Next year is in New Orleans, the sight of Undertaker's biggest defeat.

If he specifically asks to not go into the HOF for a few years, Bryan is going to be next year's headliner.

Reigns cut an in-character, squeaky clean babyface promo with Coach on ESPN after the show talking about how much he respects The Undertaker.

If anyone gets a chance help tpww out, just by clicking here on our WM recap (w/ video!)

http://www.tpww.net/2017/04/live-wre...-and-coverage/

#ULTIMATETHRILLRIDE

The outcomes of most of these matches were dogshit and WWE has literally just said "We're probably gonna troll all you hardcore fans with awfulness for the next decade until you completely lose hope in wrestling ever being good again..."

That being said, Goldberg vs Lesnar was fucking fantastic.

Damn @ Lock Jaw, did you miss WrestleMania cause of #work

No, I didn't have to work..... Went to a friend's place to watch it.... please read my posts......

I read this, and for some reason immediately thought of Cornette's thoughts on Vince's "time honored tradition" promo. Maybe they'll come to the same conclusion and finally embrace him coming off like a hand-picked asshole and let him *be* a freakin' heel. He will become a babyface over time if they just let the character grow.

It worked for just about EVERY top superstar post-Hogan, except Warrior. And the problem persists an various ways within the company not only with Roman, but he is absolutely the most noticeable.

People want to take the ride with a character. He can be a shithead, and redeem himself later, and then go on to film movies, and sell shirts, and autograph babies and all that shit. But the company seems intent on skipping over the ride and having him at the destination as fast as possible since day one. From shoving the camera up his nose during Shield entrances and the booth spending most of the time putting HIM over during their matches, to feeding him "stars" that they barely built in the first place, to continuing his fast track even after being on the shelf while people didn't give a collective crap that he was gone. That's all stuff that isn't really Roman's fault.

Essentially, if they had just turned him heel in the first place instead of resisting, they would have prob'ly been able to prepare to start (if not already) reaping the benefits of a face turn by now, and Roman as a character would have been richer for it, and if they did it right, the fans would have been READY for a face turn.

Can you sum your posts up? I only looked through the thread for reactions to the Hardys and Mojo winning the battle royal.

Back to my hotel room from the stadium. My thoughts:

By sheer coincidence, I was sitting next to a nice gay couple from the UK. We were chatting all throughout the show and for a while afterwards. I made some new friends. :)

The crowd was overall great. Afterlife messaged me during the PPV, asking if the crowd had gotten dead. Maybe WWE was being overly aggressive in editing crowd reactions?

Neville/Aries was a great opener. Good way to get the crowd warmed up. Well, we were already dying in the heat. Different kind of warmed up.

The ARMBAR was good. No idea who that football guy was. I'm guessing one of Mojo's former teammates? Sami getting eliminated sucked, but it was nice, for once, to see the crowd's last chance pick to actually win.

Ambrose/Corbin... we kinda just didn't care much about this match. I wanted to care. I like Ambrose. I've liked Corbin recently. But this feud has just been nothing to me.

AJ/Shane was way better than I expected. Shane's offense looked significantly improved over last year.

Jericho/Owens was good, but I expected it to be. It didn't exceed my expectations. Jericho's entrance was cool.

Raw Women's Championship match was pretty good. Nice to see the <strike>Shield</strike> Horsewomen triple powerbomb. Kinda weird that everyone except Nia Jax got fireworks.

Holy shit the Hardys are back. That was amazing.

The mixed tag match seemed weirdly-paced. Miz got a ton of offense in, and then Cena & Nikki just win.

Rollins/Triple H was kinda meh. There should have been a good story here, but instead it was some crap like "you betrayed my by getting injured".

Wyatt/Orton bothered me. Like, Wyatt debuted the ability to manifest the form of Sister Abigail in the ring. And he still lost. What?

I expected to dislike Goldberg/Lesnar, but I didn't. Ending the suplex count at 10 was a nice touch for the crowd. Glad to see Goldberg lose the title.

