WWE's History Pre 1984 Is Almost Never Addressed

[romanstylesiii]

WWE's history pre 1984 is barely ever acknowledged. WWE is directly or indirectly (depends who you talk to) connected to a wrestling organization run by VKM's grandfather that existed in the 1920's. WWE currently owns all the media from this venture (it's mainly newsreels and pictures).


In some ways, 60 years of WWE does not really exist in current WWE cannon. 


I get they are all Vince McMahon Sr's guys pre 1984, but it still seems weird that they are just never mentioned.


Even in all the WWE's major documentaries about the company, it always starts with Hogan beating the Iron Sheik.

[James Fabiano]

I have a feeling it's going to get worse...

[Milkman Norm]

Mar 30, 2021 17:43:56 GMT -5 romanstylesiii said:

WWE's history pre 1984 is barely ever acknowledged. WWE is directly or indirectly (depends who you talk to) connected to a wrestling organization run by VKM's grandfather that existed in the 1920's. WWE currently owns all the media from this venture (it's mainly newsreels and pictures).


In some ways, 60 years of WWE does not really exist in current WWE cannon. 


I get they are all Vince McMahon Sr's guys pre 1984, but it still seems weird that they are just never mentioned.


Even in all the WWE's major documentaries about the company, it always starts with Hogan beating the Iron Sheik.

I'd disagree slightly in that Bruno and the post 63 split era is fairly well recognised & documented. But what isn't at all is the Capital Wrestling era from before the split. Like Argentina Rocca was a huge star for Vince Sr but he's been pretty much erased from history since he worked prior to the NWA split.

[romanstylesiii]

Mar 30, 2021 20:15:49 GMT -5 Milkman Norm said:

Mar 30, 2021 17:43:56 GMT -5 romanstylesiii said:

WWE's history pre 1984 is barely ever acknowledged. WWE is directly or indirectly (depends who you talk to) connected to a wrestling organization run by VKM's grandfather that existed in the 1920's. WWE currently owns all the media from this venture (it's mainly newsreels and pictures).


In some ways, 60 years of WWE does not really exist in current WWE cannon. 


I get they are all Vince McMahon Sr's guys pre 1984, but it still seems weird that they are just never mentioned.


Even in all the WWE's major documentaries about the company, it always starts with Hogan beating the Iron Sheik.

I'd disagree slightly in that Bruno and the post 63 split era is fairly well recognised & documented. But what isn't at all is the Capital Wrestling era from before the split. Like Argentina Rocca was a huge star for Vince Sr but he's been pretty much erased from history since he worked prior to the NWA split.

He is mentioned in passing, but I don't remember a single instance where I have seen a highlight of him wrestling

[BlackoutCreature]

I've been complaining for forever that almost none of Bruno's first title reign in the 60's seems to be available online anywhere, either legally or not.

[lucas_lee]

Mar 30, 2021 21:22:24 GMT -5 BlackoutCreature said:

I've been complaining for forever that almost none of Bruno's first title reign in the 60's seems to be available online anywhere, either legally or not.

It might be a victim of recording practices of the day, where tape was recorded over tape

[Jaws the Shark]

It's not limited to WWE, unfortunately. The problem with wrestling history now is that it basically depends on what WWE is able/prepared to acknowledge and what will perpetuate WWE's revisionist myths. Unless they've researched it themselves or were actually there, people's knowledge of that era is based on WWE documentaries which generally focus on promoters who McMahon can dismiss as feckless morons with no business acumen or vision whom he trampled. There's a lot of wrestling that now gets pretty much ignored because WWE don't have the tape library and/or there's no "story" that can be made into a Network documentary/DVD/McMahon ego-stroking exercise. As a result, past NWA champions seem to have largely been reduced to Flair and his opponents in the mid/late eighties, territorial wrestling has been limited to Crockett, the AWA and World Class, and the story always ends with glorious Vince McMahon coming and saving the industry from these archaic promoters.

[mattyy]

Mar 30, 2021 21:36:44 GMT -5 lucas_lee said:

Mar 30, 2021 21:22:24 GMT -5 BlackoutCreature said:

I've been complaining for forever that almost none of Bruno's first title reign in the 60's seems to be available online anywhere, either legally or not.

It might be a victim of recording practices of the day, where tape was recorded over tape

Yeah, I know most of Memphis is lost to time since I think they recorded over the masters.

[lucas_lee]

Although compared to the attitude era, semi-stereotypical gimmicks aside. It'll probably be safer from scrubbing from history.

[jimmyjames]

I think there's a couple of reason for this. The lack of footage. I don't know if Capitol wrestling was on Du Mont but if it was then most if not all then almost all of the footage is probably gone. Even if there is any there's probably not a lot to broadcast. Second is that outside of the big name champions(pre 1970s) then most people have no idea who the wrestlers are and combined with possibly not having footage of them it's hard (but not impossible) to promote.

