goodhelmet Posted December 16, 2005 Report Share Posted December 16, 2005 Ok, since the Benoit topic degenerated into a Vince McMahon debate, I felt it was time to branch off and try figure out just how much of a genius Vince McMahon is. THere is no doubt he is the most successful wrestling promoter of all time. However, Vince McMahon has had so many gifts handed to him on a silver platter only for him to shit them away. So, lets dive into the genius and idiocy of Vince McMahon and see which is more prevalent. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Loss Posted December 16, 2005 Report Share Posted December 16, 2005 I'll start by playing Vince's advocate Genius: marketed wrestling toward children with action figures and wrestling merchandise. Genius: invented the concept of wrestling on pay-per-view Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
goodhelmet Posted December 16, 2005 Author Report Share Posted December 16, 2005 That is what I was looking for: Genius: Picked up WCW for dirt cheap only to... Idiot: Start an ill-advised Invasion angle, repeating the same mistake of JCP years earlier by jobbing out people he had under contract. Idiot: XFL Idiot: Having a daughter who would compare the steroid scandal to 9/11 Genius: Has to be the first billionaire ever in wrestling.... Idiot: Only to lose 2/3 of that billions with poor business practices Genius: Destroyed his competition ... Idiot: never realizing that competition helps the business thrive. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest TheShawshankRudotion Posted December 16, 2005 Report Share Posted December 16, 2005 I'll C/P what I wrote over in the other thread. Vince applied sound business and marketing decisions (liscensing, branding, profit sharing as a motivator) to professional wrestling. Vince had something the other promoters didn't and that was a Business Admin degree. The dude was a marketer through and through and that's where he excelled. Though I often wonder how much of the business moves and successes were a result of Linda, rather than Vince. No one is saying the dude wasn't a tremendous promoter and marketer, but a genius is something totally different. If Vince was a genius, why hasn't there been a turn around yet? Why has there been so much failure and bad moves and missteps? Why do we see the WWE repeating so many of their and others past mistakes? Why has the writing been so bad? Where is the quality control? Why are they still in the Attitude-era mindset? Why does Vince need a kick in the pants to get going? Why doesn't he provide any answers? You wanna know why? Cause he can't come up with them on his own. A genius can. The things he did in wrestling in the 80s may have been unique to wrestling, but they were not unique to _business_. It's just no one in business took a look at wrestling and said "hey, we can make money at this". I can appreciate what Vince did from a business perspective, and it may have revolutionized the wrestling industry, but it wasn't revolutionary. He didn't reinvent the wheel, he just put it on a different wagon. But he hasn't really done anything new in wrestling for a long, long time. The stuff he is doing now, with DVD's, Internet, WWE 24/7 is just old concepts applied to new media and technology. He was a leader in wrestling, but now that there's no one there to follow, the perspective has changed. It's not the wrestling industry anymore. It's the entertainment industry. It's business. And when it comes to the entertainment business, Vince hasn't showed anything. The XFL proved that. He's not a leader in the pack here, he's a hack. He doesn't cut it. Where's the genius now? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kjh Posted December 16, 2005 Report Share Posted December 16, 2005 Genius: Saw that cable TV would allow him to take his regional promotion national and then went all out to ensure that it would be a success by carefully raiding other territories of their most marketable talent. Genius: Realised that he needed to change directions when he was losing the Monday Night Wars to a much more adult and risque product, which paid off huge in the short term. Genius: Turned the colourless "Mean" Mark Callous into The Undertaker, one of the most successful and long lasting gimmicks of all time. Idiot: Turning a blind eye to Mel Phillips and the other people involved in the notorious sex scandals. Idiot: Promoting a form of wrestling that on relied his talent having larger than life physiques. Idiot: WBF Idiot: Trying to exploit the Gulf War and terrorist beheadings in major angles. Idiot: Giving too much creative power to his inexperienced and naive daughter and his selfish son in law. Idiot: Asking Spike TV for huge hikes in rights fees for Raw earlier this year despite ratings dwindling in the last 5 years, resulting in Spike TV pulling out of negotiations early, costing the company tens of millions of dollars per annum and allowing TNA to get a national TV slot on a major network. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mad Dog Posted December 16, 2005 Report Share Posted December 16, 2005 Actually I don't know if he deserves the credit for the business model the company runs from. I wouldn't be surprised if that's Linda's doing more than his. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Some Guy Posted December 18, 2005 Report Share Posted December 18, 2005 Genius: Took Hogan from the AWA and pushed him to the moon. Idiot: Allowed Hogan to win the belt at WM 9 and not forcing him to drop it to Bret at Summerslam 93. Genius: Created many national stars through creative booking and allowing their talent to shine (Hogan, Austin, Rock, HBK, Bret, etc...) Idiot: Signed and overpaid for talents from other companies who he then refused to push to their full potential because he did not create them. (Goldberg, Booker, RVD, DDP, Raven, Taz, Vader, etc...) Genius: Made himself the focal point of his show during a time when tons of talent were leaving for WCW. Ensuring that at least one of his top stars would never leave and capitalizing on the incredible amount of heat he developed out of the Survivor Series 97 finish. Idiot: Never took himself off of TV after he had become stale and giving the rest of his family on air roles and booking them to be smarter, better, and tougher than the real wrestlers. Genius: Made a DVD bashing the Warrior and started to make one bashing Bret Hart, knowing full well that Bret's ego would not allow Vince to release a DVD on him without his input. As a result Vince wins that war by having Bret come back to work for him despite years of Bret claiming he never would. And Vince made way more off the DVD with Bret than he would have on the one without him. Idiot: Asking Bret to leave in the first place. Genius: Mr. Perfect, Million Dollar Man, Undertaker, Goldust. Idiot: TL Hopper, Flash Funk, The Goon, Who, etc... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Alfdogg Posted December 19, 2005 Report Share Posted December 19, 2005 Idiot: TL Hopper, Flash Funk, The Goon, Who, etc...You LIE Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Dangerous A Posted December 19, 2005 Report Share Posted December 19, 2005 Future Idiot: WWE Films. This could be the story of 2006. If it works, kudos to them. I just don't see it happening and I could easily see them hemmoraging tons of money because of it. Just throwing this out there, at the Eddie Memorial show during a commercial break, they aired a trailer for Kane's movie slated for May and it was met with laughter and groans. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest EastCoastJ Posted December 20, 2005 Report Share Posted December 20, 2005 I don't know if you could really credit Vince McMahon as a genius for recognizing the changing landscape that the rise of cable would bring. Bill Watts knew what was coming, and Joe Blanchard's Southwest Championship Wrestling was dabbling with the idea of expanding into other territories due to the exposure their timeslot on the USA Network brought them, as they started a mini war of sorts with Georgia Championship Wrestling (who also had cable on WTBS at the time) when they tried to move in to that territory. Georgia was trying to use their cable exposure to move in to Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Michigan as well. Vince certainly made the idea work, but his New York base and his lack of fear of total failure were probably his two biggest strengths. Closed Circuit was huge for McMahon too, and he pretty much borrowed that approach from Jim Crocket who sold like 50,000+ tickets for the first Starrcade using an approach that most people thought was outlandish given the terrible risk to reward ratio and the general bust the closed circuit concept was at the time. Hulk Hogan was scheduled to be on that Starrcade card and pulled out last second, so a lot of McMahon's best ideas were really just knowing what to borrow. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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