Wrestling Observer Rewinder

July 26, 2004

WWE announced that Raw next week will feature a 60-minute iron man WWE title match between Chris Benoit and Triple H. Assuming it goes down as planned, it will be the longest match in the 11+ year history of Monday Night Raw. Dave runs down the history of hour long matches on TV. There were none in the 90s. Very few in the 80s in a couple of regional promotions. But that's basically it. And doing it on live TV is even more rare. Kurt Angle and Brock Lesnar had an iron man match on Smackdown last year, but that one was taped 2 days in advance. It was also a ratings failure, and matches of that type are hurt by commercial breaks. Doing them on live TV is a risk because things can go wrong. Dave mentions the Judgement Day 2000 PPV iron man match that totally botched the ending due to Undertaker not moving quickly enough to hit the time cue. It'll be Triple H's second hour long match, while Benoit has never gone that long before. Plus the city (Pittsburgh) is kinda notorious for being awful crowds for WWE in recent years and he's not sure this is the right match for that crowd. Also, if this shit goes 58 minutes and then has a bunch of Eugene shenanigans at the end to determine the outcome, Dave might actually lose his mind (spoiler: that is EXACTLY what happens lol).
Time to see who's a draw in WWE! Dave got his hand on detailed ratings analysis covering the first half of 2004 that shows the amount of viewers gained or lost during quarter hour segments. Using those numbers, we can look at who was in those segments and see whether it gained or lost viewers and we can see who is or isn't moving the needle in 2004. This is obviously not a perfect system. For instance, the first hour of Smackdown usually gains viewers while the last 45 minutes often loses viewers. So depending on a person's placement on the show, that could affect things, and people WWE perceives as top stars are often placed in the strong spots. So it becomes sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy in that way. It probably comes as no surprise that part time novelties like The Rock and Mick Foley pulled the best numbers. Rock's numbers would have been even higher if they'd ever promoted any of his recent surprise pop-ups. Foley was basically on TV full-time up until Wrestlemania so he's not as much of a novelty. Just a strong draw.
So what else can we take from these numbers? Well on Smackdown, the main face of the brand (Eddie Guerrero) is not a top level draw. His numbers aren't bad, but they're nothing special either. Undertaker, Paul Heyman, Brock Lesnar, and Big Show all did better, but none of them were really as full-time as Guerrero (Undertaker just returned at Wrestlemania, Brock Lesnar is gone, Big Show is off-and-on injured and off TV, etc.). Kurt Angle also saw a drastic decline from last year, but he also spent several months doing the dumb GM thing instead of wrestling. John Cena gets big pops from crowds, but so far, he's not really a noticeable TV draw either. JBL's number was pretty low, but again, he was an undercard forgotten nobody up until about 2-3 months ago and then they hot-shotted him to being WWE champion so his number is a bit misleading. Might be better to check back in a year and see where JBL really lands.
Raw side is a similar situation. For as strong as he's pushed, Triple H doesn't do as well as he should. He actually ranked behind the rest of Evolution, which Dave blames on his meandering long promo segments that often last through 2 quarter-hour segments and drive off viewers. But Evolution as a group, during their matches, are the top drawing act on the show. Orton is the strongest draw of the group. Edge's numbers look good but it's a smaller sample size, since he just came back from injury after Wrestlemania. Eugene, no matter how much the writers (Vince) seems to like the character, is not a draw and in fact, his number is deceptively high due to one specific overrun segment he was involved in that did huge numbers. Take that out of the equation and he's a massive flop in the ratings. Even worth noting the former sure-things like Steve Austin and Vince McMahon weren't guaranteed anymore but Dave blames that more on the fact that neither of them has been involved in anything good lately. None of the women's matches or segments drew and the only women who could even remotely be considered draws by these standards are Trish Stratus and Lita, but that's more due to being more heavily featured in storylines (Trish/Jericho/Christian and the Lita/Kane stuff) than any of the other ladies. They're the only 2 that get any meaningful screen time. Anyway, just from a raw data standpoint, here's your top 5 from each brand, in order. RAW: The Rock, Mick Foley, Edge, Randy Orton, and Chris Benoit. SMACKDOWN: Paul Heyman, Undertaker, Brock Lesnar, Big Show, and Eddie Guerrero.
