pmo

Good way to delineate between earth 1 Hogan and earth 2 Hogan

I always thought this was a great idea. Run it Sept-Oct, (possibly do the finals as Survivor Series) You could book it across all the shows and promote it as the only time the three touch with mixed brackets. You could write it with a unified writing team in advance and give rest of the writers a chance to recharge and plot out the rest of the year. I realize this has no basis with the current WWE works, but I always thought it could be a chance to break the year into manageable arcs, ie. RR to WM, WM to SS.

I wonder how much is that he's a third gen guy and it's all he knows. Look at a guy like Barry windham who spent the last 3-4 Out of shape and lazy after being arguably one of the best in world. Another example is Owen hart, I mean foley talks about "bad Owen" matches as a way of keeping himself interested. While I think that 2nd and 3rd guys seem to pick it up quicker there seems to be a number of that this isn't a lifelong passion for no matter how talented they are and/or they get bored of it. They are just so far ahead of everyone it doesn't make sense not to go into the business. For every Bret who lives and dies for the business there is an Owen who it's a job to. I think Randy falls into the latter category and has for the last 5 years.

I suppose but jbl had been a 3x tag champ, euro, and hardcore champ before he got the wwe title. He also had a singles push the year prior until he broke his arm. Mahal has never done anything or even hold a title.

The whole show is there if you look. Tommy Gilbert in a 2/3 falls match which basically has this and a very young Lawler as promo breaks between the falls. Interesting and Wright was amazing as a promo.

Taker was never the guy but he took Andres spot as the top attraction.

That's the biggest problem with the brand split in general. They aren't willing to really change the look and feel of the shows substantially. You would think after seeing the success of nxt, which has a different look and feel, they would realize the value of this.

Agreed on Hennig, he got good at the role, but it seemed an awkward fit at first. The thing with JJ is typical Vince hubris. You've already gone 50% there bringing in the belt why not go all the way with someone that is already on the roster. Heenan wasn't bad, actually had good chemistry, but you could run it with him and JJ and pull a slick/blassie deal with JJ taking over what's left of heenan''s stable.

I don't get the fact that JJ was right there in WWF front office if you wanted to go the new manager route. I can see Heenan trying to recreate the Bockwinkel chemistry, but Perfect never made sense.

I was always a fan of Motor City Machine Guns.

From I gather it was co promoted by Brusier and Gagne who bought it from Fred Kohler. Eventually Gagne took it over full time.

Race's music what Lawler uses now.

To be fair Watts mentioned in his shoot with Cornette that he was the only guy on the roster who be fined if he won a fight.

The match was in Kansas City, so he was a face. There's a match with him and Bundy in World Class where he is the face.

Yeah, the briefcase needs to go. It's stupid. It should only feature in the actual match, where it's necessary to actually physically retrieve something to win. There is no need for a physical representation of a guaranteed title opportunity at any time/place. Yeah I always thought it would be a good place to use the Million Dollar title if you want a physical representation.

Here's creative: Trips comes back as a wrestler in order to make a play to regain control. RR comes, Trips looks like he's going to score a dirty win for the WM spot and start to truly solidify his power base again...Here comes Sting to eliminate him. Boom match set for WM. That can write itself. Instead we get to REDO late 2013-most of 2014 again for 2015. It's honestly sad to see how desperate they are for threatening heels they had to bring Trips and Steph back just a little over a month since SS. They've done everything possible with the exception of Rusev to ensure that everyone just not get over. Exactly.... I mean you can have Steph say she maintained her manager's license and that they will prove to Vince that they can lead by assembling a stable of wrestlers that will take over the WWE from the inside out.

Mel Phillips in 80s despite an utter creep as a human being wasn't bad as a ring announcer,

I hope we get a book explaining the plot holes that will inevitably come over the years. Throw in some stupid shit like how Michael Rotunda Wyatt always favored Bo Dallas Wyatt over Bray "Husky" Harris Wyatt causing him to go insane and that Sister Abigail is the spirit of the Sunday school nun who was the only person to show him kindness. That Luke Harper used to be the popular high school football captain who would pick on the outcast Wyatt and Erik Rowan was the foreign transfer student who had a bizarre fixation on sheep. Gene Snitsky also makes an appearance for no discernible reason. I like this, but you have to throw Waylon Mercy in as Bray has gotten 1/3 of his gimmick from him. Plus Rotunda and Spivey were tag partners in 80s as well. Maybe talk about how Bray was always Uncle Waylon's favorite or something.