Smackdown Women's Championship match was also good. The crowd wasn't too hot for it, since we were all waiting for the main event. The women still put on a good match, even though they didn't have a lot of time.

Undertaker/Reigns was kinda insane. The crowd booed literally every bit of Roman's offense. Even though Taker losing is a bug downer, I think it's probably good in the long run. Undertaker really needs to retire (and it seems he has). His legacy has been cemented for a long time. A Reigns victory gives the crowd even more to boo him for. Is he officially a heel yet?

By the way, if Reigns beating Taker in the main event of a WrestleMania wasn't enough evidence of WWE just trolling the fans by pushing everything they hate down their throat.... Everyone actually fell in love with a Vince McMahon dream in Braun Strowman. It was great. So they put him in a battle royal, made him the clear favorite, and then eliminated him early and had the winner be a low-card guy whose only claim to fame is being hated within the IWC. COME ON....

U fuck?

Ugh, that sucked. I was using Nowhere Man's sweatshirt as a blanket to shield myself from the sun. I still got burned.

Nope, just some new friends.

Smiley face made it seem like you had a hot threesome. Would have made this whole thing worthwhile.

Oh, also - while walking back to my hotel after the PPV, some dudes in a car were blasting Bobby Roode's theme song, and I sang along with them while doing Roode poses. I think that was my second-favorite moment of the night (after the Hardys, of course).

That would have been a :naughty:, not a :).

What a performance by Goldberg.

Is that an option? Where do I select that option?

I mean, you've never seen us both in the same place.

Your BFF did really good. I wasn't expecting anything from that match and absolutely loved the entire 5 minutes of it.

@Poit

I am glad you had an amazing time! I had a feeling you would.

:)

Chad Gable's parents live in Northern California. They were at a comedy show I was at a few months ago. I know because there was a middle-aged woman in the crowd wearing an American Alpha shirt and I thought "That's odd" and lo-and-behold, it was his mom.

Cena and HHH are very much 'larger than life' as is Brock and all three are still with WWE

Give Roman a few years and he will be 'larger than life' too most likely

Yeah, Cena and Brock still have the "larger than life" vibe.

I don't know about Triple H.

And forget about the main roster.

The future is bleak.

Thanks again for the Takeover ticket. :love:

No prob my dude!


https://68.media.tumblr.com/237fce38...tub6o1_540.gif

(that gif looks 'sad' but I found it when I googled 'BRO HUG')

(Wrestling Observer Newsletter quote from 1999)

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">While the Hardyz were risking their bodies to entertain the hardcore audience, they were chanting &quot;We want ho's.&quot; [7/99]</p>&mdash; Meltzer in the 90s (@ObserverQuotes) <a href="https://twitter.com/ObserverQuotes/status/848701809543843840">April 3, 2017</a></blockquote> <script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

Cole said something like "things are about to be broken!" when the Hardys appeared. Don't jump to conclusions.

What?

Misses mania due to lost info but I saw on Facebook the hardy are back so does this mean no broken Matt and brother Nero?

Can confirm. Bathroom lines were ridiculous during the... musical interlude? I'll be nice and call it that.

How did the Bray Wyatt maggot magic come off live?

Just as long as you don't try to recruit my kids :y::y:

Congrats Poit

This was an awesome Mania, like really, really enjoyable. There will always be things to pick out that weren't great etc... But i was thoroughly entertained the whole way through.

Aries/Neville - Right guy won, it was a good match and there is still mileage in the feud.

Battle Royal - Big negative on Strowman, but who really cares? It's throwaway and meaningless.

Corbin/Ambrose - Neglected feud shoved in preshow. Prob the right decision.

AJ/Shane - It was entertaining and the right guy won. Hoping AJ returns to world title contention now.

Jericho/Owens - Should have been so much more, disappointing to me, but was a fine match for what it was. I think this deserved more attention

Raw Women - It was fine too. Charlotte is so good, and this has done Bayley a massive favor and legitimised her. Nia was protected too, all good!

