JerryvonKramer

Alright Shining Wiz, have a hug too buddy. I'm not having a go at you as a person, I just really disagree with your take on Vince. Only don't actually hug me. But I'm sorry if that post hurt your feelings, came across as too antagonistic, or made it seem like there was an absolute truth. Alright. Assume all my posts have that tagged on the end of them.

The Abby thing is a bit weird thinking about it. You'd think he'd be a perfect Bruno or Pedro opponent. I wonder why they never brought him in, any ideas? I mean considering they brought in guys like Bobby Duncum and Tor Kamata.

I'm sorry Shining Wiz, but I find that post exceptionally wrong-headed. Almost absurdly so. And I think it's a fantastic example of how all the little basic wrestling promotion 101 stuff that Vince has always done really well at (local marketing, booking venues, decent live gates, etc.) are just taken for granted. And it takes a really incompetent company like a JCP or WCW to remind you of all the little things WWF/E did right and have done right during Vince's entire time in charge. Here's the bottom line: Vince's worst years as a promoter, his very worst years, with the possible exception of WCW for about a year, still made more many than the best years of any other promotion. Period. Certain things are easy to take for granted. I'm not putting work into this, someone else can if they want to, but go and look at MSG attendance figures, even during the darkest years. Look at Boston. Philly. Washington. And look at other towns on WWF's core regular loop even during the very very worst years. Tell me what you see. I see people giving Memphis Wrestling all sorts of praise for getting 8,000 people to come back to the Mid-South Coliseum every month. No one ever credits Vince for selling out fucking MSG for 30 years. Just let alone ANYTHING else, look at the core old territory business and he's already better than 90% of promoters who ever lived. Now go and look at the gates in their key Canadian towns over that 30 year period. I think his accomplishments are easy to take for granted after the fact. Okay, so not every year is a Hogan year or an Austin year. Those sorts of booms come round once a generation if you're lucky. But his average year is better than any average year in wrestling history. Choose a year any year as your example, go for 1995 and 2006 if you want. Vince's 2006 was better than the best year they ever had in any other promotion in the world, in wrestling history. Fact. Now consider: - Took over every single region in the USA - Put almost every competitor out of business in the USA - Took over Canada with relative ease - Went over to the UK where wrestling was on its arse, dying on its arse, and got 80,000+ people into Wembley without free-to-air national TV. Do you know incredible that is? - Broke other international markets, including India. Now consider: - Transformed the business model of pro wrestling utterly - Added merchandise as a key revenue stream - Added PPV as a key revenue stream and ... cemented PPV as a core business principle in pro wrestling - Wrestlemania itself ("Oh but WM is its own thing" No it's Vince's thing. I mean Christ, it's HIS event and it makes shit loads of money) - Supplemented with other revenue streams (see WWE.com, WWE Network, video games, etc. etc.) - Plus god knows how many stars he's made over the years - Plus god knows how many amazing angles and brilliant TV he's overseen "Oh yeah, but 2005 wasn't as hot as when Austin was around" Are you fucking kidding me? You've lost all perspective. All of it. Compare WWF/E to Mid South, to Memphis, to JCP and it completely destroys any of them as a money-making machine. DESTROYS them. Fuck compare it to EMLL, New Japan or All Japan. "Oh but that's not fair". Why not? The bottom-line is who made the most money. Who was best at making money out of pro wrestling. #1 on the board practically every year since 1985 is Vince, with a possible blip in 1996. "Oh but only 8 of those years were HOT" Do not talk shit. I'll stop now, but this sort of thing baffles me.

So what we're saying is WWE is now too corporate, too sponsored, too sanitized to actually have proper heels who are disliked by fans? If that's what we're saying then it might be time to transition to a different model. Maybe one based on localities and regionality like a lot of sports? (Home and Away fans) Or a model of everyone kind of getting cheered but some guys REALLY getting cheered like in Japan. Because if heels can't get heat there is literally no reason to have heels at all.

