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Post by wayeK on Oct 1, 2014 20:03:07 GMT
I think wrestling turned to crap in 1999 which by far was the worst year in wrestling history. WCW had it's "Summer of Suck", followed by Vince Russo coming in and destroying everything, WWF was in full Crash TV mode with barely any good wrestling, ECW was more or less bankrupt and unable to do anything with their locker room full of junkies and on top of that you had the Heroes of Wrestling PPV which is easily on of the Top 5 worst wrestling events of all time and might very well be Nr. 1 (though UWF Black Jack Brawl, WCW Great American Bash 1991, December to Dismember and WWF King of the Ring 1995 are very strong competitors) (like the Jake Roberts/Randy Savage feud where Savage got bitten by a snake) oh wow, what a bust that was. Jake going from incredible matches and story lines to just...THAT "you wanna play 21?? well I got 22" I agree with pretty much everything you wrote ... and can I marry you?  |
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Post by ShadowAngel on Oct 2, 2014 13:36:51 GMT
I find it hard to pinpoint when wrestling turned "crap" as I always find some kind of wrestling somewhere that I enjoy and think is good, but if I had to pick a year, I would go with 2005. Eddie Guerrero's death and how that effected Chris Benoit, it felt like an end of an era with a sad death which in a way two years later resulted in a horrifying murder-suicide. Well i meant it solely based on the quality of the product. There's exactly 1 good Wrestling PPV in 1999: WCW Spring Stampede. Everything else ranges from mediocre (WWF No Mercy, WWF Fully Loaded, ECW Guilty as Charged) to "Holy faeces that's awful" (the mentioned Heroes of Wrestling, Wrestlemania XV, WWF King of the Ring, WCW Fall Brawl, WCW Starrcade, ECW Heatwave and so on) The storylines either grew stale (Austin - McMahon, nWo, Hogan - Flair for the 100th time) or were just completely botched. - Undertaker's Ministry of Darkness started out great but then came the "Higher Power" bullshit with McMahon ("It was me Austin, it was me all along!") which made absolutely no sense. - Another nonsense story was "The Rock n' Sock Connection", here you have two enemies who nearly killed each other a couple months ago (Rumble 1999 was where The Rock went overboard with the 10 Chairshots to the Head of Mick Foley which let to him losing his memory, getting a concussion and probably a little bit of brain damage) who now suddenly become best friends. - Al Snow vs. Big Boss Man feuding because Boss Man kidnappes Snows dog. - The whole Kane & X-Pac vs. Undertaker & Big Show Storyline that made no sense (Undertaker was playing this demonic Overlord and he basically was begging Kane to get back on his side and help him win a match?!) and ended without a ending. - WCW had a storyline revolving around Ric Flair ending up in a mental hospital...or not since he was out a week later, just to return to it afterwards and nobody ever knew what the rubber duck was going on. - WCW made Rey Mysterio the "Giant Killer", because it's a good idea to have a guy who's 1,60m beat Kevin Nash, Bam Bam Bigelow, Scott Norton and nearly Lex Luger. It all ended with Rey Mysterio losing his mask in a match, which made no sense at all and made Mysterio look even more like a joke, because he has the face of a 15 year old with the size to boot. - And of course: Fingerpoke of Doom! There wasn't a single good storyline that entire year. Also the weekly shows were just bad. WWF Raw sometimes featured only 20 minutes of wrestling. Nitro was a complete mess to the point that the show was sometimes written while it was already running! Of course 1999 also featured the one infamous WCW Nitro (March 8th, 1999) where the first 75 minutes contained no wrestling at all but a whole lot of promos and videos, some of which were really stupid (the first 10 or so minutes were spent with watching a guy welding a WCW logo badly into a sheet of metal) and we also had to endure that absolutely horrible rap video from Konnan. Not to mention that WCW Thunder was just horrific in 1999 and WWF Smackdown wasn't all that great either. And if we go with wrestler deaths, then 1999 was a catastrophic year too with the horrible death of Owen Hart and also Giant Baba, Rick Rude and Gorilla Monsoon dying. 