WWE, DENVER NUGGETS IN BIZARRE MEDIA BATTLE OVER PEPSI CENTER VENUE

The Denver Nuggets have advanced to the NBA Western Conference finals, and will host the Los Angeles Lakers in game three of the series next Monday night at the Pepsi Center.  The problem is that the top US pro wrestling promotion, World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE), booked that date for a live broadcast of their ‘Monday Night RAW’ television program.  Such conflicts are common in both the NBA and NHL during the lengthy postseason, and the long standing policy in most instances is that the home sports team gets scheduling precedence over the ‘one night stand’ event.  Some teams even have this contractually guaranteed with their venue lease, but even those who don’t usually get the benefit of the doubt.

In most cases, the visiting ‘one night stand’ event is cooperative in working out the scheduling snafu.  WWE President Vince McMahon, on the other hand, has used the opportunity to try to ‘call dibs’ on the date and get some media coverage in the process.  Initially, he was unwilling to compromise over the double booked Pepsi Center.  Initially, McMahon said Kroenke Sports who owns both the Nuggets and the arena didn’t hold "any malice, just ineptness," against the WWE but later added that he wasn’t about to tolerate them "just simply throwing us out on our ear."

McMahon then said that he’d be sending his production trucks and a bunch of wrestlers to Denver next Monday night:

"That's what we intend to do. We're going to show up."

As the impasse continued, McMahon began to cite the difficulty in moving the venue at the late date.  This was sort of a disingenuous argument, as many smaller pro wrestling and MMA promotions have done last minute changes in venue successfully.  Most recently, the Bellator Fighting Championships MMA promotion switched the site of their event last Friday night from Montreal to Monroe, Louisiana with only several days of leadtime.  While it might not make McMahon and the WWE happy, a huge multi-billion dollar company has the resources to pull it off much more easily.

That fact, however, wasn’t going to stop McMahon from getting press over the situation.  His next move was to cut a pro wrestling style ‘promo’ on the Nuggets management:

"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.”

That’s a snappy sound bite, but again not quite accurate since the NBA’s regular season schedules hadn’t been set by mid August 2008 when the WWE reserved the venue. 

The good news is that cooler heads have prevailed all around.  The Nuggets will host the Lakers next Monday night, while the WWE has agreed to move their event to the World Arena in nearby Colorado Springs.  This hasn’t been publically announced yet, so McMahon may try to string out the media ‘feud’ for a couple more days before putting himself over as a master of compromise who only has the best interests of Northern Colorado sports fans at heart.  He’ll no doubt make the move sound as difficult as a rocket launch, but the relocation 75 miles away will likely be accomplished with relative ease.

More than anything else, the dust up over the Pepsi Center date underscores the ease with which a minor story can become major news in a light sports news cycle and how a master promoter like Vince McMahon can make PR gold out of a simple administrative snafu.