The battle of the Vinces

[MoS]

I have been thinking about this for a while. I am not sure how exactly to articulate this, but I will try my best. 

Fans just naturally assume that Vince Jr. is a better promoter/booker than Vince Jr., but...is that true? Vince Jr. obviously has made a lot more money, and completely changed the nature of pro wrestling and made WWF the only game in town, which is by far the biggest argument in his favour. However, Vince Jr. has also presided over a product that has led to more and more fans giving up on his product for god knows how many years now. Yes, they make more money now than they have ever had, but a lot of that is due to alternative revenue streams that simply were not an option in Vince Sr.'s day. It definitely shows that Jr. is a better businessman than Jr., but that is not exactly what I am trying to explore. Money does not equal popularity.

Vince Sr. ran the WWWF/WWF for 20 years, and Capitol wrestling for 10 years before that, and except for a brief period during the late 60s when he lost TV, he never saw a decline. In fact, his product grew in popularity. Yes, to an extent, he was benefited by having Bruno as the guy, who is perhaps the only major box office draw in wrestling history whose drawing power consistently increased over the course of time. But he still made a lot of money when Morales was champ, he got more sellouts per capita than ever when Graham and Backlund were world champs. Another argument can be that he had no competition while Jr. did, but I don't find that very persuasive. For one, during WWF's worst period in the mid-90s, WCW was doing crap as well. WCW's rise in popularity actually led to wrestling getting more popular, and that benefited WWF too, including in 1997 and 1998, when WCW was at its peak. Further, WWE has been the only game in town since 2001, and, with the exception of a brief period when John Cena brought on board an entire unique fanbase of women and kids, WWE has been on steadfast (and drastic) decline for 20 years. 

This is not even about 'choosing' between one of the two. But I find the topic interesting, and I would like to unpack their relative strengths and weaknesses, and analyse where one was better than the other and where they were worse in comparison. Honestly, I think Vince Sr. should be mentioned more when it comes to the all-time great bookers/promoters in wrestling history. 

[Ricky Jackson]

Vince Sr was a great promoter. Also a great booker. (info on his booking isnt easy to come by, but as far as I know he booked all the major programs and matches during his reign) Vince Jr was a great promoter, and for many years booked like his father, with a babyface superman on top and strong main events. At some point the game changed, mostly because of Vince Jr's success, but also because of changes in culture and technology, the death of WCW, etc, and he stopped booking like his father/like a traditional wrestling promoter

[Dav'oh]

Did Vince the elder keep his hand in things to any degree after selling it to his son? (I use the term "selling" cautiously there, given conflicting reports on whether any money changed hands, and between whom.) Or are we to believe the narrative of Vincent J. leaving Vincent K. to sink or swim, and being against expansion and incursion?
I lean away from the latter like it was a dog-fart, but I'm not sure how much advice VJM was giving VKM early doors. Or how much he was capable of giving, given his deteriorating health.

[sek69]

I'm of the opinion Sr only sold (or whatever) to Jr because of his declining health, so he probably wasn't in much of a position to do much. But I do think having dad around kept VKM's more wacky inclinations at bay. 

[Loss]

As much as Vince McMahon promotes a style of wrestling that I don't always enjoy and has never been my favorite, it's hard for me to see him as anything less than the greatest promoter of all time who at his best is able to create a pro wrestling presentation that looks and feels like absolutely nothing else ever has. We don't get the best of Vince very much these days, but I can't deny his accomplishments. He played very dirty to make it to the top, but he was also taking on a terribly corrupt system so we'll call that a wash.

As for his father, he created Bruno Sammartino and Andre the Giant, two of the biggest and most successful stars in wrestling history, and I also can't dispute that he ran a successful money-making business for a long time. At the same time, it's hard for me to figure out where his genius begins and where the good luck of promoting in major population centers like New York, Philadelphia and Boston ends.

[Ricky Jackson]

54 minutes ago, Loss said:

At the same time, it's hard for me to figure out where his genius begins and where the good luck of promoting in major population centers like New York, Philadelphia and Boston ends.