Tag Titles - Brilliant surprise and swerve from New Day. Totally marked out here and took me back 15 years. Absolutely loved it.

Miz/Maryse vs Cena/Nikki - hate that Miz lost, but proposal was a big deal and a nice moment. Ladies seemed to love it and it served its purpose. Hard to say that wrong guy won with the proposal.

HHH/Rollins - Hunters entrances are hilarious. Rollins is the right guy winning again. Main card has all right guys winning up to this point. It was well documented he was injured and not only did they cover it well, but HHH/Stephanie put him over huge with her comeuppance and a clean win. Brilliant stuff

Wyatt/Orton - Only match i would say they definitely got wrong. Wyatt looks incredibly stupid and changes of him becoming a special attraction in his own right are all but gone. He has a streak alright, but the opposite of what was needed.

Brock/Lesnar - This couldn't have been more perfect. Superman/Zod was a great call from Graves. This was two superhuman guys just exploding and this feud has made both of them look amazing in the end. I doubted it so much, but great story, well told. Brilliant stuff again.

Smackdown women - Too short, but again, right girl won. I think she is unique, extremely athletic and brings qualities that the other girls don't. Great stuff for Naomi and the right winner once again.

Reigns/Taker - Beautiful and emotional end for one of the greatest of all time. An all time great Mania moment if he sticks to it. The fact that he wasn't good enough was a theme (both on purpose and by accident) of the match and it feels like he has gone on a match too long and paid for it.

My only gripe is that Reigns is now THE star of the company and he is not good enough. He is athletic, but thats it. Here, he was going up against a performer, capable of nuanced reactions, timing and just the correct measure of emotion at certain moments. Undertaker has been so successful because he is such a great performer.

Reigns is not. He is an athlete with no charisma and no real connection to the crowd. He doesn't know how to work them and his reactions and facials seem forced and the timing is completely off. It has denied Taker what HBK and Flair had before him - a performer fitting enough to create that match and that moment together with him.

People will talk about his merchandise sales, but i think wwefan hit the nail on the head when he said, kids will like anything that is presented to them in a strong way. He is the "best" and wins all the time, so buy his shirt.

It is sad because it means that he may never have the need to learn from guys like HBK and Taker on how to become a better performer, capable of bringing the crowd into the match and making them feel something. I think the company are doing him a disservice too by forcing the issue. The fact he has retired a truly great personality is ironic and sad at the same time.


In spite of that though, it is still the best Mania I have seen in a long time with so many good decisions and cool moments. It was fantastically entertaining and they deserve the plaudits that come with it. Big thumbs up from me.

I appreciated the wink wink by Cole but WWE cut to replay the second they started the DELETE chants after the match and posted an interview with them in which they were talking completely normally and talking about how honored they were to get the chance to come back and meet new people.

I'm glad they got that moment after turning themselves relevant. But I'm pretty sure they're just the Hardys again.

If they do end up going the Broken route, WWE probably to control the whole narrative hence they need to go from normal to broken again instead of just returning as crazies

Random predictions for this week's TV. Some are pretty obvious with a few "out there".

Raw
-Finn Balor returns
-Sasha turns heel to set up Bayley's next program
-Emma returns only to announce that she's going to SmackDown
-DIY debut in a cruiserweight segment and work a tag match against Daivari/Dar or Nese/Gulak
-The Hardys will get another huge pop and will play to the DELETE chants, but they won't cut a promo unless they're keeping the Broken characters as this is the type of crowd that will immediately turn on them for talking normally
-Hardys/Club and Owens/Jericho feuds continue to the next PPV as per the tradition of holding rematches
-Kurt Angle is named new GM

SmackDown
-Much like Raw, the Orton/Wyatt and Bliss/Naomi programs carry on for rematches at the next PPV
-The Revival debut and attack both The Usos and American Alpha, coming across as badass tweeners
-Tye Dillinger debuts against Dolph Ziggler
-Emma coming to SmackDown COMING SOON
-Nakamura knees Miz in the face to close the show

Random trivia that I'm totally not ashamed of knowing: Brock Lesnar is the first person to ever defeat Goldberg clean.

