New Generation Main Event Scene Wasn't Bad

[EZ: Brainy Bae]

This narrative seems baked into history but every time I watch a New Generation-adjacent show it's evidently false. The start-stop usage of these talents was a far bigger issue than lack of star power. This is the main event/upper-card talent Vince had at the time (not all at once, but most more often than not):


Undertaker
Bret Hart
Shawn Michaels
Diesel
Lex Luger
The British Bulldog
Owen Hart
Razor Ramon
Sycho Sid
Yokozuna
Bam Bam Bigelow
Mankind
Jeff Jarrett
Goldust

And part-time access to King Kong Bundy, Roddy Piper, Randy Savage, Bob Backlund

Take a look at how many of those names never had a major, money-making feud. No Taker/Bigelow, Bret/Razor, Taker/Luger, Diesel/Bigelow (one match that Bigelow was then dropped down the card for). Wasting a Piper '94 match on Lawler instead of a young heel like HBK or Jarrett who could make him look better. Absolutely refusing to let Savage be full-time despite him begging and leaving programs against Bret, HBK, Foley and others on the table. This is not even mentioning the mishandling of Tatanka who could have been another big upper-carder or 1-2-3 Kid.

Vince was clueless on so much of this but none of it had to do with a lack of names or talent.

EDIT: And I forgot Hakushi! And Vader but maybe 96 is pushing it

[SirLucas]

Another false narrative is that the New Generation era failed because it was filled with crappy gimmicks like TL Hopper, The Goon, Mantaur, Duke Drose, etc. Then the Attitude era gave us more reality based storytelling. Yet the Kane vs. Undertaker supernatural storyline was something not so reality based, but worked.

Also, those crappy occupational gimmicks were mainly booked as jobbers for tv. Those gimmicks rarely if never made it to pay per view.

[rnrk supports BLM]

The really huge blunder in '95 was turning nearly every viable top name babyface at the same time without any credible villains for them to fight. Bret, Shawn, Undertaker, Diesel, Razor, Luger, Bam Bam, all faces. Yoko and Owen were down in the tag division-- which was a good idea in isolation, they worked well together and it was a break after having big singles main event heel runs over the last two years, but that left the actual main event scene scraping the bottom of the barrel with the dancing fat guy from Men on a Mission, then relying on Davey Boy to get FOUR World Title challenges on PPV within a year, a guy who was great but who'd never been treated like a credible top name before and felt like such an entrenched midcard act the whole time.

[The Creepo Man]

One big factor was the complete black hole of tag team depth, particularly in 1995. When Diesel and Shawn won the titles from the Headshrinkers at a house show a day or two before SummerSlam 1994 and eventually broke up without having to drop the belts in the ring, it made everyone else look like chumps. Nobody could take the Heavenly Bodies, M.O.M., Blu Twins and the Smokin’ Gunns as viable champions.

Anyone complaining about the quality of the tag team titles today would be flabbergasted at the state of the division in 1995. Vince was forced to deplete the singles division of Lex Luger, Davey Boy Smith, Owen Hart and Yokozuna for the majority of the year and also Razor Ramon, 1-2-3 Kid, Bob Holly, Sycho Sid, Tatanka and Bam Bam Bigelow for brief spells to replenish the tag ranks.

Robbing Peter to pay Paul neutralized a lot of singles depth they had probably because Vince took tag team wrestling for granted but felt he needed to keep the division around out of necessity more than anything.

[EZ: Brainy Bae]

Dec 27, 2021 0:27:10 GMT -5 rnrk supports BLM said:

The really huge blunder in '95 was turning nearly every viable top name babyface at the same time without any credible villains for them to fight. Bret, Shawn, Undertaker, Diesel, Razor, Luger, Bam Bam, all faces. Yoko and Owen were down in the tag division-- which was a good idea in isolation, they worked well together and it was a break after having big singles main event heel runs over the last two years, but that left the actual main event scene scraping the bottom of the barrel with the dancing fat guy from Men on a Mission, then relying on Davey Boy to get FOUR World Title challenges on PPV within a year, a guy who was great but who'd never been treated like a credible top name before and felt like such an entrenched midcard act the whole time.

The latter half of 94 also had Backlund returning in a killer angle, working a tremendous match with Bret apart from the finishing sequence taking about ten minutes, and then three days later dropping it to Diesel like a goof because Vince thought he could recreate Hulkamania. Then Bret had to get his win back despite Diesel putting Backlund away like a jobber.

