Dooley

I think the bigger problem with putting Barb in the main event at that time is the ring attire. Sorry, but you can't put the title on a guy with antlers and even a 10 year old knows that. Warlord's an interesting choice but I think Vince realized the matches would be bowling shoe ugly.

Didn't both Eadie and Randy Colley insist they came up with the gimmick? Both used it after they were turfed from WWF and Eadie even went to court over it, didn't he? Not that I want to get involved in part 47 of the jdw-JVK feud that no one except the two of them gives a shit about.

WM8- Hogan-Sid Summerslam 92- Macho-Warrior (again, Bret-Bulldog was a big crutch for the live gate) Survivor Series 92 - Macho/Perfect-Flair/Razor WM9 - Bret-Yoko; Hogan was a special attraction in a lukewarm angle but of course wound up stealing the main anyway

Yup. Other than WM9, the world title match isn't the "real" main event for any of the cards JVK listed. And Hogan wound up being in the impromptu main event for that anyway. Although Summerslam 92 is a bit of an anomaly as happening live in England Bret-Bulldog would have been considered the main event but for the North American audience it was Savage-Warrior. Right, and? The point is that it doesn't matter what was on last or what the title was doing. They put Bret vs. Shawn on last at Survivor Series and that was a title match, but the pushed main event is Savage and Warrior vs. Flair and Ramon (ended up being Savage and Perfect). My point here is that they were running double main events similar to what the WWF had been doing for years in the 70s and early 80s. Middle of the card or end of the card, doesn't matter. If it's Bruno or Hogan in the middle of the card, you say something like "oh he's upstaging the title match -- which is now in the graveyard slot", if it's Bruno or Hogan on last you say "oh they are burying the world title by not putting it on last". The problem is not with co-main events or ordering, it's with a big marquee star who is a bigger star than everyone else. I agree it's not about match sequencing, but there weren't really two main events on any of those cards. There was a clear main and co-main for all of them (although again, Summerslam 92 is a bit trickier).

Yup. Other than WM9, the world title match isn't the "real" main event for any of the cards JVK listed. And Hogan wound up being in the impromptu main event for that anyway. Although Summerslam 92 is a bit of an anomaly as happening live in England Bret-Bulldog would have been considered the main event but for the North American audience it was Savage-Warrior.

Danny Doring.

Warrior-Hennig wasn't even mentioned on TV was it? Warrior's first TV appearance with the belt was at the April SNME where he faced Haku (underneath Hogan-Hennig I might add) and Rude got involved, kicking that off again. Hennig wasn't a viable option for a first challenger anyway, not just because he had jobbed around the horn to Hogan, but he lost clean to Beefcake at WM6. Turning Piper heel might have been interesting.

Warrior-Quake was the first plan for the fall of '90, but it was nixed either due to Quake not being hot enough after losing to Hogan or Vince thinking Warrior/LOD vs Demos was going to draw much better than it did. The booking of the 6 man feud was pretty flawed in itself with the Demos being stripped of everything that made them cool (entrance music, the godawful masks instead of paint) and painted as more cowardly heels that relied on the numbers advantage rather than badasses. Rude was an incredibly poor choice for Warrior's first feud as champ seeing as how he had feuded with Rude for the majority of the past year and come out on top. Rude didn't really get rehabbed at all beyond a haircut before going for round 2. Plus you had Warrior meeting Rude on the SNME prior to SummerSlam, kicking out of the Rude Awakening, hitting the big splash and getting a visual fall before winning by a weak DQ when Heenan pulled his hair. How that was supposed to make people want to see a cage match between the two is beyond me. There was plenty of booking blunders in '90. Warrior wasn't presented well as champion. He was positioned as secondary to Hogan despite beating him, and again lost the allure of what brought people to him in the first place due to the WWF's attempt to "humanize" him. The toned-down paint, bringing a teddy bear on "Regis & Kathie Lee" for Kathie Lee's son, the retarded Amanda Ultimate Warrior" segment on Brother Love. If they just wanted Warrior to be Hogan, why not just use Hogan? Unfortunately Vince repeated this mistake twice more with Luger and Diesel. The tag team scene was also a mess. What could have been anchored by a hot LOD-Dems feuds for the titles instead featured a Harts-Demos feud for the first half with the LOD in the background, then the Harts spent the rest of the year as directionless champs with no real feud. The majority of the undercard just seemed to be spinning its wheels for the most part. With the exception of Slaughter who returned in the summer, no one really seemed to move up the card. When Nikolai Volkoff is your #3 babyface at the end of the year, you probably made a wrong turn somewhere.

