Random Wrasslin' thoughts.....

briany

Vince McMahon has been criticized as out of touch and Vince Russo has been called a one trick pony p*ss artist. How did those two manage, then, to join forces and book what is popularly considered the hottest era in all of wrestling?

beakerjoe

Vince wasnt always out of touch, in the attitude era he gave the people what they wanted or at least what he thought they wanted

Looper007

Agent Coulson wrote: »

Gallows, Machine Gun,

Styles, Generico, Steen & Uhaa all on the same episode Monday Night Raw who'd have said that 18 months ago.

So who do you reckon will be the leader of

The Bullet Club in WWE seen as Anderson and Gallows debuted, I think Styles will probably get the nod over Balor cause I think Vince see's him as the Jeff Hardy/Rey Mysterio face who the kids love cause of his gimmick. Shame as I think Balor is a great heel and if he ever turned face in the future it would be big money

I do see Vince adding a young WWE up and comer into the gang though. Or do you reckon WWE will just keep them as a tag team.

Stereomaniac

Keep them as a tag team for the moment I'd say.

Chain Smoker

briany wrote: »

Vince McMahon has been criticized as out of touch and Vince Russo has been called a one trick pony p*ss artist. How did those two manage, then, to join forces and book what is popularly considered the hottest era in all of wrestling?

i wouldn't even know if it's that Vince is out of touch so much as he's no longer motivated. Can't imagine he was any more in touch with the world in the late 90s but he he had no choice but to adapt or he was f*cked.

Whereas now his attitude, rather than focusing on trying to gain viewers, seems to be more about proving his ideology is right. Without any realistic possibility of total failure, he's able to look at all the metrics and tell himself he's right all the time.

Itssoeasy

briany wrote: »

Vince McMahon has been criticized as out of touch and Vince Russo has been called a one trick pony p*ss artist. How did those two manage, then, to join forces and book what is popularly considered the hottest era in all of wrestling?

The wwf at the time didn't have Vince Russo fully in charge unlike his wonderful time in wcw. Vince McMahon for all his faults has proven down the years he can make good quality well produced wrestling/ sports entertainment and make it not complete horse ****.

Vince Russo had Vince McMahon as his filter and thankfully half of Vince Russos stupid **** wasn't made into a storyline in the wwf.

Wcw was clearly a different story and shows Vince Russo to be exactly a talentless one trick pony piss artist.

Ageyev

tinpib wrote: »

Hey Guys.

Kinda revisiting my childhood reading this wiki article

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1980s_professional_wrestling_boom

I started watching wrestling around the time of the build up to WrestleMania 4 but I also remember at the same time I used to see repeats where Mean Gene was promoting "The greatest extravaganza of all time, WrestleMania 3".

Anyway, does anyone know of good docs or books for this period? A more in-depth version of the wiki article.

WWE have produced plenty of revisionist DVD documentaries over the years, some of which are on the WWE Network. They have also put out a few coffee table style books.

Bret Gary's autobiography is often available in Easons and is very highly regarded - it covers his WWF career beginning in the mid-80s.

Dave Meltzer's Newsletter from the time would be a very good source of info and backstage stories however his online digital archive only begins in 1991. He appeared on the Lapsed Fan podcast which reviewed WrestleMania 1-29. I used to have a link to just his segments but lost it...

There are many wrestling podcasts reviewing old shows going back to the 80s. Look up David Bixenspan, Place to Be Nation, the video review series OSW from JayHunter which covered all the big shows of the Hogan period. Might be some more recommendations in the Wrestling Podcast thread.

The history of wrestling even that boom period is not very well documented and most wrestler autobiographies tend to go out of print.

leggo

briany wrote: »

Vince McMahon has been criticized as out of touch and Vince Russo has been called a one trick pony p*ss artist. How did those two manage, then, to join forces and book what is popularly considered the hottest era in all of wrestling?

Consider The Attitude Era more like a cultural phenomenon of its time, a fashion trend, than a boom period for pro-wrestling and it makes more sense. Watch back now and a lot of the stuff they put out doesn't stand up at all, whereas the actual in-ring stuff today is a million times better. Today you can watch a generic PPV that means nothing that'll keep you entertained for 3 hours (even if it doesn't change anything on the wrestling landscape) whereas then you'd sit through 3 hours of crap before having your mind blown by the latest twist in the saga of Stone Cold Steve Austin, which again doesn't resonate as much today as there was a genuine emotional connection and stake in him and his every move at the time (so the heat that comes with him being screwed out of the title, say, doesn't stand up with hindsight).

It hit because it was the right product at the right time in the late 90's and fit in perfectly along with MTV, Eminem, Celebrity Deathmatch, and other anti-establishment content that was blowing up at the time.

I always think the notion of Vince McMahon as 'out of touch' is a lazy one. Then he was laser focused on booking segment-by-segment in a battle for his company's life against WCW, because then content and TV ratings were everything (they still form the backbone of WWE's business, but they're the only big show in town now and wrestling has such a huge base now that they're relatively safe from veering into a genuine concern so can focus attention elsewhere to grow the business).

