goc

Pretty interesting. So he did have *some* foresight, and he did try, but failed anyway. goc, what does this do to your thesis sir? My thesis that you're ignoring the fact that Verne was better at making stars than the score of 1 that you gave him because he made the biggest star of the 80s? That you're double talking like crazy in this thread to give credit to Vince McMahon and no one else? It doesn't do anything to it. No one ever succeeded running opposition to NWA backed loaded shows. As far as the 80s, that just shows that moving his base to California wouldn't have been a good idea because wrestling wasn't doing well there at the time.

Well, see, I watched the footage from 1980 and it was a HUGE talking point, then, on camera, that Hogan was going off to make Rocky. So it was known about THEN. And Hogan was playing up to it THEN. And Kal Rudman was losing his shit over it THEN. And Rocky was already big because it was the third film. If you watch that footage, Vince -- who is on commentary don't forget -- clearly has a virtual boner. Clearly. He was generally pretty calm on commentary back then, but Hogan perks him up in a very real way. So if there was buzz around Hogan in 1980, even when he was a heel, in boring old Vince Sr land, then it's not much of a jump to say that WHEREVER he landed up post-Rocky he was going to blow up. It was just on the wall. In fact, I seem to remember that the very reason he left WWF in the first place was because Vince Sr, being as anti-celebrity as he was, didn't want him to do it. ---------- It is good though, because no one in this thread can take the line that Verne made Hogan without ALSO giving Vince credit for making Austin. So if you want we can bump Verne up to 2/10 in that category. But then we have to give Vince some credit for Austin. Horses for course. What does any of that stuff about Vince & Kal Rudman talking up his role on WWF commentary have to do with him already being the top babyface in AWA almost 6 months before the movie came out? It IS kind of a big jump to say it was on the wall that he was going to blow up after Rocky came out when he ALREADY HAD DONE SO before the movie was released.

It's was a different time. Martel had mainevented in other places before. He'd worked on top against Bock in Hawaii. He'd mainevented in Portland against Rose. He'd main evented and held titles in New Zealand, and in Canada. You just can't compare a mid-90s ECW stint with any of that. Martel was already a star in 85, in a way that some of these other guys weren't. I'll give Verne credit for making him champ at a difficult time. I don't think doing so made him any bigger of a star. It's not like the difference between Jericho in 1997 and Jericho in 2002. Ok now "I refuse to give Verne Gagne any credit for anything" double talk your way out of NintendoLogic blowing up your Thunderlips timeline.

You're double talking like crazy in this thread. Or did you forget that you just discounted Rick Martel being "made a star" by Verne, despite Verne making him the champion, because he was already a known quantity?

Please post your score for Eddie Graham so I can shit all over it because he didn't have the foresight to make Hogan a top star straight out of training with Hiro Matsuda.

Well YOU can't give Vince credit for Austin and then deny Verne credit for Hogan because "Verne didn't make Hogan a star, Hogan made Hogan a star. Verne even initially wanted to book him heel. Hogan was a huge phenomena pretty much despite Verne, not because of him." Which applies as much or more to Austin.

Yea Joe Blanchard's expansion out of San Antonio was a complete and utter failure. He tried to run opposition to to World Class in Dallas and drew 300 some fans. And no one else other than Ole ever thought about trying to do a national expansion so I'm not quite sure why you seem to be penalizing Verne worse than the rest for that.

But that's some crazy radical change that you would only do if you had knowledge of the future. Why would Verne suddenly up and relocate to LA BEFORE Vince started a national expansion? The only reason he'd do that is if he had a crystal ball that told him what was coming. His territory was doing good business, it would have seemed like the dumbest thing in the world to leave a territory that's doing well to move to an area of the country where wrestling had already died out.

Perhaps we've given Verne a bad rap about booking old guys. Maybe it wasn't really his choice as much as older wrestlers just wanting to work in the AWA because cold keeps things preserved.

I'm just not sure how true this really is. There are a lot of stories of guys leaving the AWA because it was just too damn cold. Scott Hall and The Rock N Roll Express being two examples I can immediately think of and that's late in the game when there WASN'T a whole lot of other places to go. When you're a top star and you can go anywhere in the country, is it really worth it to make a little bit more money in the AWA than to be in Florida or just pretty much anywhere where it isn't going to be cold as shit for almost half the year?