This doesn't include any non-televised losses, especially before his main WCW debut, as I have no knowledge of any of these and can only go by on-air matches.

First half of the main show and Cruiserweight match was good. Guess I'll be watching Raw again until they fuck up the Hardys. Maybe for a few weeks.

Brock/Goldberg was what it needed to be too, but the rest though, yeesh. Guess they let you get an early night if you wanted it.

Didn't they have a snapchat promo where they were saying "DELETE" and "OBSOLETE" after winning?

Goldberg never lost off-air.

Yup, that's why I upped my estimate to 3 weeks instead of tonight.

During those parts, the overhead ring view was shown on the screens, so I presume it came across live as well as it did on the broadcast.

Thought it was a good mania, though the event was too long.

I have no idea what the point of Randy Orton winning was. Every time Bray gets a little closer they do something stupid. He should have walked into Mania as champ and left Mania as champ.

Orton/Wyatt match was pretty boring. The whole maggots thing was quite interesting and came off well on TV, but the ending was very lackluster and "out of nowhere" no pun intended. But not in a surprising way, either.

Cole's line was a good enough reference for me. They are not going to acknowledge TNA totally and I thought that did the job. As long as Matt has the steak in his hair I'll assume he's still Broken. The promo afterwards was kind of emotional for both of them and Matt did his Broken voice a bit but if they are going to do it he needs to be fully committed or else it won't work.

My biggest worry was that they would get the same treatment that the Dudley Boys got. With the Hardys winning they have already eased that worry for me. DELETE chants should be loud tonight.

I got to thinking last night and I think they should use the Hardys to unify the tag division. We've already see that the Smackdown tag titles are least valuable to the company and even on Smackdown they are barely featured. Let the Expedition of Gold continue.

I honestly think they've given up on trying to make Mania a "great" show in how us smarky little fuckers define a great show.

Now it's a chance to fill a huge fucking stadium, do a marathon show, get lots of publicity and give everyone possible a payday. It's the experience, not the actual delivery.

I don't like it but be that as it may it is what it is.

The Hardy Boyz! <3

Forgot that I skipped the Wyatt match. Glad to see I missed very little.

I really enjoyed this show. It wasn't perfect, and a didn't like some of the results, but I was entertained throughout.

Even if it was too goddamn long, I had fun.

Going to have to watch the preshow matches, Styles / Shane and maybe Rollins / HHH today because I missed them due to being late to our Wrestlemania showing

My quick thoughts on Mania:

Pretty much like what others said, maybe C+ B range. I don't think it was superb, but wasn't horrible either.

-Styles/Shane was better than I thought and hands down made my MOTN after a second watch.
-Owens/Jericho should have had more impact and higher on the card.
-Glad Lesnar/Goldberg was longer than the previous match, that's about it.
-Roman/Taker honestly wasn't that bad outside of the 2 major botches.
-HHH/Rollins was a solid effort, nothing special, but nothing horrible
-Raw Women's match seemed more like a TV Raw match than a WM match.
-SD Women's match was crap. Honestly, WTF? They made so much progress with the women over the last 2 years and it had the looks of a Divas match from 5 yrs ago.
-Tag Ladder Match was pretty good. Nice return of the Hardys, though would have rather seen them return tonight or not win the match last night. I'm sure the latter was a stip in their new nice money contract.
-Orton/Wyatt was below average compared to what it could have been. Harper should have been added to it.
-Cena match was completely pointless after the hype. They should have kayfabe'd the whole thing. Had Nikki say no, turn on Cena, join a stable with Miz & Maryse, then have Nikki "realize her mistake" down the road and then do the marriage thing. This is wrestling guys, keep that personal life stuff out of the ring. Doesn't work these days.
-Battle Royal sucked. Don't do it anymore
-Ambrose/Corbin was flat for most, but completely surprise Ambrose retained.
-Cruisers was solid, but nothing I would say impressed me.

