JerryvonKramer

As may well have been predicted, the worst booker thread has been dominated by discussion of Russo and WCW in its dying years. Time to flip the question then. I think this is difficult, because very few bookers are entirely consistent. Vince, Dusty Rhodes, Gabe Sapolsky, Baba, Paul E., Cornette, Lawler, Eddie Graham, Jarrett, Bill Watts and so on ... for every massive high there is usually a correspondingly awful low or various levels of what-the-fuckery. Guys get burnt out, guys fail to move with the times, guys book against their instincts, guys with 20-year track records make terrible mistakes and go broke. Are we looking just for the most number of highest highs or are we looking at someone who has the highest average level of quality and has been the most consistent. Even Russo had a hot streak. I mean it seems like the default answer should just be "Vince and Pat Patterson", but there are lots and lots of options. What about guys like George Scott? Ernie Ladd? Bill Dundee? NB. We are talking purely about booking here, not necessarily promoting which is a slightly different ball game.

In late 93 / early 94 he, along with Dustin Rhodes, was still being talking about as "the wrestler of the 90s" and as a big future star. I mean Austin wasn't just there on the upper midcard, he was properly hyped. I've got no reason to believe that they wouldn't have kept pushing him. I don't see why they couldn't have had Austin in a new Horsemen in 94/5. Flair (world), Austin (US), Arn and Pillman (Tag). That's not a bad stable. At some point Austin is sick of being in the Tully role and wants a shot at the World title. Instant feud. If Hogan doesn't come in, I see literally no reason for this not to happen. Sting / Austin would have been great. Austin (face) vs. Flair (heel) backed by Arn and Pillman and possibly a turned Dustin Rhodes as the 4th Horseman. By 96, he's a main eventer and a draw in his own right. There's no reason either why Lex Luger and people like Savage wouldn't have come into WCW - and those would have been main event angles too. Maybe Luger / Austin as part of a wider Sting feud, while Flair / Savage is happening, then switch to Austin / Savage dream feud as we have Sting vs. Flair part 986. Theoretically, Vader is still around too as a constant alternative main event heel. Why wouldn't something like this have played out?

I'm probably alone here, but if it was between having the NWO and the Monday Night Wars and seeing what would have happened to the WCW that was building in 93-4, I'd take the latter every time. There was still something distinctively NWA about that product, a real lineage back to Crockett and a real respect for "this great sport". Hogan coming in changed all that almost overnight. We went from Spring Stampede (awesome) to Hogan vs. Brutus fucking Beefcake at Starrcade and Duggan squashing Austin in under 5 minutes. I'd love to have seen a WCW where Hogan never arrives. Venutra probably would have stayed. Vader probably would have stayed. Hell, maybe we get some classic Bret Hart matches when he turns up. Probably WCW would still be around today in some shape or form. Who knows. I'd take 92 or 94 WCW over 96 or 97 WCW any day of the week. And I'm convinced there are a whole bunch of old rassling fans that Bischoff just killed dead in the water in 94 when Hogan came in. Not convinced those guys ever came back, not even during the Monday Night Wars. I'm talking about your old MSW fans, your old Crockett fans, your old Georgia fans. Bischoff and effectively all of WCW turned their back on those fans in 94. It's a big "what if", but I still believe they were really building something there. It was a slow build, but they were moving in the right direction. Honestly, right now I'd take that over the big heel turn, Bash '96 and all the rest of it.

But my point was that was that it wasn't Hogan's fault that management gave him way way way too much power? I mean Vince in 93 didn't put up with that BS for long and he was out the door. Sure he massively pandered to Hogan's ego in the 84-91 run -- specifically total and utter bullshit like winning the 1990 Rumble when he was already champ rather than let someone like Perfect get the rub. But some of the crap in WCW reached absurd levels. Pre-NWO even, what the hell was that 8 vs 2 match against the Dungeon of Doom? I don't see why they gave ANYone "creative control". If both WCW and WWF say "no, you can have money, but the final decision is ours" then it's a choice between working or not. I'll never understand how that nonsense came about. Of course no one wants to job and look bad. Of course Hogan is going to think that it's best for his character if he never gets pinned. It's like giving a contract to a footballer which says "you can pick and choose which matches you're going to play in", that's never going to work. This is what I was talking about terrible management. Who do you blame there? The footballer for exercising his contracted "right" or the person who gave him the contract? Hogan is only ever going to have Hogan's interests at heart, he's an employee, not a booker, not an excutive. If your employer tells you you can take 3 hours for lunch and you do it every day and it's written into your contract and you take 3 hour lunches every day, is it your fault? I don't want to defend Hogan in 97-99 here, but I'm just saying you can see why he was like he was. I mean they gave Lanny Poffo a $150,000 contract AND inducted Angelo Poffo into their Hall of Fame, because Savage insisted on it in the terms of his contract. Who gives an employee that sort of power? What if they don't give Savage that sort of deal? Is WWF going to take Savage back when Vince thought he was done and they are making fun of him in skits? Probably Savage doesn't get a job in New York, so if WCW played a bit more hardball they didn't need to bend over and take it from every star. Certainly not from Savage and not to the same extent they did with Hogan.

