Was The NWA Invasion in 1998 Designed to Fail?

[sungod2020]

In late 1997, the ever-so disgruntled James E. Cornette voiced his displeasure via worked-shoot promos for the current WWF landscape saying it lacks traditional and "true" wrestling like what he grew up on. He promised by the turn of the year, things were going to change and he formed his own stable of guys who embodied his version of pro wrestling.

Without going into too much detail, this video from wrestling biography sums up this thread...


In short, his crown jewel of the stable was Aztec-bodysuit singlet Jeff Jarrett, with a supporting cast of The Rock n' Roll Express(Ricky Morton and Robert Gibson) later to be replaced with "Bombastic" Bob Holly and "Bodacious" Bart Gunn, and eventually Dan "The Beast" Severn. They even brought in their own championships.

During that time, with Double J parading around as the NWA North American Championship, the stable was feuding with WWF's resident Marilyn Manson enthuasist The Headbangers, both winning the stable's tag titles from the old Rock n' Roll Express before losing it to Cornette's repackaged version. By the summer of 1998, the stable fizzled out as each member gone on to do their own thing.

My question is, was this storyline purposely designed to fail just to embarrass Jim Cornette? The reason I ask this was because the company was finally finding it's footing with a newer and edgier product that is far from "tradition" as possible and there's no way the younger WWF audience would know or care about the NWA.

Hell Dan Severn and The Rock n' Roll Express would look out of place in the Hulkamania Era of the company, there's no way they could've gotten over in a more sports entertainment-esque envirornment that was The Attitude Era.

Jeff Jarrett even had trouble getting adjusted in the WWF during that time, and even switched back to his country singer gimmick(which he denounced the previous fall) before losing his locks and becoming a no-nonsense bad-ass who made sure you didn't piss him off or he'll play a tune on your skull with his guitar.

Your thoughts on this ill-aborted storyline?

[Feyrhausen]

I wondered if it had to do with the various lawsuits over Hall and Nash. Like WWF could claim in court that invasions angles dont work and it only worked for WCW because Hall and Nash were pretending they still worked for WWF.

Probably not and it was just an angle to embarrass Cornette.

[KAMALARAMBO: BOOMSHAKALAKA!!!]

Kind of. I listened to Jeff Jarrett’s podcast. It was a while ago but as I recall Jarrett was adamant that things are never booked specifically to fail. However, Vince McMahon was never into the idea while at the same time they needed to find some way to book all these guys. So with Cornette championing the idea and McMahon/Russo being apathetic we got the idea onscreen but not handled with a lot of care or effort.

[Clash, Never a Meter Maid]

Vince clearly wasn’t fully committed to it like Cornette was because Austin came out and stunned Jarrett during a couple of his matches (giving us the Austin robot walk). And how could it? The hardcore fans in the audience at the time already saw Corny feud with Rock ‘n Roll with the Midnights and Heavenly Bodies in Smokey Mountain for years, five years earlier in WWF too! The “true NWA” star power was Luger and Sting and the Horsemen fighting nWo on the other network. They weren’t gonna give a shit about just Rock ‘n Roll, some MMA dude and the country singer guy from USWA. Plus Austin and Tyson and DX were bringing in this mass chunk of new fans who didn’t even know what the NWA was, and they weren’t gonna give a shit either.

[Deleted]

Yes. Yes it was.

Vince is incapable of accepting anything or anyone coming in from the outside as being on par with him so it has to be knocked down as the inferior brand before he can accept it as his own. When Flair came in with the NWA Championship, he and Monsoon would just call it a phony belt at every opportunity as well as question the legitimacy of Flair as a wrestler. Yes, they were babyfaces and Ric was a heel but they did this angle no favors.

But in 1998, the NWA was a pathetic shell of itself. This was two years before the Colorado Kid would win their belt, for goodness sake! And Vince wouldn't even let them beat his own geeks?

[jason1980s]

Barry Windham was also a part of the crew though I can see why he was forgotten. He turned on Bradshaw around January or February of 1998, he hadn't even made the Royal Rumble, didn't even make Wrestlemania 14 other than interfering from outside and was gone by April or so.

I don't think it was designed to fail, it was probably even Cornette's idea but he didn't exactly get very popular guys at the time. Rock n Roll Express looked absolutely ancient, Bob and Bart-I don't think Bob mad any PPVs in 1997 and Bart was only an extra in the first two. Barry was really "just there" since returning as Stalker. I really never found Jeff Jarrett entertaining and I can see lots of fans with the same thinking. Severn was a dark horse-he could have gone either way but in 1998 without being able to talk for himself, he couldn't go far.

If it wasn't Cornette's idea, it could be have Russo to make Cornette happy/shut him up and give a few guys who were doing nothing, something to do.
I doubt Vince had any say in the matter other than OKing it to make the guys happy, get them out of his hair.

[Mozenrath]

It wasn't exactly being given WWF's full committal, but that was how it tended to be in mid-late-'90s WWF, WCW too for that matter. Trying to keep a lot of balls in the air, but a number of them got dropped.

[sungod2020]

Apr 10, 2022 14:03:58 GMT -5 jason1980s said:

Barry Windham was also a part of the crew though I can see why he was forgotten. He turned on Bradshaw around January or February of 1998, he hadn't even made the Royal Rumble, didn't even make Wrestlemania 14 other than interfering from outside and was gone by April or so.

