WWF booking from 1992-1996

[Ricky Jackson]

That could be another case of Vince bullshitting Bret, because I don't see how Flair had the power at that point (or ever) to make sure a demand like that was fulfilled.

[Loss]

That could be another case of Vince bullshitting Bret, because I don't see how Flair had the power at that point (or ever) to make sure a demand like that was fulfilled.

Could be. IIRC, Flair did skip out on a TV taping because he was mad about the decision happening so fast.

[jdw]

Suspect there's bullshit in that story as well. More likely that Vince didn't want to give away a pair of WWF Title changes for free in roughly a month.

 

It would have made for a big splash on SNME, but that wouldn't air until 11/14 which doesn't give much time to promote the co-main event if Survivors... at least how they promoted back then.

 

They really were panicking around at the time because house show business as in something of a free fall.

 

John

[Marty]

Suspect there's bullshit in that story as well. More likely that Vince didn't want to give away a pair of WWF Title changes for free in roughly a month.

 

It would have made for a big splash on SNME, but that wouldn't air until 11/14 which doesn't give much time to promote the co-main event if Survivors... at least how they promoted back then.

 

They really were panicking around at the time because house show business as in something of a free fall.

 

John

Yeah, the fall of business is what struck me as the driving force to change things up quickly. Savage was bombing as champ, and while Mad Dog makes some points about Flair as two-time champ losing and beating his rival, at the end of the day, I look at Flair's WWF reigns and feel he wasn't treated too much differently than the company's tradiitonal heel-transitional champs.

 

Weren't they building towards another Warrior reign before things fell through? If that's the case, it'd be interesting when they decided to change things up. Was it just after SummerSlam after Bret showed how he could carry a main event? Or some other time?

 

The Tito thing is an interesting bit of commentary. I remember thinking "bullshit" when reading that in his book, but a lot of the factors mentioned make a lot of sense. That said, I wonder if it would've worked, he wasn't exactly doing much in 1992 (as others mentioned, push-wise, he didn't have a bad 1990), and him getting the gold instead of Bret would've felt really out of nowhere.

 

(Apologies to Loss, as I realize this doesn't exactly fall under WWF philosophy, aside from how they likely viewed Flair.)

[JerryvonKramer]

Tito Santana as champ in 1992 is probably the most outlandish of ALL the stories, ever.

 

I mean it's not that far away from saying that they considered Virgil.

 

I mean Virgil and Tito formed the MJC (Miracle Jobber Connection) for quite a while, and Virgil's last (only) high-profile feud was only the year before.

 

It's a laugh-out-loud claim that Tito might have been champ that year.

 

I actually think that Ric Martel would have been a more realistic bet as a solid worker on the back of his feud with Shawn. Or maybe even Dibiase - I STILL think that just before his run with Money Inc when he had Sherri as his manager, they were gearing up for a (third) main event push.

 

Hell, I could even see runs for Davey Boy or even Crush above Tito at that point.

[Matt D]

There are a few things in Tito's favor. Vince knew he was loyal. Vince knew he was capable. Vince knew he was reliable. He wasn't about to end up arrested in a car with Razor Ramon (or whoever else he feuded with in 92). He had a reputation of being a family man and not a big party/drug guy. Apparently, the Matador gimmick was supposed to be part of a bigger push than he actually ended up with (Tito went to a decent amount of trouble to learn the gimmick). I'm not sure it mattered but he could also be a guy that Flair might have put forth (as he had with Windham just a year before), though it's not like he had a lot of leverage in the situation.

 

I'm not saying that I believe it, but I think there are more outlandish stories out there.

[kjh]

Weren't they building towards another Warrior reign before things fell through? If that's the case, it'd be interesting when they decided to change things up. Was it just after SummerSlam after Bret showed how he could carry a main event? Or some other time?

In the same issue of the Observer where they covered Bret's win, Meltzer vaguely talked about long-term uncertainty over Warrior's future. Sounds like Vince had just caught wind of Warrior receiving HGH from the UK and was forced to elevate a babyface to fill his spot for when the inevitable happened (Warrior walking out on the promotion rather than be publicly suspended). If not, then Warrior was a headache to deal with at the best of times.

[Dooley]

Hell, I could even see runs for Davey Boy or even Crush above Tito at that point.

Sterrrrrr-oiiiiiiids.

[artDDP]

What I still don't get is why the title win over Flair was never televised, at least on Prime Time Wrestling like the previous Flair-Savage switch was. I can't recall the WWF even showing much in the way of clips from the match on TV, although they probably did at some point.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZo-29ba-fI...feature=related

 

It was a Coliseum Video exclusive. Probably at the time Vince didn't want to run a bunch of title changes on free TV thinking it might diminish the appeal of PPV cards.

[Ricky Jackson]

I know it was filmed and put on video. I just wondered why it wasn't put on TV at the time.

 

And yes, a reluctance to televise too many title changes probably has something do with it.

[cm funk]

I wonder when they made the decision to go with Yokozuna. Likely it was around the same time they put the belt on Bret. I'm not sure when Yoko signed, but he debuted within weeks of Bret winning the title and was immediately fast tracked for a huge push. He was given a squash win at Survivor Series and the hype for him being in the Rumble began soon after. Meanwhile Bret was wrestling midcarders Michaels and Razor and doing the fighting champion gimmick. You could perhaps make a case that Bret was the first babyface transitional champion, and that they were just looking for a solid hand to keep the belt warm while they built up Yokozuna.

