When Raven left WCW to go back to ECW, he took a pay cut. He made $275,000 per year in WCW. He'll make $156,000 per annum in ECW. Some say he can make up the difference in pay-per-view bonuses and merchandising revenue. Maybe he can. More likely, he can't.

Raven did what philosophers have been trying to do for ages. He put a price on happiness. It's $119,000 per year. So, did Raven do the right thing? For him, yes. But in general, it's a tough call.

Raven is unmarried. Unattached. In fact, he's more unattached than most. He has no family to support. He comes from a privileged upbringing -- yes, that whole angle was a semi-shoot. In the time I've spent with Raven, he doesn't seem to be a material type of guy. He doesn't spend lavishly.

But Raven is driven by the wrestling business. He wants to succeed. He wants to use his creativity as much as possible. He wants to prove he knows more than the next guy.

So, when Raven left WCW, he was being true to himself. To him, the pay cut was worth it. I wouldn't call him a mark for being a star. He just wants to control his own destiny, for better or worse.

And he wants to be happy.

Wrestling is a strange business. There's only two important factors in picking where you work: Money and happiness, with the order depending on your financial and family responsibilities. Anything else is superfluous. Being a star? Please. Getting a crowd pop and seeing your name on a T-shirt might feed your ego momentarily, but wrestling fame is quite fleeting.

Wrestling has zero sense of history.

Don't believe me? Try this: Go to a baseball game and ask fans who Babe Ruth and Sandy Koufax were. They'll know. Go to a hockey game and ask fans who Bobby Orr and Gordie Howe were. They'll know. Go to a football game and ask fans who Jim Brown and Joe Montana were. They'll know. Then go to a wrestling match and ask fans who Lou Thesz and Bruno Sammartino were.

Blank stare.

Wrestling has transitory fans. There really aren't many lifelong wrestling buffs. People watch for a couple years at a time. Four or five, tops. Wrestling caters to people with short attention spans, so it only follows that fans of the industry would come and go. People who watch wrestling have a frame of reference for the time they watched it. They don't know the past. They don't care about the future.

Pro wrestling's Hall of Fame isn't located in Cooperstown, N.Y., or Canton, Ohio. It's located in Dave Meltzer's Wrestling Observer Newsletter, which is read by only 8,000 or so people. There is absolutely nothing glamorous or glorious about wrestling's past. It's an industry with no mainstream credibility.

So being a star in wrestling is quite momentary. A few, like Hulk Hogan, have transcended wrestling. But most haven't and most certainly never will. So it all comes back to money or happiness.

Raven just wasn't happy in WCW. He felt his character was compromised. He felt he should have been one of the top 10 people in WCW, and he wasn't. He got used to being a top guy in ECW, and it was hard to settle for less. Raven was miserable, and it was affecting his health and his personal habits.

He made the right move.

Chris Jericho made the right move, too. He's young, he's unmarried and he doesn't mind the road. He could afford to put happiness ahead of money. And with Jericho, the money will pile up anyway.

But guys like Chris Benoit, Dean Malenko and Shane Douglas made the right decision, too. Benoit and Malenko signed WCW contract extensions within the past year. Douglas left ECW for WCW.

Those guys have families. Those guys, especially Malenko and Douglas, are a little later into their careers. Those guys have all the happiness they need at home. At work, they need to cash in.

That's not what you hardcore fans want to hear, I'm sure. That's because you have no appreciation for wrestlers as human beings. You just know them as performers. You don't care about their families. You see them as puppets on a string to be manipulated for your own entertainment.

"Oh, Benoit should have gone to the WWF." Yeah, for less money, but you don't care about that. "Oh, Douglas sold out when he went to WCW." Yeah, and now he has more security for his future and he doesn't have to work a suicidal style, but you don't care about that.

Money or happiness. Some wrestlers get both. Some get neither. Some have a choice. And that choice is up to them, not you. You don't even remotely figure into the equation.

Mick Foley had it right during his latter days in ECW, when he did the version of Cactus Jack that would just grab a headlock for 10 minutes, when he became a heel who refused to entertain the fans. Foley was disenchanted with ECW marks by then. He realized how little they cared about anything but their own primal desires. About their need for blood, chairshots and broken bones. About being hardcore.

Look at the guys who died. Brian Pillman. Eddie Gilbert. You can't even get a good memorial show going for any of them. Barely any fans show up. The fans don't care. The fans don't remember.

Here's my advice to the fans when it comes to evaluating career decisions by wrestlers: Put yourself in their shoes. Not their working boots, but their shoes as a human being.

Ask yourself this: What will benefit the wrestler most? Consider professional gain, sure, but consider financial gain, too. Consider the wrestler's standing in life, how many mouths he has to feed. Don't consider what you want to see. What you want to see simply doesn't matter.

I'm happy for Raven. I'm happy for Jericho, too. But I'm also happy for a guy like Benoit, who did what was best for him. Who got what he wanted out of wrestling.

The wrestlers have priorities. They're not nearly the same as your priorities concerning them. Understand that, and you actually have a legitimate shot at being a "smart" fan.