2005 at least had a lot of great PPVs (ECW One Night Stand 2005, WWE Vengeance, WWE Royal Rumble, WWE Wrestlemania 21) and TNA probably had their best year ever (Turning Point, Unbreakable, Sacrifice, No Surrender, Lockdown are all awesome shows) And had some great feuds: ROH had the awesome "Summer of Punk" and AJ Styles - Jimmy Rave TNA had the long running, really great AJ Styles - Samoa Joe - Christopher Daniels story with a near perfect match at Unbreakable 2005 between those 3 and a great Hardcore feud between Abyss and Sabu WWE had Triple H - Batista, Shawn Michaels - Kurt Angle and Undertaker - Randy Orton Wrestling wise it was another end of an era as in Japan they let Rikioh win and end Kobashi's amazing 2 year run as NOAH champion, which in hindsight must rank up there as one of the worst decisions made by a Japanese wrestling company. That's just NOAH being NOAH. For whatever reason they were able to put out some great shows (NOAH Destiny 2005 was a really great show) while having some of the dumbest booking you can imagine but maybe that's because they have a different culture. After all, even ladders can become World Champion in Japan  |
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Post by Batman666 on Oct 3, 2014 2:03:23 GMT
Okay, you have me convinced, 1999 was horrible and worse than 2005 (another point I remember now is the record amount of world title changes in WWF in '99). If the Monday Night Wars/PPVs were a regular TV-Show, 1999 would have been when they jumped the shark  Your resumé of 1999 reminds me again of that argument that the WWF Attitude era was overrated. That people remember it fondly for nostalgic reasons and get reminded by the highlight clips that show up now and then. But if you go back and follow it week to week it's not that great of a wrestling product. Constant run-ins, everybody was in an angle/storyline, all those factions etc. But hey, I'm no better. I remember Nitro fondly and nostalgically and I will probably hate the Nitro episodes when it comes to 1999 when I will come around to rewatching them on the network. After all, even ladders can become World Champion in Japan LOL, the wackiness that is DDT Speaking of Japan, Gordman, have you seen any of AJ Styles matches from his current run in New Japan? |
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Post by Deleted on Oct 3, 2014 9:47:35 GMT
Speaking of Japan, Gordman, have you seen any of AJ Styles matches from his current run in New Japan? Yeah dude, I have loads of his actual NJPW matches on my PC..^^ Just amazing, better than his TNA career in my opinion. |
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Post by ShadowAngel on Oct 3, 2014 13:34:41 GMT
(another point I remember now is the record amount of world title changes in WWF in '99). Both WWF and WCW had the same amount of title changes in 1999: 11 WWF vacated the title once in that year, WCW twice (nothing compared to the 6 times in 2000 though) Your resumé of 1999 reminds me again of that argument that the WWF Attitude era was overrated. That people remember it fondly for nostalgic reasons and get reminded by the highlight clips that show up now and then. But if you go back and follow it week to week it's not that great of a wrestling product. Constant run-ins, everybody was in an angle/storyline, all those factions etc. Yeah, it gets totally overrated to the point where even Vince "I make Jim Herd look like a blinking genius" Russo gets a lot of praise. In my oppinion, WWF turned pretty bad once Jim Cornette left. He made some great booking in 1997 with producing a mixture of typical WWF style with some Florida and SMW stuff thrown in. There was still some great stuff in 1998 (Shawn Michaels - Undertaker, Austin - McMahon when it wasn't boring) but also some very dumb stuff like Val Venis - Kaientai or Road Warrior Hawk acting like a junkie which ended with him basically comitting suicide in 1999 by jumping of the Titantron (another candidate for the argument that 1999 was the worst year in wrestling) It will be interesting, if the WWE Network will change oppinions about the Attitude Era once everybody watches the Raws and see the dumb storylines and gimmicks they started to throw around beginning in 1998. |
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Post by Batman666 on Oct 4, 2014 2:44:21 GMT