 

It also seems apparent that Bret was not the first choice to take the belt from Yokozuna, and was more a case of, "well, he's the best we've got". During the entire Bret Hart era Vince was looking for somebody else to be the face of the company, be it Luger in the Hogan role, Diesel or Shawn Michaels.

 

I'm not sure exactly how Hogan's comeback and 10 second title win plays into this, because there's so many different stories about what was promised to and by who, and different things that were planned, etc. Probably Vince just decided he should/had to test the water with Hulk one more time. It was a short-term arrangement, and when the initial returns on Hogan's comeback were poor they quickly went back to hunkering down for a long winter. I don't buy that Hogan was ever going to put Bret over, or that Vince ever considered it.

[Dooley]

I don't buy that Hogan was ever going to put Bret over, or that Vince ever considered it.

They had shot promotional photos with Bret and Hulk in a tug of war for the belt for Summerslam '93.

[MikeCampbell]

During this '92-96 period, there were several title changes that didn't air on TV though. Offhand, I'm remembering several IC Title changes, and a couple of tag title changes.

[cm funk]

I don't buy that Hogan was ever going to put Bret over, or that Vince ever considered it.

They had shot promotional photos with Bret and Hulk in a tug of war for the belt for Summerslam '93.

 

Knowing what we know about Hogan and Vince I'd chalk this up to both of them covering their bases.

[Guest Slickster]

I don't buy that Hogan was ever going to put Bret over, or that Vince ever considered it.

They had shot promotional photos with Bret and Hulk in a tug of war for the belt for Summerslam '93.

 

Did that picture ever get leaked?

[Bix]

I don't buy that Hogan was ever going to put Bret over, or that Vince ever considered it.

They had shot promotional photos with Bret and Hulk in a tug of war for the belt for Summerslam '93.

 

Did that picture ever get leaked?

 

I've heard people say that the ad made it into an issue of Nintendo Power before the plans were changed. There has to be someone who can check.

[Boondocks Kernoodle]

Nintendo Power didn't run non-Nintendo ads until '98, so it wouldn't have been in there.

[Bix]

Did some googling: The story was actually that it was in the spread for a WWE/LJN/Nintendo contest promotion but someone found it and it wasn't there:

 

[Dooley]

Someone should tweet Bret and ask him if he has a copy. Knowing Bret, it seems like the kind of thing he'd hang on to

[NintendoLogic]

Damn it, I arrived too late to put my old Nintendo Powers to good use.

[CodySave]

Regarding Bret Hart's "fighting champion" gimmick - this is precisely the reason Bret Hart became my favorite wrestler as a 9-10 year old. I thought it was so incredibly cool that there was finally a champ that would defend all the time against anyone that faced him (or, they at least did an awesome job of presenting the idea.)

 

If they give Daniel Bryan the belt in the future, they should use this as an example.

[BBscout]

Start at 2:07 - Hogan-Hart

 

Kinda crazy if that's where the catch phrase stems from.

[Ricky Jackson]

If they give Daniel Bryan the belt in the future, they should use this as an example.

Too bad he's been jobbed almost beyond repair. I guess he's still over, but God they have done little to make him seem like a star lately IMO. I know he's got a big match coming up Tuesday. Not a bold prediction or anything, but my gut says his future is as a heel.

[Bob Morris]

Covering a few things discussed:

 

* Bret was originally supposed to go over Yokozuna at WM IX. That only got changed when Hogan talked his way into getting the title. I believe the plan was to have the Bret-Luger house show program be a feud for the title.

 

* As far as booking philosophy went, I suspect some of the people who came into the company might have been tossing out some ideas (Jerry Lawler and Jim Cornette come to mind) and the fact so many WWF wrestlers were either working Memphis or SMW may have given Vince the idea to take a different approach. I know they did a lot of stuff about Bret's life outside the ring, they did this to an extent with Lex Luger, and Loss has gone over what they did with Diesel.

 

Heck, you can look at WWF Magazine during that time and its approach changed a bit. I can still remember the issue in which they did a pretty extensive story about the Hart family and where they got into Randy Savage's days playing professional baseball (which I don't believe WWF had EVER mentioned before).

 

* And the early days of WWF booking Raw were certainly unique. They would shoot an angle during a show that would lead to a match later that night, something WWF didn't do much before. They did several instances of surprise booking that made the show a must see, even if the talent pool was thinning.

 

* They even had some instances in which they did vignettes for new wrestlers who, even when saddled with gimmicks, they made them seem not as larger than life. Case in point: When Tatanka was first introduced, they called him by his real name (Chris Chavis) and essentially built to how he got his new name... and they didn't really do it over the top.

[Johnny Sorrow]

If they give Daniel Bryan the belt in the future, they should use this as an example.

Too bad he's been jobbed almost beyond repair. I guess he's still over, but God they have done little to make him seem like a star lately IMO.

 

That brings up something I've been thinking about. Who exactly thinks "I can't get behind him because he's done a bunch of jobs recently"? He's over with the crowds still so they obviously don't care that he lost a bunch of matches. The "smart" crowd I'd think wouldn't care, as he's an awesome wrestler. So who are these people who are saying "that guy can't be a champ, he's lost a lot."?