We have the retirement of Japanese wrestling legend Masao "Rusher" Kimura with a ceremony held by NOAH this past week. His actual last match was over a year ago, having wrestled pretty much nonstop from 1965-2003, making him the 2nd longest full-time pro wrestler in Japanese history (just slightly behind Giant Baba, as they both had 38-year long uninterrupted full-time wrestling careers). Kimura has since been diagnosed with a brain tumor and is in such poor health that he couldn't attend the official ceremony. He was one of the first wrestlers in Japan to do violent deathmatch style stuff, one of the first Japanese wrestlers to blade and regularly bleed, headlined against many of the biggest names ever (Inoki, Andre, Gagne, Bockwinkel, etc), was the biggest star in Japanese wrestling after Rikidozan's death, until he was surpassed by Baba and Inoki in the 70s and 80s. Big part of the NJPW vs. IWE feud of the early 80s, one of the first interpromotional-type NWO-style invasion angles. Eventually settled into a mid-card comedy role teaming with Baba in AJPW during the latter days of both of their careers. Kimura and Baba were Andre The Giant's tag partners in Andre's final match two months before his death. Six years later, he teamed with Baba again, in what was also Baba's final match two months before his death. He even teamed with Jumbo Tsuruta for his last match in 1998, and Tsuruta died two years later. (If you team with Rusher Kimura, you will die. He's like that girl from The Ring.)
Dave has finally seen the tape of the recent Tokyo Dome show held by NOAH. The first half of the show was nothing special but the last half of the card was up there alongside the best of any major show ever. Notes from the matches: KENTA & Naomichi Marufuji retained the Jr. tag titles in a 4.25 star match while Jushin Liger lost the GHC Jr. title in an even better match and was the best he's looked in years. Mitsuharu Misawa and Keiji Muto facing off for the first time (in a tag bout) blew the roof off the Dome but both men got tired by the end and the match kinda fell apart. But the atmosphere for those 2 in the ring together was unbelievable. And the main event saw Kenta Kobashi retain the GHC title over Jun Akiyama with the burning hammer and that gets the full 5 stars and a strong match of the year contender. This was NOAH's version of Wrestlemania and when it comes to match quality, there's not many Wrestlemanias that can touch the last half of this show.
WWE's latest tour of Japan saw them run 2 shows back-to-back at Budokan Hall and it was a roaring success. It featured the unadvertised return of Kurt Angle, his first time in the ring since Wrestlemania. Eddie Guerrero pulled his hamstring on the first night and could barely work the second night. So they did a spot where Angle took him out before the match, leaving Eddie's tag team partner The Undertaker to fend for himself 2-on-1 against JBL and Angle until Eddie made the save late in the match. After the match, Undertaker gave Angle a chokeslam and although Undertaker has always been a safe worker, Dave thinks it's still insane for Angle to take that move with all his neck issues. Then again, him being in the ring at all is insane. It was said John Cena, working midcard matches, got the loudest reactions of the entire tour but the fans were actually into everybody. Even Johnny Stamboli got chants and of course, Funaki was hugely over. Curiously, a lot of people didn't know who Shane McMahon was when he came out, which is because Smackdown airs in a 1-hour format on the Fuji Network there and Shane hasn't appeared on the show in literal years. And while Japanese wrestling tends to draw a largely male 20-35 audience, the WWE crowds were said to have lots more families and couples.
The Great American Bash PPV, headlined by Undertaker murdering Paul Bearer and still remaining a babyface somehow, looks to have done a higher buyrate than expected. It's also a good sign for JBL's transition to world championship-level player. This was part of an experiment of running 3 PPVs in a 6-week span, which was risky but seems to have paid off. But Dave warns that they shouldn't do it too often, fearing it will burn out the audience. But in this case, it worked out great.
If Takashi Sugiura (5'7, 210lbs) and Giant Silva (7'3, 385lbs) ever had a pro wrestling match, you'd have to book Silva to win because it would be unrealistic if he didn't. But MMA is a different story. And at PRIDE this week, Sugiura beat the shit outta Silva in under 3 minutes. In front of a sellout crowd of almost 11,000, Sugiura, a NOAH Jr. heavyweight wrestler, took Silva down immediately and began pummeling him until he tapped. After the fight, Silva tried to attack Sugiura and had to be restrained, which many believed was Silva working a pro wrestling angle that PRIDE wasn't privy to (this was later edited out of videos and I can't find the Silva post-match stuff anywhere).
