Nuggets, WWE In Smackdown Over Arena Conflict

[manufan10]

Game 4 of the Western Conference finals is scheduled for next Monday night at the Pepsi Center in Denver, but there's a bit of a problem — WWE chairman Vince McMahon already called "arena shotgun." (Yes, he was outside; it's legit.)World Wrestling Entertainment said it booked the arena for a Memorial Day "Monday Night Raw" broadcast back in August. But now the Nuggets are scheduled to host the Lakers because the Rockets refused to roll over and die. (Damn you, Luis Scola(notes)!) McMahon says he doesn't believe there was "any malice" on the part of Kroenke Sports, which owns the team and the building, but that didn't stop him from delivering a Ric Flair-like "low blow." Wooooooooo!
"Even though the Denver Nuggets had a strong team this year and were projected to make the playoffs, obviously Nuggets and Pepsi Center owner Stan Kroenke did not have enough faith in his own team to hold the May 25th date for a potential playoff game," said McMahon.
Dashiell Bennett of Deadspin hilariously wonders whether Kenyon Martin's(notes) mom will team with Edge and Big Show to take on Triple H, Koko B. Ware — not to be confused with Roko B. Ware — and Stone Cold Mark Cuban in a ladder match for the right to Monday night's gate?
Funny, but I'd prefer they flip the script and just assign the WWE superstars to both the Lakers and Nuggets benches. Think about how incredible that second quarter play-by-play action would read ...



http://sports.yahoo.com/nba/blog/bal...urn=nba,164401

[duncan228]

WWE makes most of Denver Nuggets arena overbooking
By John Christofferson

World Wrestling Entertainment thrives on outlandish story lines and characters, but the company finds itself embroiled in a real-life controversy with the Denver Nuggets. And WWE’s bombastic owner is making the most of it.

The plot: Who has rights to Denver’s Pepsi Center on Monday - the Nuggets, hosting their first Western Conference final since 1985, or the WWE’s traveling TV soap opera?

WWE chairman Vince McMahon, the promoter who helped transform professional wrestling into prime-time television entertainment, fired the first salvo Monday. In interviews with ESPN, he loudly called out Nuggets owner Stan Kroenke and challenged him to a steel-cage match. (Is there any other way to resolve a grudge?)

“Quite frankly, it’s my view that Stan Kroenke should be arrested, should be arrested for impersonating a good businessman, because he’s not a good businessman,” McMahon said on ESPN. “A good businessman doesn’t book a World Wrestling Federation live televised event on Monday night realizing that his team in all likelihood would not make the playoffs.”

WWE spokesman Robert Zimmerman said the company reserved the Pepsi Center on Aug. 15 and had already sold more than 10,000 tickets for its the Monday Night Raw event. He said the organization expects a sellout, with tickets ranging from $20 to $70.

But the Nuggets are planning to play Game 4 of the NBA’s Western Conference finals against the Los Angeles Lakers on Monday at the Pepsi Center, the team’s home floor.

McMahon was not available Tuesday to comment, a spokesman said. On Monday, he told The Associated Press he couldn’t tolerate the team “just simply throwing us out on our ear.”

A telephone message left for a Nuggets spokesman Tuesday wasn’t immediately returned.

Paul Andrews, executive vice president of Kroenke Sports Enterprises, issued a statement Monday night a bit more understated than McMahon. “We are working with the WWE to resolve the situation amicably,” he said.

The NBA, which sets the playoff schedule, is leaving it to the Nuggets and the WWE to work out the dispute.

The conflict provides a welcome boost of publicity as the Stamford-based producer of live television wrestling matches tries to fill arenas and sell pay-per-view events amid the weak economy, branches into making movies, and deals with the fallout from a substance abuse and drug testing policy that has resulted in more than 30 suspensions since it began in 2006.

“Vince McMahon is one of the greatest promoters of all time,” said Alan Gould, senior media analyst with Natixis Bleichroeder Inc in New York. “Any publicity for wrestling is good publicity. It’s almost free marketing for wrestling and the sport.”

WWE is promoting the arena dispute as the “Denver Debacle” on its Web site, which it said got 18 million U.S. unique visitors last month, more than than CBS.com, ABC.com, NBC.com, NFL.com or NBA.com.

Jeffrey Thomison, an analyst with Hilliard Lyons in Louisville, Ky., who has been covering the entertainment industry for two decades, said he’s never seen a similar conflict.

“I don’t think he’s putting on an act here,” Thomison said of McMahon. “He genuinely is upset.”

