Vince McMahon - Reallly a "Genius"?

[Smack2k]

OK,

 

I saw another person on a video call Vince McMahon and "genius"....it bothers me and I am in a hateful mood tonight...so....

 

We all know what Vince McMahon has done to profesional wrestling through his money, promoting, envelop pushing, etc...., but its not like he took something new and made it into something. He took someting his family had built and made it much much better and all credit to him...he is a legend when it comes to wrestling....that being said...

 

Everything else he's done has failed and pretty much horribly....WBF / IcoPro / XFL / WWE Studios (I know they are still there, but were losing money and have to work with other companies now) / etc..., I dont see that as being a "Genius"

 

He is an amazing man in the field he grew up around and, again, deserves all teh credit in the world...but a "Genius?" A Genius can take a lot of things and make them work, not just take the one you were born into, and using a lot of money to start with and grabbing a shit ton of great talent to make it huge....Even all his marketing and promotional greatness is only effective with WWE...

 

Anyone else agree or disagree??

[BrickHithouse]

People calling Vince a "genius" tends to coincide with the boom periods most of the time. There are parallels between Vince being a genius and being a dumbass just like there were with Al Davis who seemed to alternate between "genius" and "he's crazy and has totally lost it" depending on the Raiders' record in a given season (and I am NOT trying to make a comparison between those two and launch a football debate, though Dan Marino would have fit like a glove in Pittsburgh).

 

Vince "lost it" in 94-95 or thereabouts, but was back to being a brilliant genius again by 1998 before he lost it around 2002 or whatever.

 

I'd say Vince is very sharp and perhaps a "genius" in the wrestling realm.

 

Hell I don't know.

[Childs]

He's not a genius; he's a shrewd man of immense personal force.

[Death From Above]

Lots of people are geniuses in one field and dogshit terrible in others.

 

Having said that, in this case a genius should probably know "hey imma gonna pick a fight with the NFL and college football" is a bad idea.

[WingedEagle]

Really depends what you consider a genius. If that means excelling beyond every peer in his profession, then yes, tough to argue the case.

[Ditch]

He's not a genius; he's a shrewd man of immense personal force.

It is literally impossible to overstate Vince McMahon's willpower and work ethic. You can't compete with him because he will grind you down, no matter how many mistakes he makes. When Vince finds something that works he will milk it better than anyone could hope to. Look at how over Goldberg was in mid '98, and look at how little WCW did with him in the 2+ years after he lost the title. Compare to how Vince used every megastar he's had: Hogan, Austin, Rock, Cena. Vince will wring every penny from his successes because he knows how to get everyone in the company behind his vision. Even if he isn't pointing in exactly the right direction, the ship is moving forward. Again, compare to WCW's internal politics leading to booking sclerosis.

[Dustys Pencil]

He's not a genius; he's a shrewd man of immense personal force.

It is literally impossible to overstate Vince McMahon's willpower and work ethic. You can't compete with him because he will grind you down, no matter how many mistakes he makes. When Vince finds something that works he will milk it better than anyone could hope to. Look at how over Goldberg was in mid '98, and look at how little WCW did with him in the 2+ years after he lost the title. Compare to how Vince used every megastar he's had: Hogan, Austin, Rock, Cena. Vince will wring every penny from his successes because he knows how to get everyone in the company behind his vision. Even if he isn't pointing in exactly the right direction, the ship is moving forward. Again, compare to WCW's internal politics leading to booking sclerosis.

 

 

The fact that he turned a ton of wrestlers into marks for him(listen to the way Hall and Nash talk about him they idolize HIM) that in and of itself is quite a feat. That being said he is the most successful person in the storied history of his particular field

[Ditch]

Idolizing Vince is easy. New Japan wrestlers calling Inoki "god" after all the things he's done that make the XFL look like fiscal prudence...

[flyonthewall2983]

Luck factors pretty big in Vince's success, along with the other attributes mentioned here. His father ran New York City, and he inherited that. Yes it was a localized territory that didn't maybe didn't play as well in other markets. What Vince Jr. did to make it more accessible on a national stage wasn't exactly genius in and of itself. He reached out to the music business and Hollywood to help the company's national profile, and it worked fabulously. A large part (I think) of that is because he had Madison Square Garden, not the Mid South Coliseum.

[JerryvonKramer]

I think Vince is the only genius in wrestling. I am unfortunately super busy today, but am ready to argue his corner later on.

[Johnny Sorrow]

Vince didn't inherit the WWF, he bought it from his father.

[sek69]

Vince didn't inherit the WWF, he bought it from his father.

 

I think the point was that Vince wasn't exactly starting from scratch, he took what his dad built up and went national.

[JerryvonKramer]

Ok, I have a few mins.

