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Post by Mister Pigwell on Sept 21, 2022 3:54:01 GMT -5
Also, I'd have never had ECW join forces with either side. Like, ECW was the rebel. You could even have Stephanie be the "owner" but just have ECW cause trouble and chaos. Yep I have thought this since 2001 ECW collaborating with WCW may have happened in reality In the 90s, but in kayfabe the ECW brand was massively anti WCW. Having them team up against the WWF didn't make a lick of sense. If ECW was teaming with either of those two it would 100% be WWF But as you say, in reality they should been a renegade, instigating third part of this war, as they were in realityEh kinda sorta. In reality they were on WWF payroll playing the part of rebel. Let's not forget WWF was secretly cutting ECW a check (weekly nonetheless) to stay afloat. No one knew but Heyman, so in the wrestlers and fans minds they were rebels. But reality becomes different with Heyman's actual standing. Now this coming out in storyline woulda been neat as hell in a reality where the Invasion played out better. Lotta story opportunity there.
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Mozenrath
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Post by Mozenrath on Sept 21, 2022 4:36:44 GMT -5
Yep I have thought this since 2001 ECW collaborating with WCW may have happened in reality In the 90s, but in kayfabe the ECW brand was massively anti WCW. Having them team up against the WWF didn't make a lick of sense. If ECW was teaming with either of those two it would 100% be WWF But as you say, in reality they should been a renegade, instigating third part of this war, as they were in realityEh kinda sorta. In reality they were on WWF payroll playing the part of rebel. Let's not forget WWF was secretly cutting ECW a check (weekly nonetheless) to stay afloat. No one knew but Heyman, so in the wrestlers and fans minds they were rebels. But reality becomes different with Heyman's actual standing. Now this coming out in storyline woulda been neat as hell in a reality where the Invasion played out better. Lotta story opportunity there. Yeah, there were wrestlers who suspected something was up, like Stevie Richards going to WCW was in part due to Raven, but also because guys knew that if you tried to get jobs with WWF, Paul would find out and could be vindictive, so they assumed he just had sources in the office or something. One of the Dudleys, I think Bubba but it could have been D-Von, was in Titan Towers and saw Heyman in an elevator, and that was after the Dudleyz had made the jump but before ECW had folded yet, so it was definitely a surprise to them. It had been known that WWF and ECW could obviously play ball sometimes, like the '97 invasion, WWF lending them Al Snow for a bit, etc, but I am actually unsure if anyone has come out and said how long Heyman was secretly getting paid.
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Post by "Gizzark" Mike Wronglevenay on Sept 21, 2022 5:16:53 GMT -5
Yep I have thought this since 2001 ECW collaborating with WCW may have happened in reality In the 90s, but in kayfabe the ECW brand was massively anti WCW. Having them team up against the WWF didn't make a lick of sense. If ECW was teaming with either of those two it would 100% be WWF But as you say, in reality they should been a renegade, instigating third part of this war, as they were in realityEh kinda sorta. In reality they were on WWF payroll playing the part of rebel. Let's not forget WWF was secretly cutting ECW a check (weekly nonetheless) to stay afloat. No one knew but Heyman, so in the wrestlers and fans minds they were rebels. But reality becomes different with Heyman's actual standing. Now this coming out in storyline woulda been neat as hell in a reality where the Invasion played out better. Lotta story opportunity there. Reality was the wrong choice there at the bery end, I more meant in their own kind of post kayfabe reality sandwich In gimmick, ECW were anti everyone
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Post by celtics543 on Sept 21, 2022 5:33:09 GMT -5
I'm going to zag on the Invasion a little bit. I think they ended it too early.
Go ahead and do everything they did right up through Survivor Series except don't turn Austin heel. Have Austin stay on team WWF, maybe switch him with Big Show or Jericho. Then the night after Survivor Series you have Eric Bischoff show up instead of Flair but instead of saying he owns half of the WWF he can say he owns WCW with the same rationale Flair used. Then he can launch into a little history lesson and talk about the team that the WWF beat last night was a shadow of what a real team of WCW guys would look like and right then you introduce Ric Flair, Sting, Steiner, and Goldberg. Then you introduce a War Games concept instead of Elimination Chamber and it all leads to a payoff at Wrestlemania 18.
At Wrestlemania you can debut the NWO who creates havoc for everyone, ECW is still running around creating chaos. It should have been great. That Survivor Series team should have been Rock/Austin/Jericho/Undertaker/Kane vs Sting/Goldberg/Steiner/Booker T/Flair, leave out the McMahons. That would have been the biggest buyrate, including Wrestlemania, of all time.
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Post by Mid-Carder on Sept 21, 2022 7:09:15 GMT -5
Quite a few of my wrestling fan friends dropped out at this point because they didn't follow WCW and suddenly there were a load of new guys who weren't a threat.