You're ignoring the fact that the Carolinas was also a big money territory that seemingly everyone wanted to work in. The weather was nicer there and the trips weren't that bad. Ok please present me with a scenario in which Verne is realistically going to be able to keep Hogan. You're intelligent enough to not fall for the 'IF HE'D ONLY MADE HIM DA CHAMP!' line of thinking so don't bother with that one. Hogan had already worked for Vince Sr. he had to know there was more money working on top in MSG, Boston Garden, Spectrum, etc than being on top in AWA. Even an offer of being the top guy of regional WWWF was going to lure a guy away from the AWA much less being the face of a national expansion. Hogan was trained in Florida are you going to also ding Eddie Graham for that the way you're holding Flair & Steamboat against Verne? I don't even know why you bring up Backlund, it's not like there was any competition for Backlund. He wasn't a star anywhere before he went to WWWF and even after that big run as a champion it's not like there was some huge demand for him after he left in 84.

I'm thinking I'm probably just going to end this now. I feel like the end of the Tully/David feud is a good place to quit. I had some cool stuff planned for the Eddie Gilbert and Ken Lucas feud, Duggan was going to be coming back to try and get revenge on Ron Starr and there was definitely something in the future based off The Assassin telling The Fabs they were going to feel the fire of his wrath but I'm just not that interested in keeping this going. I definitely don't feel like writing some kind of weird David tribute when I have to acknowledge his death.

Verne is always getting a 1 in that because he trained Ric Flair and Ricky Steamboat and yet ... let them both go! And he had Hulk Hogan and yet ... didn't make him the champ. It's hard not to define him through the lens of totally missed opportunities. He kept the belt on himself instead of putting over other guys and then put the belt on Bock forever and a day, as great as Bock was. The other AWA mainstays: Crusher, Bruiser, Maddog were all known quantities. Martel was a known quantity too, and 85 was too late really. The time to put him over was earlier. Hennig, I'll grant you, but you'll note that 1 is not 0. Hogan became a star babyface in the AWA. That's just a simple fact. Before that he was almost always a heel. So you're just going to ignore that Hogan was still the top star even though he didn't have DA BELT~! And ignore that it just wasn't possible because Verne had a deal with All Japan and Hogan was a New Japan guy? Are you now going to tell me that ridiculous theory that if Hogan was made AWA champ he'd have never left for WWF and all of wrestling history would have changed? Martel was a "known quantity" sure but where else did he got pushed to the level he got pushed to in the AWA? He was a tag champ in WWF, he wasn't getting pushed at the World Title level. Punishing him for training Flair & Steamboat and "letting them go" is pretty stupid as well since guys never stayed in the territory they started in. You HAD to leave that territory after a while because the fans had seen you at your greenest and doing nothing but jobs in opening matches, you had to go somewhere else to start becoming a star. Even for a Verne apologist, I don't think it's a stretch to say that making new stars was not his strongest suit. What number would you give him? Are we arguing the toss of the difference between 1 and 3 or the difference between 1 and 7? I could stretch to 3 at a push, but no higher. I also don't think Verne made Hogan a star, Rocky did and having a very distinctive look plus electric charisma did. Verne just so happened to luck out on the timing of the run. It was obvious Hogan was going to be a star in 1980. He wasn't some unknown, he was co-maining MSG with Andre. If Verne was a promoter with a real eye for talent and vision, he COULD have been booking Flair vs. Steamboat on top in 1980. He could have! What did he actually book? Himself vs. Bockwinkel, Chapter 322. You're completely ignoring the realities of how wrestling worked to say that it was feasible that he could have taken two totally green rookies and built them to top stars without ever letting them go to any other promotions. That's NOT how things worked in that time period plus it discounts the idea that Flair or Steamboat might have just wanted to leave on their own for various reasons, like maybe it's just really fucking cold in Minnesota in the winter and it'd be better to go to Florida. And as for the Hogan deal, I'm really not sure how obvious it was because no one else decided to push Hogan as a top babyface until he landed in the AWA. He was a co-main event heel vs. Andre because he was really big. You wouldn't pump up Big John Studd's resume based on that same criteria. Hogan even traveled around as the Andre opponent sometimes when Andre would go out to other territories so it's not like other promoters didn't see the guy in person and could have had the idea of trying to lure him away to push him big as a babyface. None of them did. As for the score, yea I just think 1 is way too low.