So like I said, okay, not great, not horrible. Much better than last year. I couldn't even remember the main event from last year. Had to look it up, that's how much of an impact it had on me.

Gets worse in about 2 years if the sheets are correct since it might be just Triple H by then.

Next year is hinted to be Lesnar's retirement match and then the following year being Cena's with Reigns hinted as the opponent for both.

I still wanna know why Samoa Joe was not at WM and why Sasha Banks too the cart down the ramp

Where would you have placed Joe?

at very least, the Battle Royal

But since Reigns isnt suppose to get the belt for a while, why not set up the Samoan vs Samoan feud?

If there plan was for Mojo to win its better Joe not be in the battle royal.

@ Reigns idea, it would be hard to fit Joe in with the ending that they had last night.

Meltzer was already on about the attendance, considering the obscene size of the stage 75k was obviously a bs number.

What does Meltzer know about counting sheep,,,,,,,,

dronepool sighting

Attendance also means the wrestlers, announcers, support staff, security, vendors. Anybody for any reason or capacity was in the Orange Bowl for any part of WrestleMania.

MELTZER SHEEP!

That is such an STD post.

Also... I guarantee there weren't that many people in attendance at the Orange Bowl last night for WrestleMania.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Where WrestleMania 33 ranks in the biggest pro wrestling gates of all-time <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%24WWE&amp;src=ctag">$WWE</a> <a href="https://t.co/emhYfl38zQ">pic.twitter.com/emhYfl38zQ</a></p>&mdash; Brandon Howard (@adecorativedrop) <a href="https://twitter.com/adecorativedrop/status/848764454108102657">April 3, 2017</a></blockquote>
<script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

Fucking Hell...W<sup>3 puts up his WM 33 Review finally and it cuts off at 19:36 or something when the description shows it was supposed to be around 30 minutes maybe a bit more.

It abruptly stops while he and his friend, J Biggs are recapping Seth v. Triple H of all matches, right after Brian says "clean as a whistle..." talking about some move.

Really wanted to see his final grade too. PLZ FIX SOON BRIAN "ZANE" SCHEIDEL!

*Bear in mind I live in the U.K. so my falling asleep isn't necessarily indicative of the quality of the show*

Biggest criticism is the same criticism I'd throw at WWE in general; their belief that quantity is better, or equal, to quality.

A 2 hour pre-show followed by a 5+ hour show is insane. I didn't watch in one go.

The Cruiser match was a great little opener. Both guys looked great, and probably the right result. Though I'm not sure what's next for Neville now.

Battle Royal was there. Surprised by the Show, and Strowman eliminations being so early. Really not a fan of Rawley. Didn't see the point if having Dane or Bian in there.

I must have fallen asleep here as it wasn't until watching the main show the next day that I realised they'd moved the IC match. Haven't gone back to watch it, have no inclination to do so. Surprised Corbin lost, off to Raw?

Styles/Shane opening the show was a surprise and the match was much better than it had any right to be. Glad Styles got the win. Would make sense for him to go to Raw.

Again surprised they followed with Jericho/Owens. Another good one. At this point I started to think that this Mania might over-deliver. Should have been later in the show. That bit with the rope break, amazing.

Really wasn't enthused by Orton/Wyatt, skipped it. Read on here about the weirdness, went back saw a bit of weirdness, skipped forward again. Wyatt needs to go away for a while before emerging as a real threat. Really don't get the booking here.

I looked to the heavens when I realised they were doing the full Goldberg entrance including backstage walk, Jesus! Great match making the most of what they have. Does feel like a weird end for Goldberg if he just disappears.

