Want more wrestling news, rumors, and results? Be sure to visit PWInsider.com and PWInsiderXtra.com.
SUBMIT YOUR QUESTIONS TO THE PWINSIDER Q&A BY CLICKING HERE.
Why is MJF off the AEW roster?
They removed him in January as I believe the idea is he hasn't "signed a new deal."
So I know you get a million questions on wrestling a day, but for the love of God what celebrity did more for wrestling at a important time in wrestling as Cyndi Lauper, and she's still not in? Why o'wrestling fountain of knowledge? If not now when and still why not. Thank you for reading my question.
The general consensus among those I've spoken with is that whenever Wrestlemania season came about and the idea was mentioned, Lauper happened to be on tour. Lauper has always spoken highly of those she worked with in pro wrestling and I think that if the money and timing is right, she'll go in down the line.
Were you interviewed for the ECW Biography given you were in those other ECW docs?
Nope. No one called. I am sure there is a massive list of people they'd want on there before me and I'd rather see the former ECW roster on there to be honest. I don't care if I am on there as long as they tell a proper version of the ECW story. A&E hasn't reached out for me for any projects since the Steve Austin episode years ago.
Wrestlemania in Minneapolis? REALLY?
Why not? Minnesota is literally the wrestling State - they voted Jesse Ventura in as Governor!!! The AWA! The Gagnes! Hennig, Rude, Road Warriors, etc. It's a city that has never hosted Mania and it's a perfect location in the Mid-West to draw people to. I'd be happy to see it if it happens, with the only potential downside being that the mainstream media you'll attract there probably won't be as abundant as NYC, LA, Chicago etc.
If you could pick a city to host Wrestlemania again, what is it?
New Orleans. Absolutely loved every single time I visited that city and every major venue is within walking distance. I absolutely loved every Mania weekend there.
Is there one show you are looking forward to the most Mania weekend?
Every year, the Wrestlecon Mark Hitchcock Memorial Supershow steals the week in many ways for me personally. I can't wait for this year's version, especially since it's in the 2300 Arena, a venue that I love watching shows in. Eddie Kingston vs. Mark Briscoe at ROH Supercard of Honor has me very interested plus there's a lot of fun stuff at GCW and STARDOM.
I was googling and came across a story about an old streaming service Floslam becoming a complete mess and suing EVOLVE but it was impossible to decipher everything. Do you remember any of this and if so, what happened?
Oh, do I remember. This is what I wrote here on PWInsider in November 2017:
Flosports made the decision today to shutter their Floslam streaming service, laying off their staff and closing the door on its attempt to become a destination for professional wrestling fans.
Officially launched in October 2016 and based out of Austin, Texas, Floslam had been designed to become a major streaming subscription content hub with the idea of signing deals with a number of top independent professional wrestling companies and placing them under one umbrella.
Despite announcing in August of 2016 that its parent company Flosports had "received $21.2 million in new funding to accelerate the online sports network’s growth into new sports and expand its existing verticals" from a number of investors, including World Wrestling Entertainment, the attempt to build a Floslam just never clicked.
On paper and from a financial standpoint, the concept should had everything going for it to the point that some expected Floslam would have the backing to change the landscape of pro wrestling. The theory went like this: Floslam would pay a top premium price for indy promotion content and possibly even professional wrestlers (by putting specific wrestler under contract and farming him/her out to Floslam partner promotions.) By doing so, they would drive up the worth of independent wrestling content. In execution, it never really got out of the starting gate.
Despite its best efforts, Flosports were unable to secure deals with Ring of Honor or New Japan Pro Wrestling, both of which would have been major attractions for the service. An attempt to reach a deal with Pro Wrestling Guerrilla (which was never even an option given the way PWG's business model works, as the promotion is set up as a nexus that exists just outside of contractual obligations for various promotions) was equally fruitless. No deals with any of the major lucha groups were signed.
Instead, the service ended up hanging its hat on a seven figure deal with WWNLive, Inc. That deal led to WWN producing five live events per month for the service, becoming its cornerstone. As well documented, that relationship ended just a year into the signed five year agreement with Flosports alleging in a lawsuit that WWN had misled them on how many iPPV buys the company was doing on its own streaming service, leading to WWN being overpaid for their content. Whether Floslam was tricked into wrongly overpaying or not is a matter for the courts to decide [Note from Mike: Floslam's lawsuit was later dismissed outright], but at the end of the day, they put all their eggs in the WWNLive basket and it didn't pan out. In fact, all the WWNLive deal really accomplished out of the gate was sparking WWE signing deals with PROGRESS and ICW for a potential WWE Network tiered-system that still has yet to launch. [Note from Mike: That tiered-system never launched.]
