petef3
Don Corleone
Posts: 1,783
|
Post by petef3 on Mar 13, 2022 10:47:46 GMT -5
This is pretty revisionist in and of itself. The AWA title wasn't going to keep Hogan around and Greg was never really the "main act" in the AWA, except maybe at the tail end when everyone else had left. Gagne was not an NWA member, but he was still a part of the cartel, and a convenient person for the Alliance to point to and say, "No, we're not violating any antitrust laws and we're not a cartel--see?" It would if Hogan was the guy making more money than he could make elsewhere, which certainly wasn’t going to happen if he’s not the star attraction at the top of the card, which Verne was never going to make him. Vergne wanted a technical wrestler (i.e. the best worker) as champ and Hogan was never going ot be that. But if hadn’t been so stubborn and short-sighted, his plan was to continue to expand the AWA and, specifically most immediately, do a cage match with Bockwinkel and Hogan in NYC. Let Hogan go over at MSG and you’ve got your star. And we’re not too far at that point from Vergne doing PPVs, which he did in association with other promotions, and if he had done so with Hogan as his star Hogan was probably going to make more money than in Vince’s territory — this is before WWF had taken over the wrestling world. Nobody knew at the time that this would happen and work in such a big way, that WrestleMania would become the sport’s Super Bowl level event, that there would be regular PPVs and Saturday Night Main Event on NBC, etc. Turns out Vergne was just a few years away from having a national TV deal with ESPN. Couple that with keeping Hogan and today the AWA could very realistically have become what the WWF became. Uh, Hogan WAS a star attraction at the top of the card in the AWA. Verne pushed him as hard as he'd ever pushed any other babyface besides himself. And he was the first promoter to see big money in Hogan as a babyface! He'd been a heel his entire career until he got to the AWA, crowds started cheering for him, and Verne said, "Let's go with it." The expansion-era WWF was paying guys more to be job guys working house show openers than some territories were paying main eventers. Vince already had all of the major markets besides Chicago under wraps--he'd already moved into the vacant L.A. territory in 1983. There was literally nothing Verne could have done to compete with that. He wasn't going to be able to hang onto Hogan for 2 more years waiting for the ESPN deal. It also needs to be noted that contrary to popular narrative, 1984 was an outstanding year for the AWA business-wise. The wheels didn't really start coming off for them financially until the tail end of '85.
|
|
|
Post by James Fabiano on Mar 13, 2022 11:21:57 GMT -5
Also people like acting like ADR was NEVER over in the WWE... in his first feud with Rey until Mania was getting a lot of heat... then he lost to Edge... and then to Christian... and they kept him in a holding pattern saying the same shit and basically doing the same AGGRESSIVE! thing of holding the armbar after the bell, for like a year. He was also very over as a face when he turned... it wasn't until they started taking away a lot of the things that got him over to begin with (like suddenly he's not a Mexican Aristocrat despite that being his whole gimmick.) and eventually having him feud with Dolph Ziggler who the crowd really wanted to cheer at that point. Oooh....let's think of more IWC examples... Hardcore Holly was never over. Well at least they liked him when he was the Big Shot/super heavyweight.
|
|
|
Post by "Playboy" Don Douglas on Mar 13, 2022 12:32:21 GMT -5
Also people like acting like ADR was NEVER over in the WWE... in his first feud with Rey until Mania was getting a lot of heat... then he lost to Edge... and then to Christian... and they kept him in a holding pattern saying the same shit and basically doing the same AGGRESSIVE! thing of holding the armbar after the bell, for like a year. He was also very over as a face when he turned... it wasn't until they started taking away a lot of the things that got him over to begin with (like suddenly he's not a Mexican Aristocrat despite that being his whole gimmick.) and eventually having him feud with Dolph Ziggler who the crowd really wanted to cheer at that point. Oooh....let's think of more IWC examples... Hardcore Holly was never over. Well at least they liked him when he was the Big Shot/super heavyweight. "How bout you, Dracula, why don't you drag your fat ass up there, see if you make weight."
