Debunking A Popular Flairism

[jdw]

You'd think with Dusty on the roster, JCP would have no problem drawing in Florida. But then I wonder how much Florida was already burned out on Dusty ...

 

I suspect that JCP could have done okay if they merged with FCW in 1984 and didn't try to run every city 16+ times a year and/or hot shot through programs. But even if they did well in a standard cyclical fashion, they still would have done no better than a push with the WWF.

 

Vince had Hogan. With Florida's population, which was exploding, and being less Southy than much of the South, it was always a place that he was going to push to get into. He didn't care about running a territory still workload there. He wanted the big cities.

 

There would be decent money in doing a push with the WWF for JCP. There was in Philly, Baltimore and Chicago, even if they probably overall were behind in each there was good money.

 

Whether all of those push areas could have been maintained by JCP forever into the 2000s... wasn't going to happen. They would reach that talent problem eventually. Vince also would have had the money advantage given he would have the entire rest of the country other than Mid Atlantic and Georgia and a few hold outs that didn't really matter like Memphis. With the money he could pick off guys like he did with Rude and Duggan and DiBiase, grab Hennig and the Rockets before JCP did, etc.

 

I do think JCP needed to grow. Sitting purely in Mid Atlantic would have meant a quick death as there just isn't enough there to sustain the promotion for a long number of years before burning out. It's more a matter of where to grow to, what would be sustainable (which even would be finite in time without fresh blood), and where to avoid breaking points of over extending. Well... and be smarter business folks than JCP were as well.

[KrisZ]

It all comes down to business sense in the end and Vince and his brass had way more of it than Crockett did.

[Cox]

There's probably a parallel worth talking about in the struggle of local wrestling next to small towns across America losing a lot of their local charm and just becoming a repeating loop of McDonald's and Wal-Mart.

This has basically been the theme of this season of Fargo, with the small town crime family in Minnesota, the Gerhardts, getting pushed out of town by the larger Kansas City mob. And as an aside, I've been hoping all season for some throwaway reference to late 70's AWA and haven't gotten it through 9 episodes. Can't somebody be a Verne Gagne fan hoping he wins the belt back from Nick Bockwinkel? Nick Offerman's character would be perfect for this.

[JerryvonKramer]

One things I've never got is why they didn't run dates more logically. If you look at results both Crockett and WWF were zigzagging all over the country.

 

Why not just run one area one month and then another area the next month? You don't need to run in Florida every night, why not just hit it every third month? Likewise with every region. Surely you have more chance of bigger houses if you run less frequently too.

 

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On another note:

 

Why did promotions have to physically run in every market when they had national TV?

 

I think of the 92 Wembley show. Vince wasn't running in the uk every night, and there was no loop there, and sure he must have had tremendous local promotion for that show. But a lot of that house was drawn from a TV audience who'd never been to a WWF show before.

 

Why couldn't JCP do similar things in outside markets? Let's say the TV is being shown in LA, do they need to go and physically try to run a show in LA? I don't get that. Why not film in Greensboro where the crowds are molten hot, and show the people of LA that until there's palpable demand there for a show and then run there?

 

Vince was able to get over in a lot of places through local marketing and promotion, I'm sure, but the TV and mainstream exposure must have helped a lot.

 

I guess my thought is that they might have leveraged TBS an awful lot more than they did. If you read old Meltzers Crockett and WCW viewing figures were never awful. Yet the live gates were almost always below WWF live gates. It's a point I've made before (even allowing for the lower population base than the northeast).

[Migs]

The smaller circuit would have compounded JCP's fundamental problem for the era - the way they ran TV burned through angles far too fast. Vince's TV went through angles at a much slower pace, was much more stingy in showing stars (Flair was on TV every week and the RnRs wrestled every week; Hogan was not on TV every week and Demolition would be on TV maybe every other week). This allowed him to sustain house show programs for a much longer time, key in an era where he was starting to hit towns other than NY and Boston at a much slower rate.

 

Staying on the smaller circuit would have forced Crockett to keep doing territorial style TV to consistently build new angles. Of course, they ended up doing that, and as other posters have pointed out, they were doing it without the influx of talent that the territorial system provided. So they burned through angles but didn't have new stars on top. There's no way they could have run Greensboro any more frequently.

 

Crockett would have survived if he had adjusted his company and his product to the new era that was being created by cable television in an effective way. But that's like saying, "Crockett would have survived if he had the business acumen of Vince McMahon." He didn't, and no fantasy booking is going to fix that.

[Happ Hazzard]

You can charge higher ticket prices when you run shows in more cities, and appear in each market less frequently. Plus having the product seeming big-time and national makes the percieved value of tickets that much higher than for just a Mom & Pop run local promotion.

 

Plus running nationally is better for merchandising, sponsorship etc.

 

Crockett had to do it, he just made a bad job of it, such as keeping the same accountant that had been doing the family business accounts for decades, despite the fact that they now had a turnover in the tens of millions, were paying wrestlers hundreds of thousands of dollars and were buying Lear jets to fly wrestlers around the country.

 

Rhodes should have been fired, at the latest, after Starrcade 87. Flair should have turned face far sooner than he was, and they should have put the tag belts on the Road Warriors and pushed them as the top stars headlining shows in new markets like Chicago and LA.

[Wade Garrett]

Anyone who read my introduction to the board knows I lived through the majority of this 18 up until my late 20's.

 

The longtime JCP fans who were the backbone of the company were burnt out on Rhodes as a baby (booker) and Flair as a heel. Dusty over did it with the gimmick matches. A lot of us didn't care for a lot of the new stars and there style either. When I moved back to the Napa Valley in the Fall of 87 JCP had a shitty house in Greensboro. Problem with that is that Greensboro is a 16,000 seat arena. UICP in Chicago was about 8,500 tops. Not worth it on a monthly basis. No more then 4 times a year should it be run and realistically 3 is about right. Same thing with LA and SF. I attended JCPs first card in SF in December of 86 when I was back home for Christmas. It sold out and had a turn away crowd at the 8,500 seat Civic Center. The amazing thing is JCP TV was TBS west coast time so 3:05 on a Saturday and Worldwide on an Asian station at midnight Saturday in the SF Bay Area and they still drew. They came back in March and April 87 and couldn't break 3,000. Returned in July 87 and sold out. Less was more with markets like this.

 

As for Philly, Baltimore, Washington. They weren't to far off the JCP base. They both drew and Baltimore was a big venue. Richmond and Norfolk were big venues.

 

Bottom line Crockett had National TV exposure via TBS and Syndication. The business model was shifting towards pay-per-view. When you have National TV exposure and a pay-per-view model coming into place you don't need to run you can simply walk. Crockett ran.

 

Go look at how outta whack the touring was at times. Wasn't set-up with any logic.

 

I mentioned the JCP fans in the base not liking some of the up and comers. Well the one I remember hearing about the most was Sting. I only attended JCP cards in the Bay Area in 88 so this was coming from my Buds in the Carolinas. He had his fans. But was no where near a top draw in the JCP base and that continued when JCP sold too. The Road Warriors lost a lot of shine. Nikita Koloff lost a lot of shine. Muscleheads weren't the flavor in JCP country. JCP rose through angles with GREAT in-ring work. Which we got in the 70's and early to mid-80's constantly.