 

Here are the two main pegs I'd hang the "Vince is a genius" argument on, but the first of them has at least four smaller pegs:

 

1. He turned wrestling into entertainment that competed not with sports, but with other TV shows by making it more about the CHARACTERS and STORIES than about the action in the ring.

 

Exhibit A: TNT. Mock while you will, that's a wrestling show with no wrestling on it. After watching that Albano-Lauper stuff recently back-to-back with the way wrestling was presented by WWF in 1979 for the Titans show, the change between his vision and what his dad was putting out is night and day. What's the difference:

 

- Bob Backlund putting Greg Valentine in a headlock for 10 minutes = change of channel for casual viewer or "Can we please watch something else now?" from the wife.

- Cyndi Lauper telling Albano to stick it on Piper's Pit = ooh this is interesting for casual viewer or a wife who is as invested in the storyline as you might be.

 

Is that "genius"? It's certainly something that few other promoters had had the vision to do. He changed the demographic from just men or sports fan to "the whole family".

 

I forget to mention, forget to mention Memphis

Home of Elvis and the ancient Greeks

I think it's perfectly possible that the Andy Kaufman and Lawler on Letterman stuff served as a catalyst for some of Vince's ideas -- in fact, you can probably draw a direct line from that angle to TNT.

 

But y'know, who's the genius? Is it Lou Reed and Iggy Pop who sold about 10,000 records between them in the 1960s or is it David Bowie who took those ideas and ran with them in them in the mainstream and sold millions?

 

Exhibit B: Presentation of product. I'm not just talking Titanrons and Pyro here:

 

- Gorilla Monsoon and Bobby Heenan on Primetime.

- Vince and Jesse on SNME

 

You can rag on Moonsoon as much as you like as a play-by-play guy, but thinking mainstream, think of successful show formats, think of people who don't like wrestling being converted into fans.

 

When you consider that the competition here is Bob Caudle falling asleep on Worldwide, it's not difficult to understand why as a TV product the back-and-forth banter of Monsoon-Heenan or Jesse-Vince got over.

 

Again, we might think about Russell and Dave Brown on Memphis TV, but y'know Vince was able to scale it up on a bigger stage.

 

Exhibit C: Packaging of stars.

 

Sure, gimmicks are a standard wrestling trope, but Vince turned them into an artform. Just go and watch those Million Dollar Man or Mr. Perfect vignettes.

 

Vince's "genius" lies partly in being able to get guys over before they've even put a foot in the ring. His grand innovation is in thinking about the product as a TV show first, traditional wrestling logic that says "a guy gets over through wins" takes a backseat.

 

This stuff is only "obvious" or "easy" once someone with the vision to make it happen shows you how to do it. We might also look at some of WCW's attempts at aping this sort of thing to see that it's isn't that easy.

 

He understood that get over with a mainstream audience EVERY wrestler needed their own identity.

 

Vince took wrestling from being an underground carny "sport" to something mainstream credibility.

 

Exhibit D: Packaging of moments and "history"

 

I can't remember who said it here now, but an often-over-looked part of what made Vince special was his ability to capture those postcard moments. Hogan slamming Andre. Hogan nose-to-nose with Warrior, and so on.

 

We've looked recently at how he spun the 1-month reign of Iron Sheik into something with symbolic significance far beyond the reality.

 

Vince isn't just a storyteller -- in fact I'd point to Bill Watts as being much more effective at simple ABC narratives -- he's a mythmaker.

 

That's his true genius with presenting wrestling on TV. He has always been obsessed with the total control of how the history of a given star or angle is presented. But look how effective it has been. Look how many people think Shawn Michaels is the GOAT. It borders on genius for me. Vince is the fucking Joseph Goebbels of wrestling.

 

2. Balls like melons. Absolutely fearless every step of the way. He said "up yours" to the old boys' network and dared to be aggressive. If it meant raiding talent, being ruthless with booking venues, absolutely killing Verne Gagne, so be it. There is a certain Machiavellian genius to that.

 

This fearlessness also means that he has been able to dream big and on a scale that most people wouldn't think of. Now anyone can be a dreamer. Dusty dreamed big. But Vince did what it took, whatever the means to get to the ends, and Dusty never did.

 

In addition, he's been totally fearless on screen too. We all remember the PUKE scene in Beyond the Mat, but does anyone even for a second doubt that Vince wouldn't have done it himself on screen if the situation required it? He leads from the front. If you had a boss crazy enough to do the things that Vince has done on international television, then it's hard to be too timid yourself. So we could argue his fearlessness breeds fearlessness in others.

[Johnny Sorrow]

Bob Caudle was great.

[khawk20]

Bob Caudle was great.

Be lucky that's the part of that rant that stuck with you, and not "Balls like Melons".

[JerryvonKramer]

I shouldn't have bothered.

[Johnny Sorrow]

Well when you compare Vince to a Nazi.....