HBO's "Real Sports" did a feature this week on Bob Sapp. He was compared to a cross "between Mr. T and The Rock" in Japan. They showed an interesting contrast, with him walking the streets of Las Vegas going un-recognized. Then they showed him walking the streets of Tokyo and getting absolutely mobbed by fans. They played the clips from a couple years ago of him acting wacky at a zoo, eating bananas and yelling at animals and implied that he was perpetuating negative stereotypes about black people and said he's almost like a cartoon character in Japan. Overall, it was a pretty negative story and Dave thought it was pretty shallow. The only other person they interviewed was Sapp's K-1 rival Ernesto Hoost, who trashed Sapp for his Japanese fame and said he has too much respect for himself to do what Sapp does. Bryant Gumble asked Hoost what it says about K-1 that a guy like Sapp can become a star with no experience, and Hoost said that Japan protects its top stars more than the integrity of the sport. Dave thinks Gumble should have pressed him on that because he might have gotten a real news story out of it, if he could have gotten Hoost to talk more about match-fixing in K-1.
Elsewhere in the "Real Sports" piece, Sapp said he only uses Creatine and protein powder, but no steroids. Sure buddy. Dave notes that Sapp failed a steroid test while in the NFL, but the show never mentioned that. They glossed over his WCW training years and transition to K-1, getting some details wrong. They showed clips of his TV commercials, but didn't show or mention any of his pro wrestling in Japan, only the K-1 stuff. They portrayed him as a lonely guy who lives in his sad Japanese hotel room and never leaves. In reality, he lives in Seattle in a damn mansion and is home quite often. It also talked about him being estranged from his family and having no girlfriend, but Dave says he's heard reports from Japan that Sapp has enough women over there for 10 men. The guy's not lacking for companionship in Japan. His recent losses weren't addressed, but his fighting career is very clearly winding down. He's too busy with movies and other stuff to adequately train most of the time, and has looked worse in his last fights than he did early in his career.
IWA held a major show this weekend in a baseball stadium that drew over 8,000 people and featured the in-ring return of Savio Vega. More importantly for our discussion, New Jack worked the show and he did a spot where he put a ladder on top of the dugout and did a dive from the top that was said to have been insane. I looked and can't find this video, anyone wanna try their luck?
WWC also held a major show the same weekend, drawing less than 1,000 fans. The show had been hyped for weeks as the return of Carly Colon (Carlito). They had teased that he would turn heel on his brother Eddie and everyone (well, less than 1,000 people) was waiting to see what happened. Turns out....nothing. Carly denied having any issues with his brother and that was seemingly the end of the storyline. He also didn't wrestle on the show (I'm assuming WWE wouldn't allow it) and you can kinda see why this promotion is floundering.
Elsewhere on the AJPW tour, Ricky Morton wasn't able to get to Japan for some reason, so Marty Jannetty was booked to replace him and he teamed with Robert Gibson, making it the first time a member of the Rock 'N Roll Express and The Rockers teamed up. They worked under the name The Rock'n'Rockers.
Riki Choshu's WJ promotion is officially dead. However, former WJ wrestler Tomohiro Ishii is planning to run his own show at Korakuen Hall next month using many of the WJ wrestlers (imagine a world in which Ishii was a full-time promoter).
Steve Williams returned to wrestling for IWA in Japan after his recent throat cancer and chemo treatment. He's lost hair, lost weight, looks weak, and wasn't good in the ring, but he's said to be in good spirits and is happy to just be there. He worked tag matches and didn't do much.
There were a lot of rumors lately that Ted Turner is looking to start a new wrestling company. Not true. Turner was on CNN this week and Wolf Blitzer specifically asked him if he had any new projects he was planning to start. Turner said that he was worth as much as $8 billion at his peak, but now he's worth only slightly more than $1 billion (poor guy) thanks to the AOL merger, which he said destroyed his wealth and that of all the shareholders. He said he doesn't have the money to start the projects he would like to start and he's also had to cut back on his charitable donations. Turner clearly holds a lot of resentment over the AOL/Time Warner merger that basically forced him out of his own company, and seems to be done with starting anything new. Looks like the dude just wants to retire quietly.
