Is the knock on George Scott for 88-89 run unfair?

[Infinit]

Wasn't Scott out as booker by May 89? Isn't the rough timeline that Cornette and the MX gave their notice sometime after Clash 6, but Scott was let go and they re-signed, but were given 6 weeks to do some Continental shots and get some r&r before coming back for the World Tag Team Tournament?

[Mad Dog]

Scott was gone by late March or early April. I think he's done by the time they get to Center Stage. 

[PeteF3]

2 hours ago, sek69 said:

Very true, the role of a booker changed a great deal in the post territory era. Not the least of which being the need to get talent over and keep them that way longer rather than the territory way of cycling people in and out to keep them fresh. Who knows how well the great bookers of the past would have been able to manage in an era where everyone stays around for years (or decades if its WWE) rather than a short cycle.

This is definitely something I've seen Scott get credit for as it pertains to 1984-86 WWF specifically. Piper and Orndorff may well have finished up shortly after Mania 1 if it had taken place in 1980, but now they had to stick around, and it required the result to lead to Orndorff turning babyface, leading to Orndorff feuding with Piper, leading to Orndorff teaming with Hogan, leading to Orndorff turning on Hogan, etc. Those types of storylines dovetailing into new ones never really happened in pre-expansion WWF, but they did in Mid-Atlantic where they ran towns more often and had to cycle through storylines quicker even if talent turnover was probably roughly the same as in New York.

[JerryvonKramer]

3 hours ago, Loss said:

All I really know about him is that he is the one who taught Flair to always bring a change of clothes to TV tapings and not to wear the same ring gear or suit if you come out to do promos on two consecutively taped shows.

He was a booker for the WWF in 1984-1985 as well, but we never hear much about that either way. Dave says he had to be organized to do that job because of all the moving parts, but that was really more logistics planning than booking, since the big vision stuff was Vince. But who knows?

 

The things I have read -- mainly from dedicated old-timey Mid-Atlantic types from ye olde internet circa 2001 -- suggest that Vince Sr brought in George Scott as Vince Jr was somewhat overloaded in 84 being a commentator on literally every show. However, Vince is Vince. And he and Scott had some disagreements over their vision. Scott brought in a lot of the old JCP talent, brought in incentives for higher workrate, fines for no shows, and, perhaps most interestingly, sat down with workers to give them input into their own finishes. You hear a lot about Savage being a guy who wanted to go over details, but apparently Scott drove a culture of ensuring guys took the layout of matches and their finishes seriously.

 

More importantly, Scott changed the classic Vince Sr loop booking for heels -- where a heel would come in, go over jobbers and established guys, work the three-match loop with the champ, and then job on the way out to Strongbow or Putski or whoever, Scott worked on giving them more stuff to do. Think of someone like Paul Orndroff AFTER the Hogan run and the stories he was a part of. Scott is credited with ensuring guys up and down the card were invested in their characters, stories, direction etc etc. In many ways, the polar opposite to Vince Sr.

 

Where he clashed with Vince is on the big picture stuff. Scott reputedly hated the TNT stuff. Tried to stop Butcher Vachon's wedding going on air. Wanted to tone many of the more outrageous comedy skits etc, and all that other classic Vince Being Vince stuff from 84-6. He obviously lost out on that battle, but did manage to convince Vince to drop some of the shows he was doing, which is why you get some other commentators coming in. From memory, Mean Gene and Jack Reynolds and maybe Lord Al too.

 

I only spent an hour or so digging around, but it seems Vince has put over Scott fairly big a few times after the run as being a key guy for running the show in that crucial period. Another element is the sheer number of shows they were running -- sometimes 3 shows on the same night -- and Scott seemed to be able to handle logistics like that too.

 

Just what I've picked up, although I'd say they are all from somewhat "pro-Scott" sources, just as much of the stuff on shoots is from "anti-Scott" sources. Steamboat seems very fond of him also.

[JerryvonKramer]

2 hours ago, Matt D said:

And probably the biggest thing I learned from the Gary Hart book was that we fell into a habit of focusing on pre-90s bookers as mainly matchmakers/writers as opposed to being the people who gathered and literally "booked" the talent. So if Scott had success with successful runs, some of that was his ability to either gather or hold talent in a territory.

My sense is that this varied strongly depending on who it was. Dusty was a creative. Dory Funk Jr purely someone who brought in talent and "booked" them -- literally for Baba in AJPW but also when he did runs in JCP. I seem to recall reading somewhere that Dory ran a committee sort of thing for creative since it wasn't his thing.

 

Everything I've read about Scott suggest that he was a guy who focused on working style and match details as well as locker-room discipline. I'm kind of interested in the idea of deliberately "retraining" the fans -- Mid Atlantic was a tag territory that worked a (for the period) go go style before he came in, and he basically force-fed them Johnny Valentine who "took 15 minutes to warm up", much more about building up the match from a slow start to a hot finish plus big chops -- I only imagine this is how Johnny Valentine and Wahoo worked based on how Greg Valentine and Wahoo (and Flair) worked under Scott later on. 

 

I also find it interesting how badly shit on Scott is for WCW 1989 when from a fan-perspective it's one of the greatest years of all time for match quality.

[Mad Dog]

A lot of the really well regarded stuff is long after he's gone. Chi-Town Rumble was primarily him and it's not a very good show outside of Flair/Steamboat and Luger/Windham. A lot of really slow paced stuff that got way too much time like Hayes/Assassin or Reed/Sting. 

[Mad Dog]

And to add. Chi-Town has some wonky finishes in there too. I think more than one match has the both guys are pinned, one guy barely gets a shoulder up finish. 

[JerryvonKramer]

Yes, I have vague memories of us calling that "the George Scott finish" back in the day reviewing those shows.