|
|
|
Post by EvenBaldobombHasAJob on Mar 13, 2022 15:43:02 GMT -5
"Remember when Hardcore Holly won the World Heavyweight Title at Wrestlemania?" Yes I know it's just a meme, but it's the only close example I remember. Replace Holly for Saturn or Stevie Richards depending where on the internet you're heading to. It was Shane Douglas, damn it
|
|
|
Post by Andee9001 on Mar 14, 2022 20:06:12 GMT -5
The Triple H/nWo 2002 thread caused me to remember. When WWE brought back Big Gold in 2002 they did a story on Confidential about the history of the title going back to the NWA (before Big Gold even). So it seemed like this was them bringing back the old NWA/WCW title and lineage. But then the next year H is making fun of Booker for.never winning a "big one" and only a title held by David Arquette. A title H was holding at the time. Basically the Big Gold in WWE did or did not have the history depending on whether they wanted it to that day. Yeah that lineage is very murky. The WWE website title history page always said Triple H was the first champion but then when talking up the history they would sometimes bring up the NWA/WCW history. I remember there was something brought up by Michael Cole on commentary when they unified the titles again in 2014. He made a point to mention that the Undisputed title was made up of the WWE and WCW titles but the new unified title had it's history dating to the early 1900s (i can't remember exactly off the top of my head.) Always struck me as odd that they didn't want to formally acknowledge the titles history yet they have with the United States title.
|
|
|
Post by johnnyk9 on Mar 14, 2022 20:11:52 GMT -5
Sean Mooney acting like things 2 weeks or older didn’t matter
|
|
|
Post by A Platypus Rave on Mar 14, 2022 20:12:59 GMT -5
The Triple H/nWo 2002 thread caused me to remember. When WWE brought back Big Gold in 2002 they did a story on Confidential about the history of the title going back to the NWA (before Big Gold even). So it seemed like this was them bringing back the old NWA/WCW title and lineage. But then the next year H is making fun of Booker for.never winning a "big one" and only a title held by David Arquette. A title H was holding at the time. Basically the Big Gold in WWE did or did not have the history depending on whether they wanted it to that day. Yeah that lineage is very murky. The WWE website title history page always said Triple H was the first champion but then when talking up the history they would sometimes bring up the NWA/WCW history. I remember there was something brought up by Michael Cole on commentary when they unified the titles again in 2014. He made a point to mention that the Undisputed title was made up of the WWE and WCW titles but the new unified title had it's history dating to the early 1900s (i can't remember exactly off the top of my head.) Always struck me as odd that they didn't want to formally acknowledge the titles history yet they have with the United States title. They kinda kept going back and forth on whether or not it did... the lineage always said HHH was first... but then they'd put out a History of the World Heavyweight Championship DVD and it included the NWA and WCW history...
|
|
tafkaga
Samurai Cop
the Dogfather
Posts: 2,115
|
Post by tafkaga on Mar 16, 2022 8:51:15 GMT -5
This is pretty revisionist in and of itself. The AWA title wasn't going to keep Hogan around and Greg was never really the "main act" in the AWA, except maybe at the tail end when everyone else had left. Gagne was not an NWA member, but he was still a part of the cartel, and a convenient person for the Alliance to point to and say, "No, we're not violating any antitrust laws and we're not a cartel--see?" It would if Hogan was the guy making more money than he could make elsewhere, which certainly wasn’t going to happen if he’s not the star attraction at the top of the card, which Verne was never going to make him. Vergne wanted a technical wrestler (i.e. the best worker) as champ and Hogan was never going ot be that. But if hadn’t been so stubborn and short-sighted, his plan was to continue to expand the AWA and, specifically most immediately, do a cage match with Bockwinkel and Hogan in NYC. Let Hogan go over at MSG and you’ve got your star. And we’re not too far at that point from Vergne doing PPVs, which he did in association with other promotions, and if he had done so with Hogan as his star Hogan was probably going to make more money than in Vince’s territory — this is before WWF had taken over the wrestling world. Nobody knew at the time that this would happen and work in such a big way, that WrestleMania would become the sport’s Super Bowl level event, that there would be regular PPVs and Saturday Night Main Event on NBC, etc. Turns out Vergne was just a few years away from having a national TV deal with ESPN. Couple that with keeping Hogan and today the AWA could very realistically have become what the WWF became. There's too many "ifs" here though, and the biggest one is "If Verne hadn't been", but Verne was, and that's why there was no chance of any of this coming true. Even if Hogan beat Bockwinkel in MSG and got over as big as when he beat Sheik in MSG, it's still the difference between Verne Gagne and Vince McMahon, the latter of which knew how to use Hogan, while the former hadn't a clue. Even if we have Hogan with the AWA title on ESPN, that's still a far cry from the Rock & Wrestling phenomenon that Vince helped create.