I don't think it was designed to fail, it was probably even Cornette's idea but he didn't exactly get very popular guys at the time. Rock n Roll Express looked absolutely ancient, Bob and Bart-I don't think Bob mad any PPVs in 1997 and Bart was only an extra in the first two. Barry was really "just there" since returning as Stalker. I really never found Jeff Jarrett entertaining and I can see lots of fans with the same thinking. Severn was a dark horse-he could have gone either way but in 1998 without being able to talk for himself, he couldn't go far.

If it wasn't Cornette's idea, it could be have Russo to make Cornette happy/shut him up and give a few guys who were doing nothing, something to do.
I doubt Vince had any say in the matter other than OKing it to make the guys happy, get them out of his hair.

Um, have you ever heard Dan Severn speak? While he's one of the legit toughest guys to step foot in a wrestling ring, his voice/mannerisms come off as a High School gym coach/guidance counselor. Certainly not the beast he was made out to be. He needed a mouth piece.

^{Obviously I wouldn't tell him that unless I wanted to get bent and twisted into a pretzel.}

[jason1980s]

Apr 10, 2022 15:10:50 GMT -5 sungod2020 said:

Um, have you ever heard Dan Severn speak? While he's one of the legit toughest guys to step foot in a wrestling ring, his voice/mannerisms come off as a High School gym coach/guidance counselor. Certainly not the beast he was made out to be. He needed a mouth piece.
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If WWF had put an effort into him as a killer, with or without a mouthpiece, he could have done ok. But they never gave him any kind of real promotion. They probably were never going to do so either. A guy like Shamrock was more charismatic so I'm sure Vince was looking a lot like that meme that circulates of him looking at Torrie or someone, when he saw Shamrock in his office for the first time.

Charles Bronson had a strange voice but the movie producers made him out to be a killer for several decades. Dan reminds me of a guy that Bronson would play just more physical.

Dan was in a different league than Ricky and Robert, Barry, Jeff, Bob and Bart at the time. They weren't exciting anyone at the time but Dan also wasn't the kind of guy to "excite" Vince like a guy barfing did, so he would never even get a chance. He could have been brought in later in the year, put in the Dr. Death position, with promotion against Austin, and done much better. Probably coming straight into anything with Cornette at the time was a WWF career killer also. Cornette hadn't really even done anything on TV from late 96 to late 97. That was an eternity back then so fans didn't care about him.

It also probably didn't help Dan that his name was spelled "Severn" and Michael Cole always said it "Sev Ren" like it was two last names. Why should a fan care if the commentator doesn't even take the time to properly say his name. Poor Mike Adamle was destroyed by the internet fans while Cole is a lifetime appointment employee.

[thegame415]

Russo said in a shoot this was done just to appease Cornette.

[Non Banjoble Tokens]

All I know is that it was awesome the first time I saw Dan Severn in the ring destroy someone while he was dressed in a suit.

[Fundertaker]

The weirdest thing with this angle is that I could totally buy a Bradsahw/Windham gimmick match at some B-level PPV and that could've salvaged it somewhat.

As it is, it was just pointless other than introducing us to Bodacious Bart and Bombastic Bob!

[Sephiroth]

More or less. Everything I’ve ever heard paints that it only got the green light to shut Cornett up, but that Vince never intended to put much effort into it.

[eJm]

If they didn't design it to fail then I don't know what was.

Like, the thing started with the NWA Board of Directors helping Jeff Jarrett to cheat against an out of shape Barry Windham who was last seen in a makeshift "New" tag team with Bradshaw. Raquel Gonzalez's main roster debut was better executed.

[auph10imitated]

They may have thought given them the old school mentality vs the Attitude era would have made them more heelish. But it just didn't translate.

[Can you afford to pay me, Gah]

Apr 11, 2022 5:34:14 GMT -5 eJm said:

If they didn't design it to fail then I don't know what was.

Like, the thing started with the NWA Board of Directors helping Jeff Jarrett to cheat against an out of shape Barry Windham who was last seen in a makeshift "New" tag team with Bradshaw. Raquel Gonzalez's main roster debut was better executed.

Then you added a even than over the hill Rock and roll Express. Than bring Bart Gunn and Bob Holly to be the new Midnight Express, Who didn't have a pinky worth of the chemistry that made the others work. Either Eaton and Lane. or With Dennis.

[The Dark Order Inferno]

It was like the brawl for all, Vince Russo trying to show up one of his enemies backstage now that he had the power and influence to do so, something he did every chance he got.

[fortknox]

Here's what Cornette has to say about it.

[Hulkshi Tanahashi]

I remember this. I thought it was dumber than the Brawl For All. I knew very little about the NWA back then, but I still knew enough to know that the big NWA stars were in WCW. And with all the new casual fans coming in who knew nothing about the NWA, there was no way this was going to succeed.

[Nickybojelais]

Typical Russo.

I was watching a Kayfabe Commentary shoot interview with him talking about 1998 WWF and Russo said that the idea was conceived by himself to prove that the old school NWA stuff would fail in the Attitude era.

Then Russo does a complete 180 and claims that it was all Cornette's idea. Further proof that you can't trust a single thing that comes out of Russo's mouth!