Bob Sapp will be appearing in the movie "Transporter 2" which starts filming next month. He's getting paid 5-figures for it, which sounds like a lot, but compared to what he can make in Japan fighting, it's nothing. But it's another foot in the door for Hollywood and obviously easier on his body (I researched this because he's not in the movie. Turns out the "Transporter 2" thing didn't happen because his filming for "The Longest Yard" went long and he had to pull out of it as a result).
Speaking of "The Longest Yard," Kevin Nash and Bill Goldberg are at a football training camp in Santa Fe right now along with other actors from the film, to get them ready for filming football scenes in the movie, which starts filming this week in Los Angeles. Steve Austin is supposed to be in the movie, but he's not at the training camp and no one seems to even know if he's still planned to be in the film (yes). Nash also had to pull out of an indie booking in Honolulu to do football training. Austin is still living with DDP in L.A. and was hanging out with him at a wrap party for the new movie "Devil's Rejects" in which DDP has a small role.
British wrestler and actor Pat Roach died this week at age 67. He's best known for appearing as "a German heel" in all 3 Indiana Jones movies, as well as the James Bond movie "Never Say Never Again" among many others. Dave calling the bad guys in movies "heels" tickles me to no end. Roach worked as a wrestler in the 70s, mostly in the Los Angeles and San Francisco territories. He was also a big star in the UK back in those days, up through the 80s and even into the 90s.
ROH ran 2 shows on the same day in Elizabeth, NJ under the tagline "Do or Die III." The afternoon show drew around 400 while the evening show drew over 800. The night show featured the return of Low-Ki and the babyface turn of CM Punk. They also had a tournament to crown a new Pure champion (Doug Williams) and announced Mick Foley will be appearing for ROH in September. The Punk babyface turn saw Ricky Steamboat trying to literally beat sense into him, and it seemed to work because Punk then turned babyface and saved Steamboat from an attack by Generation Me. Wait, no. Generation Next. Sorry, that's my bad. Punk doesn't fight Generation Me until 2022. Anyway, Punk got a big standing ovation afterward. Low-Ki later turned heel on Samoa Joe and cut an anti-ROH promo, even referencing the company's former "boy touching owner" and then stole Joe's ROH title belt. Some people are a little upset that Low-Ki was brought back, since he apparently left the company last time because he was upset that they wanted him to do a job.
Dave had a chance to see the recent 60-minute Samoa Joe vs. CM Punk match and says it was excellent. He gives it 4.25 stars and says the only negative is they aren't as polished as most wrestlers who've done 60 minute matches in the past, so it got a little bumpy at times, but he hates to even be critical of it because of how hard they both worked.
As previously mentioned, Kevin Nash had to pull out of an indie booking in Honolulu due to "The Longest Yard" commitments. He was replaced on the show by Sting, who teamed with Great Muta to face Diamond Dallas Page and Satoshi Kojima. Yes, this is a match that happened in 2004 on a random indie show in Hawaii. Also on the show, Rikishi was supposed to team with Rosey, but WWE wouldn't let Rosey wrestle. As for Rikishi, we'll get to him in a moment...
There was an indie show after a Buffalo Bison's minor league baseball game and the big story is, of course, Teddy Hart. He was mostly fine, just had a wild spotfest match that saw him, at one point, do a moonsault off the backstop fence from about 20 feet up. Al Snow was backstage and told someone, "When Teddy comes through this curtain, I'm going to thank him for exposing the business." He was also supposed to work heel in the match, but did everything he could to get cheered. It's believed Hart may have injured his foot doing the moonsault, but nobody believes him when he sells things anymore, even backstage when he claims he's really hurt because he's always trying to work the boys too, so who knows.
Harley Race returned to the U.S. this week and has been telling everyone who will listen that the NOAH Tokyo Dome show earlier this month was the greatest pro wrestling event he's ever seen. "Imagine how much ground that covers," Dave says. Indeed.
Don Callis wrote a story in the Winnipeg Sun newspaper last week talking about the greatest pro wrestling match in Winnipeg history. He says it was the 60-minute draw with NWA champ Ric Flair vs. AWA champ Nick Bockwinkel. Callis wrote that unfortunately, no footage of the match exists. Not true, says Dave. "I've got a copy somewhere." Also, it wasn't a 60-minute draw, but a double count-out that ended after about 35 minutes. Dave also says the pre-match promos were more legendary than the match itself. Sure enough, this is now (mostly) available online, even though the quality is awful.
