Ask 411 Wrestling: Will AEW Try To Get Its Own Saudi Arabia Deal?

Welcome guys, gals, and gender non-binary pals, to Ask 411 . . . the last surviving weekly column on 411 Wrestling.

I am your party host, Ryan Byers, and I am here to answer some of your burning inquiries about professional wrestling. If you have one of those queries searing a hole in your brain, feel free to send it along to me at [email protected]. Don’t be shy about shooting those over – the more, the merrier.

Hey, ya wanna banner?

Tyler from Winnipeg is timely:

Now that Raw is on Netflix will we get numbers on how many people watched?

We should receive some information, yes. Though historically Netflix has played coy with its viewership numbers, more recently they have partnered with Nielsen, the company that tracks traditional television viewership, to gather data on how often their programs are watched. This became a necessity when Netflix launched its ad-supported tier since obviously advertisers want information about how many people they are reaching before they punk down their hard earned money.

Data has come out regarding how many people viewed Christmas Day NFL games on the streamer, so chances are good that we’ll see similar reports regarding WWE content on a regular basis.

Donny from Allentown, PA is rewriting the book:

In 1987, had Andre The Giant come out face to face with Hulk Hogan and politely asked for a world championship match with no Bobby Heenan or heel turn involved, what would the atmosphere for Wrestlemania III be like for the rare babyface vs. babyface main event? Any thoughts?

I think it would be too risky. Andre had been a force in the WWF for ages and Hogan, though a megastar in his own right by that point, did not have the same level of history. I would be incredibly leery of not turning the Giant heel if I were booking, because I think it would come with the possibility of at least some portion of the audience not just rooting for Andre but rooting against Hogan, and that is not something the Fed would have wanted at that stage of his ascendancy.

Crook has a question tangentially related to the last one:

I personally loved Shawn Michaels and Bret Hart as my two favorite wrestlers when I first got into pro wrestling, which was Royal Rumble 1995 (I know, I know, I was 10. Cut me some slack- and hey, Bret vs Diesel was GOOD before the shmozz and Shawn did a great job selling for the definition of mediocrity). I was very conflicted a little over a year later when they went against each other in the Iron Man Match. I guess I was kinda rooting for Shawn because of the whole BOYHOOD DREAM sell, and even though I basically knew it was a work, I was still a kid and the magic hadn’t been ruined yet.

Long preamble, but here is the question: Outside of the one I mentioned, and Warrior/Hogan which I only saw in retrospect, what do you think the most divisive Mania main event has been for the fan base? I know know your stance on main events, so let me clarify by saying top billed match that ALSO ended the event. Taker/Shawn, Streak vs Career? (Not for me, I knew it in my heart it was a forgone conclusion.) Maybe Cena/Michaels or Cena/Triple H even though Trips was obviously *supposed* to be the heel? And ironic considering the hatred for HHH just a few years earlier, both kayfabe and “smart”. Those are the only ones that come to mind except for possibly this year, Roman/Cody II. Curious of your opinion, and if you can think of an older example I’m not thinking of, that’s cool too.

I have to give it to Warrior/Hogan, because it was a match from an era in which fans were cheering far more for a particular wrestler, whereas in the other split crowd matches you’ve mentioned, the audience was reacting positively to both performers but it felt to me as though those reactions were more in favor of the quality or spectacle of the match than they were in favor of the wrestler that they wanted to win.

MNMNB wants us all to get bent:

The WCW big gold belt was bent at the top (I think – having trouble finding a good pic of it, but just saw it on dark side).

Any idea how this happened? I’d imagine it would take a good amount of force to bend that thing.

Yes, the belt was bent. Unfortunately, nobody seems to know how it happened. Wrestling podcast impresario Conrad Thompson actually owns the belt at present, and he recently discussed it with Tony Schiavone on their What Happened When podcast.

Thompson said that the belt is still bent to this day. He further said that he has hunted and hunted for footage that may show how or when the bend occurred. He believes that the bend first showed up in 1987 or 1988 but after his review thinks there is no footage that depicts this happening on camera. In fact, his theory is that the damage to the belt occurred not as part of a wrestling match or angle but rather through some wrestler or wrestlers screwing around with it during their off time.

