Jingus

When/why/how did this phrase get popular? I've never once heard a wrestler say it. Pretty much every worker in the country just says "getting the heat" or something similar when referring to the part in the middle of the match where the heel beats up the babyface for a while.

I doubt they literally own 96% of the company. That would defeat the entire point of going public, since it would mean that hardly anyone paid Vince to buy shares. However, I wouldn't be surprised if the McMahons own 96% of the votes in the company's stock. That would explain the class A/class B thing; lots of companies issue multiple types of stock, but the important management get stock that has like ten times as many votes as the regular stock that they sell to investors.

What time period are you talking about? I assume this is either late 70s or early 80s, they didn't do repeat matches so often in the 90s. The short version is that Baba was just following the old territorial tradition of running the same matches in a bunch of different towns. Of course in American territories those matches mostly didn't make television, and I assume these did, so I dunno what was going on there.

If they were given the right push at the right time and the right place? Sure, they could've taken that shot, at least once. The WWF was taking random dudes like Shamrock or Kane or or the Outlaws or Test or the Brood or the Hardys and turning them into shockingly popular stars, at least temporarily. They were willing to roll the dice on talent that looked like it might not have much potential, and sometimes able to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. WCW was both unwilling and unable to do that. Considering he did just fine when they put the belt on him in the WWE, I'd say he had all the ability he needed. The point is that their level of talent didn't even matter. WCW had Stone Cold, Undertaker, Mankind, and Triple H; and mostly sat on them and didn't give any of them the chance they needed. Practically every one of the biggest stars in the industry went through WCW at some point or another, only to be ignored while Hogan spent twenty minutes on every Nitro bragging about how great he was. Whether you had the talent of Eddie Guerrero or the talent of Van Hammer, it would still be frustrating to know you were in an environment where you knew that you'd never be given a true chance to go all the way. The biggest ongoing feud was Sid versus the Harris brothers. Sullivan 2000 sucked. EDIT: and Jerry, even if someone lets you break all the rules and be a selfish prick, you still know damn well that you're breaking all the rules and being a selfish prick. Hogan knew he was hurting WCW as a whole when he booked his storylines to make Hogan look good and bury all the others. He just didn't care. He would gladly make other people starve just so he could eat one more bite.

Exactly how far up the totem pole was Sullivan in WCW during the peak years? By all accounts, that place was a madhouse, with far too many chiefs and not enough indians. Seems like there were always a dozen different people making storyline decisions at any given time. Considering how quickly the ratings and especially the buyrates fell into the toilet, it's safe to say that the fans hated that idea. The nWo were beyond played out, and the crowds were largely sick of the whole thing. And why should we have had any faith that WCW could actually book an nWo storyline to full completion, with the black-and-white actually losing the blowoff? Hell, the company had a proven track record of doing the exact opposite. No, it's genuinely because the Sullivan 2000 era sucked that hard. All of which was treated like a meaningless sideshow compared to the old guys on top. I understand why the Rads and others were frustrated, when they looked over at the competition and saw guys like Shawn and Bret getting pushed to the top. Benoit & Co. knew damn well that WCW in its current state was never going to do the same thing. Almost all of the top stars were guys who'd already been top stars for years if not decades, and WCW showed zero interest in elevating anyone younger (except Giant, but that's different). As for thinking Sullivan was gonna bury them especially hard in 2000? Well, no, that probably wasn't gonna happen. (Not like Russo was doing a hell of a lot with any of them besides Benoit at that point anyway.) From what I've seen, I think they were just so sick of WCW in general that they were all ready to leave no matter what. Having the new boss being replaced by the same old boss was just the straw that broke the camel's back. Except, Russo actually did a better job of booking that same crew of guys in the first month after he and Bischoff returned than Sullivan did during the entire time he was in charge. I'm not kidding, I genuinely think that Sullivan's 2000 run was worse than most of the crap that Russo did before or after. (Most, not all; in terms of lowest of lows, Arquette and Russo holding the belt probably beat any of the crap that Sullivan booked.) Kevin's ideas were so stale, it seemed like he had no idea how to put together a show anymore. Like it wasn't even the same guy who was lead booker in '96. Hogan takes a lot of the blame, because he was basically one of the bookers for his entire run. The most terrible thing management ever did to him was agree to give him that Creative Control clause in his contract. Shit like the awful Ultimate Warrior feud was entirely his baby.

