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Post by Seth Drakin of Monster Crap on May 8, 2024 23:06:47 GMT -5
That Chris Colt episode......damn, that is a WTF episode
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Post by "Gizzark" Mike Wronglevenay on May 9, 2024 2:23:49 GMT -5
Boy, that epilogue about Vince's downfall feels completely out of place and irrelevant to the rest of the episode. Agreed. Absolute garbage inclusion, relevant to nothing
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BRV
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Post by BRV on May 9, 2024 8:49:53 GMT -5
It is one of my problems with Dark side of the ring they made Vince out to be the Villain in random episodes he had nothing to do with... like the UWF. Sure the promoter was a coked up lunatic but it failed because mean old Vince re-signed the nearly immobile Andre the giant. Vince is a shithead, there's plenty of shitty things he actually did you could talk about. Bringing him up and making him out to be a villain in shit he had nothing or very little to do with just makes the rest of your reporting on him look suspect. That's really been the way I've felt about "Dark Side of the Ring" since its inception. Any chance they can get to make Vince McMahon the overarching villain of professional wrestling, no matter how tenuous the connection, they'll take it and run. Don't get me wrong, there's plenty of content that can be referenced in which Vince McMahon is a despicable, detestable villain and his tendrils extend far into the history of professional wrestling over the last five decades. But the show went above and beyond in numerous instances and he was inserted into situations he wasn't involved in or made out to be an antagonist in stories that had little or nothing to do with him.
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Post by Vice honcho room temperature on May 9, 2024 9:35:39 GMT -5
That's how I felt about it as well. If you're going to devote any time to the tumultuous end of Vince McMahon's tenure in professional wrestling, it has to be more than a 90-second denouement at the close of an unrelated episode. I also found it particularly odd that Jim Cornette was waxing poetically about the end of the glory days of wrestling in response to the Endeavor sale, but that's neither here nor there. Anyway, the entire hour-long episode could have been summed up by the very last person to speak. Dave Meltzer summed it all up by saying that cable television was eventually going t kill the territories, Vince McMahon was just the first person to recognize it and was the one who became the most successful. As I've said in the past, if it wasn't Vince McMahon with the WWF and USA Network, it would have been Verne Gagne with the AWA and ESPN or Jim Crockett with JCP and TBS or the Von Erichs and WCCW. But with the way cable television was rapidly growing and expanding in the 1980s, some promoter would have taken it by the reigns and gone national. It probably didn't hurt that Vince and the WWF were operating in the largest media market in the country, while the others were in Minneapolis, Atlanta, Dallas, and the like. On that alone, WWF already had a head start. People like to make Vince McMahon the villain for destroying the territories and cannibalizing the industry, but he was just the one with the foresight to see what the future held and get out ahead of everybody else. You can make him the villain for plenty of other issues, but he was the one who realized the territory days were numbered with the advent of cable TV. With cable thriving and the Internet a decade away, the territory system was simply unsustainable. Yep. Any promotor who paints Vince as a villain about this is just angry that he did it first. I don't think its all "I wish I did it first" more like "We had a good thing going why rock the boat?" Meltzer was right Gagne or Crockett would have done it if they had the chance.
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BRV
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Post by BRV on May 9, 2024 10:24:36 GMT -5
Yep. Any promotor who paints Vince as a villain about this is just angry that he did it first. I don't think its all "I wish I did it first" more like "We had a good thing going why rock the boat?" Meltzer was right Gagne or Crockett would have done it if they had the chance. That boat was getting rocked whether the old-school promoters liked it or not. Cable television wasn't coming, it was already there. If you weren't trying to go national in the mid-1980s, you were actively hurting your own business in the name of tradition. Honestly, there were only two promotions that had a chance nationally. Vince McMahon and the WWF were the first out of the gate, but they also had a decent-sized head start because they operated out of the country's largest media market and had a cable deal with USA. Jim Crockett Promotions also had a good head start because they already had the backing of TBS, which had a decade of national coverage under its belt. But by that point, Verne and the AWA and the Von Erichs and WCCW were too late to the party with their partnerships with ESPN, which came in 1985 and 1988 respectively. By that point, the national expansion horse was clear out of the barn and they were playing catch-up.