That Russo and Hogan segement on Nitro is one of the saddest things I've ever seen. Do you know then one? How much do people blame Hogan for what happened in WCW? Does he deserve some blame or is he just the victim of terrible management?

You say that but then I think, he has at least Austin vs. McMahon to his name. What does Ole Anderson have to put against that? The big defence for Ole is that "he had some good days in GCW", well Russo has to take some credit for 97-98, and his highs are probably higher than Ole's highs. What about Herb Adams? What about Verne?

I envision a rich discussion with many different candidates put forward. Since PWO is the home of challenging received opinion, I'm interested to see if there are any Russo defenders in the house. I certainly think you can make a strong case that he's not the worst ever.

I read that Macho paid for the Georgeous George gimmick for Lanny to play it in WCW but they literally never called him. He was on $150,000 a year and they never used him. This when Renegade was regularly on TV. I can see the argument that it's cheap heat, but Poffo did it SOOO well, especially working heel. Every little mannerism is just pitch perfect. He's such a total mincing ponce. It's almost impossible not to love it from where I'm sitting. All the little things like bending backwards to go under the ropes, the dainty little cartwheels, doing his hair when he backs off. Just amazing, amazing embodiment of the gimmick. The fact it might have caused riots in Texas is more an endictment of those crowds than the gimmick. Where I see it, is the the heat isn't coming from homophobia, it's coming from the fact that you've got this poncy prancing character who is doing all he can to back out from a real fight. That heat, to me is just another version of the sort of heat that Heenan has as a wrestler. It's an elaboration on the chicken shit heel. I've got to be honest, when I look at that and I look at Adrian Street manhandling Linda, I know which one I find more offensive to 2012 sensibilities. In any case, I think Street and Golddust belong to a slightly different category. They are clearly manifestations in some way of glam rock and psychodrama weirdness. They are as much Bowie or even Steve Harley and Cockney Rebel as they are Georgeous George. Adrian Adonis was much more of a cross-dresser. Poffo as the Genius is just a straightup nancy boy, and that's a pretty unique and awesome gimmick. I don't even think sexuality comes into it. I don't think he was meant to be gay as in liking men, but just a bit of a "big girl's blouse". (do you have that saying in the US? -- like a bit of a girly wimp) The big thing hurting my argument here is that the time period I'm talking about 89-91 is quite limited and he didn't have a huge amount of matches in that time because he was doubling as Perfect's manager for much of it.

My money's on Col. Mustafa actually. Side question: did Raymond ever interview Jacques?

Yes absolutely. As I said before, even with Flair, although they gave a nod to him holding the other title and he'd mention other title reigns in promos, he was still a WWF-packaged Flair. WWF Flair had no suit, for example. He always wore the robe. I made a fairly detailed posted about this ages ago but searching for Flair on this board is like searching for the word "the".

Just happened to watch two of his performances as The Genius recently: the Beefcake match from the 90 Rumble and vs. Hogan and Warrior on SNME before Mania 6. Struck me, not for the first time, that the dude was fucking incredible. I reckon he did that schtick better than Georgeous George. Think he deserved a much much bigger push, think of the matches he could have had in, for example, Honky Tonk Man's spot. How do people rate him here? To me this is a guy that totally gets it like Heenan. I mean everything he does is good, nothing wasted. Played his role to perfection.

Really good show. Think this one and the last one have been my favourites of these so far. Can't wait for this set. I was probably the poster you were referring to who mentioned the ages of guys over on DVDR and it was interesting to hear you mention that you think Verne was still booking the older guys because they were still draws and because of the mindset of the fans in that territory. I have a slightly different theory: 1. He booked them because they made it seem less strange for him to still be in the ring. 2. He booked them because they could be trusted and he was paranoid. 3. He booked them because they were available. Vince wasn't going to be using those guys at that time and neither was Crockett. Even by 87, AWA must have seemed more attractive to some older guys (e.g. Wahoo) than Memphis or Texas. 4. He booked them because there was no one else. I'm not sure how credible this one is, but I'm guessing the best talent would have been hoovered up by Vince or Crockett. Hell, Vince even poached Boris Zhukov. Verne simply didn't have the creativity or nous to spot potential or create new stars. 5. He booked them because they were cheap. I don't have figures to back this up, but I'm willing to bet that Stevens or McDaniel in 87 weren't getting large pay packets.

