Inoue & Baldwin & World Professional Championships

[jlai]

If it's going to be like Thin ICe I'm not watching

[kwanfan1818]

The champions would be auto-qualified. The next tier would decide whether to take a chance to be the Rory Flack or Steven Cousins and get publicity and exposure if they qualified. They wouldn't, though, have to be the ones that Hamilton invited because he liked them or was represented by the same agency as Hamilton, but at least for qualifying, would be eligible for open competitions (since he mentioned a series, not just a World Championship).

If it's up to Hamilton to do the inviting, the results, IMO, are as bogus as Button's invitation-only World (sic) Professional Championships.

[judgejudy27]

I think some new pro comps would be great, especially if you got someone like Kwan in on the action. For the competitions to have any shot there needs to be BIG names. Try to get a line up of Kwan, Cohen, Yamaguchi (she can probably still outjump the current world bronze medalist, just saying...), Arakawa, etc. etc.

The problem to me would be television interest. We don't even get to see the World Championships or anything at the moment. The only competition aired on Network television right now is Nationals and Skate America LP's, right? If they wont even air other major competitions it may be really hard to get them to air a professional competition.

How many of those would be interested? Shizuka mostly performs in Asia these days. Kwan has moved on from skating. Yamaguchi has long moved on from skating.

More likely what you would get is a competition involving say Cohen, Bonaly, Jen Robinson, and a couple others and Cohen winning by a huge points margin with a triple toe and triple salchow, falling on any harder triples she tries.