Both SD/Raw women's matches failed to hold my attention. I'd been convinced on here that the SD wasn't a 6 Pack Challenge so the chance of a surprise was on the table...until the match intro. The Raw match for me suffered from seeing the same 4 women compete a million times in the last 8 months.

Cena/Miz stuff was fine for what it was. Kinda pleased the crowd didn't shit all over the proposal (unless they did at the audio was cut?)

The Tag Ladder match was good. Surprised they brought back the Hardy's on this show (even if they're not broken). Speaking of broken; holy shit Cesaro must have been hurt on the Swanton.

HHH/Rollins went on too long. Far too long and far too plodding. Pleased that Rollins went over but there might have been more story in a loss here. Props to Steph for that table bump.

I had to retire during the Main Event. Carried on watching in bed but fell asleep. Should probably go back to rewatch but it doesn't sound all that compelling (and with another 5 hrs to watch Monday/Tuesday) it can probably wait.

Unless I missed it, no legend skit/surprise appearance? No Hogan, Rock, Austin, HBK (outside of the pre show panel), etc.

Dave thinks 78,000 was the official attendance for WM3. Seriously, that's what he believes.

He apparently personally counted everyone at WM32 and didn't get to over 101K like WWE said, so you know he's credible.

If he can do that, counting to 70K would be a breeze.

Honestly, the guy is such a tool when it comes to this stuff. I'm sure he's an expert on stadium capacity for every building in the Western world.

Two things I love about this chart, as this guy is your typical Meltzer sheep. Our favorite wrestling journalists believes numbers out of North Korea, but doesn't believe WWE attendance numbers.

Second, Roman Reigns is a beast.

Maybe so but its hardly like wwe have much in the way of credibility when everything about their performers is exaggerated. Heights, weights, why wouldn't attendance also factor into that, if they do it with heights and weights to make wrestlers seem larger than they are then surely making a show seem bigger than it is would also qualify.

Some of that is basically a legacy of the "wrestling business". But its a bit hard to believe that every time they do a wrestlemania they set some kind of attendance record.

There's a lot of things at play. Any promoter will do whatever they can to boost the number they announce. I know for a fact rock concerts used the same methodology for counting attendance (ie staff, performers, etc), so it's not unique to wrestling.

The other issue is that the ONLY "source" against the numbers that Vince puts out is Dave. And if you hear how Dave acquires his numbers, it's far more ripe for errors than Vince's numbers. It's not like Dave is standing at the gate with a clicker in his hand as every person walks through the door. Like I said in my post, do you really think the real WM3 number is 78k? Like exactly 78k right on the nose. Because that's the number Dave has quoted for years, decades actually. If his source is so credible, you would think he could report a number something like say 77,964. But he can't. Why? Because he's full of it. Always has been.

The bottom line on all this is whether there were 101k people in attendance at 32 or 98k, it's still a massive crowd that generated the largest $$$ gate in the history of the business. That's all that really matters. And this year what matters is this was the second biggest gate in the business, and the most viewed Mania of all time at nearly 2 million folks. That's fucking impressive. That's the real story.

You can pause on the WWE network.

Maybe he paused and counted.

Touché

Or the other explanation is he is our omnipotent overlord #Meltzerknows

Watched Naomi's entrance again. Lol I don't think she knows how to dance. She just does random awkward shit.

He did call the main card at WrestleMania months in advance. Made the doubters look foolish YET AGAIN. #Legend

Give her a break, she's injured

Dave Meltzer should own WWE. They would reach the next stratosphere of success. He is the king of the jungle #Meltzerlion

#Meltzerwolf

You mean the stuff that was obvious or the stuff that he got wrong or the stuff that he claimed he wouldn't leak because if he did then they would change it. But then that match never happened, because it was never planned, and the rest of the card that he did report on and got right never got changed.

It would have 300 fans like his newsletter subs.

She was like that before her injury. She has no rhythem . I could out dance her to that music at age 34 on a bad knee.

I'd love to see you two have a dance feud.

