Were the Death of the Territories in the 80s Inevitable?

[Dylan Waco]

7500 in Detroit is in some ways even better than it sounds because Detroit is perhaps the ultimate in wrestling towns that was completely burned to the ground by the home promotion. Detroit was completely DOA until 85 when Vince was finally able to open it up and sell the place out for record gates behind Valentine/Tito and Patera/Studd v. Andre/JYD.

[BruiserBrody]

It seems like Memphis and Portland are truly exceptions to the general rule. Greg Gange's idea that every territory hunkering down and concentrating on its own core market wouldn't work against Vince in the longterm since most territories didn't enjoy the exceptional circumstances of either Memphis or Portland.

Like goc already pointed out, Lawler was part owner of the company, so he had a good reason to stay in Memphis. The only big name from Portland that I'm recalling Vince taking is Billy Jack Haynes, and he's already been making the rounds long before Vince snagged him in '86, he'd done stints in Florida, WCCW, and Crockett.

 

 

IIRC Vince snagged Haynes in 84 but he was out quickly. Ditto Buzz Sawyer and Blackjack Mulligan and Kamala.

 

Verne made a lot of moves talent wise to remain fresh and viable after Hogan left, he just had issues with some of the troubled souls he tried to use on top. Blackwell's health, The Freebird's and Brody's instability and the Roadies not wanting to play ball were key to the quick collapse when '86 rolled around.

[JerryvonKramer]

I just listened to Ole and Dave Meltzer arguing about this in 2003:

 

 

Ole's argument is this:

 

1. The Dumont Network was national in the 1950s.

2. Vince has been bad for the business because of the total number of wrestlers who are able to make a living out of it.

3. The fans are not served as well because they no longer get regular wrestling coming to their city, sometimes as much as 5-times a night in a given area.

4. The total number of hours on TV was as much then as it is now, if not more -- and the TV was better then.

5. More bizarrely: there are a 100s of Hulk Hogans waiting to be found out there -- plus a tangent about how Hogan was not the sort of maineventer he needed in Georgia because he's not someone you can have an area night after night since Hogan is the sort of person who needs to be used relatively sparingly, which goes off into some odd areas during which he claims complete ignorance of Hogan's success in WCW.

 

Dave provides many of the same arguments provided so far in this thread.

 

Ole is his usual grouchy, bitter and arrogant self, but he does reason out his arguments fairly well for a wrestler (insomuch as he bothers to at all).

 

In the second and third parts they go off on other arguments: Flair wasn't a draw because he only did well when business was up. Ole asks Dave why he's not in the WON Hall of Fame. Fireworks now. Ole thinks he's not in the HOF because WON voters think he didn't travel around enough -- he says the Carolinas and Georgia was where the money was and he didn't want to keep uprooting his wife and family. Meltzer tries to tell him it might not have made a difference. Then they argue about whether or not Ole CARES about being in the Hall of Fame or not.

 

Very entertaining. Ole is such an asshole, but he's funny in how much of an asshole he is. "Are you interviewing me or are you interviewing yourself?" Ha ha. Part 3 more or less descends into pointless ad hominem but for the purposes of this thread, part 1 is worth a listen.

[rzombie1988]

I think some of the territories could have been saved and could have survived longer. The big thing would have been to better secure their tv through contracts and whatever they needed to do along with guaranteed contracts for wrestlers. Maybe the wrestlers and TV still would have gone, but it would have delayed the process a little. Promoters also needed to cross the territorial lines and understand that the idea of bringing someone in for a 6 week run was done. The promoters also needed to do this around Vince's first run, as they would have still suffered bad by 1986.

 

I'd like to mention that a lot of the territories were dead before Vince came through, mostly due to the local promoters being inept like The Sheik's territory and the WWA. People often credit Vince for killing off so many territories but tons of places closed up shop in the 70's.

[jdw]

I think Kris and I and other covered most of this in the Vince & Hogan vs The World thread.

 

Someone was going to go national with the rise of cable. Some already were, and some massive population areas were wide open (CA being the most obvious, but MI and OH and IN in varying degrees as well) as 1982 wrapped up.