[XIII]

Mar 30, 2021 22:13:38 GMT -5 Jaws the Shark said:

It's not limited to WWE, unfortunately. The problem with wrestling history now is that it basically depends on what WWE is able/prepared to acknowledge and what will perpetuate WWE's revisionist myths. Unless they've researched it themselves or were actually there, people's knowledge of that era is based on WWE documentaries which generally focus on promoters who McMahon can dismiss as feckless morons with no business acumen or vision whom he trampled. There's a lot of wrestling that now gets pretty much ignored because WWE don't have the tape library and/or there's no "story" that can be made into a Network documentary/DVD/McMahon ego-stroking exercise. As a result, past NWA champions seem to have largely been reduced to Flair and his opponents in the mid/late eighties, territorial wrestling has been limited to Crockett, the AWA and World Class, and the story always ends with glorious Vince McMahon coming and saving the industry from these archaic promoters.

History is written by the victors. The WWE is a good analogy for world history actually.

[jason1980s]

With the coming of age of WWE as a global entertainment company, or whatever they call it, I do think of lot of the earlier history, pre PPV era, has been forgotten. It's sad because I do very much think Vince McMahon at one point was grateful for the history. His first three classes of HOF inductees, not including Andre in 1993, were comprised of guys who helped his father get huge with WWWF. So I know Vince appreciates the history or has appreciated it but it does seem to be lost. I think the major problem is most of the guys from that era are deceased so they can't be brought back for DVD interviews or Raw segments. The few times they did do something it was with Freddie Blassie and James Dudley who were wheelchair bound.

To me, the best classes of HOF were 1994, 1995 and 1996 because, again those guys helped build WWWF. It's WWE's fault fans don't know about those guys but it's also fan's faults too. They can do some research.

[James Fabiano]

Mar 31, 2021 10:05:13 GMT -5 jason1980s said:

With the coming of age of WWE as a global entertainment company, or whatever they call it, I do think of lot of the earlier history, pre PPV era, has been forgotten. It's sad because I do very much think Vince McMahon at one point was grateful for the history. His first three classes of HOF inductees, not including Andre in 1993, were comprised of guys who helped his father get huge with WWWF. So I know Vince appreciates the history or has appreciated it but it does seem to be lost. I think the major problem is most of the guys from that era are deceased so they can't be brought back for DVD interviews or Raw segments. The few times they did do something it was with Freddie Blassie and James Dudley who were wheelchair bound.

To me, the best classes of HOF were 1994, 1995 and 1996 because, again those guys helped build WWWF. It's WWE's fault fans don't know about those guys but it's also fan's faults too. They can do some research.

With the latter, I say this any time someone tells me "[vintage actor/actess/show] will never resonate with younger viewers." It's out there, just look it up.

When I was younger, thankfully most local stations still ran shows from the 50s-70s, which was how I came to appreciate them too. They're still out there, only you can use streaming or YouTube now.

[wildojinx]

They did this during the Attitude era as well. Pretty much NOTHING prior to 1997 was ever brought up except to mock it (I wonder if the positive reception to the Gimmick Battle Royal helped them change their tune). Same with WCW around the same time, nothing older than the NWO was ever acknowledged, let alone JCP/GCW.

[Feyrhausen]

I think wrestling is similar to comic books. They even share a 7 year rule. It was always thought that wrestling/comic fans would move on after a certain period of time. So after 7 years or so you could repeat stories, characters, gimmicks, etc. And as the old fans went away the new would have little interest in what came before. Even home video did not really change this much. You cant tell me Stone Cold fans cared much about Bruno.

But now the fanbase has contracted to the hardcore. The ones that do want to see all of that history. But it is either lost or considered embarrassing to Vince. Maybe if HHH is ever in charge we might see more of it.

[BlackoutCreature]

Mar 31, 2021 10:24:33 GMT -5 wildojinx said:

They did this during the Attitude era as well. Pretty much NOTHING prior to 1997 was ever brought up except to mock it (I wonder if the positive reception to the Gimmick Battle Royal helped them change their tune). Same with WCW around the same time, nothing older than the NWO was ever acknowledged, let alone JCP/GCW.

I remember around the time of the RAW tenth anniversary show (which was nearly twenty years ago now, man do I feel old), whenever they would talk about RAW's history or show clips of it they would basically completely skip over everything, with the exception of Razor Ramon vs. 1-2-3 Kid, from the first episode to when it started going two hours in 1997. Thanksfully they've since become more appreciative of those earlier years.

[Milkman Norm]

Mar 31, 2021 10:46:14 GMT -5 BlackoutCreature said:

Mar 31, 2021 10:24:33 GMT -5 wildojinx said:

They did this during the Attitude era as well. Pretty much NOTHING prior to 1997 was ever brought up except to mock it (I wonder if the positive reception to the Gimmick Battle Royal helped them change their tune). Same with WCW around the same time, nothing older than the NWO was ever acknowledged, let alone JCP/GCW.