I was curious about this when the topic came up earlier this week and did some research on Abby. Apparently the shows he worked in 72 were in Pittsburgh, which wasn't a WWWF town at that point. The town was run by Pedro Martinez for the NWF promotion which also ran Buffalo and Cleveland. The Pittsburgh shows used some regular WWWF talent, primarily Bruno (when Morales was champ and Bruno a freelancer on sabbatical from WWWF), Dominic DeNucci, Victor Rivera, Tony Parisi and Baron Mikel Scicluna. The town was sold back to Vince Sr. somewhere around the time Bruno won the title again in December 73 As far as I know Vince Sr was a bit like Sam Muchnick in that he didn't like any nonsense and St. Louis wouldn't use Abby because they saw him as a circus act. Senior vetoed using Andy Kaufman. Although WWWF had some colourful characters (Albano, Grand Wizard, etc.), they didn't have many (or ANY) wrestlers who were considered "gimmick guys". Did Sheik ever work in WWF?

Unconnected to anything. As I was walking back to my office just now, it occurred to me just how much I LOVE the way Flair says "Wahoo McDANiel" when he's listing off all the guys he's faced in promos. The way his voice goes high and almost breaks at the "el" part. Flair is such a great fucking promo. EDIT: Shit, this was meant to go in "Comments without a thread"

Would recommend splitting this off as its own topic V. Interesting. More later.

But the casual fan is transitory and slopes off. He's a fairweather fan. He's a kid of 8 who is into something now and moves onto something else in a year. To an extent the WWE just needs a constant churn of such fans. What was the gate at the last Wrestlemania?

The casual fan doesn't care. Just lives in the perpetual present. Do you think in 1985 that the average Hogan fan even knew who Bob Backlund was? The point is that the past just doesn't matter. John Cena probably. Undertaker has just gone out.

Well the thing is, Mick, I'm not representative of Vince's target audience. I think a lot of the time Vince just point-blank writes off the hardcore fan. He cares more about the casual dollar. That's always been where he's focused his attention. To an extent, he probably thinks "well there's a certain portion of guys who are gonna turn up no matter what, it's the other 80% I need to worry about". I absolutely hate what Vince has ended up turning wrestling into. But I still see phenomenal gates on the PPV events, legions of message boards talking about nothing but WWE, and people fucking telling me that HBK is the greatest of all time, which suggests that Vince is doing something right. He's making something that I don't want to buy, but there are people buying it. Just like Simon Cowell makes music I'd never ever ever buy in a million years, but the charts are full of his acts.

Can you break down what's changed in him? How and when did Vince fall off in your estimation? I'm interested. If this thread isn't the place for it, I'd encourage someone to start one. This is a fascinating topic to me. My analysis has been for a long time that the thing Vince gets than no one else -- as in other promoters, fans, etc. -- does is that the public at large don't really like wrestling that much and his whole career has been a testament to that. I think that Vince's instincts are always FIRST towards getting product over as you'd get any other product over. Then he thinks in wrestling terms second. And his wrestling instincts, I think, are still very much influenced by his dad -- as in babyfaces, babyfaces, babyfaces. Heels have always been second-class citizens in WWF.

Yes, because the man who has made more from wrestling than the next TEN promoters combined doesn't know what he's doing and CM Punk and the smart fans do. Not trying to pick a fight, but for as much criticism as Vince gets -- remember that he beat Sam Muchnick, Bill Watts, Fritz Von Erich, Eddie Graham, Verne Gagne, Jim Crockett, Paul Heyman, Ted Turner ... Vince won every single time. And every step of the way there was Dave Meltzer and a 1000 smart fans talking about how wrong everything he was doing was. Every step of the way.

Oh shit. I was really keen not to forget Pete after that dude named literally everyone who ever did a podcast but didn't list Pete. And then I fucking forgot Kelly. lol

I've also just got to the Will and Tim section. No offense Steven, but your Bret argument is fucking retarded. I don't want to get into either. I just wanted to mentioned it somewhere to let off steam. Will didn't even mention Ron Garvin.