Monday Night Raw draws almost 6 million viewers weekly, making it one of the top rated programs on cable television, Thomison said.

“The conflict has to be resolved very soon,” Thomison said. “Monday Night Raw is a very valuable asset to the company.”

The WWE said its crews will be in Denver on Monday night, even if it means putting on a show in a parking lot.

[duncan228]

Double bookings at arenas can mean double trouble
By Eddie Pells

The soothing sounds of Yanni and the chair-breaking chaos of pro wrestling have this much in common: They put bodies in the seats, money in the register and have caused the NHL and NBA a couple of headaches this playoff season.

They also remind that while teams like the Denver Nuggets and Pittsburgh Penguins play for cups and rings and trophies, the bottom line at their arenas - and most arenas - is still the bottom line.

“The facility is just as important, or in some cases, more important than the franchise itself,” explains Wayne McDonnell, a professor at the New York University Tisch Center who used to handle scheduling logistics at Madison Square Garden.

Which is one way to explain how the Penguins recently found themselves getting iced by Yanni and the Nuggets currently find themselves in a smackdown with Vince McMahon, the chairman of World Wrestling Entertainment.

The company that owns the Nuggets had to scrub next week’s WWE Monday Night Raw wrestling date at the Pepsi Center to make way for Game 4 of the Western Conference finals against the Lakers.

Earlier this month, a Yanni concert scheduled for Mellon Arena in Pittsburgh - along with a number of other events, including WWE - forced the Penguins and Washington Capitals to play playoff games on back-to-back nights, first in Pittsburgh, then in Washington.

The Nuggets, Colorado Avalanche and the Pepsi Center are all owned by the same company. Squeezing every penny out of that building through ticket sales, concessions, parking, luxury suites and souvenirs for all events - even those not involving the primary tenants - helps pay the multimillion-dollar salaries that keep the teams in business.

Though the Penguins and Mellon Arena aren’t co-owned, the bottom line is basically the same: A building that hosts an event normally makes somewhere between $100,000 and $500,000, and nobody wants to give up that kind of cash. That’s especially true in Pittsburgh, where the arena is nearly 50 years old and doesn’t draw as many top events as the newer buildings.

“Underutilizing the facility can be a detriment to the organization in the long run,” McDonnell said.

McDonnell said sloppy clerical work and the never-ending quest to make money were the most likely reasons for the double bookings. Most arenas have schedules and calendars and contingency plans in place months and years in advance.

The WWE-Nuggets imbroglio, he said, almost certainly was not caused by owner Stan Kroenke’s lack of faith in his team. Trying to stir the pot, McMahon said if Kroenke had really believed in the Nuggets, he wouldn’t have been booking the arena during playoff time.

“He’s not sitting at his desk doing scheduling,” McDonnell said. “The bottom line is, it probably doesn’t sit well with the Denver Nuggets audience, thinking he doesn’t have faith. But that’s probably not the case. All you have to do is look at the players he acquired and the team he assembled.”

Indeed, the Nuggets weren’t picked as a playoff team by many back in August, which is when the WWE date at the Pepsi Center was secured - and nearly three months before the team traded for Chauncey Billups.

That, however, changed everything. But regardless of the roster, anyone looking to rent an American arena that has hockey or basketball teams as its primary tenants in May should do some double checking.

In 2007, Steve Penny, president of USA Gymnastics, was deciding whether to put his 2008 Olympic trials in Boston or Philadelphia.

“They did a thesis statement on the odds of the Celtics getting to the ’08 NBA finals,” Penny said. “I’ll just say, if you could’ve put money on it in Vegas, you would’ve done it.”

But that paper was written well before the Celtics acquired Kevin Garnett, who did, in fact, lead the Celtics to the finals in 2008.

Luckily, Penny had done his homework and chosen Philadelphia, mainly because that city’s backup venue, The Spectrum, was a better option than the No. 2 choice in Boston, 6,300-seat Agganis Arena at Boston University.

“Basically, I had a friend who said, ‘Steve, do you like to sleep at night?”’ Penny recalled. “I said, ‘Yeah.’ He said, ‘Well, what happens if the Celtics make a run next year and you spend the first six months of your Olympic year wondering if your building is going to be available?”’

That sealed the deal.

It appears there was no such forward thinking in the case of the Nuggets and the WWE. That has left McMahon scrambling and the Pepsi Center facing possible litigation. McMahon needs to find a venue for his event, which is supposed to be televised on USA Network.

