I’m going to the Kentucky Derby this weekend and probably won’t be able to post again until Tuesday, so I wanted to clarify my argument one last time before Bo attempts to tear it to shreds. I don’t think I quite explained my Schwarzenegger/Hoffman analogy well enough, so I’m giving it one more go. Here’s my point: Wrestlemania is a blockbuster action movie because the whole idea is to put fannies in the seats and suck people into paying $40 to watch it on TV. And thus, you would never cast Phillip Seymour Hoffman as the lead because his name is not going to draw a big audience. Now, you could cast him as the villain, and there’s a good chance he steals the movie. In the same vein, you can’t put Perfect in the main event because that’s not going to draw people to the arena, but if you put him in the 5th or 6th match, he might very well steal the show. Savage/Steamboat at Wrestlemania 3 was one of the greatest matches ever, but if Hogan’s not wrestling Andre in the main event, a much smaller audience would’ve been there to see it. Guys like Perfect, Hart, and Steamboat needed Hogan or you probably would’ve never heard of any of them because Vince McMahon’s wrestling to the mainstream idea may have failed. Perfect is a mid-card guy, that’s the formula, McMahon knows what he’s doing believe it or not. Comparing The Wire to CSI or Capote to Terminator 2 is not a valid analogy for Hogan and Perfect, because unlike going to a movie theater or flipping through TV channels, every wrestling fan has to watch the same show. A good wrestling card must first and foremost draw the largest interest possible, and then you can worry about having something for everybody. The wrestling audience isn’t large enough to snobbishly exclude guys like Hogan.  You need them much more than you need the Perfect’s of the world. So, if you want to cater to your high brow wrestling audience that sips tea and eats cucumber sandwiches, fine, but that’s really not in the spirit of a true Wrestlemania, let alone an ultimate Wrestlemania.

P.S. After we finish this project/argument, we are not talking about wrestling on this blog for at least 2 years. If we’re still going in mid-2011, I’ll think about an Ultimate Royal Rumble.