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Ben Wyatt
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Post by Ben Wyatt on May 9, 2024 12:15:12 GMT -5
I don't think its all "I wish I did it first" more like "We had a good thing going why rock the boat?" Meltzer was right Gagne or Crockett would have done it if they had the chance. That boat was getting rocked whether the old-school promoters liked it or not. Cable television wasn't coming, it was already there. If you weren't trying to go national in the mid-1980s, you were actively hurting your own business in the name of tradition. Honestly, there were only two promotions that had a chance nationally. Vince McMahon and the WWF were the first out of the gate, but they also had a decent-sized head start because they operated out of the country's largest media market and had a cable deal with USA. Jim Crockett Promotions also had a good head start because they already had the backing of TBS, which had a decade of national coverage under its belt. But by that point, Verne and the AWA and the Von Erichs and WCCW were too late to the party with their partnerships with ESPN, which came in 1985 and 1988 respectively. By that point, the national expansion horse was clear out of the barn and they were playing catch-up. The reality is that one of 2 things were going to happen: 1) Vince/Crockett/Mayyyyybe someone else was going to sweep in and pick them off, 2) they were going to die anyway even if they were left alone because of the first part you mentioned.
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Post by Mr Mario Mario on May 9, 2024 18:52:13 GMT -5
Interesting episode. More so than I thought was going to be because the behind the scenes stuff I never really knew about but yeah that Vince McMahon stuff at the very end really almost came out of nowhere
They genuinely could do a mini-series purely about the rise and fall of Vince McMahon in the same vein of this upcoming WCW series
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Lardlad
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Post by Lardlad on May 10, 2024 11:47:05 GMT -5
That’s a wrap on Season 5!
What was your favorite episode this season?
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salz4life
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Post by salz4life on May 10, 2024 12:42:10 GMT -5
Enjoyed Black Saturday until the last part. I guess you could use Vince's undoing as a sort of "karma" for what he did on Black Saturday, but it just seemed so unnecessary. I know we want to bag on Vince for what he did and rightfully so... but I just don't think it was needed in this story.
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salz4life
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Post by salz4life on May 10, 2024 12:45:21 GMT -5
I don't think its all "I wish I did it first" more like "We had a good thing going why rock the boat?" Meltzer was right Gagne or Crockett would have done it if they had the chance. That boat was getting rocked whether the old-school promoters liked it or not. Cable television wasn't coming, it was already there. If you weren't trying to go national in the mid-1980s, you were actively hurting your own business in the name of tradition. Honestly, there were only two promotions that had a chance nationally. Vince McMahon and the WWF were the first out of the gate, but they also had a decent-sized head start because they operated out of the country's largest media market and had a cable deal with USA. Jim Crockett Promotions also had a good head start because they already had the backing of TBS, which had a decade of national coverage under its belt. But by that point, Verne and the AWA and the Von Erichs and WCCW were too late to the party with their partnerships with ESPN, which came in 1985 and 1988 respectively. By that point, the national expansion horse was clear out of the barn and they were playing catch-up. I think had Fritz really seen the landscape and tried to go national in 83 or 84 like Vince, he could've made it work... granted, in hindsight, he probably crashes and burns because of family deaths... but just looking at the time, that territory was insanely hot and was starting to be seen outside of Dallas already. I think I remember the boys bringing it up to Fritz and some point and he just didn't want to do it. Again, in hindsight, it probably wasn't going to work, but just looking at how hot they were in 82, 83 and 84.... they could've made a go.
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chrom
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Post by chrom on May 10, 2024 12:57:01 GMT -5
That’s a wrap on Season 5! What was your favorite episode this season? I'd say The Terry Gordy episode, that or Tenta
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Post by A Platypus Rave on May 10, 2024 12:59:08 GMT -5
Chris Colt was the one I found the most interesting cause I knew the least about him and as I said it starts with drug induced spiders attacking him and keeps on going...