Yeah dude, I have loads of his actual NJPW matches on my PC..^^ Just amazing, better than his TNA career in my opinion. Yeah, his current run as IWGP champion is great. At least in-ring wise, the nWo/Kliq behaviour in promos from Bullet Club is kind of embarrassing He will face Tanahashi on the 13th, really looking forward to it, their last match in the G1 in August was great. Both WWF and WCW had the same amount of title changes in 1999: 11 WWF vacated the title once in that year, WCW twice (nothing compared to the 6 times in 2000 though) Ah, didn't know both had as many title changes. Just remember that a while ago I went back and checked the amount of title changes per year in the WWF/E and 1999 stood out. Yeah, 2000 WCW was a creative mess. Yeah, it gets totally overrated to the point where even Vince "I make Jim Herd look like a blinking genius" Russo gets a lot of praise. Vince Russo is horrible in so many ways, what annoys me the most is that he got so many chances to fail again and again after that WWF run. He was involved in the death of WCW and by all accounts the death of TNA. And I wouldn't be surprised if Jeff Jarrett brings him in for his Global Force Wrestling, which will give him a chance for a hat-trick. |
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Post by ShadowAngel on Oct 4, 2014 21:55:51 GMT
Yeah, his current run as IWGP champion is great. At least in-ring wise, the nWo/Kliq behaviour in promos from Bullet Club is kind of embarrassing He will face Tanahashi on the 13th, really looking forward to it, their last match in the G1 in August was great. I don't see how that is embarrassing. Taunts and gestures have always been reused in wrestling, just like looks and gimmicks. There's barely anything really now to be found nowadays. Also Ken Anderson even went so far as to ask Triple H and Scott Hall, whom he is friends with, if it's OK if they use the taunts. I mean the nWo itself wasn't original but largely "inspired" by the "UWF invades NJPW"-Storyline. Whereas the D-Generation X was like a comedy version of The Four Horsemen. Same can be said for most big wrestling stables in wrestling. Most are just rehashes of the past. Vince Russo is horrible in so many ways, what annoys me the most is that he got so many chances to fail again and again after that WWF run. He was involved in the death of WCW and by all accounts the death of TNA. And I wouldn't be surprised if Jeff Jarrett brings him in for his Global Force Wrestling, which will give him a chance for a hat-trick. He truly is horrible. I recently heard a quote from him about how it was "God's plan for Owen Hart to die" and nothing could've been done against it, since when "God writes your final date in his book, you'll die" and how he doesn't take responsibility for the stunt that killed Owen (it was Russo's idea) Though i don't agree that he was involved in the death of WCW. He booked a lot of crap, did a lot of very bad things but ultimately, it's a common misconception, that this killed WCW. That had completely different reasons. He is responsible for the situation TNA is in, since Spike has said several times that they stopped negotiations once they found out that Russo was still working there. |
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Post by Batman666 on Oct 6, 2014 3:30:25 GMT
Yeah, most stuff is reused and people steal stuff all the times, but in this case regardless if they are friends with HHH & Scott Hall, in my opinion it has an aura of childishness. Like indie-wrestlers pretending to be pro-wrestlers they saw on TV rather than actually being and portraying yourselves as pro-wrestlers. I just find it unoriginal and boring to go around and repeat the same catchphrases, taunts and fingersalutes that were old 15 years ago. That's why I find it more of a direct (cheap) copy of nWo/Kliq rather than a faction inspired by the nWo/Kliq.
But what gets you over gets you over and the current NJPW audience is mostly new viewers plus I feel that nWo Japan wasn't done to death the same way as it was in WCW, so what I find cringe-worthy isn't a problem for their fanbase.
Haven't heard that comment before, but doesn't surprise me. Nothing is ever his fault it seems.
What really/finally killed WCW was that the network head at Turner (forgot his name) decided he didn't want to have wrestling anymore on their channels and that Bischoff didn't have time enough to find a network in his pitch to buy WCW. But I still say Russo has a part to blame as did Bischoff, Nash, Hogan etc. It was both the creative's fault and the wrestlers on top with creative control over their matches that killed the product and drove away the fans. If the product was better the ratings would have been higher and the decision to kick WCW from the network would have been harder to implement.
I still don't get why Dixie/TNA were so desperate to keep Russo, baffles me to no end that they lied to Spike that he wasn't involved. Was his creative input that badly needed that you risked the future of your company?
Russo is like the Rasputin of the wrestling world.
