Loss

The thing about Hogan that WCW never realized is that the more business declined, the less power he really had. That he was the centerpiece of everything as WCW started declining demonstrated that while he was maybe the most important part of the turnaround, he wasn't the sole reason it happened. Contractually, Hogan had them by the balls because of the creative control clause, but in terms of having to keep him happy because he's carrying the company, those days were over. If he didn't like what was proposed for him, he had the option to go home, just as WCW had the option to send him home. So yeah, with Hulk, play ball or get out. As Dave has said, Bischoff was in the Hogan business, not the wrestling business, so that would have taken care of both of them with one stone. Nash is an odd one. By this point in time, he added nothing and took a way a lot, so there would be a pretty low tolerance for bullshit anyway. Him going to the WWF in 1999 may have had a short-term impact, but they were behind anyway and WCW didn't need Nash at all anymore. So again, play ball or go. As far as who should have run the company, that's a really tough one. Wrestling did a horrible job of grooming booking and managing talent during this time.

I think they should have found a way to leverage whatever music was part of the Time Warner library. What made WCW cool at first was eventually their undoing. Lapsed fans saw all of their childhood stars on Nitro and tuned in. Meanwhile, a new crop came along elsewhere that was younger, cooler and fresher and because WCW had one of the strictest caste systems any wrestling company has ever had in terms of card placement, they had no one prepared on their undercard to make the leap despite having a wealth of options to develop new stars. They just assumed Hogan would be current forever. Anyway, I mention the music because they needed an aesthetic overhaul that made them feel more contemporary, and that might have helped. I've been thinking about WCW booking in 1999 since 1999, probably. My starting point is usually the night after Spring Stampede, but basically my key things were: - Get the belt on Goldberg immediately and put him in the center of everything, building to two key matches later in the year: Bret and Flair. Bret seeking full redemption after the Owen tragedy. Ric making one last run at the top and putting everything he has out there. - Make Benoit and Malenko a main event level tag team with Arn there to run interference and act as their mouthpiece. They would still work most of the same guys they did as a team anyway (Rey-Kidman, Raven-Saturn, etc), but the division would be more spotlighted - Speaking of tag teams, a heavier focus on tag teams all around would have been a way to revitalize the division. Tag team wrestling started making a comeback in the WWF later in the year when the Hardys and Edge & Christian had the ladder match, but before that, it had been dead for years. Tags could have been WCW's calling card. Even the top singles wrestlers should have been interested in the tag team titles and had a regular partner when the situation called for it. For Goldberg, I would have made that person Booker T. Not the goofy spinnerooni Booker T in the WWF, but the suit-wearing serious athlete in WCW - Pull some guys off TV for a while that had unique demo appeal and could have meant much more, then bring them back months later with a new look and vignettes that humanize them. Konnan is the first guy that comes to mind here, but there are others. - Rebuild the relationship with New Japan and maybe try to establish something with RINGS where shooter types can come in and take dives for Goldberg, building him up as the real deal who can beat the best fighters in the world. I think with the right booking, Goldberg-Don Frye could have drawn in 1999. Find a way to sign Ken Shamrock at all costs. - Speaking of Japan, revitalize the cruiserweight division by bringing in stars from Michinoku Pro that were starting to get stale there, but would be in a fresh environment now. While there were many talented wrestlers in the division already, so many of them were wasted and seen as jokes, so I would have cleaned them out and replaced them with a new crew of M-Pro guys and whatever good juniors were available stateside in '99 (if there were any). Most TV matches would be multi-mans, with singles title defenses mostly just happening on pay-per-view second from the top. Rey would be the focal point of the division. I realize he had already been unmasked at this point and he can't just put the mask back on, but I do think a Muta-Muto alter ego thing could have worked here. Maybe he uses his real name and works TV mostly without the mask, but "Rey" shows up as an alter ego on pay-per-views and dome show Nitros. - Let the WWF presentation of women run its course. They had educated fans (it wasn't too difficult I suppose) to not really give a shit about the talent women had in the ring, so a more credible women's division in WCW would have been doomed to fail because no fair comparisons could be drawn. So I'd keep women out of the ring as long as possible with the idea of building something when the Sable-Debra types faded away. - Re-focus on some of the strategies that put WCW over the top in the first place -- Nitro parties and accompanying presence at college campuses, counter-programming, signing the best guys in the world regardless of where they lived, etc. - Pump some money into merchandising and start marketing their video library like crazy (admittedly, that's a case of hindsight being 20/20) - Revamp the C-shows by getting them out of the Disney buildings and putting them in front of ticket-paying customers. There's nothing wrong with taping the shows before or after Nitro or Thunder, but I don't even think that would have been necessary. - More annual traditions that link to yesteryear -- Starrcade wasn't really presented as their Wrestlemania and hadn't been in some time. A few history packages and that would be an easy change. Bring back the Bash tour by doing a series of more "special" than usual shows with the series ending at the Great American Bash pay-per-view. I don't know that a Crockett Cup-type tournament would have worked in 1999; in fact, it probably wouldn't have. But I'd still take a loss on the first year and know it may be a failure, but see what lessons can be learned to revamp it in subsequent years. - Ric Flair needed to be presented as an almost untouchable icon who only wrestled 3-4 times a year and usually won when he did. He could have had all the interview time they wanted to give him, as those segments were usually a good bet to pop a rating, but there was no reason for him to be wrestling on TV all the time. He's someone that WCW fans held in such high regard that they needed to protect that. - Hogan turning babyface in 1999 didn't bug me so much because the time was probably right for a change, but they could have made a great, months-long redemption arc for him instead of him just switching to red and yellow one night like he did. How about a storyline where he has to repent and he realizes he wants to bring back Hulkamania but he has to earn it and prove that he has changed, maybe by taking out a few of his old running buddies. There needed to be some angles where he was attacked by a group of heels and no one came to his rescue as well, as that would put big sympathy on Hogan. - New announcers. I don't know where they would come from or who they would be, but Bobby needed to go. Tony I don't think was bad, but he was burned out and the Mick Foley thing really hurt his credibility. Larry Z didn't add much, and Tenay was good for providing background on the Japanese and Mexican guys, but I'd use him more as an assistant to help prep the lead announcers than to actually bring him to the booth.

