Making the rounds -- guy was pulling in CRAZY money right before Nitro started to lose the ratings war with RAW.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/287131780/199 ... t-with-WCW

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"All crowds boycotting football games shouldn't care who sings or takes a knee because they aren't watching." - Nas

Saw it ... cannot believe it, yet I can.

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Power is always in the hands of the masses of men. What oppresses the masses is their own ignorance, their own short-sighted selfishness.
- Henry George

LOL Terry is a girl's name.

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daaaaaaammmmnnn linda got paid.

tho he wasn't cut in on the NWO merch deal, only hollywood/hogan shirts. if he got 50% of those NWO shirts linda might never have to work again.

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Didnt seem like a great deal?

Outside of the signing bonus of $2M and the guarantees of $675K everything is based on the sales....?

...and the merchandising deal? I bet the "NET" is very very little. That he got 50% of....

I assume he wad the biggest star they had? and it is a good deal for him that he particpated in eveything if they made money, but the majority of his deal was all contingencies.

I am sure it was better than 99% of the wrestlers...just thought he would be pulling in more on a contract...and didnt need to carry eveything.

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"That's what the internet is for. Slandering others anonymously." Banky
“Been that way since one monkey looked at the sun and told the other monkey ‘He said for you to give me your fuckin’ share.’”

Hogan was the first choice to be pitchman for Foreman Grill. Like a dummy he turned it down and George got the second call and accepted... 300 plus million dollar mistake by Hogan.

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he got a 2mil signing bonus, 1.35mil 3 times a year in the first 3 years, and then he got $675k/each for 6 PPVs per year, along with a bonus ranging from 250k-~1.5mil or something for each PPV depending on how the buyrate was going...

so figure he was getting ~4mil/yr off of that 1.35 payment, then 4mil off of the individual pay per view payment, then anywhere from like 150-200k up to 1mil depending if the PPV sold, and multiuply that by 6.... so basically he was pulling in ~10mil/yr after that 2mil signing bonus and then merch and stuff came in.

yeah its not OMFG money but considering it was almost 20 years ago and it was "the business" he still did pretty fucking good... and i didnt even really dig through this looking for more.

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IMHO, best part of the deal is that he locked in before the show started tanking. The shows were still selling out, so he was getting all the gate, but he was still locked into those payouts even as the ratings slipped to below 3. Plus he is getting 25% of the gate -- hard to imagine that happening today -- is Cena pulling that much? I would doubt it, but maybe.

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"All crowds boycotting football games shouldn't care who sings or takes a knee because they aren't watching." - Nas

Nobody is making that much now.

Closest would probably be Lesnar.

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oh shit, he was getting 10mil/yr plus 25% of the gate for nitro and house shows???.... and that was going on every week! ha!

yeah biggie.... he was doing pretty damn good.

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Another big thing is, it was a contract with Turner, not with WCW.

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Middle Aged Crazy, like Uncle Terry

In 1998 Wrestling was very popular on TV and PPV's and did great ratings vs. what it is today. I remember even local sports caster Tim Weigel would show highlights from WrestleMania of who won and lost in between talking about other sports in Chicago. Hogan was worth whatever Turner offered him since at the time he was a big star and brought eyeballs to the show. In Business when someone pays high performers a big $alary is because the employee generates 5x, 10x, or even more revenue for the business what they pay the employee or else they would not pay..

The issue with wrestling today is you have these superstars from 20 years ago that are still being pushed who are now in there 50s which is ridicules and no real new characters that are gaining traction with casual fans. Also there are so many other forms of entertainment now than there were 20 years ago including internet, Netflix, UFC, etc... than wrestling has a hard time getting newer fans who never purchased or seen the product before.. This will continue in my opinion!

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"You know 'that look' women get when they want sex? Me neither" ~Steve Martin

"You remember the when Hogan came in and won the belt and we did an interview prior to him winning the belt? And [he] talked about… winning the belt?" asked Sullivan of the other men. "And we're on Nitro and his interview comes up—because we used to do some pre-shot interviews, if you remember—and Hogan starts talking about beating… I think it was Vader for the belt. And I'm going, 'What is going on here? We just gave the finish to the pay-per-view!' … So now… I'm beside myself; Eric [Bischoff] is beside himself, Hogan is beside himself. Everybody is saying, 'Oh, we can't overcome this!' Mean Gene Okerlund went out and cut a promo that saved the company. He said, 'This promo that you just saw was my wish. I was hoping that Hogan was going to beat Vader.' …If he'd have been [Lee Harvey] Oswald's lawyer, Oswald would have gotten off… Mean Gene Okerlund never got the credit he deserved. He's a very smart guy. "

Its good money, not saying it isnt. But he was an international brand. I would guess they made $100 Mill+ on him, so thats why it wasnt a great deal.