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Post by ShadowAngel on Oct 6, 2014 14:39:02 GMT
What really/finally killed WCW was that the network head at Turner (forgot his name) decided he didn't want to have wrestling anymore on their channels and that Bischoff didn't have time enough to find a network in his pitch to buy WCW. Jamie Kellner is usually "credited" with the death of WCW. Actually, it was Gerald Levin (named by CNBC as the worst american CEO in history). He never gets mentioned anywhere though. He was the CEO of Time Warner and the person who did the merger with Turner Broadcasting in 1996 and already back then he wanted to get rid of WCW but Ted Turner still had enough power to stop him (Levin even negotiated with Vince McMahon to let him buy WCW) In 2000 he brokered the merge of Time Warner with AOL and immediately sent Ted Turner a Fax saying that he's basically released from most of his power and Jamie Kellner takes his place as CEO of Turner Brodcasting. Kellner simply was on teh same side as Levin about wrestling. Because the ratings weren't a problem. Despite WCW being pretty bad, Nitro still had the highest ratings of any show on TNT or TBS. It was still between 2.1 and 2.9 points (which isn't far off from what WWE Raw draws today, they're around 2.5 - 3.1) And the Fusient Media deal for buying WCW fell through not because Bischoff had not enough time to find another TV station but rather because no TV Station was interested and that was mostly for 2 reasons: - They all saw that WCW loses money. In all it's existence from 1988 until 2001 there was exactly 1 year when they made a profit (1998), every other time they lost money and in 2000 they lost 62 million dollars! - There were quite a few lawsuits: Hulk Hogan sued them for the Bash at the Beach 2000 incident. Sonny Onno sued them for alleged racism, which was followed by another racism lawsuit by wrestler Bobby Walker and the final settlement of a series of lawsuits between WWF and WCW which was settled in late 2000 (WWF sued them for implying that Kevin Nash and Scott Hall are invaders sent from the WWF, WWF sued them because Mark Madden talked about WWF storylines, giving away the outcome on his hotline, WCW on the other hand sued WCW for the Billionaire Ted Skits, for acting as if Kevin Nash and Scott Hall would return as Diesel and Razor Ramon (who then where played by different wrestlers) and a rant from Jim Cornette against WCW on a Raw Show) They settled out of court and WWF got a first bid right if WCW ever went out of business, which at the time was already planned by Levin and Kellner. But I still say Russo has a part to blame as did Bischoff, Nash, Hogan etc. It was both the creative's fault and the wrestlers on top with creative control over their matches that killed the product and drove away the fans. No. There were ton of wrestling companies who did the exact same thing, yet still survived for years and years. The prime example is the AWA: Verne Gagne was a very stubborn old man who only pushed his best friends. Nick Bockwinkel was the dominant wrestler in the AWA from 1974 when he won the title (which was held for 7 years by, you guessed it, Verne Gagne) until 1987 when Gagne finally decided to push somebody else (Curt Hennig who of course directly was put into a fued with Verne Gagne's son Greg) AWA had usually bad wrestling events, not really good storylines and borked up so many thing it's unbelievable (I mean Hulkamania started in the AWA but Gagne refused to push Hogan, letting Bockwinkel still be the dominant guy in their feud) The company existed until 1991 after the whole alliance with WCCW and CWA turned out to be a financial disaster (CWA already ceased to exist in 1988 and was replaced by the USWA, another very bad promotion, i mean Jerry Lawler was 28 times the World Champion in the spawn of not even 9 years!) WWE for a couple years now is an exact copy of WCW 2000: Still pushing the same old guys they have pushed for the last 10 years. Bringing back older guys to wrestle in main event storylines (Lesnar, The Rock), refusing to properly push guys or give them a short push and then just forget about them (like The Miz or Sheamus), having horrible PPVs where you know in advance the outcome of most matches, having bad weekly shows and dwindling viewer numbers yet i doubt they will die anytime soon. |
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Post by Batman666 on Oct 7, 2014 0:09:59 GMT
Yeah, Kellner was the one I was thinking of. Don't believe I've heard the Levin connection before, interesting.
Okay, yes you are correct, there have been other examples of creative control among wrestlers and bad booking that turned to a bad product but the wrestling company was still profitable enough to survive. As you mentioned WWE is a perfect current example but is self-sufficient with a healthy business plan (pre-network launch but in due time the network will most likely pay for itself and make the company profitable) where there is no chance they will fold up anytime soon.
And I'll agree that in the grand scheme of things, Hogan, Nash, Bischoff & yes even that hateful human being Russo weren't directly the cause of WCW's demise. Seeing as the key is that they almost never were profitable and when they couldn't depend on Ted Turner for protection they were eliminated as any sane business plan would do with a hugely money loosing subsidiary, as you pointed out.