Random News & Notes: Sean Waltman (X-Pac) recently checked himself into rehab. Former wrestler One Man Gang is working as a prison guard at Angola Prison in Louisiana on the death row unit.
More detail on the backstage drama in TNA between Dusty Rhodes and Larry Zbyszko. This all stems from Larry completely outclassing Dusty in a promo a couple weeks ago. Rhodes was said to be livid about it and telling everyone that Zbyszko's promo wasn't that good (it actually was that good, Dave says) and that he goes on TV looking like a golfer. Basically still just a bunch of hurt feelings but nothing really new. Dave hopes this turns into an angle just because he wants Zbyszko to finally reveal what was in Baby Doll's envelope 15 years ago, which is apparently a reference to an old 80s angle that I have no idea of? Anyone?
WWE is planning to massively expand their developmental program. Nothing is official yet but the current plan is to add as many as 3 new territories (Connecticut, Atlanta, and Tampa). Dave thinks they should have one in Los Angeles. The kind of people WWE looks for (athletic, good looking people with charisma) usually end up living in L.A. chasing Hollywood dreams that never pan out. Dave's not saying they should recruit actors and bodybuilders, but per capita, that's where you're going to find more people with "the look" that Vince likes so much because that's where people with "the look" tend to go.
Ric Flair's autobiography is expected to debut on the New York Times bestseller list at #5. It's the highest ranking of any WWE book since Mick Foley's 2001 "Foley Is Good." Anyway, it's kinda sad because Dave says the book is really pretty good, but WWE has taken the low road in promoting it, having Flair go out in every interview trashing Bret Hart and Mick Foley because of the controversy those topics have caused, which they're hoping leads to more sales. They even had Lawler read passages about both Hart and Foley on Raw last week to promote it. There's no storyline here. This isn't building to a Flair vs. Bret Hart/Mick Foley match or anything. Neither Foley or Hart are even under WWE contract. It's just WWE gleefully allowing their names to be trashed in order to boost Flair's book, and both Hart and Foley have made it clear they don't appreciate it. Dave says there's a group of people with locker room power in WWE who don't like Bret Hart and are loving seeing Flair go after him. You might say it's a group of Flair's close friends. A kliq of people, if you will. Dave thinks it's all pretty pathetic and childish.
WWE filed a lawsuit against Marvel Comics over the names Hulk Hogan, Hulkamania, and Hulkster. You see, Marvel owns the trademark for Incredible Hulk and there was some issue there. Waaaaay back in the early 80s, when Hogan was becoming a star, WWE and Marvel signed a 20-year usage agreement allowing WWE to use the above terms in relation to Hogan. Marvel claims the contract was signed on July 9, 1984 which means it has now expired and they want more money to sign a new deal. WWE is in a tough spot because 20 years ago, they figured they'd be done with Hogan by now. But he became such a huge part of their history and now they want to market the video library, so "Hulk Hogan" is going to be part of WWE literally forever going forward. WWE claims the contract was signed in March of 1985 and thus, there should still be some time left on the existing deal. If they don't strike a new deal, WWE would need to go back and edit their entire video library to remove those words. (Only thing worse would be if they had to edit out the words "WWF" man, that would suck. Could you imagine?!)
Rikishi was officially fired by WWE last week, to the surprise of nobody. He had gotten himself in trouble when he was out with an ankle injury and, right before he was scheduled to come back, he went and got nasal surgery without informing the company, which further delayed his return and got him a ton of heat. Then, while still out with this alleged injury, he worked an indie show for his uncle Afa, and then booked himself to work another one. WWE got wind of that one and pulled him from it. There was also concern over his weight ballooning to more than they were comfortable with. Awhile back, word got out that he was reaching out to friends in TNA because he was expecting to be fired, so this didn't come as a surprise to him either. He had a great downside guarantee on his contract. He made around $700,000 last year, despite rarely being featured in anything notable, so it was an easy decision for WWE to get that contract off their books.
Bret Hart met with Shane McMahon this week to discuss WWE doing a DVD on his career. The hold up is, as always, the Montreal situation. Bret only wants to do the DVD if the Screwjob is presented honestly. He doesn't want the DVD to be "another Monday Night Wars-style history piece, if you get my drift," says Dave in an acknowledgement of how dishonest and full of shit that DVD was.