Taker was really hampered by injuries as their matches progressed. He was almost worthless as a worker in 99. Yes, but they didn't deliver in their 1997, 1998, 1999, 2001 or 2002 pay-per-view matches against each other, nor did they in the many TV matches they had against each other in those same years. The sad thing about Austin's run as the top guy is that aside from the match with Dude Love at Over The Edge '98, nothing else really delivered in a great way in the ring until his 2001 comeback.

Is that what great match theory is about? Making a case that someone with a few good matches is better than someone with a ton of good matches? I don't think there are any absolutes, but I think in most cases, the better wrestler has the better output. But as Matt said himself, it's a starting point, not the end of the conversation.

Whether you liked the match or not, HHH and Rock stole the show. Austin-Undertaker had great hype and couldn't live up to it in the ring. The heat for HHH-Rock was off the page. I'm not debating the merits of the match so much as I am debating the takeaways from the show that night. The main event wasn't the hottest thing on the card coming out, even if it was going in.

A wrestler that has 50 good matches isn't necessarily better than a wrestler that had 38 good matches, but a wrestler who had hundreds of good matches has got to be better than the wrestler who only had 19 of them, right? Volume isn't a direct number comparison, but I think at a certain point, having good matches time and time again is the ultimate pattern you are looking for. You'll note that I'm using the word "good" and not "great". Yes, Ultimate Warrior had more great matches than Brad Armstrong, but Brad Armstrong had far more good ones.

I know. I was being facetious. The idea that wrestlers can be fairly judged on the quality of their matches isn't some radical new way of thinking about this stuff.

I mention it because most of the talk in this thread has been about Shawn and Austin hasn't really been vetted at the same level. We've gone through the Michaels critiques time and time again, so I'd rather talk more about Austin instead of building a case for him solely by building a case against Shawn. The Summerslam '98 match was really disappointing. HHH and Rock stole the show that night.

Austin and Undertaker working so many times and never fully clicking is a big black mark for me.

I don't even know what a John Tenta match looks like. There is a Flair match, a Hogan match, a Bret match, a Shawn match, an Austin match, a HHH match, a Kobashi match, a Misawa match, a Choshu match, a Liger match, a Rude match, a Backlund match, a Steamboat match, a Rey match, a Toyota match, a Yoshida match, a Santo match, a Windham match, a Daniel Bryan match, a Midnight Express match, a Hansen match and a Larry Zbyszko match. For better or worse, someone could describe any match as a typical ___ match and I'd have a general idea of how it was laid out. But I don't even know that I could say "This is what a John Tenta match looks like". Doc was typically the type of guy that got plugged into the other guy's working style in his best matches himself, and he never really struck me as a ring general. Maybe the same is true of Tenta, maybe it isn't. I don't know, because I can't name 10 memorable-good John Tenta matches. But that is all going in circles anyway. I think that's the divide when we debate these things. Half of us would rather talk about what-ifs than the careers these wrestlers actually had, while the other half would prefer not to deal in hypotheticals at all.

If Great Match Theory is going to become an institution, will the history books cite me as its greatest champion?

Great Match Theory stopped selling the leg during the comeback, which was very My Turn, Your Turn and full of 2.99999 wrestling. Talk about it here. **3/4

I guess the Benoit-Jericho-Eddy-Rey generation was the first to really pay attention to everything, but probably the biggest reason was that they worked everywhere. But I know Daniel Bryan and Cesaro, for example, follow modern New Japan, and Bryan has said he feels that it's part of his job to be in tune with this stuff. Regal has always seemed pretty in tune with everything too.