Today he's managing a global behemoth outsourcing a lot of the heavy-lifting booking to other people while managing his business on multiple different scales. So the end product has less of his personal touch, each segment we watch is further away from Vince than it would've been in previous years, while the company itself continues to fire on a lot of other cylinders, yet his name is still on the banner so we act as if he's responsible for it all. Which he is of course...but he's also not. So if something bad happens on Raw, is it a case of Vince personally conceived and scripted it to be poor and is thus out-of-touch? Or is his eye less on the ball producing so many more hours of content each week than beforehand and therefore crap gets through the filter easier? The former doesn't stand up to scrutiny when you step back and look at the bigger picture.

Russo gets a lot of harsh flack. He's thinking on a different scale to most wrestling fans. We're basing our ideas of what booking should be having studied the autobiographies, shoot interviews and podcast interviews of old school wrestling traditionalists. But under these guys and their idealisms, WWE would never have tapped into the mainstream like they did in 1998. Russo understood how to combine shock value and a Jeremy Kyle-like 'can't look away' quality with wrestling and was effective with a traditionalist like Vince looking over his shoulder and guiding the overall ship. When left to his own devices? Yeah he had/has a tendency to veer towards the crap, but a lot of his priorities worked perfectly for Raw - the TV presentation as opposed to the wrestling show - at the time, such as how to keep people watching segment-to-segment, forward selling on the booking and conditioning fans to come back each week in case they miss something and are out of the conversational loop. It's something they could learn from today.

The truth is, to answer your question, that people who throw out these grand, sweeping statements are just looking to have a strong opinion in order to sound educated, but those valuations don't really bare out when you look at the evidence. Both guys have their positives and negatives and, for all you can legitimately criticise them over, you're absolutely right when you say they presided over when wrestling 'clicked' more than any other period, so writing them off altogether is obviously crap that shouldn't be taken seriously. Criticise individual decisions or traits by all means, but I stop listening the second someone makes stupid sweeping statements like the ones you mention.

grames_bond

Leggo get away out of that with all your "logic" and "resoning" - that has no place on the internet!

briany

leggo wrote: »

Consider The Attitude Era more like a cultural phenomenon of its time, a fashion trend, than a boom period for pro-wrestling and it makes more sense. Watch back now and a lot of the stuff they put out doesn't stand up at all, whereas the actual in-ring stuff today is a million times better. Today you can watch a generic PPV that means nothing that'll keep you entertained for 3 hours (even if it doesn't change anything on the wrestling landscape) whereas then you'd sit through 3 hours of crap before having your mind blown by the latest twist in the saga of Stone Cold Steve Austin, which again doesn't resonate as much today as there was a genuine emotional connection and stake in him and his every move at the time (so the heat that comes with him being screwed out of the title, say, doesn't stand up with hindsight).

The rest of your post I agree with, but I do have to say that the Attitude era featured PPVs where the majority of the matches on the card had some sort of story arc to go with them, and ones with continuity at that. It wasn't simply waiting to see what happened with Austin any more than every wrestling card ever that has been principally focused on its main event and the performers therein. Today's PPVs feature much more wrestling, but if I have no reason to be involved in the match, if the psychology makes little sense and I'm not even sure whether the match is going to mean anything in a week's time then it matters not what moves they do.

And I think the in-ring stuff was better in the AE, if only because it wasn't over-produced, it didn't have the fans giving a running commentary in hockey chants, and we hadn't necessarily seen every match on the card in one form or another on previous TV and PPVs because there was a de-emphasis on actual in-ring action for TV. That's something I do agree with Russo on. Skits, vignettes and other things to build the characters of wrestlers are great. Having ways to keep wrestlers apart until the big shows really creates anticipation, tension and a greater excitement in the match they eventually do have.

PTH2009

Going to try and get too a UK TV taping in November but I'm very worried they will be no November tour with WWE doing the network special in London in September

Itssoeasy

PTH2009 wrote: »

Going to try and get too a UK TV taping in November but I'm very worried they will be no November tour with WWE doing the network special in London in September

Hadn't heard that now. Is it a stand alone show or as part of a tour ?

DEFTLEFTHAND

Talking about the resurgence of women's wrestling I came across two epic women's matches on the Network recently. Akira Hokuta vs Madusa from both Starrcade 96 and The Great American Bash 97.

Incredible matches, a far higher standard to anything going in WWE today, even with the likes of Becky, Charlotte etc.

On a side note Dusty Rhodes' and Bobby Heenan's commentary was absolutely hilarious on WCW ppvs in those years.

Blue_Dabadee

I think late 1999 - early 2001 were best days of Attitude era.

When they were soo much great talent from lower card to the main event.

leggo

briany wrote: »

The rest of your post I agree with, but I do have to say that the Attitude era featured PPVs where the majority of the matches on the card had some sort of story arc to go with them, and ones with continuity at that. It wasn't simply waiting to see what happened with Austin any more than every wrestling card ever that has been principally focused on its main event and the performers therein. Today's PPVs feature much more wrestling, but if I have no reason to be involved in the match, if the psychology makes little sense and I'm not even sure whether the match is going to mean anything in a week's time then it matters not what moves they do.

