart without the pink was just a cranky Canadian uncle lol.

I could go on and on. I love using the pro wrestling industry as a backdrop to show my students how a lot of these textbook theories are playing out in life all around us.
And most of my kids are from jersey families that were once white immigrant working class, so they love it!

Btw pro wrestling is very much a legit career option even today. One of Rupal's high school classmates quit his office job in his mid 20s to go into it full time. It's like any other career, overall. And these days, it's relatively the cleanest & safest in recent decades.

The 90s were the most dangerous time to be a pro wrestler in the US cos of the market pressures to get big, leading to a lot of steroid abuse. There was little awareness or regulation.

Times are different today. It's largely a post-steroid industry. Cos market pressure is gone.

Knights of Columbus #kayfabe must be like

*Whisper* "turn the other cheek"

*Whisper* "Matthew 5:39!"

*Whisper* "no brother, literally, turn the other cheek, this hurts"

🤭🤭🤭 twitter.com/i/web/status/1…

He didn't make it to the WWE or TNA in the end. He made a decent living doing regional events and promotions, some foreign travel. And then coaching etc I think. Which also he was happy with.

The industry provides many decent livelihoods. Even in Mexico.

https://twitter.com/nvrknwn/status/1668561059794280449?s=19

People fighting in the ring and others watching it is literally the oldest form of public entertainment.

Pro Wrestling has gotten a lot of negative PR in recent decades, a lot of it well deserved.

But big picture, it is not going away anywhere any time soon.

At least in the US, cos amateur wrestling is big in schools and colleges, so there is a constant supply of wrestlers. Everyone dreams of Olympic medals, but only a few dozen reach that level. For the rest, there's events like these to make a living doing what they love.

Oooh I forgot to mention the very central role that technology has played in pro wrestling.

Distribution, which I keep telling my students is 8/9ths of the marketing iceberg out of sight.

Describing the first WrestleMania distribution tech to 2020s students is a challenge lol.

Today, or for that matter late 80s onwards, watching WrestleMania is just a matter of paying extra and watching it at home.

For the first WrestleMania, you had to go to theaters and such! It was technically "close circuit" broadcast all over the country. Cutely retro tech.

Cable first gave economies of scale through distribution that pumped in money in the 80s.

The opening up of foreign markets through cable TV was an unexpected bonanza for WWE. Especially Europe and Asia. That gave Vince a crucial financial cushion through market power.

Once the 21st century rolled around and everything started being moved to the Internet, WWE was very proactive in digitizing content, setting up different streaming distribution channels, and very heavily using Twitter and Insta.

This chapter of the WWE story is being written.

Sidebar: 21st century WWE is also a lot more "woke" than the doggedly conservative positioning of 90s WWE.

For over a decade, WWE has been publicly into racial diversity and LGBTQ inclusion.

This isn't the WWE from my childhood. And I mean it as a compliment.

Don't be surprised if you hear of a right wing "boycott" of WWE for being queer friendly this month, from the Budweiser Target bashing crowd.

Cos pro wrestling used to be almost theatrically white rural conservative until Stephanie & Triple H took over.