Current WWE v 80s WWF

[Strummer]

Last week in his weekly mailbag, Dave Meltzer was asked if he thought the current WWE product is the worst in company history. He said no and said the product in the 80s was much worse. I completely disagree with him. The wrestling might not have been that great but the booking was linear, logical and made sense most of the time. Plus they made you care so much about the outcomes of the matches and angles. They built people up properly and protected guys for future money matches down the line.

 

So do you agree or disagree with him? Which era is better? or worse?

[Guest Bruiser Chong]

By current standards, a lot of their stuff doesn't hold up. But I don't think it was until late '89 that they stopped having anything of quality in the ring that could be banked on nightly.

 

Maybe he was referring to the early '80s, which I'm less familiar with, but I don't think anything from '84 until 1989 can be compared to today's stuff.

[sek69]

If he's talking about the in ring product, I agree. The 80s were a pretty dismal time to be a workrate freak. Booking wise, like you said, the 80s were probably the best time the company ever had. Almost everyone on the card had something to do, and it usually was booked to a logical (by wrestling standards) conclusion.

[Strummer]

Just to clarify he specifically mentioned when he toured the house shows with WWF around the horn in the mid 80s. He mentioned this before on WOL and said it was torture to sit through. I took the comment to mean the product as a whole, and not just in ring, but he was vague.

[Guest Bruiser Chong]

Well, in comparison to NWA at the time, the two were like night and day. Still seems like storylines, managers and feuds did a nice job at hiding the weaknesses of most of the workers.

[Loss]

I much prefer 80s WWF to modern WWF. At that time, WWF was in the business of selling shows based on a formula, which Hogan was a huge part of, but everyone worked hard and did their part. Now, they only seem to be in the business of selling the main event, and fuck everyone else on the card. The opening match in that era, dare I say, seemed more important than your average RAW main event now. And I think the wrestling was at about the same level for the most part, just with a lot of standard WWE-style booking that made no sense (i.e. heels pinning faces after ref bumps). Still, there are all sorts of things that don't make sense in modern WWE, and at least there was some semblance of long-term continuity then, which we don't have at all now.

[Marty]

I prefer 80s WWF over the current product. The work may not have been great, and there wasn't much room for other top babyfaces with Hogan being there, but I look at it this way: Unlike Hogan, is there anyone today in the company who has the potential of being a long-term draw at all? The booking today is handicapping that a LOT, but still, with the lack of development a lot of the new guys face in OVW, as well as most of the guys that have been around a while now (HHH, HBK, Angle) having never drawn that greatly themselves, I don't see the money potential like the 80s was facing say in, I dunno, 1983 or so.

 

Also, the matches may not have been great in the 80s, but neither is a lot of the stuff today. There's really on a few workers in the company that you can count on to deliver on a nightly basis, meaning those that can deliver a strong story in the ring (Rey, JBL, etc.). Many of the others, especially the younger guys, are good athletes, but are best for spotfests and not much else, and even when they're good, which they have been, the WWE never gives it the same attention they give to the usual suspects.

 

This, in my opinion, contrasts to the 80s way of booking, where your workrate guys got to stand out in certain cases. Take, for example, WrestleMania 2. It may not have been the main event, but the Bulldogs and Dream Team got to close out the Chicago portion of the show with the best match on the PPV. There's also the times that the Harts and Bulldogs main evented the odd show and went to curfew, even at MSG. You'll never get to see stuff like that today.

[Loss]

Seriously, I think the Intercontinental and tag titles seemed more life or death then than the world titles do now.

[Guest Dangerous A]

Also, who the champions were was more emphasized. Back in the 80's, you were constantly being reminded of A) who the champions were and who was chasing them.

 

Nowadays, the entire focus is almost completely on the Heavyweight champions and nothing else. There have been several instances in the last 3 years where I couldn't tell you who were the tag team champions on either brand and I couldn't tell you who a current IC champ had defeated to get said championship.

 

I guess it's a byproduct of having the Heavyweight champion in the booking meetings garnering all the focus on himself.

[Guest Bruiser Chong]

I've made no secret that the IC title was my favorite title and usually involved my favorite wrestlers from the time I started watching wrestling until they turned it into a joke in 1999. And the Fed's tag team division from the mid-80s until 1989 was sick.

[Coffey]

For me, it's tough to say. I wonder what I would've thought about WWF in the 80's had I been "smartened up" then. I probably would've been bitter that Hogan was on top and DiBiase wasn't, instead, I was a Hogan mark and I wanted him to beat everyone.

[Loss]

I may not have been a huge fan of Hogan (and I wasn't), but I would have understood the value in keeping him in that position. Really, I was more of an NWA fan than anything then. I didn't really get into the WWF product as far as the Hogan/Warrior types, but I did like Piper, Savage, Rude and Mr. Perfect quite a bit. There were irritating things about WWF booking even then, but the simple approach and the logical way they went about things made more sense. I also feel like in that era, everyone on the card was considered valuable in some way or another. That was always a strength of the WWF, in fact, until 2001 when Vince McMahon told the writers that he no longer wanted to hear any ideas for non-main event storylines.

[Marty]

Seriously, I think the Intercontinental and tag titles seemed more life or death then than the world titles do now.

I think you summed up the differences in the eras perfectly in that one sentence.

[anarchistxx]

here's also the times that the Harts and Bulldogs main evented the odd show and went to curfew, even at MSG.

When Hogan wanted to leave early <_>

[Loss]

Weren't the tag team champs usually on the non-Hogan crew? Paging Cawthon ...

[anarchistxx]

I just read that Hogan would often have his match midway through the show, so he could leave early.