Yeah that's my point though. There should be a division between true world titles and mid major world titles, sort of like the way the wbo was looked at compared to the WBC, WBA, and ibf in boxing. The Wwa is a mid major, the awa is a world title

Another to add... NWF World Title- 70-81 defended in the US and Japan. was mid major in Ohio in 70s before being the top title in NJPW with Inoki. 10 years defended worldwide There should be mid major titles that didn't quite fit the criteria I would put these titles under there WWA- Indianapolis Montreal World Title Omaha World Title -Merged with AWA title American Wrestling Alliance Cleveland- Merged with NWA title

As I recall the buzz was one of them was going heel, most likely Austin. IRC Austin was somewhat flat when he came back from the neck injury. He still quite rusty and his character wasn't getting the pops that he had in 98/99. He also lost to HHH in the three stages of hell match which didn't help. The run up to WM X-7 he started heating up in feud with the Rock. He started acting heelish towards the Rock which had the opposite effect of getting him more over as a face. It also had a lot to do with the Rock getting stale as a face as well something that kept happening in the rest 01 and really until he turned in 02.

You hit the nail on the head there. It's not caring that's a problem. I know I feel the same way a lot about spending time with wrestling (except replace United with Fulham). I think the reason it hasn't gone entirely off the cliff is because there is something to cyclical nature. I wonder if the fact that the 80/90s generation that grew hasn't moved on has hurt the WWE in terms of booking. ( I have no data to back this up, just spitballing)

Territories and cities die. It's always happened in the history of wrestling. Even New York died in the late 30s and took more than a decade to rebuild. It's common any just about everything. Products die. Sports teams die. Televisions networks go in the tank (look at most of NBC). Etc. There's no reason to think this doesn't happen in wrestling. Just wondering how it happens. For example, the Detroit example says Sheik pissed off the fans by being an unbeatable heel for too long. So when someone else tries to promote a show 3 years later without the Sheik on the card, what's stopping people from going? Every person in the city is just completely turned off wrestling and won't even entertain going to a show? When long-lasting products die, it's often because something else comes along to take their spot and they can no longer compete. For example, in this country old-fashioned plate-service chain restaurants (see Wimpy, Lyons Corner Houses) were killed by fast food once McDonalds turned up -- just as Music Hall was killed by radio and TV. The product goes out of favour because it didn't move with the times, not because anyone had ill will towards it. Indeed, the passing of the product is met with a feeling of sadness and you'd expect to see campaigns to save it. The wrestling burnout example isn't like that -- the logic is that the promoter breeds ill will in the fans and turns them off the product and then, somehow, that ill will stays for a number of years to "kill" the town. I cannot think of examples of sports teams dying due to low crowd turnout bred from ill will. Most football clubs here have been running for almost a century and failures come down to financial mismanagement such as overspending on players (see Portsmouth). This is why I asked if things are different in the US. Which sports clubs died from breeding ill will? There were two good story Cornette gave in his 1st shoot about Territories dying. The first when Jerry Jarrett tried to bring Memphis TV to Cincinatti. He talked with one of the local station managers who basically popped in a tape of the Sheik's program at it's worst (according to Cornette, the Sheik was doing the snake gimmick and the snake looked dead plus a ton of bad looking blading, everyone is old). The program manager then said this is why I won't have professional wrestling. Another story was the drastic change in reaction of folks in Dallas from when Cornette worked during the heyday of World Class vs going in with Crockett after all of the tragedies had gone on. Basically it went from something everyone was talking about and excited for to some "ahhh this is something we used to do." To put it another way to kill something dead, the product has to be so bad and offensive that it just turns the fans off to the sport entirely. With the Sheik, it was so bad and schlocky that it was embarrassing to watch. World Class with the Von Erich deaths and exploitative aspect of it just turned off a generation of Dallas wrestling fan. WCW was the late Bischoff/Russo eras that was so bad it just made people stop caring period. On a personal level a good example of this is when I was in college freshman year, 99, my buddy was a huge old school NWA/WCW fan (PWI almanacs, tape collection, Etc) and really preferred it to the WWF. When Lyger came in during the Russo era he was so excited to watch Nitro that instead of switching back and forth, he went to his dorm just to watch Lyger. Needless to say that was the Lyger/Juvy bottle of tequila angle. It just killed the joy of watching it for him By the time we got back to school for Sophomore year he no longer watched much wrestling. I would have to bribe him with a Crockett Cup tape I rented or something like that. To kill a territory it has to not just be bad, but bad enough to piss off the hardcore fans. While one can argue you don't want to always appeal to the hardcores, you need to do enough to keep them happy. To drive them out you have do a series of things that are so extremely offensive (Mike Von Erich living mircle/ Fritz Heart attack)/embarrassing (50 yr old Sheik and Bobo) that it would drive away the fan and/or make them not care. A good football reference would be Wimbledon/MK Dons franchise and the fans reactions to their moving (basically we don't care just leave) might be a better comparison than Pompey.

Just watched it, not nearly as depressing as I thought it would be. Flair clearly has serious problems, Piper actually seems to have his shit together apparently.

That belt is NWF title.