Sim is all about the money:

One may consider pro wrestling and MMA to be very similar. In its core, both of them are about people fighting each other, with little to no rules, for the entertainment of the masses (description to be taken very loosely). The biggest difference between the two is obviously the fact that one is real and one is scripted.

So I’ve been wondering, which of the two is actually more profitable?

Or, if you allow me to phrase the question the way I want: Which of the two approaches actually makes more money? real fighting or fake fighting?

UFC is typically more profitable than WWE, though in recent history the numbers are pretty close. The website Wrestlenomics actually has a really great breakdown of the financial figures for both companies for the third quarter of 2024 (the most recent quarter for which we have data as of this writing), and it’s so thorough that I can’t say I have anything to add . . . so just go read that excellent piece of work.

Bryan is flyin’ . . . overseas, that is:

Considering Tony Khan and his dad are international businessmen, do you think AEW will ever try to get deals with Saudi Arabia the way WWE has? Or do you think the royal family is only interested in WWE’s brand? Is there any cultural animosity between Pakistan and SA I’m unaware of that would make the royal family opposed to doing business with Shad?

First off, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia are generally cool with each other, so I do not think that would be any sort of impediment.

However, I have a hard time seeing AEW winding up in Saudi Arabia for other reasons. The main one of those is that, frankly, Saudi Arabai doesn’t need AEW when they’ve already got WWE. A large part of the reason that the Kingdom is entering into these deals with the E and other American sports and entertainment brands is that they want their nation to be seen as legitimate players on the world stage, and dealing with major American businesses does just that.

If Saudi Arabia is already partnered with the largest American wrestling company, partnering with the distant second doesn’t really advance their goal of legitimacy any further. It would be like Saudi Arabia bringing an NFL game to their country and then deciding that they also want to host a UFL game there. It just doesn’t make any sense to reel in a small fish when you’ve already reeled in the biggest you possibly can.

Here comes the Davros, and here comes the Smasher:

I’ve been thinking about Demolition recently and how over and popular they were well into early 1990 when they won the WWF tag team title from the Colossal Connection at Mania 6.

My question is when and how did their heel turn happen between then and SummerSlam 90?

There really wasn’t a strong angle to turn them heel. Really, what happened was they brought in Crush as their third member, and that lead to a series of events in which they were relying on outside interference or their two-on-three advantage, and that slowly turned them rather than a beatdown of an established babyface team or anything of that nature.

If anything, I actually find this sort of turn refreshing, as it feels more organic than a wrestler just waking up one day with a disposition that is the 100% opposite of what it was the day before.

Night Wolf the Wise wants to have fun with his family and friends:

1. There have been alot of stables in the history of wrestling. What would be your top 10 wrestling stables that made stars? For example, Evolution made Randy Orton and Batista into stars.

2. On the flip side of that what would be your top 10 stable that failed to make stars?

Here’s the thing . . . in some respects, it seems wrong to me to rank stables by their ability to make stars, because making stars isn’t the purpose of every stable. Take the original Four Horsemen, for example. It didn’t make any stars, because Ric Flair, Arn Anderson, Ole Anderson, and Tully Blanchard already were the company’s top heel stars. Does that mean I should put them on the list of stables that failed to make stars, even though that’s never what they were trying to do in the first place? It just seems off to penalize an entity for not meeting a goal that wasn’t their goal.

So, I’m going to modify the question a little bit. Instead of “top ten stables that made stars” and “top ten stables that failed to make stars,” I’m going to approach this more along the lines of “top ten stables that tried to make stars and succeeded” and “top ten stables that tried to make stars and failed.”

I’m also going to have to keep my rationale on these very brief, because otherwise asking me to do two top ten lists is a bonkers level of work that could easily be two to four columns on its own. I’m also doing these in no particular order, because it’s my list and that’s what I feel like.

Success

The Shield: Do I really even have to explain this one? Three stables, three world champions, none of whom had been on the main roster previously. It doesn’t get much better than that.

D-Generation X: Triple H seemed like a perennial midcarder before DX anointed him, and Billy Gunn and the Road Dogg were probably even worse off than that.

Evolution: Night Wolf already called this one. It’s the main reason Dave Batista and Randy Orton became two of the biggest stars of the 2000s.