But I refuse to accept that they had no blame in this, it was under mostly Bischoff & Russo's creative control they had that horrible 2000 fiscal year with as you pointed out a loss of 62 million. Even if they had no goals or directives to be profitable, you can't be absolved from blame when that happens under your watch. It was Bischoff that signed all those wrestlers to big guaranteed money and creative control clauses which caused the roster hierarchy and the product stagnation. In that way you could put less blame on Russo seeing as Bischoff sabotaged his own product by actions like that which made it much harder for Russo to be able to book when he arrived in late '99.
But to claim the man that is the poster boy for the booking mentality "wrestling doesn't have to make sense" has no bearings or blame for the financial outcome of the product feels just wrong. And yeah, you could claim WWF '99 didn't make much sense but still was one of the most profitable years in WWF history. But Russo did have an editor in WWF in the form of Vince and a hot product can often get away with stuff like that. Plus, as bad as WWF '99 was, it wasn't close to the creative train wreck that was WCW 2000.
So, I agree they weren't directly to blame for the death of WCW as they were not in control of the network decisions, but I wouldn't absolve them from any blame as you make the bed you lie in.
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Post by ShadowAngel on Oct 7, 2014 21:11:44 GMT
Yeah, Kellner was the one I was thinking of. Don't believe I've heard the Levin connection before, interesting. Like i said, he gets never mentioned, which is curious, since basically ever since the Time Warner-Turner Merger in 1996 he wanted to get rid of WCW since a) after all the drugs- and sex scandals around the WWF wrestling had a very, very bad reputation, b) WCW was losing money and c) WCW also had their fair share of problems, because even as far back as 1990 there were accusations and pending lawsuits about racism (that's the only reason why Ron Simmons became World Champion in 1992, to be able to say "Look, we have a black World Champion, we're fine" (Same reason why they later pushed Booker T. like crazy, it was mostly because of the racism lawsuits i mentioned previously) Okay, yes you are correct, there have been other examples of creative control among wrestlers and bad booking that turned to a bad product but the wrestling company was still profitable enough to survive. As you mentioned WWE is a perfect current example but is self-sufficient with a healthy business plan (pre-network launch but in due time the network will most likely pay for itself and make the company profitable) where there is no chance they will fold up anytime soon. Thing is, WWF wasn't healthy when they borked it up big time after the whole Hulkamania era died. The New Generation was a huge failure (and the WBF of course was a financial disaster) and nearly put the WWF out of business. They made a 4.5 million dollar loss in the business year 1994/95 followed by -6 million dollar in 1995/96. The only thing that made the losses not as extreme was their ongoing huge success in europe. There's a reason they went 2-3 times per year to Europe. Of course Vince also knows how to juggle finances and made savings, something WCW never did because Ted Turner just let them spend millions and millions of dollars (and even had some wrestlers under contract by different departments. Hulk Hogan for example wasn't contracted to WCW but Turner Home Entertainment, other wrestlers were contracted to TBS. That's the reason why so many WCW guys weren't around for the WCW Invasion in WWF: They were contracted to AOL/TimeWarner and just sat out their fat contracts which of course Vince McMahon was unwilling to buy out) It will be interesting to see how the WWE Network will turn out. It can be a win, it can also be the final downfall of WWE. And I'll agree that in the grand scheme of things, Hogan, Nash, Bischoff & yes even that hateful human being Russo weren't directly the cause of WCW's demise. Seeing as the key is that they almost never were profitable and when they couldn't depend on Ted Turner for protection they were eliminated as any sane business plan would do with a hugely money loosing subsidiary, as you pointed out. Like i said, people at Time Warner wanted to get rid of WCW. AOL after the merger wanted to get rid of it. Ted Turner was the only one who kept it alive but even before all the mergers, there were people telling Turner to get rid of it since it's a money grave and it's wrestling but Turner refused. WCW would've been taken off the air regardless of what they did. WCW could've been the Nr. 1 show making millions and Levin would've wanted to get rid off it, Kellner would've wanted to get rid off it. Everybody after the Time Warner merger did his best to keep WCW down. Like in 1998 when Harvey Schiller (then vice president of Turner Sports and about the only one next to Turner who actually believed in WCW) and Eric