Wrestlemania XIX: The Best Wrestlemania You Didn't See

Allow me to beg your indulgence for a moment. Yours truly at Wrestling Compliment Sandwich is going to attempt to solve one of wrestling's great mysteries: that serious dip in buys for Wrestlemania XIX. 

As you can see by the graph above, the number of buys for Wrestlemania, the WWE's (all of wrestling for that matter) signautre event, rose every year after hitting rock bottom (no pun intended) in 1997 with 237,000 buys. Next year's show buyrate more than tripled on the strength of Mike Tyson and Stone Cold Steve Austin being a supernova by this point. it would steadily rise for the remainder of the Attitude Era, peaking at just over a million buys for Wrestlemania X-Seven. It dipped quite a bit for Wrestlemania X-8, but it could have been a hell of a lot worse were it not headlined by The Rock versus Hulk Hogan. Next year's show had Hulk Hogan and The Rock. And Stone Cold Steve Austin. And Triple H. And Brock Lesnar. And the Smackdown Six. And Shawn Michaels. And Chris Jericho.

560,000 buys. Here's a bit of perspective: every Wrestlemania since but one flirted with a million buys, with seven going over a million. 560,000 buys is also about as many PPV buys as Wrestlemania VI (that was The Ultimate Challenge one), where PPV wasn't as big a deal in 1990 as it was in 2003. And WM VI had way more filler. 

For posterity, here was the card for Wrestlemania XIX:

• Lance Storm & Chief Morley vs. Kane and Rob Van Dam for the World Tag Team Championship (Sunday Night Heat dark match)
• Matt Hardy vs. Rey Mysterio for the WWE Cruiserweight Championship
• Undertaker & Nathan Jones vs. Big Show & A-Train
• Victoria vs. Trish Stratus vs. Jazz for the WWE Womens Championship
• Team Angle vs. Los Guerreros vs. Chris Benoit & Rhyno for the WWE Tag Team Championship
• Shawn Michaels vs. Chris Jericho
• Triple H vs. Booker T for the World Heavyweight Championship
• Hulk Hogan vs. Mr. McMahon in a street fight 
• The Rock vs. Stone Cold Steve Austin
• Kurt Angle vs. Brock Lesnar for the WWE Championship

Pretty stacked card, wouldn't ya say? So... why so few buys?

Time to comb the Interwebs.

From WrestlingForum:

1) Overemphasis on Hulk Hogan vs Vince McMahon. Hogan vs Vince was Wrestlemania-worthy, but WWE hyped it as the biggest match on the card. Many posters featured a stare-down between Vince and Hogan, and the two of them often ended Smackdown shows each week. In fact, many people guessed that Hogan vs Vince was going to end the PPV! This hype, I think, hurt the PPV and drove casuals away. It should have been an upper-mid card match, not a main-event attraction.
2) Angle - Lesnar not a big enough draw. This one may surprise, but I think Lesnar and Angle was not big enough. Lesnar was the new guy who debuted 8-9 months earlier. He was booked strong, but people didn't know him well enough. Angle, on the other hand, was more well-know, but he has never been big among casuals. If WWE had gone HHH vs Brock Lesnar, I think Wrestlemania XIX would had been more successful.

Another from WrestlingForum:

- Lesnar was a horrible draw as WWE champion in late 2002. Which makes what he has become for UFC so much more amazing.
- Triple H had horrible angles and matches left and right in the several months leading up to WM19. TWO PPV matches with the Big Bad Booty Daddy (complete with memorable moments such as posedowns and bench press challenges), plus the subtle racist feud with Booker.
- Even though the Rock was displaying the greatest gimmick of all-time, the feud with Austin (who had lost so much momentum drawing-wise since his heel turn at WM17) just wasn't fresh. Also, doing the job for Hurricane (who went on to not appear on WM19 whatsoever outside of maybe being a Heat lumberjack) just made Rock look less credible. It wasn't the job so much, as the fact that he did it for someone left off the Grandaddy of 'Em All.
- Hogan vs. Vince, and a been-there-done-that Rock vs. Austin feud were not good enough top two main events in terms of marketing. Something else fresh with proven draws booked successfully for many months should have been marketed as THE top match, with the Monday Night Wars matches right underneath.
- Raw was just fucking atrocious during this period whenever the Rock or HBK/Jericho wasn't on the screen.