No doubt promoting in the Northeast provided Vince Sr with a better chance of success, but he still had to present a product that captured the public's attention. One could argue New York was a difficult place to draw, because the fans were fickle and hard to impress, plus high rent at MSG meant one needed consistent large crowds to keep going. Prior to Vince Sr promoting MSG in 1956 many others had tried and failed to have sustained success for several years. Top promoters like Fred Kohler and Jim Barnett, and stars like Gorgeous George, Lou Thesz, and Verne Gagne couldn't make a serious go of it. Vince Sr (helped by Toots Mondt, longtime wrestling promoter/booker) got on the air in New York with an exciting product and had great success for many, many years, with only a brief period in 59-60 where he lost promoting control. Vince Jr at his peak in the 80s couldn't match Vince Sr's track record at the Garden as far as consistent sellouts and large crowds go. I cant really comment on the pre-Vince Sr Philly and Boston wrestling scene, but they were definitely huge drawing cities under his promotion. Of course there is no way of knowing, and not to discount Rocca, Rogers, Bruno, Pedro, etc, but I think hypothetically Vince Sr would've been just as successful in say, Portland or Amarillo, due to being able to maximize his draws and present the public with an intriguing product 

[C.S.]

Sorry to be "that guy" but these typos are driving me nuts.

3 hours ago, MoS said:

Fans just naturally assume that Vince Jr. is a better promoter/booker than Vince Jr., but...is that true? 

It definitely shows that Jr. is a better businessman than Jr., but that is not exactly what I am trying to explore.

Anyway, I'm going to use Loss's post to dive into this question...

1 hour ago, Loss said:

As for his father, he created Bruno Sammartino and Andre the Giant, two of the biggest and most successful stars in wrestling history,

Can we really credit Sr. with Andre though? I feel like Andre was such a star, such a massive attraction, that only an idiot could screw it up. Just book Andre and let him do what he does best. 

With that said, let's compare Sr.'s booking of Andre to how Jr. has booked every giant post-Andre - mainly The Big Show.

Sr. wins handily.

Of course, Jr. had his hands on Andre too, but after WrestleMania 3 and 4, what happened? Jr. had Andre doing one-minute jobs to Ultimate Warrior around the horn. I realize Andre was breaking down at this point and you want to use him to "make" people. We can argue that Andre - if not "made" Hogan - certainly helped Hogan ascend to an even higher level than before. But the Warrior matches did nothing for anyone, and it was a law of diminishing returns after that.  

Every giant after Andre has been booked like shit. Sure, you can argue that none of them were as special as Andre. While that may be true, Big Show was a better wrestler and more versatile in every way - and yet he was "just another guy" for most of his run. Yeah, different time and all that, but still.

That's just one direct comparison of many between Sr. and Jr., but I think it illustrates the point well.

[Al]

The problem is the ideal method of booking Andre ceased to exist post-expansion. In Vince Sr’s era you cycled a special attraction, kept it on the road through various audiences and only displayed them a couple times a year. Once cable television comes around you can’t really do that. You couldn’t book Andre the same way today if you wanted to. 

[El-P]

5 hours ago, Loss said:

As much as Vince McMahon promotes a style of wrestling that I don't always enjoy and has never been my favorite, it's hard for me to see him as anything less than the greatest promoter of all time who at his best is able to create a pro wrestling presentation that looks and feels like absolutely nothing else ever has.

Agreed.

5 hours ago, Loss said:

At the same time, it's hard for me to figure out where his genius begins and where the good luck of promoting in major population centers like New York, Philadelphia and Boston ends.

Luck is 90% of success anyway.  

[NintendoLogic]

10 hours ago, Loss said:

As for his father, he created Bruno Sammartino and Andre the Giant, two of the biggest and most successful stars in wrestling history, and I also can't dispute that he ran a successful money-making business for a long time. At the same time, it's hard for me to figure out where his genius begins and where the good luck of promoting in major population centers like New York, Philadelphia and Boston ends.