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"That's what the internet is for. Slandering others anonymously." Banky
“Been that way since one monkey looked at the sun and told the other monkey ‘He said for you to give me your fuckin’ share.’”

He actually made out like a bandit on merchandise, because a lot of retailers were lazy & coded most of the WCW action figures as Hulk Hogan, so if they sold a Raven, it went into the system as a Hulk sale & he got the cut. I think WCW or some retailers got sued over that.

Beebo, most of the top stars of WCW had Turner contracts. That's why guys like Hogan and Sting didn't immediately jump to the WWF after the buyout.

First, dont even know what or who Raven is...so, cant imagine that mistake led to huge money?

Second, I am quite sure that his retail take was much less than you think. His take was 50% of the "NET". Lets say a Hulkster Figurine was $20? I would guess that after all expenses they might have left $2 on the table to be divided. I am not saying that is the actual numbers, but I am telling you thats what they reported to him. Its a classic business move, because Hulk wasnt going to have his own team of accountants go in and audit.

best story ever heard...Sherwood Schwartz, creator of the Brady Bunch. Got his base contract pay, but didnt see any royalties for years. He got an accounting statement that would take out every penny. Delivery fees for the tapes, lunch, etc. He said his royalties were like $42 a month. Then the reruns started and his stupid little show was picked up by stations all over the world and in his own words, they couldnt hide all the money, so he then had enough money to have an audit done and he got more money than he ever dreamed.

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"That's what the internet is for. Slandering others anonymously." Banky
“Been that way since one monkey looked at the sun and told the other monkey ‘He said for you to give me your fuckin’ share.’”

Raven was a guy who wore grunge attire and was always moping about things. One of those guys who was a big deal in ECW but couldn't make it on the big stage, equal parts being set up to fail and being exposed.

I think wrestling figurines usually ran about $5 a pop. My neighbor bought like every one.

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Raven was never utilized properly in WCW, as most of the 2nd tier wrestlers weren't. I think he had RL issues, though, which really prevented him from being a star anywhere else. ECW didn't give a fuck how messed up you were, as long as you were willing to get your skull split open, you'd be a star.

I don't remember too much about Raven's WCW run other than him sulking in the front row all the time, losing a title to Goldberg, and some storyline where a camera crew tracked down his parents and it turned out Raven was just some spoiled rich kid who was acting out. That sounds kind of interesting in theory but WCW probably did a really crappy job. And lest it seem like I'm just beating up on poor old WCW, the WWF butchered his character even more.

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How dare you speak ill of Johnny Polo!

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"That's what the internet is for. Slandering others anonymously." Banky
“Been that way since one monkey looked at the sun and told the other monkey ‘He said for you to give me your fuckin’ share.’”

yeah biggie, you seem kind of caught up on the merch angle.... but even taking that out entirely, the guy was making ~10mil/yr for just salary/PPVs, and then he was getting 25% of the gate whenever he did nitro/thunder/house-shows, and since nitro was every monday, thunder every thursday, and house shows at least a weeekend or two a month, it's conceiveable that he did ~100+ live appearances a year outside of PPVs and he was getting 25% of the gate at all of those..... on top of that 10mil and whatever he got for merch.

idk how much gate brings in, but i think hogan was prolly like.... shit, 20-30mil/yr? not bad, he almost had jay cutler $$$ =D

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And he was lucky he had some leverage because there were two players. Not anymore... now you get what they tell you you get.

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"All crowds boycotting football games shouldn't care who sings or takes a knee because they aren't watching." - Nas

you know newps, for a bunch of low-to-mid-carders lately they've found out that being a free agent who can do multiple indy promotions and go to japan and etc is a way of making more $$$ than a really low-end WWE contract.