This. Windham was set to be a main event heel for the WWF at this time but life got in the way. They were even hinting at him challenging Hogan on the syndie shows.

The other factor in the failure was the insecurity of the WWF locker room. It seemed like every one of them bitched and moaned at the idea of putting over a WCW guy. Where guys like Hardcore Holly got that sense of entitlement from is beyond me.

I would think the logical plan would be to keep the belt on DiBiase until WM5 where Hogan takes it back. You have Savage chase DiBiase through the summer, re-introduce Hogan (in-ring) at Survivor Series, he wins the Rumble than takes back the belt. It's easy to forget how slow WWF booking moved back then. That wasn't going to happen. Vince didn't blowoff world title feuds in that area. He saw Wrestlemania as the Superbowl of wrestling. There is more evidence for my claim. The first world title change happened in 1997's SummerSlam, i.e. only when competition forced Vince to change strategy. Again, SummerSlam tended to be for Intercontinental title changes. My post on this page covers this. There is no chance in Hell Vince was going to change a world title at SummerSlam in fucking 1988. If DiBiase wins, he holds it until Wrestlemania V. But he was not drawing in his shadow title run. In math, this is a proof by contradiction, or at least being reasonable doubt in the space of humans. While I agree that DiBiase would have held until Mania, the problem with your reasoning is that you're relying on a formula that hadn't been established yet. You keep talking about what SummerSlam patterns were, but there hadn't been a Summerslam yet. Historical patterns only work in a past context, not a future one. As far as DiBiase's "shadow" reign (I dislike that term), it's hard to blame him for 2 weeks of houses where tickets were sold not knowing he was going to be announced as champion. SNME established Savage as a Hogan ally and a guy that can carry the babyface side in Hogan's absence. Nothing more.

I would think the logical plan would be to keep the belt on DiBiase until WM5 where Hogan takes it back. You have Savage chase DiBiase through the summer, re-introduce Hogan (in-ring) at Survivor Series, he wins the Rumble than takes back the belt. It's easy to forget how slow WWF booking moved back then.

Having DiBiase "buy" his way to the finals and Andre injure Hogan after their match and interfere like crazy during the finals would have been enough of a cushion to put DiBiase over Hogan, one would think.

If Hogan doesn't go film No Holds Barred or take a hiatus for whatever reason, I'd think they'd go with Hogan-Andre in a cage for WM4, with DiBiase in Andre's corner. That gives you a jumping off point for a Hogan-DiBiase summer feud as DiBiase finally decides he can't buy the title or send a henchman for it and finally has to do it himself. If Honky drops the IC title to Savage I think everything still goes according to the original plan with DiBiase winning a tournament and Savage chasing him until Hulk comes back. I still can't wrap my head around a guy like Vince caving to Honky of all people and allowing that to change his plans for his champion coming out of his biggest card of the year.

As a footnote, I'm watching the Cincinnati-Miami NFL game and they just did a split screen of Hogan and a youngster dressed like Hogan at the game. They spent a few seconds talking about how "Hulkamania was running wild at the game tonight".