Bischoff came up with an idea they called "St. Valentine's Day Massacre", it would've been the divorce of Dennis Rodman and Carmen Electra inside an WCW Ring shown live on NBC. It would've been 2 hours of wrestling, followed by that event. NBC thought it was a great idea, Bischoff thought it was something completely random that still would've got a lot of talk and would've put WCW front and center (just like the random Mike Tyson thing WWF did) but the whole idea was shut down with a "Yeah, great idea, we're not interested in doing that with WCW" by the sales people behind Time Warner/Turner. Also WCW was forced to stay PG because the company wanted it. The whole "International object" name wasn't a joke, it was how the "Standards & Practice" in the company refused to let WCW do anything that could be offensive, racist, criminal, illegal, whatever. WCW was forced to stay in PG comic land and that was at the time when WWF ran the "Steve Austin invades Brian Pillman's house and Pillman pulls out a gun"-Story and other rather realistic storylines. But I refuse to accept that they had no blame in this, it was under mostly Bischoff & Russo's creative control they had that horrible 2000 fiscal year with as you pointed out a loss of 62 million. They weren't even in power for most of that time. Eric Bischoff was released on September 10th, 1999 and never regained any true power. He appeared back in WCW in April 2000 but only as an on-screen character. Bischoff had nothing to do with any booking or anything backstage at all. He was simply a character (though already then he planned to buy out WCW whenever it was possible, Russo was released after WCW Souled Out 2000 turned out to be catastrophic (January 16th 2000) and was reinstated in April. Between those dates, Kevin Sullivan, Terry Taylor and Ed Ferrara (+ Hogan, Nash, Flair and JJ Dillon) were the bookers and were facing exactly the same problems as everyone else: Standards & Practice refusing anything that went beyond PG, Creative Control from wrestlers and a lot of backlash from Time Warner/Turner (i really recommend the Kayfabe Commentary documentary "Kevin Sullivan and the end of WCW", it's amazing) So Russo was back in power in April and was again released in October after the whole Bash at the Beach incident and it's backlash. That's only 7 months of a year. After that and until the end of WCW Terry Taylor, Johnny Ace and Ed Ferrara where the head bookers and they clearly tried to turn WCW around. Of course Russo created the David Arquette story but then again, you had prominent figures appearing all the time in wrestling David Arquette wrestling isn't much worse than Mr. T appearing at Wrestlemania 1 and 2 (and winning in both matches) and the titles were worthless during that era anyway. Actually, i'm kinda happy it happened since i later learned that David Arquette gave all the money he made from those WCW days to the wifes of Brian Pillman, Owen Hart and Bobby Duncum Jr. which is really awesome. It was Bischoff that signed all those wrestlers to big guaranteed money and creative control clauses which caused the roster hierarchy and the product stagnation. A) Hogan already had creative control in WWF for quite a while. Vince made the same mistake: Giving Hogan the title at Wrestlemania IX, when Hogan talked about doing something with Bret Hart, then Hogan vanished to film a movie (i think it was Mr. Nanny), then he refused to step into the ring with Bret and rather wanted a quick storyline with Yokozuna (kinda understandable) but did that WWF hurt in the long run? It established Yokozuna as a major heel and it was only Vince refusing to push Luger to the top and instead trying again Hart who already failed as a Champion to get back to Nr. 1 B) How would you act, if you basically have unlimited number, a lot of freedom and a billionare behind you who signs everything? Bischoff went overboard with everything he did, he admits that and he was basically always surprised when Turner just said "yes, let's do it". Bischoff never thought they could sign Hogan but Turner lured him over with movie offers and big paychecks. Bischoff never thought that WCW Monday Nitro would get the green light, he only used it to try to get the attention of Turner about the state of wrestling and actually was shocked when Turner said "Yes, you get an hour on TNT for a live wrestling show" Would you act different? In that situation, when you have a lot of money and freedom, when you can do what ever you want? I played wrestling sims like Extreme Warfare Revenge and at the moment TEW2013 where people recreated old years and it's fun to do WCW in 1994. You see all the money you have, the TV Shows, the PPV contracts and you think you can't do no wrong. You hire a ton of wrestlers who have big names, demand a lot of money and creative freedom, thinking "Yeah, let's kick WWF's ass" and either you succeed or, what mostly happen, you crash and burn. Wrestling isn't much different to any other industry. But to claim the man that is the poster boy for