[Matt D]

I do think Vince has a couple of things going for him. One is an insane, probably quite literally, work ethic. The second is a bevy of ideas and, in general, an ability to think outside of the box when encountering something new. I think a lot of his outside partners he's worked with such as Ebersol or Andy Heyward would say as much.

 

I think the fact he has such a quantity of ideas matters, as it helps to average out the quality.

[Smack2k]

I am not saying he's not an amazing force in wrestling and has balls of steel..but I will argue that he will not wear you down with his ethic in whatever he does...Wrestling? OK, he will...Outside of the sport he was born into and built up incredibly? No....he's tried using his force and ethic and has failed over and over in everything outside the WWF/E main product. Even now, he is still trying to prove he can do more, with teh WWE just being initials now as they are an entertainment company and dont want wrestling in their name...but what else entertainment wise have they done that has made a positive mark and you can say "Wow, Vince was able to move into a realm he didnt know all about and got a good hold of it and began to dominate it.." None I can think of...

 

Every example leads back to wrestling. And yes, again, he was and is a "FORCE" in that genre. But being born into it learning about it as he grew and being in the biggest market and getting the best talent early on, giving him a ton of money in which to take chances really helped him to. That is not a "genius" to me...If he didnt have the resources to get all that talent early on, would he have gotten past go? That I dont know, but always wonder about.

[JerryvonKramer]

Brian two things:

 

1. If you read my argument above, the 4 "exhibits" are ways in which he completely transformed the product he inherited from his dad. It wasn't SIMPLY a case of raiding talent was it? He completely changed the way wrestling was presented on TV.

 

2. I don't get why you want him to do things beyond wrestling.

 

"That Bob Dylan can sure write a song but he's a terrible actor and a lousy painter too"

 

It doesn't hurt Dylan's case for being a genius that he's not good in other areas.

 

Why does it hurt Vince's?

[MJH]

I hate the word "genius".

 

That said: his failures don't prove anything except that he overreached a few times. Or that some (many) of his ideas sucked. You could say that about any (or many) bona-fide unquestioned "geniuses" in history. Especially "creative genius", which is what we're talking about here. In many cases that's actually part of the allure. To use Dylan, as Jerry did, heck, forget the painting, a fair amount of his albums are pretty fucking bad. That doesn't change anything.

 

I mean, of course, it's just WWE rhetoric, but if we have to apply to term to someone in wrestling, I don't see why not Vince.

[khawk20]

2. I don't get why you want him to do things beyond wrestling.

 

"That Bob Dylan can sure write a song but he's a terrible actor and a lousy painter too"

 

It doesn't hurt Dylan's case for being a genius that he's not good in other areas.

 

Why does it hurt Vince's?

It becomes a valid point because Vince keeps forcing the issue. His failed forays into football, boxing PPV promotion, and bodybuilding (the key failures from "my" era of watching the WWF expand) make it easy to argue the "well, he's great at wrestling promoting but he sucks at the other stuff he wants to get into" point.

 

I would guess he's gotten "better" at his outside-wrestling-endeavours (movies, for example) since he has the means to surround himself with people that actually know how to make forays into the field(s), but I can see how the idea of Vince's "Genius" is hampered by those excursions outside of the WWE's base product for some people.

 

At the end of the day, for me, he cleaned out all his competition (some by his hand, some by the competition's own idiocy)...his genius is that he made himself the only real game in town, which allows him to pursue and succeed/fail in his other projects almost at his leisure. He has to get his due.

[Loss]

I fully agree with Jerry, by the way. Vince's greatest strength is taking a business that historically was run locally and lived and died on the gate and expanding it nationally and diversifying revenue streams with merchandise and pay-per-view. As has been said by others, he ultimately recognized that pay-per-view was a way to draw a huge house in an arena that had unlimited seating. Action figures, t-shirts, videotapes and a house magazine were also a breakthrough. I agree also that Vince was more mythmaker than storyteller, and I think that's a great way to describe him. He isn't peerless when it comes to booking wrestling angles (although I think on his best day, he's not terribly far behind the very best), but that's really secondary. He modeled pro wrestling after Disney.

[JerryvonKramer]

I'd also like to talk about advantages. "He took daddy's money and bought out the talent, making him the only game in town".

 

Did that sell out Wembley in 92?

 

Let's think about advantages. Turner owned a TV station AND he's Ted Turner. They also bought out all the talent. Who won?

 

Think people are quick to sell Vince short.

[khawk20]

I'd also like to talk about advantages. "He took daddy's money and bought out the talent, making him the only game in town".

 

Did that sell out Wembley in 92?

 

Let's think about advantages. Turner owned a TV station AND he's Ted Turner. They also bought out all the talent. Who won?

 

Think people are quick to sell Vince short.

Context. The former was a big part of the 80's push to be the main game. The later 90's and the WCW wars were different.