And with so many defects already, the complications in doing face-heel dynamics in large, undefined stables like Team WWE and Team WCW, 8 two-hour shows between each monthly PPV, short of holding off the angle, you have to wonder how soon WWE would have reverted to normal business after 3 PPVs. With such a huge overhead, it probably wasn't a great business move actuarially. Hogan and Flair were huge stars, but Austin, Rock, HHH, Undertaker were all much bigger stars by that point. DDP hadn't been a draw since 1999. Were people going to pay money to see Hall and Nash when they hadn't been significant draws before? Sting was the face of WCW and he'd never sign on, which hurts the legitimacy of it being a real WCW, even with Flair. Jeff Jarrett wasn't going to get signed, Luger was broken down, and Scott Steiner could have worked well until he was exposed. Mysterio was obviously a great hand, but he was never seen as a top WCW guy but instead in the same way as the Radicalz, a workhorse of midcard status. Goldberg was significant though. So of all the guys who really mattered as being inherent draws or who had potential mobility such that he was booked as more than a midcarder, I only see Flair, Hogan, Goldberg, and Steiner. Hogan could draw but I think only for special attractions and not as a guy who had the stability to be on top long-term because he's Hogan. Flair is in the same mold. Steiner really got a bad rep after a few matches given how much he slowed down. Goldberg is the only guy who had real value beyond being special attraction, and we're talking about a guy whose drawing power started dipping 3 years before and who had been buried ever since. This is going on all the while pulling the trigger for WCW would have come at the expense of any younger guy like Jericho or Angle who WWE had already spent a year pushing. I think WWE made the right move by not taking the bait and by introducing valuable acts in increments without putting their midcard on the altar. There is no evidence any of them had long-term drawing potential besides Goldberg, and even his case is shaky. A $10-20 million overhead could not be justified in added PPV revenue for a bunch of guys whose drawing power had ddissipated while in WCW. People look through the potential with rose-colored lenses. For every talent acquisition WWE got in that era also came with the stigma of a company that only created one star and whose booking incompetence even hurt Hogan, Flair, and Goldberg, their only draws. It's almost as if some critics want to put a blanket over the head and pretend Vince bought 1998 WCW and not a company who three years thereafter was so dysfunctional that WCW PPVs couldn't even get 100 000 buys in a hot period where WWE could do 5x that on a B-show. In other words, Vince inherited WCW's booking incompetence, a company who by 2001 showed all the signs of a company that waited too long to build to the future. You pretty much hit all the smark talking points in one fell swoop. Kudos. There's literally no point in doing a WCW "invasion" if you're not going to bring in the names most associated with WCW to begin with. If that means you have to delay the invasion by a year to get the top guys on WWF deals, so be it. It beats WCW making its debut by Lance Storm and Mike Awesome doing meaningless run-ins. Saying no one cared about WCW in 2001 misses the point. By that point any casual fans were watching WWF anyway. They didn't stick around for the downfall. They still remembered WCW's heyday roster of Hogan, Flair, Goldberg, The Outsiders, Sting, etc. That's why people gave the Invasion a shot to begin with. But when it was clear that it was just Team WWF stomping a bunch of guys they'd barely heard of, they tuned out. One could argue they've never really come back.

We're not that far apart on this. I think "cultural icon" is a ridiculous label to throw at Hulk Hogan. Comparing him to a 30 year old Wendy's commercial is just too far in the other direction. He had a successful MTV show just a couple of years ago. Also, I hate you for making me remember who K-Fed is. That guy's more comparable to the Wendy's commercial.

"Where's the Beef?" lasted one summer if memory serves. Hogan's been doing (bad) movies/TV for 30 years. I agree that his importance shouldn't be overstated, but people know who he is. Comparing him to someone who's only notoriety came from a 30 year old fast food commercial is equally disingenuous. I wonder about your social influences when you say that Carrot Top is more recognizable than almost all major movie actors. The rest of your thought is immaterial as well as 99% of entertainers aren't remembered 100 years later. Or are we about to side-drain into a discussion about the top entertainment acts of 1913?

"That was easy".

I thought it was all Shane McMahon's fault?

That's always puzzled me. How does one guy in the crowd get 20,000 to chant something?

Rascalz had a Bret Hart sample in "Gametime/Sharpshooter" and Bret appeared in the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OflDxK7v3Lw

Biker Taker found a groove as a heel, but the early babyface days were pretty rough. I still remember him announcing to Vince that Linda had signed him to a new contract by saying "i'm gonna get paid a whole lotta money to kick yo stank ass". I cringed. In spirit, the character wasn't more than an Austin clone who rode a motorcycle....or the lost member of DOA.

Davey Boy Smith was someone who jumped to mind. Had a few times in his career where he was put in the main event mix and if he could have cut a decent promo on his own, he may have stayed there. But he was too BIZARRE.

Explain.