Throughout all of 1995 you could see Vince struggling which Pokemon starter to select between Bret (dependable! good)!, Diesel (the size! the power!) and Shawn (the looks! the charisma!) which is why he couldn't turn any of them until Diesel decided to hit the door, and by doing so never made one feel like the star. There are a million ways that whole year could've been run back and most of them would've been better than having Mabel win KOTR and main-eventing your second biggest show of the year (which was unfair to him too, as he was over in one of their few tag teams!). Mind-numbing. 

[Can you afford to pay me, Gah]

Dec 26, 2021 21:01:09 GMT -5 EZ: Brainy Bae said:

This narrative seems baked into history but every time I watch a New Generation-adjacent show it's evidently false. The start-stop usage of these talents was a far bigger issue than lack of star power. This is the main event/upper-card talent Vince had at the time (not all at once, but most more often than not):


Undertaker
Bret Hart
Shawn Michaels
Diesel
Lex Luger
The British Bulldog
Owen Hart
Razor Ramon
Sycho Sid
Yokozuna
Bam Bam Bigelow
Mankind
Jeff Jarrett
Goldust

And part-time access to King Kong Bundy, Roddy Piper, Randy Savage, Bob Backlund

Take a look at how many of those names never had a major, money-making feud. No Taker/Bigelow, Bret/Razor, Taker/Luger, Diesel/Bigelow (one match that Bigelow was then dropped down the card for). Wasting a Piper '94 match on Lawler instead of a young heel like HBK or Jarrett who could make him look better. Absolutely refusing to let Savage be full-time despite him begging and leaving programs against Bret, HBK, Foley and others on the table. This is not even mentioning the mishandling of Tatanka who could have been another big upper-carder or 1-2-3 Kid.

Vince was clueless on so much of this but none of it had to do with a lack of names or talent.

EDIT: And I forgot Hakushi! And Vader but maybe 96 is pushing it

You look at this list and you go well not bad. How was it used is a different thing. They put for of them in tag teams. Bulldog/Luger and Yoko/Owen. If Vader in 96 is pushing it, than why would Mankind be listed when he came in later in the same year? Now 95 or Diesel title run is where it went wrong. You look at the list and ask yourself how many where heels. Take away Mankind and really Goldust because one debut at the end of said run and the other came in the following year. Diesel had 3 PPV matches against Sid who not that good of a wrestler. So the matches sucked. Bulldog turned Heel and was Diesel's last PPV title defense before losing it to baby face Bret Hart. He faced Shawn once at Wrestlemania and than turned Shawn face. The problem why why Diesel failed as champion as people say. He was given shit to work with in the ME most of it. He MEed SummerSlam with a guy not listed in Mabel. What fans brought him as a ligament MEer? Nobody. fans crapped on it as it took place the push at King of the Ring. So who was going to order the PPV with him in the ME. Not trying to sound disrespectful to someone who passed away in Mabel but he wasn't a great worker. I mean you don't hear about good matches that he was involved in.

[The Dark Order Inferno]

They weren't short of talent in the new generation era, the problem was the booking, gimmicks and lunatics running the asylum, able to veto any attempt to right the ship even though it would mean they had more varied opponents and more interesting feuds.

[tafkaga]

I think one of the main problems with the NG was not the quality of talent, but the vacuum left by Hogan with no apparent heir. The New Generation I think was the WWF's way of rebranding and saying "We don't need a Hulk Hogan anymore", but it took time for the fans to become accustomed to not having an 'IT' guy at the top, and as a result we saw most of the names on your list as midcard acts passing around the WWF title. Also, the difference between the Intercontinental champ and the WWF champ at this time was virtually nothing, and if anything that helped cultivate the illusion that WWF lacked star power.

[Jindrak Mark]

Dec 27, 2021 9:10:01 GMT -5 tafkaga said:

Also, the difference between the Intercontinental champ and the WWF champ at this time was virtually nothing, and if anything that helped cultivate the illusion that WWF lacked star power.

At Summerslam 95 the IC title with the Razor/Shawn ladder rematch seemed like a way bigger deal than Diesel v Mabel for the world title.

[johnnyk9]

I’ve been watching 1995 in chronological order and they had a decent undercard to even if they had crappy gimmicks they could work

[thegame415]

I think the uppercard from 1993-1996 is great. It's just the lowecard is garbage.