Why WWE coverage?

I didn't get a harrumph out of that guy -- Gov William J Lepetomane

 

Doris Roberts played the mother of a sports reporter on a scripted TV sitcom

Chyna played a champion female entertainment wrastler on a scripted TV show

 

Come on, if you're going to use the word, it's 'rassler, not wrastler. Get it straight, man.

 

Unless they subscribe to the Suplex City Times

 

You also don't want to allow territorial squabbles allow a reasonably big story to slip through the cracks. Friend of a friend told me at his shop that when a big-time wrestler from back in the day died -- pretty sure it was Randy Savage -- sports deferred to news, news thought it was entertainment and entertainment was already finished for the issue, so they story was not published anywhere in the paper. It didn't cause or advance the death of print journalism by its absence, but I'm guessing there were more than a few stories that had less news value that made it in.

 

Depends. If it's a paper in their hometown, or college town, or if they were big stars in the territory era, they probably would get significant coverage.

Flair, heaven forbid when he dies, will get 1A in papers in the Carolinas, for instance.

 

Absolutely. I happen to live in a town that has a fair amount of former and current pro wrestlers as residents, so we follow it more than most papers would. I can promise if Hulk Hogan died anytime soon it would be 1A, maybe even the lead story. But Bill Goldberg? No.

 

Flair and Hogan would/should get A1 coverage. Rock's a guarantee, though in his case he'd get it because of his acting career, even if he never wrestled. John Cena definitely would if he died right now for shock value, but depending on how the rest of his career (particularly post-wrestling) goes, he'd be a strong candidate.

Steve Austin is kind of iffy, actually; he was a massive name in the 90s but he's in a weird spot where he's out there enough that there's no nostalgia for him, but also not out there enough to make him immediately relevant. He'd be A1 in Texas, most likely.

After that, I can't think of anyone else. Bret Hart would make it in Canada. Rey Mysterio would in Mexico. Everyone else would only have a shot at their hometown paper, unless they died in the ring or in a noteworthy way.

 

Sounds about right.

 

ESPN is giving it some coverage because there is an audience for it. It's niche, but it's there. A legit 95,000 people were in Dallas a few weeks ago for WrestleMania, and the WWE Network has more than a million subscribers. You may think of me as a drooling, cross-eyed moron for enjoying it, but my dollar is worth the same as yours and my viewership is still valued by a company trying to draw whatever eyeballs it can.

(I got my Nielsen diary in the mail, by the way, so ratings for Raw and SmackDown are going up!)

My paper put Hogan's trial as briefs in A section. The death of Roddy Piper last year was a sports brief. We've covered local MMA shows if there was a local guy on the card (which drew more than anything except our college football teams and a hell of a lot more than any high school game we staff by a few hundred people), and we'd put the AP results for big UFC cards on sports page 2 if we could get them by deadline. We definitely ran a full story on Rousey's upset.

My replacement in sports wanted to cover midget wrestling, but even I shouted that down. There is a line, and he found it.

 

Not to be a cynic, but ESPN covers everything and my guess is Jonathan Coachman played a role since he worked for WWE. And ESPN haa always been big on the entertainment side.

 

Hockey say hi.