|
|
Futureraven: Beelzebruv
Bill S. Preston, Esq.
The Ultimate Arbiter of Right And Wrong
Spent half my life here, God help me
Posts: 15,050
|
Post by Futureraven: Beelzebruv on Mar 16, 2022 10:18:37 GMT -5
The old "If it was a house show it didn't happen" philosophy. With the exception of One Night Only, I wonder how relevant to storylines the UK PPVs ago. Only other thing I can remember was Bulldog throwing a trash can at Test, hitting Stephanie and giving her amnesia in 99.
|
|
fg
Unicron
Gaming
Posts: 2,952
|
Post by fg on Mar 16, 2022 14:25:23 GMT -5
With the exception of One Night Only, I wonder how relevant to storylines the UK PPVs ago. Only other thing I can remember was Bulldog throwing a trash can at Test, hitting Stephanie and giving her amnesia in 99. If you watch that moment where the Bulldog threw the can, you can hear that it hit a wall and not Steph (unless Steph’s head is as hard as a brick wall).
|
|
Futureraven: Beelzebruv
Bill S. Preston, Esq.
The Ultimate Arbiter of Right And Wrong
Spent half my life here, God help me
Posts: 15,050
|
Post by Futureraven: Beelzebruv on Mar 16, 2022 15:45:45 GMT -5
Only other thing I can remember was Bulldog throwing a trash can at Test, hitting Stephanie and giving her amnesia in 99. If you watch that moment where the Bulldog threw the can, you can hear that it hit a wall and not Steph (unless Steph’s head is as hard as a brick wall). Well...
|
|
|
Post by ianriccaboni on Mar 17, 2022 6:51:44 GMT -5
"Ole Anderson was the worst booker ever." People always use 1990 and the Black Scorpion to back up statements like this. It ignores the fact that Jim Herd was pushing for a WWF copycat. Asking Ole Anderson to book that style of wrestling would be like asking Vince Russo to book in the style of Mid-Atlantic or Jim Cornette to book a lucha company. It also ignores that he took that and pulled some of the biggest individual television ratings ever for wrestling, specifically the first Black Scorpion vs Sting match!
|
|
msc
Dennis Stamp
Posts: 4,447
|
Post by msc on Mar 17, 2022 9:27:38 GMT -5
On this subject, I've been doing a bit of research on the decline of British wrestling in the late eighties, and people have a lot of ideas about how and why that went down that I'm not sure are entirely accurate. People claim it was still popular and Greg Dyke is often derided as a horrible classist bastard for axing it because it was "too working class", and there's still a massive amount of nostalgia for it and people who think it was a travesty that it was axed. The reality was that its viewership had been declining since the early eighties, and while class may have played a part, it was largely about money: ITV had just signed a contract with the Football League it needed to pay for, and the Crabtrees were apparently charging an absolute fortune for television. And the whole thing was just a bit shit and dated compared to the WWF which was now available. Like territorial wrestling in the US, it was doomed.