Verne is always getting a 1 in that because he trained Ric Flair and Ricky Steamboat and yet ... let them both go! And he had Hulk Hogan and yet ... didn't make him the champ. It's hard not to define him through the lens of totally missed opportunities. He kept the belt on himself instead of putting over other guys and then put the belt on Bock forever and a day, as great as Bock was. The other AWA mainstays: Crusher, Bruiser, Maddog were all known quantities. Martel was a known quantity too, and 85 was too late really. The time to put him over was earlier. Hennig, I'll grant you, but you'll note that 1 is not 0. Hogan became a star babyface in the AWA. That's just a simple fact. Before that he was almost always a heel. So you're just going to ignore that Hogan was still the top star even though he didn't have DA BELT~! And ignore that it just wasn't possible because Verne had a deal with All Japan and Hogan was a New Japan guy? Are you now going to tell me that ridiculous theory that if Hogan was made AWA champ he'd have never left for WWF and all of wrestling history would have changed? Martel was a "known quantity" sure but where else did he got pushed to the level he got pushed to in the AWA? He was a tag champ in WWF, he wasn't getting pushed at the World Title level. Punishing him for training Flair & Steamboat and "letting them go" is pretty stupid as well since guys never stayed in the territory they started in. You HAD to leave that territory after a while because the fans had seen you at your greenest and doing nothing but jobs in opening matches, you had to go somewhere else to start becoming a star.

I'd have rather you commented on my post about Verne than the joke post about Austin & The Patriot.

This does touch on what I feel like is the biggest issue with modern wrestling. It never does a call back to previous history. That was what made Memphis (and Southeastern/Continental) so great is that nothing was ever "thrown away" you could have an issue that happened 2-3 years ago suddenly become relevant again because someone uses it as a reason for a turn. The best example of that kind of storytelling in wrestling is from Southeastern where Bob Armstrong comes back from a real life weightlifting accident that partly crushed his face and wants to make amends for his heel turn on Ron Fuller. There's a series of videos on youtube that show the whole story called The Bullet and The Stud and it's some of my favorite wrestling stuff ever because it combines real life events and past history from within the promotion. When you keep a continuity in wrestling it makes for characters that can actually grow and change over time and feel like real people instead of just "well the promotion decided it's time to turn this guy so now he's going to be completely different."

Based on this post we really need a re-evaluation of 90s Vince's Mastery score. He went with the crowd on Austin and made his top babyface a guy who drinks beer, flips off his boss and does the Stunner to women? He should have told the crowd to fuck off and pushed The Patriot.

Verne at 1 for new stars seems really silly when you consider that Hulk Hogan became a top star babyface in the AWA first, not anywhere else. If Verne doesn't give Hulk a big push in AWA I don't know if he gets on Vince's radar to build the WWF around. "But he didn't give him the belt!!!!" doesn't really change the fact that Hogan was AWA's top babyface from not very long after he got there until the time he left. That's also not counting that he made Rick Martel his World Champ, pushed Curt Hennig hard, that AWA was the first place the Roadies went after Georgia, the Blackwell face turn, etc.

"Official statements" after a suspension never go well.

Roy Lee Welch busting out a Full Nelson? Makes me think good ol' Mike Masters should come in and try his hand at that Submission Invitational. Like your use of The Wild Hoggs, who seem to be kind of Moondog stand-ins. I liked the surprises in the main event and The Rich Cousins vs. Prichard & Eaton would have been a really good match.

But you're not factoring in that if you plugged this match into TEW then Ospreay's momentum AND overness would both go down after the loss. Made up TEW metrics trump any kind of story telling.

It really is a horrible new reality we're living in that a man with a brain lesion that causes seizures is forced to retire instead of being allowed to further damage his brain. Think of all the great ***** matches we're missing out on because of this bullshit "people shouldn't kill themselves for wrestling" attitude.

No one has seemed to mention that there is an inherent difference in your need for motivation when you're a guy traveling around to a bunch of different promotions & charging them top dollar to bring you in vs. having a guaranteed contract. Del Rio knew he had to perform at his best when a couple of lazy performances could mean that RoH or AAA decides to stop using him. He seemed to stop caring in his second WWE run pretty much as soon as he signed the contract. It's not like they gave Del Rio a whole lot to work with but it's not like he gave them a real reason to give him stuff to do either.

Well there was the whole incident with Paige after Money in the Bank where there are pics of her being put in handcuffs and then put into an ambulance while still in the handcuffs. Somehow that kind of went under the radar. http://www.cagesideseats.com/2016/6/20/11984490/paige-handcuffed-hospital-wwe-money-in-the-bank-2016-raw

Why the heck would you not advertise Chris Masters? He's one of the few people in wrestling who would guarantee me buying a ticket to see within a reasonable driving distance.