 

The WWF was the most obvious because they had the largest base. That also gave them something to fall back on in case they failed.

 

The AWA was the second most obvious, because the had key markets, a good core business, pretty decent location for expansion. Of course they didn't have a lot of vision.

 

I'm not 100% certain that "WWF Rivals" had to expand massively on a national basis, or that All Of The NWA Had To Unify to survive. We've talked about JCP, and that if they and their Eastern Seaboard promotional brothers had some vision they might have combined into something more than just JCP + GCW's dead husk. JCP+GCW+CWF would have been a pretty strong core base to grow from if they joined hands 1983, took Flair with them (even in the sense of conning the rest of the NWA into more dates), and made some key signings. We ralked in the thread about Vince targeting Florida: in the South, Florida and Texas matter. He won Florida. He didn't win JCP-ville or GCW-land, despite buying GCW. If they could have maintained a strong hold in Florida the other two, then they have a better base to build on.

 

Would a strong FL market (i.e. as strong as their core was when they were "hot") have been more valuable to JCP than their efforts in California? Certainly while JCP was still alive, before Turner bought them. It also would have been useful in keeping Vince out of it if they had the success they had in JCP+GCW in keeping Vince out.

 

It's small and you always have a risk of Vince stealing your talent. But if even a handful (i.e. 5 promoters from the AWA and NWA) had some vision, they probably could have carved out two strong expanded territories that could have survived Vince's onslaught.

 

Of course one of them would have had to have been the AWA, with Hogan as champ. But we've already talked about that: Verne didn't have the vision for it, and even if he did... Vince would have still expanded and eventually just backed up the brinks truck to Hogan to steal him. New York? You don't think that would play to Hogan's ego, along with his money lust?

 

The "territories" as they'd been in the 60s and 70s were doomed, and they already were dying to a degree by the early 80s. Detroit was dead. The old strong Ohio based offices were long since shells. SoCal was dead, as was NoCal, two promotions that had some hot times in the 60s and 70s. I suspect if we looked at all the offices of the 60s and 70s that there were others that fell off.

 

But larger territories in the face of a national promotion? Suspect that there would have been life there, especially given how USA Network for the WWF wasn't the only cable company on the dial. Dittos the increased ease of syndicating to more markets within your territory.

 

Which gets back to the core reason why it was doomed:

 

Wrestling promoters had no vision. They were use to operating monopolies. If something fell in their lap like a new city, then it was easy. A new competitor with massive resources and killer ways of fighting you? Well beyond them.

 

Cable was part of it. The already existing issue of major territories dying was part of it. Lack of vision was just as much.

[jdw]

Whoops... double post.

[JerryvonKramer]

Good stuff John. Tomorrow in work I'll print out the Vince vs. The World thread and read it in full, assuming I'm not sacked for wasting university resources.

 

I have two questions:

 

1. Why CWF rather than, say, Watts?

 

2. I find this notion of a town "dying" strange. Everyone always says that Detroit was completely dead by the end of the 70s. How does that happen? In the US does this ever happen with other sports? I mean let's say if someone ran a show in Detroit in 1980 were the people there just totally against the notion of going to a wrestling show? Were they actively anti-wrestling?

 

I've talked in the past about fads -- WWF in 91-92 here was a fad like yo yos -- but those were established towns with decades long traditions. How do they just suddenly stop like that? Curious phenomena. The only parallel I can think of is something like the death of Music Hall (believe Americans say "Vaudeville"), but that is explicable in terms of technology and cultural shifts. The idea that an area gets "burnt out" by a wrestling company hot shotting is a bit strange. Ok, you piss off some fans in 1977, 4 years later that means no one in the area will watch a wrestling show? I'm not saying it didn't happen, it clearly did, just trying to make some sense of it.

[thebrainfollower]

My understanding of the Detroit territory was that the Sheik booked himself as an unconquerable heel for so long that fans just gave up and stopped watching. There could be other factors I'm not aware of but that's what Cornette has said a bunch of times.