I get it in the 80s, but Flair worked a far reduced schedule in the 90s, so not keeping up with the WWF guys during that time surprises me. He wasn't even aware on that show on the Network that Mike Tyson was the selling point for Wrestlemania 14, or that it was pretty much when the WWF turned around.

It always frustrates me when wrestlers seem unaware of any wrestling outside their bubble. Flair clearly didn't follow the WWF in the 90s when he was in WCW. Bret clearly never followed Flair as NWA champ. I know you could say the same for a lot of wrestlers, but I think it surprises me the most when it comes from great workers. You'd think they would want to be in tune with what everyone else is doing to either steal ideas or try to top them. I wonder if Bret has ever seen an All Japan match, or if Flair has ever seen one from the 90s, for example. I think there are more wrestlers now that keep up with everything, but they still seem to be a rare breed.

Yes.

I know the style is not everyone's cup of tea, but Chigusa Nagayo really does deserve strong consideration for 1985, and maybe a few other years but definitely 1985. She had the mat classic with Devil Masami and the most emotional/disturbingly violent hair match in history against Dump Matsumoto within a week. She had her first singles match with Lioness Asuka, which was so good that AJW made the Battle of the Crush Girls an annual tradition through the end of the decade. She also has a pretty impressive list of workrate tags against opponents like the Jumping Bomb Angels and Red Typhoons, along with brawls with Dump and Bull. This was probably the year her status as a pop culture figure was at its peak as well. She's a strong candidate here.

Well, they did sort of have Seth screw him out of the title and he was at odds with The Authority the next night. Brock-Rollins has also been plan all along for Summerslam. So the fans turned him, but they did follow up.

Also, I hate to say it, but the new model has all pay-per-views free except for three of them. So do they still have to feel as special as they did before?

How did they write Rusev out of NXT? Did he lose on the way out?

I'm not sure I've ever heard anyone argue 2000 as the peak because of all the great TV matches. It's usually pay-per-view matches that people like, and the booking was also solid to great most of the time. Now, instead of one or the other, we have neither.

Wrestling doesn't sell. Nobody wants to watch a match without a story. At least that is what Vince said on Austin's podcast. In recent years, long matches have shown more ratings growth than talking segments generally speaking. And the type of matches I'm thinking are main eventer vs midcarder matches that they wouldn't put on PPV anyway. No reason Seth Rollins can't go 20 defending the title against Titus O'Neill, for example.

If Austin-Brock had even a slight chance of happening, they wouldn't have turned Brock babyface.

I'd put Shawn ahead of Austin, but it's close. Their strengths and weaknesses overall I think are opposite each other in most areas, so direct comparisons are hard on anything other than output for me personally. Austin had a 14-year career and he spent nearly half of that living on potential. I loved Stunning Steve, but not in a "one of the greatest of all time" way, and one reason I liked him so much was that he was trying so hard to improve. His career trajectory was exciting to follow, but he was a late bloomer. Austin was a great athlete from the start, but it took him a while to put all the pieces together and become a great worker. Comparatively, I think Shawn started performing at a high level much earlier in his career and stayed there until the back injury in 1998. It did take him some time to adjust to being a singles heel, much like it did Austin. I think it's close either way, but I also think Shawn had a far higher number of memorable matches, even excluding his second career. On a global, all-encompassing GOAT list, I wouldn't necessarily think this, but on a WWE-only list, I think Shawn has a really strong argument for number one. To me, his biggest strength there is in his influence. He popularized the ladder match and Hell in a Cell, which are two of the most important and enduring WWE gimmick matches. Ladder matches in particular also became popular on the indy scene and even played a role in great matches internationally, with AJW's Rage In The Cage and Psicosis' man vs self performance against Ultraman in early 1996 being the first that come to mind. I realize ladder matches happened before his run with Razor, but they weren't really a hot ticket until Wrestlemania X. I also realize that not all of his influence has been positive, but I do think you could argue that he set the standard and created the template for the modern WWE working style. I'm not sure I fully embrace that point of view, but a good argument is definitely there.

The more we learn about WWF politics, the more I think Austin, Bret, HHH, Undertaker and Michaels should all be held to a much higher standard, given that they were pretty much always the "captains", for lack of a better word, who were dictating the match. I start to wonder what we can really learn about their opponents by watching their matches. I don't think it's much, unless we want to see what kind of passengers they are. Vader has talked about how it was made very clear to him in his time there that Shawn and Undertaker called the shots when he worked either one of them. Austin has talked about how he always called his matches because of his hearing problems, and that he thinks the reason his matches with Undertaker never fully clicked was that both were used to being the driver. Add their endless opportunities to work long matches in main event spots to their creative control over the match path itself, and I think they all have a higher hill to climb, which is totally fair.