Notes from 7/15 Smackdown: JBL and Eddie Guerrero wrapped up their feud with a nearly 30-minute long cage match. It was good but not great and it's hard to convey violence and hatred in a cage match that long when you're not allowed to bleed. 3.5 stars from Dave. The surprise finish with Kurt Angle interference was awesome. John Cena was great on the mic, yet again, and Dave says Cena has the ability to make even bad material work.
Notes from 7/19 Raw: show opened with one of those Triple H promos where he turns 5 minutes of material into a 15 minute diatribe. Crowd booed the hell out of the Diva Search segment. One of these women is going to win $250k, and Dave points out that the entire yearly budget for developmental is only $500k. "There are some screwed up priorities in this company," he says. Rosey returned with a new costume, and he's not longer a Super Hero In Training (S.H.I.T.) but has graduated to actual superhero now, so it's an improvement. Batista got a lot of hometown cheers and has turned into a whole new wrestler in recent months, showing tons of improvement. Edge retained the IC title over Orton in a 4-star match. That's about it.
Notes from next week's Smackdown tapings: Heidenreich re-debuted with Paul Heyman in his corner as his manager in a dark match. Fun fact, I checked Heidenreich's Wikipedia page while writing this to try and confirm some dates, and there's a line in there that says "On the February 8, 2004, episode of Heat, Heidenreich was kissed by Rob Van Dam." I pulled up the match and I'm afraid there's a Wikipedia editor trolling us, because there was no making out in that match. Anyway, where was I? Heidenreich is scheduled to be paired with Heyman and feud with Undertaker soon and people have tried to talk Vince out of putting the very green guy in such a prominent role but you know how that goes with Vince and big guys. The show was in Philadelphia and during a commercial break to get heat, the Dudleyz insulted ECW. There was a 4-way lingerie match with Sable vs. Torrie vs. Dawn Marie vs. Jackie that never really happened because GM Kurt Angle came out and fired everyone before the match started. Aaaaaactually, I pulled this match up and the match did start. The bell rang. Then Angle came out before anyone did anything. But the bell did ring, which means THIS is actually Sable's final match, not the one last week. Somebody go update the Cagematch records. Then babyface Vince McMahon returned and fired Angle as GM, resulting in Angle attacking Vince to end the show.
Vince McMahon sent a personal letter of apology to Verne Gagne this week, apologizing for Chavo Guerrero Sr.'s behavior at the Cauliflower Alley Club event a couple months back. Jim Ross also sent a similar letter to Nick Bockwinkel. If you recall, Chavo (when he was still with WWE) attended the event, got drunk, and basically made a complete ass of himself, threatened Verne Gagne over a PPV payoff from 16 years ago, and just totally embarrassed himself and WWE. Chavo was apparently about to attack Gagne until Danny Hodge intervened. At that point, "when he saw the face of death," Chavo wisely decided to stand down and was forced to leave. Even at 72, nobody wants to fuck with Danny Hodge.
Matt Hardy has knee surgery scheduled for after Summerslam for a torn ACL. It will keep him out of action for several months. Sucks for his girlfriend Lita, but I'm sure she'll find a friend to travel with while he's away.
OVW notes: they plugged the debut of Gene Snitsky, a trainee of Afa, who will be using the name Mean Gene Mondo (this dude gets barely one month in OVW before Vince sees him and brings him to the main roster. Vince was out of control at this time with trying to rush completely green rookies onto TV). Meanwhile, Matt Cappotelli is looking ready for the main roster, which guarantees that won't be happening any time soon (never did).
Chris Nowinski wrote an interesting article in a New Hampshire newspaper on the subject of concussions. He's been studying them a lot since it looks as though his career may be over at 24 because of them. He wrote about the dangers of concussions in football, talking about his own experiences with it before wrestling and noted that a recent study said more than half of high school football players suffer from at least 1 concussion during the season. Medical science is only beginning to understand the links between concussions and later brain issues in life such as Alzheimers, depression, memory loss, personality changes, etc. Dave has been around wrestlers and MMA fighters for years and says anyone who has spent time with those people can see examples of these things (and so begins Nowinski's transition from wrestling to leading concussion expert).