Watts definitely definitely will, but it'll be a question of how much of that material they use. I'd also like to say that Ernie Ladd has the best leg drop I've ever seen.

Took me ages to find online, but they EACH chose their top 4 and then made a composite consensus one, see below -- Cornette did make it: JR: Bobby Heenan, Jim Cornette, Gary Hart, Paul Heyman Dillon: Heenan, Gary Hart, Cornette, Jimmy Hart Hayes: Heenan, Ma Bass, Frenchy Bernard, Gary Hart Jimmy Garvin: Heenan, Gary Hart, Dillon, George "Crybaby" Cannon Joey Styles: Miss Elizabeth, Dillon, Heenan, Jimmy Hart Consensus: Bobby Heenan Gary Hart J.J. Dillon Jim Cornette That being the case then I reckon they might give Cornette a call. Why not?

Actually, that 4th spot *I think* was given to Gary Hart. They put him over massively on that show. So Cornette didn't make the Mount Rushmore.

Can anyone remember the roundtable they had on managers on Legends of Wrestling a couple of years ago? I remember they did a "Mount Rushmore" at the end picking out the 4 top managers of all time. If I can remember correctly, Heenan was one, Jimmy Hart was another, JJ Dillon was one because he was on the panel, but was Corny the 4th? I can't remember. If Cornette was featured on that, then I suspect JR has got enough pull to get him contacted. I mean Cornette worked for WWE until 2005, that's only 7 years ago. I don't think it's impossible.

Sigh

I think when El-P was saying "revisionist" there, he was really trying to say "WWE-centric". That is what they do. They rewrite the AWA as being where a lot of "future" WWF stars first plied their trade. They rewrite NWA and WCW history to be almost 100% geared towards the Monday Night Wars. So anything before that is just a precursor to that, unless it's Dusty vs. Flair or Steamboat vs. Flair, which have a sort of privileged status. There are a few other narratives that they allow "privileged status" in this way such as the Von Erichs vs. the Freebirds in Texas or the basic idea that territorial heads were like mob bosses. I reckon somewhere at HQ they've probably got a "Bible" of what is considered "good history", and what not to mention.

I was thinking about this yesterday and aside from Watts, Duggan, Dibiase and JR, who else do you think they could get? Mr. Wrestling II is in his 70s (but then so is Watts), here are some other names of reasonably prominent Watts guys who are still alive: Bob Roop Jerry Stubbs Matt Bourne (legends contract as Doink?) Butch Reed Jim Cornette (highly unlikely?) Bobby Eaton Dennis Condrey (under WWE contract) Ricky Morton Robert Gibson Killer Kahn Chavo Guerrero Hector Guerrero Jake Roberts Tommy Rogers Bobby Fulton Terry Taylor Dutch Mantell 1. How many of these guys would be willing to be interviewed? 2. How many of the guys would the WWE BOTHER to contact? Part of me thinks they'll just think "Oh, we've got JR and DiBiase, they are familiar to the modern fans, and we've got Watts so don't need anyone else".

I think a Mid-South documentary with Watts, JR, DiBiase and Duggan before they are all dead or too old to talk can't be a bad thing.

Other than Flair, there are very few examples from the 85-93 period where he didn't 100% repackage someone and act like they had no history outside of the WWF. Even Dory Funk Jr became "Hoss Funk" and was given a cowboy gimmick. This was one of the big differences between Vince's self-contained cartoon universe and the much more realistic NWA world in which success elsewhere was seen as adding to a guy's legit credentials. Always thought this was one of the more interesting aspects of Vince's whole marketing strategy: he knew his audience was mainly kids who didn't know any wrestling outside of WWF, so he went out of his way to encourage their ignorance and leverage that to his own advantage.

I think that 18-second match at Mania has relegated Big Goldy to being a joke title now. That and the fact that almost everyone on the roster has held it at one time or another. I'd like to see an end to the brand split. I'd like to see a drastic reduction in the number of PPVs. I'd like see guys of different shapes and sizes and types in wrestling again. I'd like to see storylines that run for a year. None of these things are going to happen.

Very big news. Is that the final piece of the jigsaw? Does WWE now effectively own US wrestling history?

I pretend wrestling ended in 2002.

Have just learned that the playwright Samuel Beckett used to drive Andre the Giant to school. That has got to be the weirdest and most unlikely wrestling connection I've ever heard.