Running in big cities may have been part of it, but it was far from a guarantee of success. LA and Detroit were the third- and fifth-largest cities in America in the 70s, and they were both dead as a doornail by the end of the decade. And as brother Ricky Jackson noted, New York itself was dead as a wrestling town for decades before Antonino Rocca revived it. In fact, it could be argued that smaller population centers like Memphis and the Carolinas were at an advantage for drawing wrestling fans due to lack of major league sports competition.

9 hours ago, C.S. said:

Can we really credit Sr. with Andre though? I feel like Andre was such a star, such a massive attraction, that only an idiot could screw it up. Just book Andre and let him do what he does best.

Andre was far from idiot-proof. By the early 70s, it was apparent that he would start to kill territories if he stuck around in one place for too long. It was Vince the Elder who had the idea to make him a touring special attraction. If not for that, he may have ended up being a flash in the pan.

[Log]

As far as I know, Vince Sr. never booked any of his talent to have to literally kiss his bare ass in the middle of the ring, so I'm gonna go with him.

[flyonthewall2983]

10 hours ago, C.S. said:

Every giant after Andre has been booked like shit. Sure, you can argue that none of them were as special as Andre. While that may be true, Big Show was a better wrestler and more versatile in every way - and yet he was "just another guy" for most of his run. Yeah, different time and all that, but still.

Just in terms of big guys instead of just guys who were tall, Earthquake and Yokozuna were booked pretty well, at first anyway. Where they really went wrong and this has been well-covered enough, is Vader. But how much of that was Leon White's fault and how much the company's is hard to say. He just turned 40 and lost his sizzle from WCW. And yet despite that he had a good run in Japan after, which maybe speaks to how better they took care of him compared to Vince, Jr. (and Leon said aside from how he was used on-screen, McMahon treated him pretty great). 

[El-P]

11 minutes ago, flyonthewall2983 said:

Where they really went wrong and this has been well-covered enough, is Vader. But how much of that was Leon White's fault and how much the company's is hard to say.

Just before he entered WWF, and while he was already super banged up and injured, he had that killer match with Inoki at the Dome. As soon as he left WWF, where he was deemed a "fat piece of shit" and ended up doing jobs for Mark Henry and Kane, he had killer matches with every one of the AJ main event crew. That's pretty telling if you ask me... WWF just did not get what Vader was at all.

[Matt D]

22 minutes ago, El-P said:

Just before he entered WWF, and while he was already super banged up and injured, he had that killer match with Inoki at the Dome. As soon as he left WWF, where he was deemed a "fat piece of shit" and ended up doing jobs for Mark Henry and Kane, he had killer matches with every one of the AJ main event crew. That's pretty telling if you ask me... WWF just did not get what Vader was at all.

Who on the roster wanted to work his style? Should Sting get more credit for willing to take his stuff?

[Robert S]

12 hours ago, Loss said:

He played very dirty to make it to the top, but he was also taking on a terribly corrupt system so we'll call that a wash.

Reading Hornbaker's book (Death of the Territories), I would not even consider most of the stuff he did dirty compared to his rivals. A lot of promoters played at going national, were shipping their tapes around to non-local stations and so on. Vince Jr. was just the one, who gambled the hardest (and someone lot of the other promoters did not consider a rival on the national stage, believing him when Vince claimed having to interest in being a national player). You could consider the way he bought the promotion from his father dirty (paying an undervalued prize from the future profits), but Vince Sr. could just have directly handed over the company to his son as well (I guess the minority owners got screwed, though were there at this point any other minority owners besides Gorilla?).

[El-P]

49 minutes ago, Matt D said:

Who on the roster wanted to work his style? Should Sting get more credit for willing to take his stuff?

Sting has always been credited on being game as hell with Vader. As far as WWF goes, Cactus obviously could have renewed his feud and have some terrific matches. Dustin if he had not been so out of shape and working a stupid gimmick. Austin & Bret worked really well with him and could have had some great matches if the opportunity was there. Of course his pal 2 Cold, who was reduced to a JTTS in no time despite being given a great production (what else is new ?). They could have had a long term feud with Shamrock, instead of having the later work "Loser eat dog food" match with the Bulldog and made to be "just another guy" in the span of a few months (what else is new ?).