Uh, that's already strike one and two. Nash is only second to Billy Jack Haynes in the competition for "shoot interview filled with the largest amount of total bullshit". Yep, total bullshit. Goldberg got hurt an entire year later than Nash is claiming here. He was there, healthy, and wrestling for the entire time that Nash was booking. But he never came anywhere near Hogan or the belt.

Sullivan's booking stint in early 2000 was absolutely unwatchable. At least Russo's shows could be entertainingly bad at times, with a "rubbernecking at a car wreck" sort of feel. And they tended to fly by pretty quickly. Sullivan-booked shows from that era were some of the slowest, dullest crap imaginable and the storylines were still no more coherent than Russo's were. He also took WCW back a step by trying to push the oldest guys in the company as the top stars, at a time when even the other bookers in that company had finally figured out this was a bad idea. Nash was a fucking terrible booker (the summer of 1999 might have been WCW's single worst period ever), but did he do it long enough to count? He didn't have that job for even an entire year. He had two claims to anti-fame: beating Goldberg. which was, indeed, very very stupid. But was the Fingerpoke his fault, or was that more of Hogan's infamous creative control? Hulk's ridiculously generous contract pretty much let him write all his own storylines and the company wasn't allowed to say no, and I can't imagine Nash volunteering to lose the world belt so quickly after he won it. Also, despite hurting the company significantly, WCW was still doing much better business during Nash's tenure than they were during Russo's. When measuring bookers, I think using the company's overall bottom line is a much fairer metric than trying to argue which wrestler drew how much money. This is the one guy in charge of everything, and the company's success or lack thereof is pretty easy to gauge. I don't think he literally has zero redeeming qualities. He always tried to give the undercard guys their own personalities and stories, as opposed to many bookers who just throw the young guys out there in meaningless matches with no gimmicks and no angles. And he sometimes tried to push younger stars when others in power were still clinging to useless has-beens. Those two positives aren't nearly enough to counterbalance all his negatives, but it's more than zero. That being said, he's still my vote for WBOAT too. Nobody in the history of wrestling has consistently lost more money than Vince Russo. Yeah, that's the amazing and depressing part. Russo really does still have fans and defenders out there. Obviously not many, considering TNA's track record, but they do exist. Then again, you also still get people who think that the Nazis were awesome. Never be surprised at the depths of human stupidity. Heyman shows and Russo shows don't look that much alike. Russo stole a few ideas from ECW, mostly the central concept of doing an edgier young-adult-oriented product, but then he did things very differently. ECW still did plenty of long matches and focused more on the in-ring action than anything else. Russo's always been severely allergic to in-ring action, and tried to construct his shows almost entirely out of promos and vignettes and backstage brawls.

And the clinging-to-kayfabe mentality has led to nothing but awesome stuff? Wrestling is a fictional show. Its strange insecurities and insistence on being treated as being more "real" than other fictional shows is a liability now. Of course Russo-style "IT'S A SHOOT, BRUDDA" stuff is pointless, and nobody should ever call a belt a prop during the show, because no other shows do that and it would just be stupid. But I've never seen the point in pretending that wrestling is somehow more legitimate or kind of a sport or that you should refer to the wrestlers as athletes and it's an insult to call them actors. All of that "if someone asks if it's fake, attack them" bullshit mindset should be long dead and buried.

In any other on television, if the people on the screen are holding any item in their hands, it's called a prop. Same in the movies, and on the stage. I don't see how it's insulting the belt to call it such. It has no inherent meaning or value, it's just a big chunk of metal and leather. The WWE's championship belts aren't any more important in real life than the kings' crowns are in Game of Thrones. The only importance it has is the importance that the fans believe it has; and these days, that's not very damn much.

So what? Why do you find it so insulting to apply the same vocabulary towards wrestling that we use in every other form of live-action entertainment media?

Considering that Nash spent the next month burying the fuck out of Rey and even unmasking him, I'd say that win didn't help Mysterio at all. Even on the rare occasions he did important jobs, Big Sexy always managed to somehow make them meaningless in hindsight.

If Ross or especially Watts asked him to do it, he probably would. The problem is, knowing Cornette, he'd probably demand some kind of conditions to do it that the WWE wouldn't agree to. And that's if they even wanted him in the first place, considering that he's spent the past several years burying them at every opportunity.

Why do you watch something you have such blatant contempt for? How else would you describe them? It's not a sport. It's fake. No modern champion ever "won" their belt in a competition. They were given that title, according to a prewritten script, and pretend that it really belongs to them. So yeah, that's a textbook definition of a prop.