the booking mentality "wrestling doesn't have to make sense" has no bearings or blame for the financial outcome of the product feels just wrong. And yeah, you could claim WWF '99 didn't make much sense but still was one of the most profitable years in WWF history. Which was probably more because A) WWF always had more viewers than WCW (and even before when it was JCP), even during the 80's war, WWF had a lot more power, than they had (best example is the Starrcade/Survivor Series 1987 story) B) WWF was "edgier" it turned into a crude mixture of South Park, Playboy and ECW whereas WCW as mentioned above was bounded by PG rated stuff. WWF changed their audience from kids to young adults and succeeded and the same way South Park was a crude vulgar mess, WWF was a crude vulgar mess that just worked perfectly towards the american audience that was more interested in pseudo-sexual stuff, drug-related things and ADHD-type storylines than even wrestling. People watched it not for the wrestling but because of the chaos that was all around, the chance you could see a pair breasts (like The Kat stripping down at Armageddon 1999), having a redneck spraying beer over the enemies and causing anarchy. It was ECW done Mainstream style and ECW already grew bigger and bigger before that with basically the same style (and is still say that Steve Austin is simply a toned-down version of The Sandman) And WCW couldn't keep up with that freak show, they weren't allowed to keep up. So of course they were seen as that "old school, second rate wrestling show". |
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Post by Batman666 on Oct 9, 2014 4:31:32 GMT
Speaking of the financial difficulties WWF had during the 90s, I always found it funny how they outsourced wrestlers like Vader, Shamrock & Undertaker to matches in Japan and splitting the booking revenue with the wrestlers. And also kind of funny in hindsight that the financial troubles (couldn't afford Bret Harts 20 year contract) in a way was responsible for Survivor Series 97 and the beginnings (even though unintended) of Heel McMahon character. I don't think the network will be the downfall of WWE, I think the key is still TV, if they for some reason should loose both RAW and Smackdown and find no American network willing to pick them up thus forcing them to have the shows on their own network, that would be a serious financial and commercial blow. WWE as we know it would probably have a problem existing in their current form. I think though they will be around in some way regardless, even it would be just as a subscription based wrestling library or a merchandise licensee. The question would be, would they stop producing wrestling shows at all at that point or downgrade them to an indie-level of production? Haven't seen the Kevin Sullivan Kayfabe Commentaries (Did he fall asleep during it like he did on the RF one? ), but I've seen other Kayfabe Commentaries and they are always entertaining, will check it out. Well, 7 months is still the majority of a year But I will drop it, no need arguing semantics. His hands was obviously tied in many ways and Russo was clearly not the correct booker for that product. I've played those sims too with the yearly scenarios and yeah in Bischoff's shoes most people would have gone mad and done the same, me included (figuring I didn't have the knowledge of what can happen to the wrestling business as WWE has shown with their monopoly). But here's my problem and why I will continue to have resentment towards Russo, Bischoff, Hogan, Nash etc. for what I feel they did to the product. Levin & Kellner are faceless corporate people, I didn't see them on wrestling shows in WWE and TNA for the past 10+ years like I did with the above mentioned people. So while I see the wrestling business crumbling around the empire that is the WWE, I still see the people involved during the end days of WCW still having jobs in wrestling. It's much easier and fulfilling to resent and hate the people you see than the people or the corporation you don't. It's a stupid human fallacy and highly illogical, but 13 years later, here I am without a WCW or a real viable contender to the WWE and that makes me mad and I want to blame people And again, logically, I could point out that the WWE monopoly and the death of the wrestling business would have started in the late 80s if Ted Turner didn't get involved thus prolonging it for 13 years. But as I said, it's much more fulfilling to blame the sociopath that is Russo. Edit: This is neither here nor there, but am I alone in thinking it feels so weird that TNA outlived WCW? |
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Post by ShadowAngel on Oct 9, 2014 18:21:52 GMT