I remember around the time of the RAW tenth anniversary show (which was nearly twenty years ago now, man do I feel old), whenever they would talk about RAW's history or show clips of it they would basically completely skip over everything, with the exception of Razor Ramon vs. 1-2-3 Kid, from the first episode to when it started going two hours in 1997. Thanksfully they've since become more appreciative of those earlier years.

To be fair those taped mid 90s shows from places like Bushkill, PA didn't have much to offer in terms of highlights.

[Dr. Bolty, Disaster Enby]

Mar 31, 2021 10:36:35 GMT -5 Feyrhausen said:

I think wrestling is similar to comic books. They even share a 7 year rule. It was always thought that wrestling/comic fans would move on after a certain period of time. So after 7 years or so you could repeat stories, characters, gimmicks, etc. And as the old fans went away the new would have little interest in what came before. Even home video did not really change this much. You cant tell me Stone Cold fans cared much about Bruno.

But now the fanbase has contracted to the hardcore. The ones that do want to see all of that history. But it is either lost or considered embarrassing to Vince. Maybe if HHH is ever in charge we might see more of it.

Some of it is contraction to the hardcore, but some is also the increasing availability of older material. A lot of this trend started with the shift from VHS (which could generally hold about 2 hours of content) to DVD (which could hold quite a lot more) - I can't help but remember the Mick Foley VHS tape that was mostly a few clips and highlights strung together, because they couldn't actually fit very many entire matches on it, and compare it to the post-MNW Foley DVD that had just about every worthwhile match that he had mentioned in his memoir except for the King of the Deathmatch final.

Trying to fit something like the old Ric Flair DVD on VHS would have been disastrous - probably a very expensive set of four or five bulky tapes instead of a relatively affordable box of multiple discs. That turned history into a much more attractive product than it had been before.

Same thing with comics - contraction to hardcores happened in concert with the rise of direct market comic book stores, which themselves became markets for back issues. That begat the rise of trade paperbacks, which like VHS tapes, started as inadequately small (see the earliest Marvel Masterworks volumes that collected maybe five issues of Avengers or Fantastic Four) and have now earnestly begun to cover adequately big swaths of the 60's and onward with as many as 21 issues per color paperback volume.

And it's happening with streaming, too. The Office and Friends have just sort of stuck around as pop culture fixtures, because thanks to streaming, they've never stopped being just as available as the newest shows around.

I think there's a wider principle here that once an archive of media is broadly available, it attracts interest, and becomes competition for anything new. I suspect that a lot of media coming out these days is so twist-heavy and postmodern because it needs to set itself apart from the more popular formulaic shows that are, in effect, still their competition.

[BlackoutCreature]

Mar 31, 2021 10:48:29 GMT -5 Milkman Norm said:

Mar 31, 2021 10:46:14 GMT -5 BlackoutCreature said:

I remember around the time of the RAW tenth anniversary show (which was nearly twenty years ago now, man do I feel old), whenever they would talk about RAW's history or show clips of it they would basically completely skip over everything, with the exception of Razor Ramon vs. 1-2-3 Kid, from the first episode to when it started going two hours in 1997. Thanksfully they've since become more appreciative of those earlier years.

To be fair those taped mid 90s shows from places like Bushkill, PA didn't have much to offer in terms of highlights.

I disagree, just doing a cursory glance of RAW's in 1993 I've seen plenty of things that would have made great highlights -
- Ric Flair vs. Mr. Perfect Loser Leave WWF Match.
- Hulk Hogan (and also Brutus Beefcake's) big returns.
- Jim Duggan vs. Shawn Michaels Lumberjack Match.
- Shawn Michaels vs. Marty Jannetty IC Title change.
- The Quebecers vs. Steiner Brothers Tag Title change.
- Razor Ramon vs. Rick Martel for the vacant IC Title.

And that's just the obvious stuff, as I see plenty of matches that have the potential to be hidden gems (most notable a Shawn Michaels vs. 1-2-3 Kid match from towards the end of the year). Then in 1994 you got things like The Quebecers vs Marty Jannetty and the 1-2-3 Kid, Bret Hart vs. 1-2-3 Kid and the rise of crazy Bob Backlund. They could have easily done flashbacks to any of that stuff.

[Deleted]

Mar 31, 2021 10:05:13 GMT -5 jason1980s said:

It's WWE's fault fans don't know about those guys but it's also fan's faults too. They can do some research.

Eh, unless they have an interest in the history of wrestling, I wouldn't say it's their fault. There are plenty of baseball fans who don't know anything about the sport pre-1980's or 90's, video game fans that only go back to playing, say the PS2, movie fans who know an incredible amount about film that have never seen movies from Eisenstein, De Sica, Ozu, Bunuel, or whomever.

A fan doesn't owe that.