Taker to some degree but I guess the big guy lamenting the fact there aren't tough guys in pro-wrestling anymore wasn't as tough as this bodybuilder surfer guy, who would have guessed ?

Shawn, if he wasn't such an unprofessional douchebag.

[MoS]

Vince Sr. was better at booking giants, and I don't think this is limited to Andre either. Gorilla Monsoon became a huge drawing heel for him, and this was despite appearing weekly inmost towns and monthly at MSG 

[El-P]

Let's not forget the "giant" gimmick was much easier to book when guys weren't on national TV every week and there was not nearly the same access to footage from elsewhere. The mystique is easier to attain when a guy shows up three times a year in a territory than when you're an a weekly TV show where you have to work competitive matches all the time because the audience is just not gonna stay interested in a tall guy squashing people for very long.

[pmo]

I have a very under researched theory that if one wanted to make a drama about the Mcmahons it should be about Vince Sr. claiming and founding the WWWF.  I mean he gets back from the war in the 40s and then proceeds to get farmed out to start the business in DC by his father Jess Mcmahon.  Jess IIRC was the one to get MSG reopened to wrestling in the 50s and was able to keep the various small club promoters together and allowed them to promote big cards.  Then Jess promptly dies in 54 and Vince has rights to part of the territory but never can quite get NY back which culminates in the 59-60 war with Pedro Martinez where Vince Sr. consolidates power and gets the NWA Champ.  Factor in Characters like Toots, Rogers, the Grahams, etc and you have a really fun period piece.  

That said I its kind of split decision for me.  Vince Sr. was more conservative and his product was more consistent but was never as exciting.  Vince Jr has the higher highs but lows are just awful.  

[Ricky Jackson]

I fantasy directed an HBO style 50s-70s McMahon family wrestling show in my head years ago. Basically like Mad Men morphing into Boogie Nights. In the right hands it would be freaking awesome. IIRC, Norman Lear once had a show about 70s New York wrestling in some stage of development about 10-12 years ago but nothing ever came of it 

[Al]

A little off-topic, but a mock-documentary style show about Harley Race, Dusty Rhodes and Ric Flair circa 1979-81 would be interesting. The old champion and the two younger challengers vying over who should carry the belt. Find someone to play Happy Humphrey and you've got yourself an Emmy.

[Log]

2 hours ago, Robert S said:

Reading Hornbaker's book (Death of the Territories), I would not even consider most of the stuff he did dirty compared to his rivals. A lot of promoters played at going national, were shipping their tapes around to non-local stations and so on. Vince Jr. was just the one, who gambled the hardest (and someone lot of the other promoters did not consider a rival on the national stage, believing him when Vince claimed having to interest in being a national player). You could consider the way he bought the promotion from his father dirty (paying an undervalued prize from the future profits), but Vince Sr. could just have directly handed over the company to his son as well (I guess the minority owners got screwed, though were there at this point any other minority owners besides Gorilla?).

I've always thought that 99% of the old promoters crying about tradition and the killing of the territories were just pissed that Vince was the one to actually pull it off.  They'd have switched places with him in a heartbeat.

[Loss]

Vince absolutely played dirty with Jim Crockett. Building lockouts, sabotaging PPV attempts ... that's where I see the dirty tactics first and foremost. A lot of his behavior is probably illegal under antitrust law, but antitrust is often not enforced at the level it should be.

[NintendoLogic]

Encouraging if not outright forcing wrestlers to walk out of promotions without giving notice beforehand was a dirty tactic as well.

By the way, Dick Ebersol's role in the WWF's popularity can hardly be overstated. The increased production values at his insistence made the WWF look like the big time and the other companies seem bush-league in comparison.

[Loss]

Indeed. They have just been continuing to iterate on that arena look ever since.