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BRV
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Post by BRV on May 10, 2024 13:32:16 GMT -5
That’s a wrap on Season 5! What was your favorite episode this season? NOTE: I have not yet watched the Sherri or Sandman episodes. THUMBS UPBuff and the Bagwells - Easily the best of the season. It was like peeling an onion with the amount of wild stories that kept getting told, from Buff shooting his father to his rapid rise and sudden descent in the wrestling industry to his appearance on that skeevy gigolo show to having his and Scotty Riggs' lives rescued by DDP. Terry Gordy: Final Flight of the Freebird - A solid episode. As a northeasterner, I never really got to know much of the Freebirds until YouTube came along, and there were so many stories to it. The Life and Legends of Harley Race - I remember it being a good episode that kept my attention, but I also couldn't tell you a single thing that I remember about it. It just came and went and as soon as the episode was done, I'd forgotten about it. Welcome To My Nightmare, The Chris Colt Story - What I said about the Harley Race episode. THUMBS IN THE MIDDLESaving Face: The Brutus Beefcake Story - A little disappointing. It was the most complete summary of his horrific accident that I can recall, but they never really got into why his relationship with Hulk Hogan crumbled, even though they advertised it as two lifelong friends falling apart. Black Saturday: The Rise of Vince - A fine episode, but it was just kind of a historical retelling of the ordeal without anything particularly interesting or insightful. THUMBS DOWNThe Ballad of 'Earthquake' John Tenta - The episode was, sorry for being blunt, really boring. It felt so stunted in its narrative and because there was never really any "holy s**t!" controversies surrounding John Tenta, it didn't make for an interesting watch. Chris Adams: The Gentleman and the Demon - I wanted this to be so much better, because the Chris Adams story was arguably the one I had been most looking forward to. And it just wasn't any good. From the glowing red eyes gimmick to giving air time to a talking head who - with no evidence - tried to claim that Adams' death was murder, it was all the failings of "Dark Side of the Ring" smushed into one episode.
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Post by john84 on May 10, 2024 13:45:15 GMT -5
The glowing eyes thing in the Chris Adams did put me off too BRV. Just came across as comedic when it was supposed to be a serious thing and put me of from it.
I liked Tenta's one, yes it wasn't as ''holy shit'' like others but I liked hearing from his family about him and seeing Haku laugh his ass of after seeing the Shockmaster thing was nice. I guess I liked it mostly because it WASN'T that dark compared to, well pretty much every other episode in every season.
I can't comment on Brutus as I've yet to see that one. Black Saturday was ok, I actually agreed with Meltzer at the end in that if it wasn't Vince it would've been someone else.
Surprising ones for me were Buff's and Sandmans in that I actually enjoyed the episodes. I thought I was going to switch off around halfway but I actually liked them.
Gordy was a good one too. Harley is another one I can't comment on as I've yet to see that one.
Sherri one got me emotional when the son started talking near the end about how he doesn't hate her and how much he loves his step-mother. Not embarrassed to admit I shed a tear there.
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Post by A Platypus Rave on May 10, 2024 19:32:21 GMT -5
Minus the lame eyes thing I did like the Adams episode too.
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Post by jean0987654321 on May 11, 2024 2:58:23 GMT -5
Yep. Any promotor who paints Vince as a villain about this is just angry that he did it first. I don't think its all "I wish I did it first" more like "We had a good thing going why rock the boat?" Meltzer was right Gagne or Crockett would have done it if they had the chance. IWA tried to do it a few years earlier than Crockett so there's precedence...
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Lardlad
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Post by Lardlad on May 12, 2024 7:56:50 GMT -5
Enjoyed Black Saturday until the last part. I guess you could use Vince's undoing as a sort of "karma" for what he did on Black Saturday, but it just seemed so unnecessary. I know we want to bag on Vince for what he did and rightfully so... but I just don't think it was needed in this story. I couldn't agree more. It made me wonder if they know we'll never get a proper Vince McMahon episode, so it's the only time it might fit. I didn't like the ending at all.
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Post by wildojinx on May 12, 2024 13:05:57 GMT -5
It's a shame that Ted Turner is in no shape to do interviews anymore as he would have been a good talking head for the Black Saturday episode.
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chrom
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Post by chrom on May 12, 2024 13:13:38 GMT -5
Looking at the lineup for the show of Black Saturday, it was doomed from the start.
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hassanchop
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Post by hassanchop on May 12, 2024 15:19:04 GMT -5
Are they gonna bag on Vince in Who Killed WCW? McMahon that is. I know they will bag the other Vince, but he is on the show. I wonder what Russo will say about Vinnie Mac?
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