but yeah back to hogan for a second: throwing around some #s.... if nitro/thunder/house-shows had an average ticket price of $40 and were bringing in 15k peoplke, that's $600k gate and $150k going to hogen... multiply that by 50 and it's 7.5mil.... since it's conceiveable he did 75-100+ of those per year (cuz there were 52 nitros, 52 thunders, and shit.... 20-40 house show weekends? maybe even multiple house shows on friday/saturday nights) i mean 100 would be 15mil + 10mil so that's 25..... so yeah i feel comfortable saying that hogan made 20-30mil/yr BEFORE MERCH... so yeah, i reckon that was pretty much the full boat for a wrestler, and i figure cena makes somewhere between 10-20mil/yr... punk was prolly 5-10... and most of the rank-n-file is prolly 150k-2mil or something.

still tho, i think even if you can technically do better being a free agent doing a bunch of indies... ultimately going/back to WWE and making yourself a bonafide superstar (cuz wwe.com lists mojo rawley as a superstar... lol) is prolly the only way to make 5-10mil+ per year, so that's why guys like alberto del rio go back to WWE.... i think their floor might be higher as the superindie free agent, but ultimately if they can get over in WWE and move a shit-ton of t-shirts that's the way to making $5mil+/yr and being able to fuck off like punk in your mid-to-mid-late 30s and have enough "fuck you money" to have a UFC adventure, but i dont think anyone would be surprised if he shows up back in WWE within 5 years to try and pull a brock lesnar type deal on the good ol "absence makes the heart grow fonder" tip.... cuz ultimately that's where the best $$$ in the business is if you're able to move the merch and headline the PPVs, especially as a "special event" wrestler like brock/taker/rock/etc.

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I was reading on Grantland (RIP) that wrestling is BACK, BABY because we're embracing nerd culture like never before, which makes it okay to like wrestling again. Okay, whatever, I just figured wrestling has always been highly cyclical, where you have the boom of mainstream popularity, the slightly less popular but critically acclaimed run of success, followed by a steady trip down until things totally bust. But when did wrestling become cool again? I mean, I know CM Punk had some crossover appeal, but he's been gone for a while, hasn't he? I missed this. I thought they were still mired in the same muck they've been in for years.

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Ratings are lower than they ever have been, and so have PPV buys, but that may be partially due to the network subscription that they sell. I think it is $10 a month, but you get the PPVs for free... someone could probably tell you better than I can. To me, I don't know how they can sustain it... needs something to shake things up.

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"All crowds boycotting football games shouldn't care who sings or takes a knee because they aren't watching." - Nas

Well, ratings aren't going to get any better; such is media in 2015 versus media in 1998. If you can't bet on its fantasy iteration, it's not going to command an enormous market share.

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plus the product in WWE (the standard of pro wrasslin nowadays) is just plain stale. since they have 3hrs/week of flagship program to fill, we've seen just about every combination of main-roster wrestlers working together (and in the case of like, orton/cena or sheamus/anyone or now cesaro/owens we've seen it a billion times and enough already!) so now when the PPVs come up we're just seeing the "ultimate version" of matches we've seen at least variations of 5-50 times on RAW over the years....

...i'm pretty sure that's why they decided to kill of PPVs (tho i think they STILL get ~150k buys of "big 4" PPVs like mania/rumble/summerslam/surv-series) and just try to get $10/month from ppl for the network. i subscribe to the network cuz $10/month is reasonable and i'll toss vince my $$$ and let my dad use the proper network while i stream NXT/PPVs.... and i think long term asking people for a relative pittance of $10 every month as opposed to $60/month for a PPV is going to win out, and i think they're spot on with doing it cuz there has to be a lot of ppl like me who just toss vince that tenner every month without thinking/caring about it.

and beyond that stale factor, man, the booking is horrible these days. they have no idea what the fuck they're doing, but because since they're the WWE and they're the only top-tier game in town, they'll always do OK.... maybe if the product gets good and, example: people are "the most see superstars" because they're ACTUALLY must-see as opposed to the WWE telling us 1-5 times a week that they're must-see, then they'll be must see.

look at the divas revolution.... it's the same ol horseshit except now that they brought up 2-3 chicks who can actually work a proper match, even tho they're doing the same shitty booking they did with chicks who cant work a decent match to save their life (see: bellas) IT'S A REVOLUTION.... then the WWE says #DivasRevolution 5000000 times and claims it's a revolution so it's a revolution because they SAID it's a revolution and not because it's an actual revolution, you know?

i'd guess they could like, you know, actively change stuff up and let a revolution actually happen, but now with social media all you gotta do is force the hashtag/meme enough and ppl will buy in and some social media metrics will say you're doing a good job and ready the aircraft carrier cuz it's mission accomplished time! * claps hands *

TLDR = put out a good product and the ratings will go up.

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