Who is the greatest booker ever?

[joeg]

Who was booking NOAH during the NJPW juniors vs NOAH juniors under card feud and the Sterness vs Burning main event feud? I thought at the time NOAH was the best booked promotion promotion out there. Looking back, they never properly built Akiyama or gave him a proper title run that would have cemented him on that ace level. Did his booking duties and the conflict of interest have anything to do this?

 

 

Also did anybody ever get heat on their heels the way Paul Heyman did? In an era when the business was more exposed than ever, in front of an audience that was "smart" or it least thought it was, he got legit white heat on all of his top heels. Anybody who had a run as one of the top 2 or 3 heels there - Sandman, Cactus, Austin, Raven, Douglas, Taz, Sabu, Dudleys, Credible, Corino, Rhino, etc got more heat than any heels have gotten in the past decade.

[SmartMark15]

Also did anybody ever get heat on their heels the way Paul Heyman did? In an era when the business was more exposed than ever, in front of an audience that was "smart" or it least thought it was, he got legit white heat on all of his top heels. Anybody who had a run as one of the top 2 or 3 heels there - Sandman, Cactus, Austin, Raven, Douglas, Taz, Sabu, Dudleys, Credible, Corino, Rhino, etc got more heat than any heels have gotten in the past decade.

 

Agreed. That kind of heel heat has been rarely replicated since consistently since that point. More recent examples of this that I can recall include Quack in his hot period when the BDK were absolutely reviled, the genuine heat that Gabe captured during the ROH vs. CZW feud, and maybe even Adam Cole's heel run in PWG (although that inevitably got ironically over as a babyface).

[Mad Dog]

Quack really handled the BDK well that first year or so. They marched through King of Trios and then won the tag titles fairly quick. But he effectively pulled off having the BDK start to take losses while still making them a threat. High Noon blows the angle off really well and Spectral Envoy vs. Ares and Tim Donst is a good end point to it. Amazingly, the meat of the BDK angle was only 2 years but it feels longer than it was. That's where he really fucked up with the Flood. He set up this huge stable that was supposed to dominate Chikara and they never won matches.

[SmartMark15]

Quack really handled the BDK well that first year or so. They marched through King of Trios and then won the tag titles fairly quick. But he effectively pulled off having the BDK start to take losses while still making them a threat. High Noon blows the angle off really well and Spectral Envoy vs. Ares and Tim Donst is a good end point to it. Amazingly, the meat of the BDK angle was only 2 years but it feels longer than it was. That's where he really fucked up with the Flood. He set up this huge stable that was supposed to dominate Chikara and they never won matches.

The whole shutdown angle completely killed a lot of the momentum and good will he had built up with CHIKARA's entry into iPPV.

[shoe]

The goal of a booker is to draw money. So some of these names shouldn't even be on this list. Yes booking should entertain to, but draw money as well. For me it was Bill Watts.

[gordi]

The goal of a booker is to draw money. So some of these names shouldn't even be on this list. Yes booking should entertain to, but draw money as well. For me it was Bill Watts.

 

I'm not trying to be funny but, I mean... Watts had to sell the UWF to Crockett because he lost so much money trying to go national in 1986.

[shoe]

On that criteria as an end result all most every company would be disqualified , because they are not in business.Watts had several years of drawing big business. Paul Boesch's Houston promotion had its most lucrative years under Watts

 

Watts made a mistake at the end of his run.We shouldn't judge his whole run on that. When people call Flair the greatest wrestler of all time. I'm sure it's not his 2004 run as why he's the greatest. It was the stuff beforehand.