 

It is interesting that CA fell apart, both territories so close to each other and only a few years apart.

[Bix]

Good stuff John. Tomorrow in work I'll print out the Vince vs. The World thread and read it in full, assuming I'm not sacked for wasting university resources.

 

I have two questions:

 

1. Why CWF rather than, say, Watts?

 

2. I find this notion of a town "dying" strange. Everyone always says that Detroit was completely dead by the end of the 70s. How does that happen? In the US does this ever happen with other sports? I mean let's say if someone ran a show in Detroit in 1980 were the people there just totally against the notion of going to a wrestling show? Were they actively anti-wrestling?

1. Watts wasn't an NWA member, CWF was closer geographically, CWF shared talent with the Georgia office regularly.

2. Knoxville was dead too for years. The promotional war between the Fullers and All-Star wrestling killed it (I forget exactly how...paging Zellner) circa '79 and it was (usually) promoted by outside offices until Fuller came back in '84. And that's a great wrestling town with no "real" sports franchises of note.

[KrisZ]

Here is the deal with Knoxville.

 

All-Star opened up as opposition to Ron Fuller when Roop, Garvin, Orton, Malenko, etc broke off aligning with the Poffos while just burying the Fullers on their TV and in their printed lineups. They exposed the business giving out shoot names etc and they hurt the Fullers but they also hurt their own brand as they had some success to start yeah but as soon as Ron Fuller sold the Knoxville part of Southeastern out to Bob Polk in early 1980 then Polk brought in Georgia talent every week it really hurt All-Star who basically went away before 1981.

 

Knoxville then became a bouncing ball as Polk sold to Jim Barnett who ran it for a while before selling it to Mulligan/Flair/Crockett and they had some success through 1981 and into 1982 but then they backed out thus leaving Knoxville dormant for the next couple of years or so. There would be shows there but not on a regular basis until Ron came back in during 1985.

[KrisZ]

Regarding the territories let's just go with January 1, 1983 as the date and look at these cities that had no real home promotion.

 

Los Angeles

Detroit

San Diego

Sacramento

Indianapolis (WWA doesn't count)

San Jose

 

And these got monthly action at best

 

San Francisco

Phoenix

Seattle

Denver

Cincinnati

Cleveland

Las Vegas

Columbus, OH

Salt Lake City

 

That's a huge chunk of the country west of the Mississippi that some genius promoter (eventually Vince) would decide to try to eat up.

 

Like I said as soon as Ted Turner put up the satellite and the country started to see GCW which at the time was as good of a wrestling TV show as any other one in the country it was over for a lot of territories.

[jdw]

Good stuff John. Tomorrow in work I'll print out the Vince vs. The World thread and read it in full, assuming I'm not sacked for wasting university resources.

 

I have two questions:

 

1. Why CWF rather than, say, Watts?

 

Maryland --> Virginia --> NC --> SC --> Georgia --> Florida

 

JCP+GCW+CWF would basically claim the coast from the Mason-Dixon down to the Keys.

 

Of course Maryland was a battleground state: the WWF was very succesful in 1982/83 in Baltimore and DC, and had been for ages. GCW wasn't as established there. However, JCP did do very good business there. In turn, Vince always would try to turn FL into a battleground state, with Hogan likely an effective tool there. My point was more in getting established there.

 

In terms of population, Watts didn't have a pot to piss in compared to getting GCW and FCW merging with JCP. Also in the sense of TV markets: Atlanta, Miami, Tampa, St Pete, Ft Laud out strip what Watts could add.

 

 

2. I find this notion of a town "dying" strange. Everyone always says that Detroit was completely dead by the end of the 70s. How does that happen? In the US does this ever happen with other sports? I mean let's say if someone ran a show in Detroit in 1980 were the people there just totally against the notion of going to a wrestling show? Were they actively anti-wrestling?

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.

 

John

[KrisZ]

And here is the thing with CWF that they had that almost no one else did......they had air time in NYC for years.

[jdw]

Regarding the territories let's just go with January 1, 1983 as the date and look at these cities that had no real home promotion.