“We may be holding an event in a parking lot somewhere,” he said.

For the record, the Pepsi Center parking lot is booked Aug. 20 through Sept. 6, when Cirque de Soleil comes to town.

[Morg1411]

Game 4 of the Western Conference finals is scheduled for next Monday night at the Pepsi Center in Denver, but there's a bit of a problem — WWE chairman Vince McMahon already called "arena shotgun." (Yes, he was outside; it's legit.)World Wrestling Entertainment said it booked the arena for a Memorial Day "Monday Night Raw" broadcast back in August. But now the Nuggets are scheduled to host the Lakers because the Rockets refused to roll over and die. (Damn you, Luis Scola(notes)!) McMahon says he doesn't believe there was "any malice" on the part of Kroenke Sports, which owns the team and the building, but that didn't stop him from delivering a Ric Flair-like "low blow." Wooooooooo!
"Even though the Denver Nuggets had a strong team this year and were projected to make the playoffs, obviously Nuggets and Pepsi Center owner Stan Kroenke did not have enough faith in his own team to hold the May 25th date for a potential playoff game," said McMahon.
Dashiell Bennett of Deadspin hilariously wonders whether Kenyon Martin's(notes) mom will team with Edge and Big Show to take on Triple H, Koko B. Ware — not to be confused with Roko B. Ware — and Stone Cold Mark Cuban in a ladder match for the right to Monday night's gate?
Funny, but I'd prefer they flip the script and just assign the WWE superstars to both the Lakers and Nuggets benches. Think about how incredible that second quarter play-by-play action would read ...



http://sports.yahoo.com/nba/blog/bal...urn=nba,164401

Despite how I normally feel about wrestling, I think that would be the greatest NBA game ever.

[manufan10]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZW1Y4Lg9yM

[Spursfan092120]

But it's a WORLDWIDE FANBASE!!!! People drive from all over the place to see the WWE! It's so good they don't care how far they have to drive!

Did you get beat up by wrestlers as a kid? Why do you hate so much?

[Spursfan092120]

send raw to san antonio! I'll buy tickets and will be there!!

+1000

[duncan228]

You Got Schooled: Summer Slammed
By Chris Ferrell - Express-News

In one of the most famous episodes of the “Brady Bunch,” Marcia finds herself with two dates on the same night.

After agreeing to go to a dance with Charlie, she gets asked out by Doug, who just happens to be the big man on campus, and also accepts.

So she gives nice-guy Charlie an excuse and plans to go out with Doug.

Marcia, Marcia, Marcia.

But then Peter’s errant football toss hits Marcia in the face, grotesquely smashing her nose. Doug, it turns out, was only interested in Marcia’s looks and breaks off the date.

Fortunately, for Marcia’s social life, Charlie was still willing to take her out.

Congratulations, Denver Nuggets owner Stan Kroenke. In the midst of the team’s best playoff run in 25 years, you’ve found yourself in the middle of a Brady Bunch plot line.

Stan, Stan, Stan.

What in the name of Sherwood Schwartz was Kroenke’s Pepsi Center staff thinking when booking World Wrestling Entertainment’s “Monday Night Raw” on a night that could potentially interfere with a home playoff game? The contract with WWE was actually finalized on the last day of the regular season, when the Nuggets were assured of being either the No. 2 or No. 3 seed in the West. That meant they were likely to play at home on May 25 if they advanced to the Western Conference finals.

Pepsi Center, where bad event planning happens.

As expected, the Nuggets will host Game 4 of their conference finals matchup against the Lakers on Monday night at the Pepsi Center. Despite having the arena reserved since last August and selling more than 10,000 tickets for the show, Vince McMahon and his traveling soap opera were told Tuesday to start looking for a new arena with less than a week’s notice.

The WWE said on its Web site Tuesday that it had received offers from New York’s Madison Square Garden and Los Angeles’ Staples Center to host the show Monday.

McMahon, of course, isn’t moving on quietly. He began ripping Kroenke even before WWE got the boot. McMahon said the Nuggets owner clearly didn’t have faith in his team to reach the conference finals when allowing the building to be rented out and suggested Kroenke should be arrested for impersonating a businessman.

The WWE chairman’s flair for the dramatic might be a bit much, but he has every reason to be angry. He had a contract and contends there was no provision saying “Raw” could be pre-empted. Logistics were put in place for the world’s second largest traveling show (behind only the Ringling Brothers circus) to be in Denver on Monday.