Oh I don't know. Reigns vs Taker before the Rumble. Orton winning the Rumble and Wyatt being the champion going in before either was remotely hinted at. Cena and Nikki vs Miz and Maryse before they started feuding. *yawn*

Oh wait. It's CyNick. The king of denial. You got DUMMIED. You should be used to it by now. #SpoilerMeltzerWins

He might as well. He already knows what they're doing before they do. Man's been DUMMYING haters like this fruitcake CyNick for so long it's sad.

Reigns vs Taker was hinted on TV before the Rumble. You just had to pick up the clues big dog.

Miz-Cena he was totally out to lunch on and yet that was finalized before Total Bella's started filming.

Orton v Wyatt was pretty obvious going back to Survivor Series. The title in the line was also logical since no other program on SDL made sense as a title feud.

He got the obvious stuff, I'll give him that.

Vince wishes he was the great David Cornelius Meltzer

Thank You Taker.

Fuck You Vince.

Fuck WM 33.

Fuck You Roman.

What a surprise. CyNick claims everything was predictable months ago in hindsight to try to make himself believe Meltzer didn't actually know anything in advance. The denial is so strong. Poor CyNick. Must be tough to look in the mirror after getting DUMMIED so much.

CyNick will continue on being in denial over the rest of 2017 before he finally can't even stomach his own bullshit and has to slowly stop posting entirely. I won't wait til it happens and then claim it was obvious. I'm calling it now. #BallsLikeMeltzer.

I feel like if EVERYTHING is predictable that's the sign of a pretty shit product. I mean some stuff can be predictable. But if EVERYTHING is predictable I mean that's pretty weak.

Meltzer has said plenty of times in the past his numbers come the actual arenas whenever he'd contact them for a report about an event. Even mentioned the 78k for Mania III is him just rounding up the actual number to make it easier to remember.

Even mentioned several times the breakdown when it comes to attendance numbers and how it takes months for the actual final number to be confirmed. Last year's Mania didn't get confirmed until a few weeks ago and turned out the paid attendance was even lower than previous estimates.

Also has decades of experience fact checking WWE numbers which is how he can safely estimate the amount of padding used. Usually goes between 10k-20k for big events and a few thousands for smaller events and tv shows.

Won't happen. You'll understand why in due time.

I don't know. I think the best programs are largely predictable. No different than most movies you watch ists predictable that the hero will overcome and save the day in the end. That's just the nature of storytelling. It's all about the journey getting there. I think this year WWE did an excellent job with the journey.

I don't doubt he asks, what I doubt it's the source of the info. Usually his numbers come from spotters who estimate crowd size. Just because someone works for an arena, doesn't mean they have access to the actual paid attendance. That's why all of his numbers for live events are "4000", or "5000". You never seem him publish actual numbers with sourcing from the arena because his sources are BS. If say Camping World Stadium had real numbers, they could just be forthright and say the actual attendance was "X".

He's got this gimmick down to a science where his followers just believe anything he says. You're even doing it in your post. He has decades of fact checking WWE numbers, but who is fact checking him? Bruce Prichard who no longer has anything to do with WWE has gone on record saying Dave is full of crap with his numbers. This is from a guy who would actually have access to real numbers based on his past employment with WWE. Give me other sources other than Dave who can verify that day WM3 had 78k fans instead of 93k? You can't, because it's just the info he collects from these mysterious sources who they themselves lack credibility, and people in the IWC just drink the Kool aid.

A big part of fact checking is actually presenting facts. Dave misses the mark on that one. He's a nice guy, he's just a carny, and his followers don't see that. I still enjoy talking to him when I get the chance though.

It doors if they're arena/stadium management. They HAVE TO have records and maintain them, I'm sure probably in perpetuity too.

If Silverdome management says WWF's 93,173 @ WM III attendance claim is correct, then I believe them unless/until there's empirical evidence that shows beyond a shadow of a doubt that the number is untrue and inflated by WWE and Silverdome management records.