 

Los Angeles

Detroit

San Diego

Sacramento

Indianapolis (WWA doesn't count)

San Jose

I would group them:

 

Midwest

Detroit

Indianapolis (WWA doesn't count)

 

SoCal

Los Angeles

San Diego

 

NoCal

Sacramento

San Jose

 

 

 

And these got monthly action at best

 

San Francisco

 

The AWA was making a go of it, but it's safe to say that NoCal was effectively "open".

 

Phoenix

I'd add in Tucson as well as a city that could be "moved into". The WWF tended to wisely run shows in both. If we created in out mind a mythical "Western Promotion" that sprung up to to be similar to the AWA in the mid-west or more so the WWF in the Northeast. then the Phoenix/Tucson "swing" would be part of running the territory.

 

 

Seattle

I seem to recall Bix mentioning that this was part of the PNW territory? Still, the Portland territory was a weaker one that was very open to being rolled over by someone like Vince with bigger guns and exposure.

 

 

Denver

I thought that had been in the hands of Verne for a while. Vince going after it was part of his multi-front war against the AWA, knowing they had the best markets next to (i) his own, and (ii) the open ones. Like we've talked about, Vince strategy was pretty easy: kill the AWA and take the open major cities = Victory.

 

Cincinnati

Cleveland

Columbus, OH

GCW had these? Easy pickings for Vince since they were well out of GCW's "core", and GCW was past it's peak when Vince went to war.

 

Even in a JCP+GCW+CWF scenario, these might have been tough for JCP to hold. They were on a path connecting Vince to the AWA, so he was going to fight hard for them, if not early, then no later than after he killed off the AWA.

 

I always felt that MI, OH and IN were expansion slots for Verne if he had been more proactive in say 1982 (i.e. building towards Hogan As Champ). They just fit in better with his core.

 

Las Vegas

Salt Lake City

Verne had SLC. Did he have Vegas as well? It's kind of an odd appendage.

 

That's a huge chunk of the country west of the Mississippi that some genius promoter (eventually Vince) would decide to try to eat up.

 

Yep.

 

 

Like I said as soon as Ted Turner put up the satellite and the country started to see GCW which at the time was as good of a wrestling TV show as any other one in the country it was over for a lot of territories.

I don't think GCW impacted many fans around the country when it got on the air. The territory here in SoCal and up in NoCal died without it having an impact. There also was about zero chance of GCW ever going up to New York and killing the WWF off. From a promotional standpoint, Vince didn't use cable as much in expansion as he did Syndication. The local shows were pushed on the syndication, which I don't recall at all on the cable (other than the city flashing by on the list of cities they'd be in that month). Almost all of the angles on cable were those run in Syndy, with the major exceptions being those on the network.

 

I wouldn't say cable was a zero to Vince, but it was well behind Syndication and then SNME.

[jdw]

It is interesting that CA fell apart, both territories so close to each other and only a few years apart.

I think wrestling in the 70s was pretty similar to baseball in the 50s: people remember it with rose tinted shades, but the reality is the the business was unhealthy in a lot of places. SoCal and NoCal were fading as the decade went on. Det died. Bruiser's Indy promotion was fading / faded. It would be interesting to see someone do a history of wrestling in Ohio, because it seemed to fade with Al Haft and the others who ran it in the 50s.

[KrisZ]

San Fran, Denver, Phoenix, Vegas, & SLC were all regular monthly stops for Verne in 1983 so yeah he had them as part of his territory but still it wasn't his core area of Minnesota, Wisconsin, & Illinois.

 

PNW ran Seattle once a month as well as they focused plenty on Portland and smaller towns.

 

GCW was running Grand Rapids, Cincinnati, Cleveland, & Columbus monthly as well sometimes twice a month but again it was up for the taking.

 

Regarding cable/syndication of course Vince had a bigger advantage with syndication as he was buying up other territories TV times or going to rival channels in their markets where if the territory wasn't up to task they were getting eaten up.

 

GCW though got big and Tommy Rich was touring around the country as an attraction at one point working in Frisco, Boesch, & Watts.