Maybe he also needs a worm sidekick. A guy who clearly if he wasn't hiding behind this bully would get his ass kicked. Every bully needs one of those. Maybe Jimmy Hart / Grand Wizard build. The main heel would be a bit like a toned down Garston out of Beauty and the Beast. The worm sidekick would have to have an annoying laugh and secretly make sure things are just right for the main heel. Could even do a very slight riff on Mr. Perfect character ... only let's say the main heel throws a dart or something and he misses, but when he's not looking the sidekick moves it to the bullseye, or some shit like that. AND gets the geek kid minions to nervously cheer for him. Progressively darker as the angle continues. Eventually it transpires that he's even got them wiping his arse for him. And then eventually one of the generic WWE babyfaces has to come out as the defender of geeks everywhere. Maybe even get a cameo from one of the Big Bang Theory actors or something.

Well good. Maybe see how far you can push the character and still have them cheer. He makes one of the geek kids into a slave has them shine his boots. He spits on them. He drives one of them to the verge of suicide. Let's see how far the over 40s go in how much they want to cheer this guy.

Reading that again -- kjh, sure, I wouldn't know the names of any other places anyway. I'm just happy to point generally to "those fans out there".

But there's no need to stereotype other online wrestling communities when you can just critique the generic views. Many of the posters on PWO have ties to other sites, so although it's true that members don't owe shit to the rest of the internet, it would be a nice gesture if they didn't insult those places. I'll be honest, I don't give a shit. Other people can do what they want. If Loss and Will want to make a rule about all generalizations about anyone anywhere, then I guess fine we can make that rule but ... Says it all to me.

Here's my last idea. Basically, a two-faced heel. You can have the group be heel or babyface to start, does not matter, but basically the guy is constantly two-faced about his friend. Talking behind his back. Making faces behind him. This is a remix of the old Sting-Luger angle, only a little more overt with the douchery in the Luger role. Maybe you also see him claiming credit for things his partner has done. Running his friend down. Maybe even shagging his girlfriend. Or something like that. Basically act like the biggest piece of shit ever. Again, I don't see why anyone would cheer that. Of course this does rely on the logic that the wrestler doesn't watch TV and ignores people telling him about it on twitter, etc.

If the segments were entertaining and the guy was a solid wrestler, he would be cheered. Or at least not booed. Make the shit DARK. Not entertaining, proper off-the-deep-end dark-as-fuck bullying. They won't cheer that.

Here's another heel: "The Vegetarian" Not only is he always awkward when ordering meals and things, he goes out of his way to stop others eating meat. Picture the old APA hanging around and about to tuck into a hot dog each. The vegetarian pops in and takes their hot dogs from them. His finisher could be called "Sustainable development".

Terrific!!!

I would like to see the heel I'm talking about call out a fat teenager in a black hoodie carrying a Nintendo DS. Maybe a pair of glasses on. And literally kick the crap out of him. Then grab the mic and as he's laying in stomps saying shit like the following as each stomp connects: "Your status updates don't mean anything!" "No one cares about your twitter account kid!" "Your video games are lame!" And as he's writhing around, crying on the floor, the heel drops an elbow on him. Grabs the DS and smashes it over his head. "Your parents don't love you!" "No one could love you because you're worthless!" "Your whole generation is WORTHLESS!" "You should be OUT THERE! In the sunshine. You fat. Worthless. GEEK" ------- Fast forward a week and he's sticking another nerd kid's head down the toilet and flushing it. Takes a twenty dollar bill from out of the kid's pocket. "What's this then kid? You been saving up for another one of your LAME video games?" He rips up the twenty dollar bill. Then sticks the kids head down the toilet again. I cannot believe a modern audience would cheer that.

Instead of writing "the board" just list the people who hold the opinion or examples of people who hold the opinion. However, I disagree with kjh's point above because I see the same generic views repeated in far too many places, and members who post on PWO don't owe shit to the rest of the internet.

They aren't / don't? We've entered interesting times where the live audiences don't really represent the WWE Universe as a whole. Even live crowds for TV tapings are much different than live crowds for house shows. It's tough to navigate it all. But surely you have to play to the live crowd no? I mean fuck they plug twitter and WWE2k15 enough.