From 411mania.com (which happens to be asking this very question in their Ask411Wrestling feature this week):

Maybe interest in the product was down? Blaming Brock Lesnar vs. Kurt Angle for the poor number does not add up. That show was absolutely stacked from top to bottom. Just because the WWE Title match (from Smackdown no less) just so happen to go on last does not make them the scapegoat. A number of matches could have gone on last. If Stone Cold vs. The Rock was the final match, does that mean we can blame those two (huge draws) for the buy rate? Or Hulk Hogan vs. Vince McMahon, if that was the last match of the evening? The mystery still remains why WMXIX did such a dreadful PPV buy rate. It was not just down a little bit or a some slight decrease. When other WrestleMania events were grabbing just below or above one million buys, this one doing less than 600,000 buys sticks out like a sore thumb. Big time! That is a HUGE drop off folks. 

From LordsofPain.net:

To this day, the only explanation is that the fan base just fell off the face of the earth in 2003. If ever there was a moment when the WWE probably started to breath heavily about their business moving forward after the Attitude era, it was likely the day that they got the buyrate data back for Wrestlemania XIX. 540,000 buys and a 1.4 buyrate is horrible by modern PPV era standards. There are some Summerslams that have almost equaled those numbers in the last ten years. The only thing keeping it from being a complete and utter financial disappointment was that it was a stadium show, packing 54,000 plus into Seattle’s Safeco Field. Many of you probably wanted to see this event near the top of the overall rankings, but you can bet that its poor showing at the box office will drag it down a few notches, unfortunately. Quality wise, it’s my favorite Mania of all-time, but the numbers do not lie on the business rankings.

The WWE was in major transition mode back then. The was the first Mania of the brand split era and the WWE was seeing if it was actually possible to create two fan bases similar to what wrestling had when WWE and WCW were at their respective peaks. That was probably unrealistic to think that it would go down that way, but the shows certainly were different in their presentation. Paul Heyman booked a simple, straightforward show on Smackdown featuring a lot of great wrestlers. Brock Lesnar and Kurt Angle were at the top of the ladder on the blue brand and were flanked by several notable top talents such as Taker and Hogan, along with an awesome mid-card featuring Chris Benoit, Eddie Guerrero, Rey Mysterio, and Matt Hardy. Taker teamed up with giant newcomer Nathan Jones in an intriguing match (my college roommate really liked Jones) against Big Show and A-Train. Show and Taker had been feuding for quite some time. Hogan and McMahon proceeded to battle over who was the main one responsible for the success of Wrestlemania. 

I think the WWE put themselves between a rock and hard place, though, because SD was so much better than Raw, the flagship show. I don’t think they anticipated that when they split the rosters. Back then, it seemed like a foregone conclusion that Angle vs. Lesnar would main-event Mania after the lengthy story they set up in the months prior and Lesnar’s stature via victories over Undertaker and The Rock. Raw seemed to struggle to find its post-split identity. Triple H was there steering the ship, but the show had some major misses in the storyline department – I say that with a straight face even though they did well with the HBK, Stone Cold, and Rock returns. Booker T was thrust into the main-event and was a refreshing new, talented addition to the scene, but it came across as rather random given that he’d been tagging with Goldust for the better part of the previous nine months – not exactly a glowing resume for someone stepping up to the big time. Triple H vs. Book took center stage with the World title on the line in a feud that skirted racial lines, while Rock and Austin reengaged for their third Mania dance. The Rock was excellent in his role, shining as brightly as a heel as he ever had before. HBK and Y2J had a fantastic feud, as well, starting all the way back in December and carrying through to the end of March. 

Something was assuredly missing, though. Fans either did not buy into Book as a threat to the World title or did not want to see the third chapter of the grand stage Rock-Austin rivalry or did not care for Lesnar and Angle as the top acts or Hogan taking on McMahon in a match 20 years in the making. I cannot imagine why they wouldn’t have gotten into Y2J vs. HBK, but that’s the mark for both talking. I don’t know. I just don’t know. It was as stacked a Wrestlemania card as there has ever been, but fans just didn’t buy it. I can’t help but blame the Raw creative side. Perhaps the people had had enough with Katie Vick followed by the Scott Steiner fiasco. I guess we’ll never know until someone that lived it can explain it to us.

But this little nugget from a poster from TheColi.com may be the best reasonable explanation there is as to why so few people bought Wrestlemania XIX:

First digital cable only PPV. As in you could order it ONLY IF you had a digital cable box.

Yikes. You needed a digital box to buy it, or you were locked out? If that's the case, then way to go, WWE. You certainly shot yourself in the foot on that one. Here's a short list on what you may have missed out on that night:

• the surprise return of Rowdy Roddy Piper
• the last match of Stone Cold Steve Austin
• one of the last matches of The Rock
• catfight girls
• the last Wrestlemania bout of Hulk Hogan's career
• Brock Lesnar damn near breaking his neck

Consider what I'm about to do a solid. Here's Wrestlemania XIX. Does it hold up against recent Manias? Where does it rank all time? You be the judge. You're welcome.