[KrisZ]

It is interesting that CA fell apart, both territories so close to each other and only a few years apart.

I think wrestling in the 70s was pretty similar to baseball in the 50s: people remember it with rose tinted shades, but the reality is the the business was unhealthy in a lot of places. SoCal and NoCal were fading as the decade went on. Det died. Bruiser's Indy promotion was fading / faded. It would be interesting to see someone do a history of wrestling in Ohio, because it seemed to fade with Al Haft and the others who ran it in the 50s.

 

Ohio was huge in the early 70's as NWF was really successful there but then they got a in promotional war and both died.

 

Los Angeles died when they lost English speaking TV but they had moments there with Piper & Chavo.

 

Frisco died pretty much with the Buddy Rose incident.

 

Detroit died thanks to the Sheik around 1976-77 as they were drawing pretty big in the first half of the decade and you can see the gradual decline here.

 

Big Time @ Detroit, MI – Cobo Hall – May 3, 1975 (7,261)

Lou Klein d. Ali Baba

Randy Poffo & Mike Thomas d. Pretty Boy Floyd & George Steele

Kurt Von Brauner d. Pez Whatley

The Alaskans d. Cowboy Allen & Alo Leilani

Lord Athol Layton d. Saul Weingroff

Angelo & Lanny Poffo d. Fred Curry & Hank James by countout

Bobo Brazil d. Killer Karl Kox

Abdullah the Butcher battled The Sheik to a no contest

 

Big Time @ Detroit, MI – Cobo Hall – August 28, 1976 (4,276)

Dominic DeNucci d. Gary Fulton

Mighty Zuma d. Denny Alberts

Nick DeCarlo d. Johnny Davis

Chris Colt d. Cowboy Dawson

Andre the Giant batled George Steele to a DDQ

Hank James fought Don Kent to a draw

Pampero Firpo d. Killer Karl Krupp

Thunderbolt Patterson battled The Sheik to a DDQ

 

Big Time @ Detroit, MI – Cobo Hall – September 17, 1977 (3,298)

The Wildman d. John Boy Ruffin

Hank James d. Sachamo Boogy

George Gulas & Tony Parisi d. Sam Shell & The Wildman

Luis Martinez d. Nelson Royal

Moose Cholak d. The Wolfman

Don Kent d. Ed George by countout

Abdullah the Butcher & The Sheik d. Dory & Terry Funk

 

Big Time @ Detroit, MI – Olympia Stadium – February 26, 1979 (2,609)

Richard Charland, Al Costello, & John Ruffin d. Steve Cooper, Tiny Hampton, & Sailor White

Al Costello d. Steve Cooper

John Ruffin d. Tiny Hampton

Richard Charland d. Sailor White

Mighty Igor d. Mike Wayne

Ed George d. Floyd Creatchman

Pancho Villa d. Bobo Brazil

The Sheik d. Randy Savage by countout

 

WWA was doing well even after losing the Battle of Detroit as they were running Market Square Arena for big shows and drawing around 8-9,000 while getting 5-6,000 on their shows at their regular building Expo Center. It started going down in 1979 and then in 1980 it completely fell apart.

[jdw]

San Fran, Denver, Phoenix, Vegas, & SLC were all regular monthly stops for Verne in 1983 so yeah he had them as part of his territory but still it wasn't his core area of Minnesota, Wisconsin, & Illinois.

 

PNW ran Seattle once a month as well as they focused plenty on Portland and smaller towns.

 

GCW was running Grand Rapids, Cincinnati, Cleveland, & Columbus monthly as well sometimes twice a month but again it was up for the taking.

Yep... pretty much what I was thinking.

 

CWF was running regular right up until Vince rolled the trucks in, but it wasn't especially strong at that point, and Dusty was already heading out to JCP. Just running shows isn't enough when you've got a killer coming after you.

 

Again, not totally sold that a JCP+GCW+CWF "merger" in 1983 could have kept Vince out, but it probably would have resulted in a stronger "JCP" business in Florida, and perhaps at worst been similar to Philly and Baltimore as battlegrounds.