Fabulous Freebirds: This entry is a bit different than the others on the list, because the Freebirds didn’t become main event singles stars (excepting Terry Gordy in Japan) but they made themselves main event stars as a team in an era where there was such a thing as a main event team.

Bullet Club: BC has gotten way, way watered down over the years, but most men who have lead the stable – Prince Devitt, AJ Styles, Kenny Omega, Jay White, and David Finlay – have all gotten huge shots in the arm. Heck, it got the stank of Impact Wrestling off of AJ.

The Nation: Joining the Nation saved the Rock’s floundering career, and the group also introduced us to D-Lo Brown, gave Mark Henry some needed direction, and successfully repackaged Kama into the Godfather.

The New Day: Though Kofi Kingston had some decent upper midcard success before this group was formed, Big E Langston and Xavier Woods received no such luck. Now, two of the three men are former World Champs and there’s a perfect storyline set up for Woods to complete the trifecta.

Los Gringos Locos: This faction in Mexico’s AAA made Art Barr and Eddy Guerrero into main event ruods there and also put them on the radar of Paul Heyman, leading to Eddy’s run in ECW, which in turn lead to his runs in WCW and ultimately WWE.

The Bloodline: It feels odd to put a current stable on this list, but it fits. Both Usos are now main event singles stars. Solo Sikoa had one of the fastest ascensions from developmental ever. Jacob Fatu, Tama Tonga, and Tonga Loa skipped developmental altogether.

Kaientai: This may seem like an odd choice, but hear me out. This stable took four indy level Japanese wrestlers and got them contracts with the WWF at the height of its popularity. It didn’t make anybody into a world champion but it took four otherwise very obscure wrestlers and made them known internationally when otherwise they were highly unlikely to be.

Failure

The Nightmare Collective: Not only did this fail to make new stars, it also killed Amazing Kong’s existing star power. I’m surprised AEW’s early effort to get Brandi Rhodes over doesn’t seem to get categorized alongside Erik Watts or George Gulas in wrestling’s worst nepotism pushes.

Retribution: In some ways it feels like wrestling fans have collectively agreed to forget about the pandemic era of the sport, but, oof, this took five promising performers and killed all of them.

Legacy: This gave a lot of TV time to Cody Rhodes and Ted DiBiase Jr., but I can’t say it made them stars. They were just glorified punching bags for the past their expiration date version of D-Generation X. Let’s not even start with Manu and Sim Snuka.

The Nexus: These guys may have had one of the best ever debuts for a stable, but then it fell off almost immediately and none of the eight young wrestlers in the group became stars save for Daniel Bryan, who if anything was hindered by the stable as opposed to helped by it.

The Union: It seems like this was meant to elevate Test by giving him a rub from the likes of Mick Foley and the Big Show, but, well, we know how Test’s career wound up.

The No Limit Soldiers: Master P was really hot in the late 90s and I don’t blame WCW for trying to do something with him, but the execution was poor and the new wrestlers the group debuted – Swole and 4×4 – didn’t go anywhere.

The World Elite: This was Impact Wrestling’s effort to make Eric Young into a main event level heel after being a comedy geek for years and years. It failed miserably because, no matter how talented Eric Young is/was, it was going to be impossible to rehab him overnight as the company attempted to do.

The New Breed: No, not the time traveling tag team that predicted a Dusty Rhodes presidency. I’m talking about Kevin Thorne, Matt Striker, The Count Marquis Von Cor, and Elijah Burke, who were pegged as being the future of WWE’s ECW relaunch. Turned out they weren’t the future of anything.

The Misfits in Action: People who defend Vince Russo say that he tries to give every wrestler on the roster something to do. When the “something to do” is putting you in a paramilitary faction and renaming you Hugh G. Rection, it would probably be better if he didn’t come up with anything at all.

The York Foundation: I could see wanting to put a fresh coat of paint on former NWA World Champion Tommy Rich, but who in the world though that turning Ricky Morton heel was a good idea? Plus, they had a manager who was not really great on the mic.

We’ll return in seven-ish days, and, as always, you can contribute your questions by emailing [email protected]. You can also leave questions in the comments below, but please note that I do not monitor the comments as closely as I do the email account, so emailing is the better way to get things answered.