How many shows do the puro feds ever run outside of Japan nowadays? Or CMLL outside of Mexico? Since they're all just fake props, around the waists of actors and stunt men, I've never worried too much about what belts count as "legitimate" world titles. In a real sport, there would only be one big heavyweight belt anyway and all the others would be looked at as second-class or wannabes, like it is with boxing. And has there ever really been a true unified "world championship"? Even at the peak of the NWA's heyday, I'm sure there were always competing promotions which formed their own smaller alliances and proclaimed some other dude to be the real world champ.

There used to be tons of fat guys who were taken seriously. Yokozuna, Earthquake, Typhoon, One Man Gang (pre-Akeem), Bam Bam Bigelow, Adrion Adonis (even despite the gay gimmick), so forth and so on. As Vince got older, he got more and more obsessed with the idea that practically everyone on the roster had to have a perfect body except for his comedy acts.

Whoa, you're the first guy I've seen write the exact same opinion of Roode that I have. I don't get the big deal about this guy. He's perfectly good as half of a midcard heel tag-team, but he's not a top guy and he never will be.

Isn't weed just a fine and not a suspension? Good for him. I've never understood their weirdness in forcing legitimate veterans to slum it in FCW or wherever before deigning to let them on television. Shelley's been wrestling over a decade, and has spent most of that time either in the top indy in the country or in the only other promotion with national television. He's not some young kid who needs to be taught how to work. Did guys like Punk or Danielson really learn that much from their developmental stints that they hadn't already learned from the million different companies they worked for, in over a dozen countries?

To be fair, practically nobody in wrestling today is a big enough draw that they justify airfare. Wrestling's changed, and it seems like the total package of the promotion is generally more important nowadays than any individual worker.

So basically all these people paid to show up, and were confronted with the exact same size of television that they probably had in their living rooms. How was this not a huge fiasco with every single fan demanding a refund? He also died just shortly after Vince Jr bought the company, which you'd think would be a pretty huge chunk of change. Did Jr get that money right back, soon after he'd paid it?

Thanks for a description of the night. Nobody ever bothers to explain exactly how people around the country watched the first Mania; every time it's talked about, everyone seems to just assume that we all know how it worked. Oh yeah, of course. Vince had to get Monsoon, Arnold Skaaland, and one or two other guys I'm forgetting to all back him financially in order to buy the company from his dad. But my point is, Vince Sr. was dead by the time Wrestlemania happened. So where did his money go after he passed? He must've been a multi-millionaire, who inherited the fortune?

So, was renting these buildings the big expense, then? Because otherwise I don't see how Mania could've cost a hell of a lot more than any other MSG supershow, unless they spent a truly insane amount of money on advertising. Also, about the physical setup: how did that work, in the rented buildings? What sort of screen was the video projected on? Especially since these are sports arenas, not theaters, you'd need multiple screens facing in different directions so the audience could see everything. This got brought up once here before, but was never answered: what happened to Vince Senior's fortune? He surely had a shit-ton of money, being the promoter of the largest wrestling federation in the world for several decades. All the profits from all those Bruno sellouts in the Garden went right into VJM's pocket. What other heirs were still alive at the time of his death, how much money was there, and how'd it get divvied up?

Pretty much. I can't recall ever hearing a wrestler say it, unless they were a particularly web-savvy young worker and were saying it with verbal quotation marks.

Yeah, that's the story that keeps getting passed around, but the more I think about it the more it sounds like a huge exaggeration. What was he spending so much money on? What were the costs of doing a closed-circuit broadcast? (Hell, what were ANY of the details of doing a closed-circuit broadcast? That was before my time, but everyone who talks about the first Mania today just seems to take for granted that everyone knows exactly how it worked.) I know that all those celebrity cameos must've cost a chunk of change, but surely not nearly enough to bankrupt the guy who already owned the largest wrestling company in the world. Seriously, what was different about this show? It was held at their usual home arena. It mostly starred the usual card of the WWF's regular wrestlers. Why was this supposedly such a risk?

How much did Vince actually risk on the first Wrestlemania? What was the difference between that and all the other big MSG shows at the time, aside from the closed-circuit (and how much money could that really bring in, and how did it work?) and the hype? We always hear this "if Wrestlemania had failed, the WWF would've died" meme, but I don't know if it's even close to true or if it's just part of the WWE's revisionist history.

American ratings seem like they're custom designed to be deliberately difficult to understand. Like, if you're not an insider, then you can't make heads or tails of these numbers; and the industry likes it that way. Of course, lots of people have said that Nielsen numbers are questionable at best anyway. Their process for gathering these statistics is often criticized for being wide open to massive inaccuracies.