 

Because of this, they ended the match with an excitng tag match, which would send the crowd home happy, in the absence of Hogan.

[Loss]

Hogan did have a tendency to do that, many times because he was working double shots and many times just because he just wanted to leave.

[Strummer]

The reason given was so that he didn't get mobbed by fans after the show. If he left half way through, he could get out untouched and go right to the next town.

[Guest DylanWaco]

The WWE has always been a company that's matches stuck to a formula of sorts. The formula now is set up in such a way that the average match is probably gonna suck a lot less than the average match in the 80's sucked. The pacing and build of those 80's matches is just not something I think was a condusive to great or even good matches, espcially given the time limits. I'm not gonna shit all over the company in the 80's, but there really isn't alot from that decade that I would find essential and other than Slaughter, Adonis, Muraco and maybe Savage there are really no workers that I find to be on that level of greatness where their work becomes part of a canon.

 

I don't know. I haven't seen alot of 80's WWF in comparison to NWA and I tend to not like the formula they used. So I guess I prefer today's product, despite the fact that saying that doesn't seem right.

[Loss]

I understand what you're saying though, Dylan. Expanding on that, would you prefer 90s WWF with Bret, Austin and Shawn reinventing the company style to both the 80s or the current era?

[sek69]

The mid 90s might have been the best top-to-bottom wrestling era in WWFE history. You were most likely going to have at least a decent match from the opener to the main event. It also happened to be one of the worst drawing periods in WWFE history which is what must have cemented it in Vince's mind that the fans want Sportz Entertainment instead of wrestling.

[Loss]

I'm sure it did shape his mindset.

 

Obviously, there were a lot of reasons for that decline, but I think the big 80s stars taking so much without giving anything back played a major part. And after a decade of educating their fans that bigger is better, their top stars weren't as big anymore.

 

By the time they caught up to the times, Hart and Michaels did help them through a tough time and each man did play somewhat of a part in the resurgence in 1997.

[Guest DylanWaco]

The 80's were a wierd time I guess because the competition was just smoking the WWF in terms of match quality.

 

I guess part of my problem, outside of the formula issue is that I never liked Backlund very much in the ring and Backlund was a big staple of the promotion up until he dropped the belt to Sheik, with most of the better wrestlers in the company being paried off with him at one point or another. That's not say that Bob didn't have good matches with these guys, but when I think about guys like Patera, Muraco, Adonis and Slaughter I really feel I would have enjoyed them more in different dynamics than up against Bob who I just never "got". In the past I've felt compelled to bust out a list of workers who I felt were better than Bob, so I may as well toss out a mini one right now and say that in the 80's alone I preferred Slaughter, Murdoch, Adonis, Patera, Paterson, Bret Hart, Dynamite Kid, Iron Sheik, Savage, Bob Orton, Ted Dibase, Rick Steamboat and probably alot of others I'm forgetting..and that's just in the WWF. Basically what I'm getting at is that when half of the decade is dominated at the top of the card, by a worker whom I never really felt much for and the other half was dominated by a guy who wasn't very good for the most part, it's already gonna be at a distinct disadvantage to an era that was led on top by guys like Bret, Michaels and Austin.

 

Anyhow, you factor that in with the formula problems, the akward match layouts, the abuse of time limit draws and really it's hard to justify an argument that 80's WWF is better than what goes on today, which naturally means it was nowhere near as good as what was going on from 91-97.

 

Really 91-97 was the peak of the WWF. It featured Michaels, Austin, and Bret all at there best point. It was a little before Foley's peak, but he was still quite good. You had Owen and Bulldog during most of that period and Taker working hard for wierd stretches of time. Basically the top of the card rarely sucked, and when it did the I-C level was dope. The crowd heat for things like Good Friends Better Enemies and Canadian Stampede is really not anything that we are gonna see today. On the other hand the undercard did suck during alot of this period, with wierd shit like The Godwins and Los Boriquas, but it didn't dominate the shows.

 

So yeah 91-97 was the best period for the company. Some people would feel comforable extending that out a bit, but the drop off for wrestling period after 97 was pretty severe. 97 was the last great year for either Michaels or Hart (and Michaels only worked part of the year), the end of ECW's best period, the last great year for WCW cruiserweights, and the last great year for AJPW. There have been some ebbs and flows, but nothing has quite stepped in to fill that void.

[Mad Dog]

Obviously, there were a lot of reasons for that decline, but I think the big 80s stars taking so much without giving anything back played a major part.

This has always been the downfall of Vince. He almost never has one generation of stars put over the next. I mean there are guys that have been in the company for 15+ years like the Undertaker and Shawn Michaels who haven't put anyone over during their entire stays.

[Guest Bruiser Chong]

I still think WWF did a better job of covering up their flaws than they do now. Promos are obviously a bigger part of the picture now, but it's still amazing to me that they insist on having people who absolutely cannot speak a lick cut promos that are supposed to sell shows or build angles.

 

At least in the WWF circa '80s, you had the poor speakers usually coupled with a manager who could convey the proper emotions and sell the given angle. Christ, even Mr. Fuji was able to get the point across most of the time.

 

In regard to the poor workers of the time, the booking played to their strengths. If you'll notice, there were quite a few tag teams that featured the powerhouse (read: lousy wrestler) with the technician that created a well-oiled combo. The Hart Foundation is still the best example of this.

 

But even when you had two meatheads tagged together, they didn't go out there and wrestle marathon matches. It didn't create great matches, but there were few matches featuring real lousy workers that went too long. With the crash style booking that still remains for the most part, you don't have that problem on TV often. But when they go out on PPV and have to do a 15-minute match, it's a recipe for a trainwreck.