 

That's what Vince's areas were: battle grounds. If Vince "won" or battles to a long term "draw" in his core cities, he would have also won in those non-core areas as well: a hot product in Chicago would have worked in Denver.

 

Ohio... that just seems like a state that Vince would have rolled unless Verne was super established in it, like he was in IL/MN. I don't think GCW was strong enough to hold out, and if we're thinking of a JCP+GCW+CWF merged promotion, you wonder if it's resources being taken away from (i) doing strong business in the JCP core, (ii) keeping Atlanta a strong draw, (iii) protecting Florida, (iv) keeping the GCW investment in Maryland/Baltimore alive, and (v) possibly pondering Philly invasion. Ohio was a great state for Vince to take, but if we're thinking of Super JCP, then Florida feels like a better fit, and you don't really want a sink hole in a war with Vince while you're trying to get three promotions integrated into one.

 

I almost would be tempted in 1983 to "sell" it to Verne, and let Verne be a beach head. It also keeps you from wasting your dates of Flair in that state, instead using your dates in the core, and Baltimore.

 

 

Regarding cable/syndication of course Vince had a bigger advantage with syndication as he was buying up other territories TV times or going to rival channels in their markets where if the territory wasn't up to task they were getting eaten up.

He went balls out. No one had that vision.

 

 

GCW though got big and Tommy Rich was touring around the country as an attraction at one point working in Frisco, Boesch, & Watts.

I'm not sure how massive TBS was in those days. WTBS had 2M subs in the late 70s, and that's what CNN launched with. Cable penetration really didn't take off until a bit later.

[KrisZ]

Let's go with a JCP/GCW/CWF merger in 1983......like I said before CWF had weekly TV in New York so that was a huge plus then you had GCW on TBS which by 1983 was starting to really grow.

 

What you could've done is basically run it like 3 different circuits as you have a North/Central/South setup for your non-anchor towns while on weekends where you run your anchor towns you bring in a mixture of the 3. That way you can keep guys fresh by interchanging them out every so often and you could do that with bookers too.

[jdw]

Los Angeles died when they lost English speaking TV but they had moments there with Piper & Chavo.

It was a long, slow death through 1982.

 

Frisco died pretty much with the Buddy Rose incident.

Did Shire have TV issues before or after that? I thought the blow was off the promotion before Rose, and that was one of the next major nails.

 

 

Detroit died thanks to the Sheik around 1976-77 as they were drawing pretty big in the first half of the decade and you can see the gradual decline here.

Yep. Sheik rolled in so much money for so long that he never thought of changing much.

 

You have to wonder if Sheik's "hot period" had taken place starting in 1975 instead of 1965 (for a 1965-76 run), and Vince went to war with Det in 1984, would Sheik have been a Lawler who could withstand it, or would his promotion have been so one-note that after close to decade of the same thing, would fans turn to Hogan. The thing with Jerry is that he could work the mic. Even then, the best days of Memphis business were done not long after WWF expansion.

 

 

WWA was doing well even after losing the Battle of Detroit as they were running Market Square Arena for big shows and drawing around 8-9,000 while getting 5-6,000 on their shows at their regular building Expo Center. It started going down in 1979 and then in 1980 it completely fell apart.

That's doing business for a long time. How much AWA talent (i.e. Brain and his teams) did the use while still drawing well?

[Bix]

And here is the thing with CWF that they had that almost no one else did......they had air time in NYC for years.

For all intents and purposes, wasn't that a WWF show? Or was it a completely independent deal where Graham just gave up the local promo time to Vince since he had no use for it? Also, at the time of the expansion, that station (WNJU) didn't just show CWF, it was also carrying the same WWF syndicated shows that were airing on WWOR.

[Bix]

The Funks vs Sheik/Abby show is the one with the "robbery with the box office" that led to outside names no longer coming in, isn't it?

[KrisZ]

It was the complete CWF show with WWF promos where CWF promos would be.