Ah there's plenty of room to think Greg Dyke was a classist bastard AND note the decline in wrestling. (After all, Dyke axed a bunch of other stuff at the same time.) It fell considerably from the days of the insane ratings for McManus/Pallo, but then - Mick McManus as a heel was a huge draw (with opponents) and when he got old (he was in his 50s by the 1970s) and his generation retired, they had Big Daddy, and that was about it. A vacuum. The ratings died because there wasn't anyone to tune in for. There's a reason casual folk with memory of British wrestler's memories tend to go "McManus...Big Daddy.... maybe the British Bulldog".
|
|
|
Post by Milkman Norm on Mar 17, 2022 10:56:16 GMT -5
It would if Hogan was the guy making more money than he could make elsewhere, which certainly wasn’t going to happen if he’s not the star attraction at the top of the card, which Verne was never going to make him. Vergne wanted a technical wrestler (i.e. the best worker) as champ and Hogan was never going ot be that. But if hadn’t been so stubborn and short-sighted, his plan was to continue to expand the AWA and, specifically most immediately, do a cage match with Bockwinkel and Hogan in NYC. Let Hogan go over at MSG and you’ve got your star. And we’re not too far at that point from Vergne doing PPVs, which he did in association with other promotions, and if he had done so with Hogan as his star Hogan was probably going to make more money than in Vince’s territory — this is before WWF had taken over the wrestling world. Nobody knew at the time that this would happen and work in such a big way, that WrestleMania would become the sport’s Super Bowl level event, that there would be regular PPVs and Saturday Night Main Event on NBC, etc. Turns out Vergne was just a few years away from having a national TV deal with ESPN. Couple that with keeping Hogan and today the AWA could very realistically have become what the WWF became. Uh, Hogan WAS a star attraction at the top of the card in the AWA. Verne pushed him as hard as he'd ever pushed any other babyface besides himself. And he was the first promoter to see big money in Hogan as a babyface! He'd been a heel his entire career until he got to the AWA, crowds started cheering for him, and Verne said, "Let's go with it." The expansion-era WWF was paying guys more to be job guys working house show openers than some territories were paying main eventers. Vince already had all of the major markets besides Chicago under wraps--he'd already moved into the vacant L.A. territory in 1983. There was literally nothing Verne could have done to compete with that. He wasn't going to be able to hang onto Hogan for 2 more years waiting for the ESPN deal. It also needs to be noted that contrary to popular narrative, 1984 was an outstanding year for the AWA business-wise. The wheels didn't really start coming off for them financially until the tail end of '85. And it's not like Chicago had any great loyalty to Verne. If anything it viewed itself in terms of size as importance as closer to New York. Heck, Fred Kohler and Vincent J McMahon were allied in trying to disolve the NWA in the 60s. Vince K moving in and being successful was gonna happen regardless.
|
|
agent817
Fry's dog Seymour
Doesn't Know Whose Ring It Is
Posts: 21,170
|
Post by agent817 on Mar 23, 2022 10:23:33 GMT -5
It felt like TNA went out of their way to try to get you to forget their own history every few years, especially after Hogan came in. At some point, they tried to act like the Asylum days didn't happen. I know that there was that DVD of the Asylum Days, but still.
|
|
|
Post by GodzillaIsMyMonster on Mar 23, 2022 12:01:41 GMT -5
Also people like acting like ADR was NEVER over in the WWE... in his first feud with Rey until Mania was getting a lot of heat... then he lost to Edge... and then to Christian... and they kept him in a holding pattern saying the same shit and basically doing the same AGGRESSIVE! thing of holding the armbar after the bell, for like a year. He was also very over as a face when he turned... it wasn't until they started taking away a lot of the things that got him over to begin with (like suddenly he's not a Mexican Aristocrat despite that being his whole gimmick.) and eventually having him feud with Dolph Ziggler who the crowd really wantIed to cheer at that point. He got over again as a heel during that Ziggler feud. The match where he kept attacking his head. He was HATED (in a good way) but WWE f***ed it up.
|
|
|
Post by GodzillaIsMyMonster on Mar 23, 2022 12:04:44 GMT -5
It felt like TNA went out of their way to try to get you to forget their own history every few years, especially after Hogan came in. Ahhh, the old DC Comics approach lol.
|
|