And also kind of funny in hindsight that the financial troubles (couldn't afford Bret Harts 20 year contract) in a way was responsible for Survivor Series 97 and the beginnings (even though unintended) of Heel McMahon character. Actually by 1997 WWF was back in good financial waters. The addition of the In your House PPVs and further TV Shows (WWF Livewire and WWF Shotgun Saturday Night) proved to be a very good move. They also entered new international markets and finally managed to bring out their merchandise in most parts of the world. Vince wanted to get rid of Hart for multiple reasons: - Bret never turned out to be the huge draw Vince hoped for (and Hart still think's he was and is. The guy is so delusional, it's not even funny anymore) - Bret cried and cried about his Heel turn and how much he hated it. - Bret also complained about the direction WWF was heading, away from the comical kiddy stuff toward more mature storylines. Bret never liked that and was vocal about it. I mean, why else would Vince openly say "Yeah Bret, go on, have negotations with Eric Bischoff. See if you can work for the company that has been kicking my ass for the last 1 1/2 years" If it was only because of financial reasons, Vince would've found a way to keep Hart, but he simply wasn't interested in him anymore and probably also thought that he wouldn't suddenly become a big drawing superstar in WCW - especially not with Hulk Hogan there, seing how both guys weren't exactly the best friends. Haven't seen the Kevin Sullivan Kayfabe Commentaries (Did he fall asleep during it like he did on the RF one? ), but I've seen other Kayfabe Commentaries and they are always entertaining, will check it out. No, but who can blame him for falling asleep? RF Video produces by far the absolute worst Shoot Interviews and Documentaries. I'm amazed they're still in business, i mean Rob Feinstein is more or less a convicted pedophile (so why would anybody want to financially support him?) and the stuff they put out is of such a low quality, i honestly wonder how people can endure it. Kayfabe Commentaries is 10 times more professional, better organized and release great stuff. Sullivan has done quite a few very interesting projects, next to the WCW documentary, he made a Shoot Interview, the WCW Timeline 1996 (really interesting, he talks about the formation of nWo and how he and Bischoff tried and tried to convice Hogan it would be a great idea for him to turn heel) and two Guest Bookers (Where people from the business do fantasy booking about a certain subject, also very interesting) He did "Rebooking the WWF in 1984 without Hogan" and "Integrating TNA into WWE" with Gabe Sapolsky. I really recommended that all (and also all the Jim Cornette stuff, his re-booking of the WCW/ECW Invasion makes the real product look even more like complete faeces. But here's my problem and why I will continue to have resentment towards Russo, Bischoff, Hogan, Nash etc. for what I feel they did to the product. They certainly were a part of the reason why WCW turned to be so bad. But then again, WCW had stupid storylines and characters long before any of those guys showed up there. Hogan and Nash just tried to stay at the top, something that a lot of other wrestlers did too once they had enough power. Of course that did damage. Bischoff hadn't a lot of good ideas and also had trouble with the Time Warner guys backstage and Russo is Russo. |
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Post by Batman666 on Oct 11, 2014 9:11:18 GMT
I've seen the '84 and Invasion ones before, both were great, will track down the others.
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Post by ShadowAngel on Oct 15, 2014 20:54:03 GMT
I just watched "A Corny in the UK" which is about Jim Cornette's first visit to the UK (February this year) and it's a hilarious documentary, mostly not about wrestling but about Cornette experiencing the UK for the first time, including him getting scared about the highway ("What is the slow lane in the US is the fast lane here, the fast lane is the slow lane and we're in between them with a driver on the wrong side"), a visit to the doctor ("They call it the surgery here, i'm not letting them cut me up!"), his surprise about how medicine can actually work ("They gave me steroids, so don't piss me off!") and getting fance about the subway, since it doesn't smell like took a piss, you don't get stab or pickpocketed like in the New York Subway. With various segments from various british show, including a full recreation of a rib Owen Hart pulled on him, when Owen took a phone to Cornette saying it's Stu Hart, with Jim Cornette fully believing it was Bruce Prichard imitating Stu Hart. It's amazing  That documentary is just a small insight into the Q&A's Cornette did in Birmingham, London, Manchester and Cardiff (all seperate releases, 2 hours long) followed by a 2 hour long Q&A about Managing and Booking which is really interesting if you look for the insights into how Wrestling should be booked, how Managers should act and what the rubber duck is wrong with Mainstream wrestling today. I probably could listen 24/7 to what Jim Cornette says, he's a blinking wrestling genius and a comedian at the same time with his road stories and his rantings about Vince Russo and others. |
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