Other promotions, including House of Hardcore, had agreements that saw multiple events streamed live via Floslam before moving on, while others streamed their events as unique, one time specials. While there was great excitement early for the concept of the service among independent promoters, especially when word made the rounds about WWN's seven figure deal, that was greatly tempered when it was obvious the major money went to WWNLive as they were first in line to sign and everyone that followed were getting lesser and lesser financial deals. In fact, there were a few independent companies that turned their Floslam offers down, feeling that locking themselves in to deals that could potentially see them lose access to ROH and other companies' talent wasn't worth the risk, even short-term.
The pricing was an error from day one in my opinion. Priced at $20 a month or $150 for a year (more than most major streaming services, including Hulu, Netflix, Amazon Prime AND the WWE Network), Floslam was going to be a hard sell unless it had top, premium talent. Without the major groups signing on, that price point was out of wack with what fans were realistically willing to spend. When the company raised the monthly price to $30 without notice, they likely went past the point of no return when it came to servicing their potential audience. WWE had changed the price point for what fans were willing to pay for top notch, slicky produced pro wrestling content with the WWE Network at $9.99 a month for Wrestlemania level shows, so how could Floslam realistically expect fans to pay $20-$30 for independent wrestling shows that had no real production value or lighting, despite costing double or triple of pro wrestling's industry leader?
The rollout for the service was, in many ways, completely haphazard one as well, absent of any sort of promotion or marketing plan for the service (for example, PWInsider.com never received ONE press release from Flosports about their service and never once received any email inquiries returned) and featured a confusing rollout that saw Flosports' Roku platform crash depending on what Roku device you would be using, a failure to expand to other streaming device platforms, a basic interface that made it impossible to easily seek out specific content, among other issues. Staffing changes in management only helped to fuel a vortex that never allowed the service a chance to even course-correct. They had put a plane in the air without any landing gear and proceeded to then shove the pilots out the door.
None of these made the paid subscription service something that was going to earn positive word of mouth and as noted, there was no major marketing or advertising campaign to create awareness of the service. Whatever buzz and following Floslam had, it was based specifically on whatever buzz there was for that week's WWN and House of Hardcore event, not the other way around. Once out of the gate, other than providing a home for the live streaming events, there was really nothing done to increase the reach of Floslam by Flosports. Not only was the plane in the air doomed, everyone shrugged once they realized it was up there.
After the lawsuit against WWNLive was filed, Floslam made all of the WWN content free for all (possibly in an attempt to hurt the value of that content elsewhere), the entirety of Floslam's live events schedule was canceled and in recent weeks, it acted as a site that featured news, columns and podcasts. In what is a completely maddening and unfair turn of events, the staff that was hired to populate Floslam with content was laid off today, despite the fact that none of the deals and none of the fallout of those deals had anything to do with them. To me, that's a completely disgusting situation. I don't know any of the staff that were hired on any level, but these were people who were trying to feed their family with their work and believed they were getting into bed with a legitimate streaming provider that was going to be in business for a long term. They were sought out by Floslam and made the decision to take the plunge. All they did was go to work and in the end, they got screwed over - weeks before Christmas. I feel horrible for them on a personal level, despite having never spoken to any of them. They deserved better than Floslam gave them and everyone involved in the treatment of the staff should be Goddamned ashamed of themselves.
Back in 2016, I wrote, "There has been some great excitement within certain circles as to a new money player putting some money into independent wrestling promotion. Over the next week or so, we should have a greater understanding of exactly what this all means and how much, if at all, this will be change the landscape of the independent realm, but it is certainly an interesting development."
At the end of the day, Flosports changed the landscape, but for the worse There were hopes Floslam was going to change the business for the better on the independent scale. Some decreed that was going to happen before the service signed one deal.
Instead, the story of Floslam will just be another story we recount about "what could have been" if the right people had been involved, if the right deals had been made and had they actually tried to make it work instead of spending some money and waiting for everyone to rush to subscribe. Instead, what's left? A lot of money spent, a lawsuit against WWN, a situation with Joey Styles that left him so disgusted he fled pro wrestling for good, missed opportunities that for some promotions may never come back around, goodwill on all sides that has been destroyed and most importantly, a group of wrestling fans who got their hopes up only to have those hopes ruined, disappointing all who cared to invest their time and money on the service along the way.
What's left is yet another big crater of regret in the minefield that is professional wrestling. What's left is a huge trail of doubt and destruction that will no doubt give the next potential big backer reason to give pause before wanting to better professional wrestling on an independent level. That will be the legacy of Floslam, whether anyone involved wants to personally admit it or place the blame on the next person.
Floslam: 2016 - 2017.
Full disclosure: I was a paid annual subscriber to Floslam until they canceled their live content - because when I emailed them asking for comment about canceling the content, they instead canceled my subscription.
SUBMIT YOUR QUESTIONS TO THE PWINSIDER Q&A BY CLICKING HERE.
If you enjoy PWInsider.com you can check out the AD-FREE PWInsider Elite section, which features exclusive audio updates, news, our critically acclaimed podcasts, interviews and more by clicking here!
Bang On Casino