 

Bruiser was still using AWA guys in 1980 and then once that relationship ended his territory went down. The last feud that actually drew there was the Battle of the Bruisers (Dick vs. Brody)

 

Another situation I forgot to mention with Frisco was the deal where they got LA TV so there were guys who were babyfaces in Frisco but were heels in LA and the fans were completely confused. The Roddy Piper/Moondog Mayne situation in particular where they were in a blood feud in Frisco but best friends in LA.

 

The Roop/Sullivan feud was before Shire brought in the PNW guys and that did well plus they had a nice run with Dean Ho/Muraco feuding on top but after the Rose incident it really went down.

[KrisZ]

The Funks vs Sheik/Abby show is the one with the "robbery with the box office" that led to outside names no longer coming in, isn't it?

Pretty much yeah but the Funks were always loyal to the Sheik and kept coming in.

[jdw]

Let's go with a JCP/GCW/CWF merger in 1983......like I said before CWF had weekly TV in New York so that was a huge plus then you had GCW on TBS which by 1983 was starting to really grow.

 

What you could've done is basically run it like 3 different circuits as you have a North/Central/South setup for your non-anchor towns while on weekends where you run your anchor towns you bring in a mixture of the 3. That way you can keep guys fresh by interchanging them out every so often and you could do that with bookers too.

You've have to think about whether 3 crews or 2 crews are better. One key thing is that you need to keep the average attendance up. You need money to keep everyone from jumping to Vince. Guys in JCP in 1986 were making enough money not to think about it too much, especially guys in the top 4 or so matches. But by 1987... things started changing.

 

Also, if you're trying to protect FL and Baltimore, you really don't want to run "weak" cards. You're not going to get Flair every card like JCP basically did in 1986 (very few dates with the rest of the NWA that year). What a Merged Promoter could try to do is lobby the NWA for the same number of dates that Flair gave to JCP+GCW+CWF in 1982 and see if they buy it. But still the point would be is that you wouldn't have Flair anchoring 1 of 3 cards every night. Which makes me think 2 to 2.4 crews would be better.

 

I'd also try to re-align the promotion into "monthly" in the major cities, possibly 8-10 in some place like Baltimore (and Philly if you move there). Every 3 weeks strikes me as too much: JCP ran Greensboro and Charlotte a ton in 1986... something like 16-17 times. It's rather focus on getting all my core shows a strong card every month (10-12 cards a year), not burn through programs so fast, and make sure every city is doing well.

 

Maybe a 2.5 crews, with two major crews and a third one that you could run in the smallest of towns. The thing is... no one would want to be on that 3rd crew that ain't drawing.

 

I don't know how much I'd treat it as a "split", though I'm not sure if that's what you mean by "circuits". The WWF just had one large promotion. We know that worked, while the Brand Split was less effective. I like crews: you have your US Champ, WTT, your Flair world title match when he's around, your Dusty Feud (who i'd try to treat as Andre rather than chasing any titles as he typically did)... etc. The US Champ may anchor one crew, the WTT the other crew, mixing and matching the crews as needed. If you're going into Baltimore, you might do a combined crew for a deeper card with the balance of the talent working somewhere else.

 

You've seen how the the WWF did stuff when you were knee deep in the results. A crew would hit a part of the territory (which for the WWF was the entire country), so they'd hit SoCal, AZ, NV, NoCal and some other western things. Hogan might be working another part of the country. I think a Merged Promotion would want to do the same thing. One crew hitting FL and GA, while the other hitting JCP... then flipping so each major feud had it's run in the cities. Sometimes you alternate... other times you run the feud straight through in a region before flipping: Hogan-Savage was on the 12/85, 1/86 and 2/86 MSG cards... before Tito-Savage took over on 3/86, 4/46, 5/86, 6/86 & 7/86 cards... with the last two being the tag team versions (and also with Hogan on the 4/86 cards).

 

It's complex. Of course JCP was doing that back in the 70s with split crews, and made it work. I just wouldn't want to water down cards when there's a War going on. A Merged Promotion couldn't lose Florida or Baltimore. Don't have to "win" those cities by routing the WWF, but you need to wrestle to a draw in Baltimore, and more than hold your own in FL.