Is The Vince Mystique Dead?

[romanstylesiii]

It has become way to clear that he is the problem. People always noted how Vince as a mad genius who single handedly beat WCW, but now he is slowly killing his own company to a point where no one can deny it anymore

[This Player Hating Mothman]

It's dying a hard, long death right now and it's about f***ing time. Some people are always going to think Vince was a genius and keep praising him, but on the whole things are really starting to look bad for the myth he's made around himself and that a lot of people have help up and insisted on for all this time.

[Perd]

I never bought the notion of him being a genius. He just happened to have the best territory. And he hoodwinked a bunch of other carnies. Somebody was going to get rich, bringing wrestling to the masses, and he had the most ammo to get it done. Now, I don’t think he’s a moron or anything, but I damn sure don’t think he’s a genius:

[MAD TITAN]

Time Warner and AOL merger beat WCW, not Vince.

[Citizen Snips Has Left]

He beat WCW 18 years ago.

[Allie Kitsune]

Eh. I'm not going to play the Retroactive Binary card on him and say "73 Year Old Vince being crap also retroactively means that 43 Year Old Vince was crap".

RAW has been awful for at least 10 years now, though.

[Prince Petty]

Vince's masterstroke to turn the tide in the Monday Night Wars was to let the talent be more themselves, and to filter the ideas of Vince Russo and other writers, rather than trying to dictate everything that happened on his shows.

His masterstroke before that was to be more forward thinking than a bunch of old men who were set in their ways and could envisage no other way to run wrestling than as separate, small scale territories.

The trouble is, every once in a while the WWE will get something really right, somehow, and it just makes people go back to saying, 'Vince, you mad old genius, you.'

[Deleted]

I'm beginning to believe Vince got extremely lucky in the 90s. When you hear crap like he didn't want Austin to cut promos originally because he didn't think he would get over with his accent then it makes you wonder.

[romanstylesiii]

May 30, 2019 16:47:56 GMT -5 Citizen Snips Has Left said:

He beat WCW 18 years ago.

And yet the company creates specials about every year since 2001. 

[Fade]

Seventy-three years old.

[Pushed to the Moon]

I never bought him as a "genius" anyway. He more or less fluked his way into "killing WCW" by Austin and Rock rejecting the gimmicks HE wanted them to have (just imagine thinking Steve Austin needed a mouth piece!) and letting them loose and be the characters they wanted to be. Granted he himself played a big role in the Austin story and was a great character on the shows too. Maybe his genius WAS the fact he let them loose but creatively speaking I'm not entirely buying it.

[Deleted]

He was great at one time, but he’s far past his prime now.

[This Player Hating Mothman]

May 30, 2019 16:50:59 GMT -5 Allie Kitsune said:

Eh. I'm not going to play the Retroactive Binary card on him and say "73 Year Old Vince being crap also retroactively means that 43 Year Old Vince was crap".

RAW has been awful for at least 10 years now, though.

That's not really the point though; there's things like the "Vince was a great business genius who beat the other territories out" myth pushed by the company and by people who believe that line, and if you listened to anyone who knew a damn about the history of the territories that was clearly never the reality, but it was out there. It's not that the company being bad now makes WWE awful forever retroactively. The cracks have been showing more and more, and specifically in ways that highlight his overall failings, as he more and more insulates into his own ideas and stops listening to other people. A lot of the stuff coming out doesn't paint current Vince in a bad light so much as it paints overall Vince at his most base instinct as a problem, and if he's listening less and less to people who aren't him, well.

[nate5054]

To me it's just becoming more clear that he's one of the greatest promoters ever, but a real awful booker. He was smart to use guys like Pattetson back in the day, and it seemed like he listened to them more back in the day.

[Wilfred]

He’s a great businessman but less so as an actual booker. Obviously had massive success in the 80’s yet seemed to have the most success creatively when guys like Kreski, Russo, Heyman, Ross had heavy influence in creative. Vince can contribute like anyone else, he just shouldn’t be having the final say anymore. If I could pick any booker in history to run my company Vince McMahon wouldn’t be in my top 10.

[Viking Hall]

He's an opportunist at best. Very little of what has been great in the WWF/E through the years has been directly due to him, he just happens to have been in the right place at the right time, which in fairness, is a skill in itself. Even the jewel in his crown, Wrestlemania was a natural progression and arguably a response to Starrcade, it's not like it was an idea he plucked from thin air (although he probably thinks otherwise).

[Ecks Ecks Ringout Ecks Ecks]

A business genius maybe, albeit an evil one, given his exploitative and manipulative practices over the years.

Creatively, though? Absolutely not. I'd say his only really brilliant creative decision was deciding to play a cartoonishly villainous version of himself; the Austin-McMahon dynamic hadn't really been done before, as conventional wisdom says that the promotion should always be babyface. Unfortunately, Vince's empire been coasting on variations of that same formula for over twenty years since.

Beyond Vince's business acumen and one milked-to-death idea, the success of the company is entirely due to the talents of his employees "independent contractors"—back when he allowed them more creative freedom, or in more recent years, when fan reaction became too loud to ignore.

[TWERKIN' MAGGLE]

Jennifer Lawrence and Vince McMahon should date.

[Brian Suntan]

From Game of Thrones, to Star Wars, to when I was on a Guns N Roses board and the consensus was the band's success was all down to Izzy Stradlin... it's a well worn trope of internet fansites that their figureheads are derided as being nothing but hacks.

If you put similar effort into the careers of successful businessmen, you'd also see a long list of failed projects, terrible ideas and elements of luck.

You don't fluke what Vince has done and continues to do with the business of the WWE. The fact that they are going to be making more than they ever have, with a fanbase in perpetual revolt, is amazing.

But he shouldn't be head of creative in the year 2019.

[abjordans]

That Moxley interview was really damning and kind of opened my eyes. I guess I have just chosen to ignore how much people say Vince is the problem. Or maybe just didn’t want to believe how much of a problem there actually was with the company as a whole, which directly ties to how much of a problem Vince is. I feel like the morale lately and things like this interview may get the ball rolling on Vince swallowing his pride and stepping back. Like, Ambrose really shed light to me how convoluted the whole WWE creative process is.