And I think the in-ring stuff was better in the AE, if only because it wasn't over-produced, it didn't have the fans giving a running commentary in hockey chants, and we hadn't necessarily seen every match on the card in one form or another on previous TV and PPVs because there was a de-emphasis on actual in-ring action for TV. That's something I do agree with Russo on. Skits, vignettes and other things to build the characters of wrestlers are great. Having ways to keep wrestlers apart until the big shows really creates anticipation, tension and a greater excitement in the match they eventually do have.

Yeah see I remember it similarly, but then in recent times with the WWE Network (and we do live tweetathons for classic PPVs with the show I do), watching them back the in-ring content isn't up-to-much. It's wrestling by numbers, the emphasis is more on everything else going on around it: the storyline, booking the finish, getting gimmicks over etc rather than taking the fans on a journey and telling a story in the ring (WWE actually dictated to talent, in 2003 I believe it was, that they wanted it to be this way from then on - I remember covering it for a website I worked on, it was a big story then).

Like recently we watched WrestleMania 16 as part of the show, and it was voted in by our listeners ahead of a lot of others, then as we watched it we all came to the realisation that the show didn't stand up like we remembered it. The highs were high, the rest was awful. Even stuff like the Hardcore Battle Royal would be fondly remembered by me, but now I see it's just a cluster****.

Not to take away from your enjoyment or opinion. If you still enjoy it as you did then, by all means that's great.

I agree with what you're saying about a lot of today's stuff. But none of that really factors into what I'm saying, that's all more to do with the overall presentation of the show as a whole than the wrestling itself. To me the in-ring content is leaps ahead in quality to what it was. The characters just aren't as over and the matches themselves don't mean as much. Like compare Mania 32 to Mania 16 for sheer entertainment value: I got WAY more out of 32 personally. The matches themselves (save for the main event) were largely quite good...they just meant nothing because of the booking and lack of consequence. My summary of the show on Twitter on the night was: "Good show, terrible booking." Which sums up a lot of what we see today.

But what I'm saying isn't surprising, wrestling has just evolved to the point that the in-ring content is more central to the product now. In the Attitude Era, the wrestling was almost a necessary evil to get to the storylines, gimmicks, funny promos, entrances, catchphrases, storylines etc. And that's why it attracted a more mainstream audience, people didn't care about wrestling itself, they liked the characters and all the bells and whistles above. That isn't a criticism, that stuff drew me to wrestling to begin with, it's just how it is.

PTH2009

can deff see the Hardys and Drew Galloway coming back to wwe someday. the dudleys are as popular as ever and so would the hardys if they came back to wwe.

i would of loved to see Drew galloway as a superstar in wwe but for some reason it didnt work out same with Bobby Lashley

hopefully vince might buy tna in a few years. Lunca Underground will be next

Stereomaniac

I think Lucha Underground are good to go the way they are for the foreseeable future on the El Rey Network. I'm open to correction on that but I wouldn't say they'll wind up in WWE's hands. I'd absolutely love to see The Hardy Boys back in WWE and Drew Galloway should have never been let go. He should have been used so much better when he was there.

Omackeral

They're speaking about us in the real world. "You know it's fake right?!"

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2057586079

gerrybbadd

Omackeral wrote: »

They're speaking about us in the real world. "You know it's fake right?!"

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2057586079

The knuckle heads have shown their cards already. Apparently, we are all Manchilds

LeeJM

Jesus that thread is unreal. How can they believe its not real :pac: also LOL at Omac pointing out it hasnt been WWF for 14 yrs!

Stereomaniac

Making my way through that thread there now but I am very proud of those of you who replied!

Bounty Hunter

followed the link here, didn't plan to reply to that thread but somehow could not stop myself

CastorTroy

Though I see one of those calling fans man children is really a Zack Ryder fan

Wo wo wo, slow down. Your being ridiculous now

gimmick

Mean Gene. Has there been a better voice in Wrestling ever?

Stereomaniac

Yes. Jesse.

gimmick

Better or on a par?

As an interviewer Mean Gene is top of the pops.

Then they did completely different jobs. Jesse an amazing if not the best heel commentator.

Any love for Adamle??

Stereomaniac

Mike Adamle was on air during my dark period so I am not really that well up on what his run was like. But you're right, Mean Gene is probably the best backstage interviewer they ever had. Having said that, I really liked Kevin Kelly in his early period and I think if Renee Young keeps up her good work she'll be remembered as one of the very best someday.

gimmick

Yes but Mean Genes voice for me us up there with the Buffers as being synonymous with the product the are associated with.

Love also hoes to The Fink. No one has ever done the "AND NNNNNEWWWW........" Like him since.

Take that Justin Roberts

Riddle101

As sad as it was that Zack Ryder only got a 24 hour title reign with the I.C Championship and is generally not booked very well, I would still be happy for him regardless. He got a nice Wrestlemania moment and considering that he's most likely never going to be a WWE Champion or Main Eventer, it was probably the biggest moment of his career.

CastorTroy

And then they fee him to Corbin