tafkaga
Samurai Cop
the Dogfather
Posts: 2,151
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Post by tafkaga on Nov 5, 2023 21:10:52 GMT -5
Imagine if they'd gone with WCWF. It satisfies World Wildlife Fund and it makes us wrestling fans feel all warm and nostalgic.
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Post by OGBoardPoster2005 on Nov 5, 2023 22:33:42 GMT -5
In that era, doing so wouldn't have made sense from a marketing end. By May of 2002, it had been 14 months since WCW and ECW ended. To say, "hey we are all three of these companies combined" wouldn't appeal to anybody. The ECW fans knew what Vince's product was, same for the old NWA territory that became WCW fans, and the WWF fans would have just groaned at the idea of the other two. Fandom was very different in that era. The NFL never even marketed the AFL heritage until 2009, 50 years after the merger. It took the NBA 30 years to even do the same with the ABA. Nostalgia wouldn't have sold in that time, especially when so close to its end. That said, by 2004 when time had past and you had in the year prior Goldberg, Scott Steiner, Rob Van Dam, Booker T, Ric Flair, Hollywood Hogan, Eric Bischoff, Paul Heyman, Kevin Nash, and Scott Hall in featured spots, you had those fans who wanted to come back and new ones that grew up with the WWE that would feature those guys but also showcase new talent that debuted post merger in John Cena, Randy Orton, Batista, and Brock Lesnar and elevate guys like Eddie Guerrero, Chris Benoit and Chris Jericho who were midcarders with potential in WCW. As for acknowledging history, from a narrative standpoint, iykyk. We didn't need Benoit and Flair in 2004 to talk about Benoit being a Horsemen in WCW because to the fans who know, they know, and to the fans who don't, it takes away from the story that is being told. That said, Vince may never have acknowledged names directly on air but he never pretended that there wasn't wrestling outside the company. They just didn't talk about it because whats the point if you are appealing to an audience who would know nothing about it. It's WWE spin to think their viewers didn't know anything else about wrestling outside of WWE. The fact they held onto some of WCW's titles and PPV names and even brought back ECW as a brand name shows that. They weren't wrong in theory. The WWF audience was Northeast based for the longest time. The mainstream fans that tuned in during Hulkamania weren't Mid-South fans, weren't JCP fans, weren't Memphis fans, they were non wrestling fans who fell in love with the WWF product. Its not that farfetched to believe their audience didn't know wrestling outside of their company because to see WCW you had to have TBS and to see ECW you had to be central to the Northeast, which a lot of the base WWF/WWWF fans were from. Was there crossover? For sure, but it wasn't the majority and a lot of casual WWF fans never watched the NWA/WCW. Its revisionist narrative that wrestling fans are one size fits all. The WWF didn't need to acknowledge other wrestling as it would confuse those that don't follow the other shit. As for the nostalgia kick, a lot of that came from time passing on. By 2004 the landscape of the WWE was radically different than what it was in 2001, especially now lot of core WCW and ECW guys had been introduced and releasing these old matches allowed new context for the viewer. Lets be real, the audience has constantly evolved and changed, and you see it on tape.
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