Post-WrestleMania thoughts: Wrestling & The hobby
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=866vaAbV5DI]
By Chris Olds | Beckett Baseball Editor
As one of the 72,744 in attendance for WrestleMania 25 at Reliant Stadium in Houston on Sunday, it’s apparent how big pro wrestling has become, how much of it is a spectacle and how much of it is athletics. (Just watch the video above — while it lasts.)
Pro wrestling’s grandest stage is a larger-than-life event, a showcase of the ultimate in scripted danger. Yes, the results are fixed — manipulated — but there’s nothing fake about the falls and the passion. There was no blood on Sunday, but you can bet that there was real pain as the stars put their bodies on the line.
The passion of the competitors is there — their mission for WrestleMania to be the one who steals the show, the one who is remembered, the one in the highlight reel forever. The passion of the fans is there, too — I’d bet that roughly 72,743 fans wore some type of WWE clothing — I wore my standard white dress shirt (had to have a pocket to secure my ringside ticket in mint condition, I swear). The days of wrestling madness in armories or high school gyms pales in comparison, even if the legends of yesteryear are more remembered than some of today’s stars.
And, in the ring, it was the Undertaker–Shawn Michaels match that stole the show, one for the eternal highlight reel and one — I’ll say it — that just might be the greatest pure WrestleMania match in history. At one point in the match, nearly every Michaels chop to Undertaker’s chest was matched by a Ric Flair “wooooo” from the crowd, while every countering blow from the Deadman was matched with a “boooo” — at least from many in my section.
But the mainstream main event — the one getting talked about on E!, in People magazine and in “legitimate” news outlets like The Los Angeles Times — was actor Mickey Rourke‘s knockout punch on Chris Jericho. Rourke, star of The Wrestler, had been involved in an angle for months — but it wasn’t clear what the payoff would be until his left hook connected with Jericho’s jaw and an in-ring celebration with Flair ensued.
Although the angle probably fell flat of many a wrestling fan’s expectations — everything from a rescue by “Stone Cold” Steve Austin or Hulk Hogan to a Randy “The Ram” Robinson appearance (Rourke’s character) had been hoped for — it was the WrestleMania Moment that the WWE had hoped for, one for the highlight reel on everywhere but a wrestling fan’s TV screen. The one that brings wrestling into everyone else’s living rooms.
And right alongside Rourke? The biggest wrestling star in the hobby right now — “The Nature Boy” Ric Flair.
Mickey Rourke and Ric Flair celebrated at WrestleMania 25. (AP)
Flair is considered the greatest wrestler of all time — a guy who could talk people into seats at ringside, keep them from sitting in them during his matches, keep them talking — whether “woooing” or “booing. He’s the guy who could bleed with the best of them, wrestle hard and party harder. (After all, he retired from the hard life of wrestling just last year — at age 59 — in a grand send-off at WrestleMania. And he’s back for more — just not wrestling.)
While many fan knows who Hulk Hogan is, it’s Flair, a 16-time world champion, who has given it all to his profession. Many people don’t know he actually broke his back in an airplane accident back in 1975 — he should have never wrestled again, let alone become one of the sport’s biggest stars.
And on Sunday he was alongside one of the movie business’ ultimate comeback kids, Rourke, for a mainstream moment that can’t hurt the legacy of “The Nature Boy.”
And yet today Flair’s doing well — so well, he’s broken away from WWE (WrestleMania was just one of a handful of appearances; he’s not under contract) and has become a brand of his own. He’s actually slated to make several appearances for independent wrestling promotions — to help give back to the sport that made him a star — reportedly turning down a six-figure deal to become a talking head on WWE broadcasts.
And all this makes me wonder — what if wrestling’s place in the hobby was as large as say baseball or football? A guy like Flair not having a certified autograph card at the end of his career? Preposterous.
And, really, to anyone who actively collects wrestling cards that word must already apply because the response to our contest to give away 15 copies of an exclusive Flair autographed promotional Donruss Americana card has been overwhelming. We’ve had more than 800 entries in a week — and it’s not a done deal until May 1.
Panini America may not know what it has on its hands. The inclusion of a Flair autograph in a product like Americana? Wooooo. Right now, it’s got the kind of potential that a Derek Jeter card with George Bush and Mickey Mantle Photoshopped into the background — but with a legitimate collector reward. What could a Flair-Rourke dual autograph fetch? That one, we’ll probably never know. (Right now, no future plans for the autographs have been announced, though it’s very possible that his Command & Conquer video game appearance with EA Sports could be first out of the gate.)
I honestly wasn’t sure how impressive a Flair autograph card would be to the collecting masses, but in my mind it’s probably going to be the next $100 wrestling card — even without it being a limited quantities release. (There are more than a few other wrestling cards that will fetch good money — see our top 10 list in the April issue of Beckett Sports Card Monthly — but not many recently that could regularly eclipse that mark.)
The cards in the contest? Only 15 were made exclusively for us — and right now the demand has been exceedingly high — 52 interested people wouldn’t get one for every card awarded. I wouldn’t be shocked if it became a $200 card once they hit the hands of winners and a select few opt to sell theirs online.
While wrestling cards are often treated with kid gloves — or perhaps the cardboard equivalent of the red-headed step-child compared to other sports — there’s definitely a hungry audience for wrestling memorabilia out there. There were more than 72,000 examples of that in Houston on Sunday — more people were in attendance at WrestleMania this year than there were at the Super Bowl — and millions more were watching at home.
Only one company is a WWE card licensee right now, Topps, while WWE’s only competitor, TNA, has cards produced by TRISTAR. Their products may not sell in the volumes of baseball or football but they’re right alongside them in many a retail outlet. Yet, on the whole, wrestling cards have a history that date back to the origins of sports cards themselves with 1880s tobacco cards. It’s a fascinating, but not overly complicated, genre of collecting worth exploration.
And exploration into other sports beyond the Big Five — baseball, football, basketball, hockey and auto racing — might be where the hobby helps itself business-wise. Topps’ first Ultimate Fighting Championship MMA set has been accepted as a resounding success — box prices have escalated just like a popular first issues in baseball like 2001 Topps Heritage or 2006 Allen & Ginter.
More than a few fans know that MMA is one of the fastest-growing sports around, but wrestling — specifically the WWE — has been around nearly 50 years and a wealth of wrestling memorabilia beyond the WWE properties exists. There’s an untapped market there, one that could perhaps be grappled with at the fraction of a cost for the manufacturers compared to other sports with a very strong potential return. (How many collectors would gladly dig into a reasonably priced wrestling legends product that had an autograph in every pack? This one would … )
The toughest part is tapping into that market, finding a way into wrestling fans’ hands — once card makers can do that?
Well, it’d be 1-2-3 — a WrestleMania moment for the hobby.
Chris Olds has collected sports cards and memorabilia since 1987. Before coming to Beckett Media, he wrote about the hobby for the Orlando Sentinel on his blog, SportsStuff, and for the San Antonio Express-News and The Tuscaloosa (Ala.) News. Do you have a comment, question or idea? Send e-mail to him at colds@beckett.com.
I truly hope Flair becomes a household name like Hogan.In my opinion, Flair was a better performer and competitor then Hogan, plus he was a world champion that tour the entire globe defending the world championship while Hogan, for the most part, was still competing exlusively for the old wwf in America. I am dissapointed that Topps Allen and Ginter or Sportkings did not get Flair on their products. I am one of those fans that would pay a lot of $$$ for a Flair certified auto card, but I think having a game used piece of robe or boots of Flair along with his auto would be cool. I hope Ric recognises his popularity in the sport and the hobby and lends his name to other products.