The post-Survivor Series Raw hitting the reset button tells me they knew it was a flop and wanted to quickly move on.
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Post by kingoftheindies on Sept 21, 2022 8:02:33 GMT -5
Yep I have thought this since 2001 ECW collaborating with WCW may have happened in reality In the 90s, but in kayfabe the ECW brand was massively anti WCW. Having them team up against the WWF didn't make a lick of sense. If ECW was teaming with either of those two it would 100% be WWF But as you say, in reality they should been a renegade, instigating third part of this war, as they were in realityEh kinda sorta. In reality they were on WWF payroll playing the part of rebel. Let's not forget WWF was secretly cutting ECW a check (weekly nonetheless) to stay afloat. No one knew but Heyman, so in the wrestlers and fans minds they were rebels. But reality becomes different with Heyman's actual standing. Now this coming out in storyline woulda been neat as hell in a reality where the Invasion played out better. Lotta story opportunity there. Fun fact WCW was also paying ECW in the 90s but once Heyman decided to make everything anti WCW they pulled the plug. As for the Invasion angle there were a couple things that happened to that got them heat. For one the talent was supposed to get involved at Wrestlemania and help Shane beat Vince but Shawn Stasiak did a radio interview saying they were all being flown in so with how wrestling works because Stasiak opened his mouth WWF officials decided that all WCW wrestlers couldn't be trusted. Next issue was the WWF ring was a bit bigger than the WCW ring so the timing for wrestlers was off making WWF think WCW guys couldn't work. The infamous Buff/Booker match that was universally panned. Vince wanted that match cause he saw Buff as the bigger name but they had been running Booker vs Lance Storm on house shows (and since debuting in WCW Lance was higher on card than Buff) which were well received. Despite everyone telling Vince to go with Lance he went with Buff. They also were in Tacoma so the WCW guys got booed and Scott Hudson/Arn Anderson was not a good commentary duo for that match. As others have pointed out the next WCW match was Kidman vs Gregory Helms in Atlanta and both guys got huge reactions. DDP also got a lot of heat because he liked to plan out every detail of his match... which why he got heat for that no clue since Macho Man did the same thing but him getting heat moved him down the card.
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hassanchop
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Post by hassanchop on Sept 21, 2022 19:03:18 GMT -5
Eh kinda sorta. In reality they were on WWF payroll playing the part of rebel. Let's not forget WWF was secretly cutting ECW a check (weekly nonetheless) to stay afloat. No one knew but Heyman, so in the wrestlers and fans minds they were rebels. But reality becomes different with Heyman's actual standing. Now this coming out in storyline woulda been neat as hell in a reality where the Invasion played out better. Lotta story opportunity there. Fun fact WCW was also paying ECW in the 90s but once Heyman decided to make everything anti WCW they pulled the plug. As for the Invasion angle there were a couple things that happened to that got them heat. For one the talent was supposed to get involved at Wrestlemania and help Shane beat Vince but Shawn Stasiak did a radio interview saying they were all being flown in so with how wrestling works because Stasiak opened his mouth WWF officials decided that all WCW wrestlers couldn't be trusted. Next issue was the WWF ring was a bit bigger than the WCW ring so the timing for wrestlers was off making WWF think WCW guys couldn't work. The infamous Buff/Booker match that was universally panned. Vince wanted that match cause he saw Buff as the bigger name but they had been running Booker vs Lance Storm on house shows (and since debuting in WCW Lance was higher on card than Buff) which were well received. Despite everyone telling Vince to go with Lance he went with Buff. They also were in Tacoma so the WCW guys got booed and Scott Hudson/Arn Anderson was not a good commentary duo for that match. As others have pointed out the next WCW match was Kidman vs Gregory Helms in Atlanta and both guys got huge reactions. DDP also got a lot of heat because he liked to plan out every detail of his match... which why he got heat for that no clue since Macho Man did the same thing but him getting heat moved him down the card. One more thing to consider they had to rename themselves The Alliance as Heyman didn't have ownership of the brand name ECW but claimed he did and there was an ongoing lawsuit with Heyman and he told no one.
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Post by tntchamp on Sept 22, 2022 14:01:16 GMT -5
To this day, I don't think there will ever be a wrestling storyline with more wasted potential then the invasion. This really should have been the biggest wrestling storyline of all time but they dropped the ball big time. The high point was pretty much just Stone Cold Steve Austin clearing the ring of the alliance the raw before the invasion ppv(and we of course saw what that ultimately lead too) and a fantastic survivor series winner take all match. It's clear in hindsight that Vince's ego was never going to let WCW look good or actually threatening but all the big money matches that we could have gotten during that period but didn't is a shame. Can you imagine what a ppv butyrate with Stone Cold vs Goldberg could have made or for that matter what the live gate attendance would have been? It could have easily made Vince back whatever money he would have had to spend to get those contracts.
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