 

His run was actually much shorter than I thought.

 

 

[Migs]

Yeah, it's really only about 3 months. Ultimately, his terribleness in that run may be slightly overstated - really, the issue was that he was a bit behind on booking for a TV war when he underplayed Clash 6, and that was a mortal sin for the TV people he worked for. There was no retraining of the fans that was going to fix that WCW needed to draw TV ratings now and that the Clash opposite Wrestlemania was a big deal that needed to be promoted as such. Whether any of his other ideas were good or not almost became beside the point.

[Mad Dog]

1988-1989 to me is kind of the birth of the modern era. That's when people like Scott, Watts, etc. all got left in the dustbin of history. Fans began to have different expectations and wrestling became a TV product over a live show model using TV as infomercials. 

[JerryvonKramer]

Legit question though: did WCW make any more money for a high TV rating when Turner owned the station?

 

I seem to remember from the WONs that the gates in the late 80s were not brilliant -- not as bas as they'd become in the early 90s but not competitive either -- and surely the multi-million dollar weekends the WWF there doing were still ultimately driven by live gates no?

 

From pure business perspective, surely Scott was right to be concerned about turning around the live shows, no?

[Migs]

Higher ratings = better ad rates. That's how Turner would make money off the higher ratings.

Which, to be fair, was a huge flip in how wrestling worked, business-wise. It's easy with hindsight to say that Scott missed the boat, but lots of smart people have gotten left behind, especially when that change had literally just taken hold. It's probably the best argument for him being a bit unfairly maligned.

[sek69]

5 minutes ago, JerryvonKramer said:

From pure business perspective, surely Scott was right to be concerned about turning around the live shows, no?

He wasn't entirely wrong since it was still a major source of income, but the tide was quickly turning from making money on live shows to making money on TV and PPVs. Neither one was a thing in his heyday, but he clearly didn't get with changing times either. 

[PeteF3]

Watts (and almost every other WCW honcho pre-Bischoff) didn't grasp that increasing PPV buyrates by just a few percentage points--maybe even percentages of percentage points--would bring in more revenue than anything short of practically doubling house show business (or more).

I think Watts gets a little too much shit for his focus on the Omni--it was an issue before him as well--but it was definitely an issue nonetheless.

[Loss]

WCW, despite its missteps, probably should have been profitable long before it was. I don't know if it would have been under Scott, but consider that they did not get paid to continuously produce first-run content that drew great ratings until 1995. Turner Home Entertainment also pocketed all of the profits from what was a lucrative video rental market at the time. They were in the red every year and rarely drew big houses, but there were other revenue streams that are now taken for granted that were simply denied to them. Bischoff was the one smart enough to cut back on house shows and force Turner Home Entertainment to take on Hogan's salary when he came in, which led to them ending a fiscal year in the black for the first time in their existence at the end of 1995.

As for Scott, early 1989 TV is not any good, but I don't know that I put that on him. Yes, he was the booker, but they had just been bought out and Jack Petrik and Jim Herd already had the edict that they weren't going to make any major changes for at least six months. They lost Barry Windham and JJ Dillon, Dennis Condrey left with no warning ... the great main events were the only thing that seemed to be going their way. In April, the Saturday Night show got a big facelift and moved out of Techwood Drive studios and they dramatically picked up the pace of weekly TV. Anyone coming up to bat first was just going to be in a holding pattern until they started making bigger changes.

[Loss]

I should also add that WCW hyped the Omni cards so much on TBS because they could not get syndicated TV in the Atlanta market to promote local cards.

[Matt D]

2 hours ago, JerryvonKramer said:

My sense is that this varied strongly depending on who it was. Dusty was a creative.

Even Dusty had his guys though. He poached Magnum, brought in Bass, slowly accepted back Barry, etc.

[Mad Dog]

I do think the debut of Steamboat was a good angle and Flair/Windham breaking Gilbert's nose on the cement the next week were good. I believe the Gilbert nose break was a rerun of something they did with Steamboat in the late 70s. But if it works it works. I thought the Michael Hayes heel turn was mostly well handled and he probably booked that.

He did kill WCW's relationship with All Japan though.

[joeg]

So Scott only had the book from when Dusty left in late January/early February until early April? 

[Mad Dog]

Maybe mid Janaury. I know Crockett had the book for like 2-3 weeks before he came in. 

[NintendoLogic]

8 hours ago, Mad Dog said:

He did kill WCW's relationship with All Japan though.

I don't know if you can pin that one on Scott. My understanding is that Turner execs had decreed that Sting was the new rising star and were scared to death that he might get booed on live TV, which is why they booked the angle where his team got locked in the dressing room. And the relationship had already become strained under Crockett due to him pulling Flair from several advertised tours.

[PeteF3]

2 hours ago, Mad Dog said:

Maybe mid Janaury. I know Crockett had the book for like 2-3 weeks before he came in. 

Also Dusty was around for a few more weeks as talent after getting fired as booker before leaving entirely.

[conker8]

You might be interested by the interview of Jim Brunzell (he works under Scott in the 70's)  by David Chappell :

http://www.midatlanticgateway.com/search?q=brunzell

[JerryvonKramer]

8 hours ago, conker8 said:

You might be interested by the interview of Jim Brunzell (he works under Scott in the 70's)  by David Chappell :

http://www.midatlanticgateway.com/search?q=brunzell

Terrific find!

[joeg]

Question, who's idea was it to run the Clash at the Superdome on the same day as Wrestlemania? It seems like a terrible idea running a stadium show with a weak undercard simply to counter program Wrestlemania... no wonder they only drew 5,000 fans and did a 4.0 rating back at a time when there were only 25 cable channels.