Still, as soon as the double booking was discovered, it was clear what the outcome would be.

The WNBA and NHL, when faced with similar postseason arena issues during the past year, moved or rescheduled games. Neither of them is the NBA. The NBA has more clout and a better television contract. Carmelo and Kobe weren’t going anywhere, not for Triple H and John Cena.

“I’m up the creek, and I don’t have a paddle, either,” McMahon told the Denver Post on Tuesday. “I really don’t know what to do.”

But there’s a good chance McMahon knows what he’d like to do. And it probably involves smashing Kroenke’s face with something capable of more damage than a football. Perhaps one of those folding chairs that will be courtside Monday night.

NO VACANCY

2009 Stanley Cup playoffs: The Washington Capitals and Pittsburgh Penguins play back-to-back nights in different cities because of a Yanni concert taking place at Pittsburgh’s Mellon Arena.

Cowboys 2008 training camp: With the Alamodome hosting a Church of God convention, the Cowboys move training camp from San Antonio to Oxnard, Calif.

2008 WNBA Finals: Game 3 between the Silver Stars and Detroit Shock moves to Ypsilanti, Mich., because “Disney on Ice: Princess Wishes” was already scheduled to run at The Palace of Auburn Hills.

2007 NBA playoffs: The Golden State Warriors’ unexpected playoff run bumps the Bill Gaither and the Homecoming Friends gospel music show from Oakland’s Oracle Arena to the nearby Cow Palace.

[Avitus1]

Someone might be joining the Vince McMahon Kiss My Ass Club by the end of this.

[duncan228]

A deal is a deal, especially with devilish McMahon
By Jim Litke

Vince McMahon is so good at attaching himself to even the smallest controversy that those custom suits he wears must be made out of Velcro.

The World Wrestling Entertainment impresario’s latest “look-at-me” opportunity comes courtesy of the Denver Nuggets, who simply made an honest mistake. Stan Kroenke, who owns the NBA team, is always looking for ways to lay off the cost of another of his properties, the Pepsi Center. So back in August his people agreed to rent the arena to McMahon & Co. next week for one of those Monday Night Raw extravaganzas.

Nine months ago, no one had any reason to believe the Nuggets would need the building for Game 4 of the Western Conference finals against the Lakers. First-round exits, after all, have become a playoff tradition in Denver. But a deal is a deal, especially with the devilish McMahon, who wasted no time staking out the low moral ground.

He mocked the Nuggets boss for having so little faith in his team, challenged him to a steel-cage match, then suggested having Kroenke “arrested for impersonating a good businessman.” That’s rich, coming from the same guy who burned through $50 million in just a single season trying to sell the public a phonied-up, third-rate football league called the XFL nearly a decade ago

It must bug McMahon to no end that a handful of the gimmicks he pioneered have been folded into mainstream sports. The cameras in the cheerleaders’ locker room and embroidering silly names on the back of the XFL jerseys didn’t catch on — with the notable exception of Chad “Ocho Cinco”—but ground-level action shots, breathless mid-game interviews and elaborate plot development have become a staple of just about every sports telecast.

McMahon didn’t invent steroids or villainy, but both players and owners in other leagues have explored the benefits of sampling those wares, too.

Two of baseball’s biggest stars, Alex Rodriguez and Manny Ramirez, recently were laid low for the kind of performance-enhancing the WWE was literally built on. And only last week, Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, whose Dallas team the Nuggets beat to advance to the next round against the Lakers, did a passable imitation of McMahon himself, inflating small slights until they threatened to overshadow the actual games.

Kroenke won’t play along, but he will wind up paying plenty. McMahon has so far refused to name the number it will take to buy him out, but it won’t be cheap. His outfit said more than 10,000 tickets were already purchased for Monday Night Raw and that a sellout was expected.

That’s on top of all the publicity McMahon has already squeezed out of the scheduling conflict, with who-knows-how-much more still to come. He understands leverage, in all its varied applications, and his lawyers haven’t even weighed in yet.

McMahon said WWE trucks and crews were already rolling toward Denver and they’re prepared, if need be, to stage the show “in a parking lot somewhere.” Even though he’ll extract his pound of flesh, being forced out to the margins yet one more time might be the most galling development of all.

“I don’t think he’s putting on an act here,” Jeffrey Thomison, an analyst who tracks the entertainment industry, said Tuesday. “He genuinely is upset.”

No doubt.

