What's The Pay Window All About?
What's The Pay Window All About?
Seeing how pro wrestling seems to be the only "sport" where no one keeps tracks of the athletes' win-loss records, I thought it might be interesting. If nothing else, it gives you some insight into who's getting the biggest push, who's getting the most visibility on TV, etc.
Figuring out who to do this and how to interpret this is more difficult than you might think.
For years prior to 1997, I am using results sent to me by Nicolas Seafort. Nicolas does weekly updates that get posted on RSPW and he was nice enough to send his volumes of information to me. He has kept a stat list going for WCW since 1995 and, since then, has gone back and retroactively put together rankings for WCW/NWA back to 1987, using magazine reports and wrestling tapes from his archives. As a result, the farther you go back, the thinner they become; however, even it those early years you can extrapolate. His records were compiled as follows:
- A pinfall, submission, forfeit, countout, or DQ decision in your favor counts as a win.
- A pinfall, submission, forfeit, countout, or DQ against you, or a double countout, double DQ, or double no contest is counted as a loss.
- A time limit draw is viewed as a draw.
- Six man tag teams are not ranked as such. Instead, he lists them as three different teams. For example, Dustin Rhodes and the Steiner Brothers team up for a victory. The teams of Dustin and Scott, Dustin and Rick, and Rick and Scott each get a victory.
- I've sorted his data in descending order of win percentage, number of wins, and number of draws.
Starting in 1998, Alex S. has taken over the thankless job of keeping the statistics for me. (Note that it's only a thankless job if no one thanks him.)
Here's how Alex does it for the DDT Digest listings for the last part of 1996 and beyond (T-Bo also used this scheme for the 1995 win/loss records he sent me):
- A WW is a win by pinfall or submission, W a win by DQ or CO, ND a no decision (double DQ, double countout, no-contest), L a loss by DQ or CO, and a LL a lost by pinfall or submission.
- In terms of deciding what it means in terms of a wrestler's push, we're doing it like hockey points. 2 points for a WW, 1 for W, 0 for ND, -1 for L, and -2 for LL.
- In calculating the overall win percentage, WW and W both count as a win and LL and L both count as a loss.
- For triangle or four corners matches, the team/person executing the win gets the points and the immediate victim gets the minus points. Others involved in the contest get a ND.
- We did include the matches from nWo Saturday night as well as matches refereed by Nick Patrick when he was a heel.
- For a battle royale, the winner gets a WW and no one else gets anything.
- Unlike most sports, pro wrestling does not have a "season". However, just as Wrestlemania is the WWF's biggest annual event, Starrcade is WCW's biggest annual event. Seeing as Starrcade is always the last weekend in December, we're going to say the WCW "season" is a calendar year.
- We are including results from WCW Saturday Night, WCW Sunday {Pro}, Monday Nitro, pay-per-views, and Clash of the Champions. We include the results of Worldwide that I have. We also include any house show results people send to me.
- If a wrestler changes gimmicks (Jack Boot / Sgt. Buddy Lee Parker), it will still be one listing. The sole exception to this is J.L. and Jerry Lynn. Even though they are physically the same person, they are technically two separate wrestlers so they will be listed separately.
- This does not take into account quality of opponents nor does it take into account microphone time. Hulk Hogan's and Roddy Piper's low or negative number of points obviously don't tell the entire story.
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