Like every other sports entrepreneur, McMahon is trying to wring every dollar out of every event in a down economy. His “Raw” telecasts pull in almost 6 million viewers weekly, but the seven shows that finished ahead of it in the cable ratings last week all happened to be NBA playoff games.

Few people understand better how money talks. Yet the guess here is that McMahon would sacrifice plenty to be able to write the ending for this dispute, the same way he resolves all the fake ones that arise during every WWE event.

Little more than a month ago, the WWE took in $52 million staging WrestleMania 25 in Houston, making it the highest-grossing one-day entertainment event so far this year. Judging by the applause, the crowd’s favorite moment came when actor Mickey Rourke, who received an Oscar nomination for portraying a washed-up wrestler struggling to hang on, knocked WWE star Chris Jericho with a single punch.

If only it were that easy in the real world.

[LnGrrrR]

sons this shouldn't be a big deal. Vince and David Stern work together very closely and have been good friends for years. Vince and his creative writing crew at the WWE have written and developed many of the scripts and story lines for the NBA playoffs in the past.

[manufan10]

Q: What's the difference between the WWE and the NBA?

A: One is an embarrassing sideshow with predetermined outcomes, the other is pro wrestling.

[LnGrrrR]

I think Vince is totally within his rights to be pissed. I mean, he has a contract, and that's money lost.

[Spursfan092120]

I think Vince is totally within his rights to be pissed. I mean, he has a contract, and that's money lost.

...The cons ution does mean something after all.

[bostonguy]

This situation would have been much worse if this was during the 99-02 years With Stone Cold and The Rock running the show.

[Cry Havoc]

Did you get beat up by wrestlers as a kid? Why do you hate so much?

I don't hate wrestling. As I said, I used to be a fan.

I dislike the at ude of overzealous fans who immediately feel the need to defend it's legitimacy as entertainment by using the "well other people like it so it's good" sheep-type mentality. You're validating the idea of wrestling by using the masses to suggest at it's quality. Well, the general public is not the brightest tool in the shed, and I can find little redeeming about the state of wrestling today, that's all.

It is not as if I've never watched before and therefore am coming from an opinion of complete ignorance. I watched every single major wrestling event up until Wrestlemania 18 or so. At which point I outgrew my fondness for watching two nearly naked men fake beat each other up.

...The cons ution does mean something after all.

Yes. That's in the cons ution.

[Spursfan092120]

I don't hate wrestling. As I said, I used to be a fan.

I dislike the at ude of overzealous fans who immediately feel the need to defend it's legitimacy as entertainment by using the "well other people like it so it's good" sheep-type mentality. You're validating the idea of wrestling by using the masses to suggest at it's quality. Well, the general public is not the brightest tool in the shed, and I can find little redeeming about the state of wrestling today, that's all.

It is not as if I've never watched before and therefore am coming from an opinion of complete ignorance. I watched every single major wrestling event up until Wrestlemania 18 or so. At which point I outgrew my fondness for watching two nearly naked men fake beat each other up.





Yes. That's in the cons ution.

If you dislike the idea of people standing up for something as entertainment, then you are hating on it. Whether or not you watched it in the past has no bearing on facts. It entertains people...therefore it's entertainment. Maybe more people watch soccer than wrestling, but wrestling is watched by more than any other sport...and more people spend $60 to watch a wrestling PPV than a free playoff game in any sport. I would say more people agree with you than disagree. And if you haven't watched wrestling in 8 years..things have changed. And if you're saying wrestling's not quality..it all depends on what you call quality. Wrestling's been around longer than most sports, and more people watch it more than most, as well, as I've said already. Just because YOU don't like it doesn't give it any less credibility as entertainment. I've run into a good amount of people on HERE who watch it just like I do. Oh..and when it comes to being in the cons ution, if you don't think that the rights of a contract with notarization, as this one would had to have been, is a right in the cons ution, you need to go back to History class, dude.

[sribb43]

[Spursfan092120]

Randy Orton is a monster..lol

[manufan10]

We can now basically confirm that next week's WWE RAW show will be held at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, California. The press conference we mentioned earlier will be held soon by WWE to make things official to the public.

An interesting twist to the story is WWE is going to be pulling the SmackDown/ECW taping from the Pepsi Center and moving it to the Staples Center as well for next Tuesday, to follow RAW on Monday. WWE is basically doing the same thing to the Pepsi Center that the Pepsi Center did to WWE with the RAW/Denver Nuggets controversy.

http://www.wrestlezone.com/news/arti...with-raw-77365