Wrestling Myth Busters

[tomk]

He asked me to stop taking shots based on opinions posted two years earlier and I stopped.

 

More likely Hogan was working an insane travel schedule that limited his workrate. There are stories of Hogan wrestling in two different time zones in the same day. That can not have a positive effect.

All this is true. The point was that the WWF style was built on loose work where guys controled their own bumps with weak heels/strong faces.

 

It's a style that preserves the bodies of the faces (not so much the heels who were working same schedule). Either way don't know if we should accuse him of a lack of work ethic.

[Bix]

I remember reading (I think in the Meltzer Eddy Guerrero obit) that Eddy wasn't crazy about playing heel due to all of the bumps a heel in WWE has to take feeding comebacks and whatnot.

[Boondocks Kernoodle]

I don't know if Dave exactly said that Eddie wasn't happy about it, just that playing heel is rougher on a wrestler's body because of the bumps the heel takes.

 

(On a side note, this makes me recall the funny memory from TSM I think of Dave reporting that Eddie's doctor said that he had the back of an 80-year-old and some poster was like "WELL WHY DIDN'T MELTZER TELL EDDIE THAT? COULD HAVE SAVED HIS LIFE." I might be remembering that wrong. I hope I'm not.)

[Phil Schneider]

I don't really know anything about AnarchistXX other than that whenever he says something like "I don't like the Sandman," Phil Schneider or Tomk will respond with "What, you don't like him because he teamed with Too COON Scorpio, you Klansman?" I assume at some point he must have expressed some views that could be construed as racist, but with these reactionary DVDVR folks that could be as simple as preferring Owen Hart to Butch Reed.

He called blacks subhuman and denied the holocaust. Racist isn't a term I tend to throw around lightly.

[Jingus]

Oh. Well. Nevermind.

[Boondocks Kernoodle]

Well then, those are some...interesting views.

[MikeCampbell]

I've got one that I'm hoping Khawk will be able to give some insight on.

 

The theory that Greg Gagne was a terrible worker, was massively overpushed by Verne, and that he was universally hated.

[sek69]

I've got one that I'm hoping Khawk will be able to give some insight on.

 

The theory that Greg Gagne was a terrible worker, was massively overpushed by Verne, and that he was universally hated.

 

Greg was a great tag team worker, he just wasn't all that good in singles after a certain point. He wasn't overpushed by Verne since he never held anything but the tag titles (which no one complains about) and the TV title (which was created when the promotion was dying and didn't matter). Plus Greg was the one guy Verne knew wouldn't jump ship, so it would make sense he would keep him in the upper card just in case someone else bailed on him.

 

I think a lot of the anti Greg stuff comes from the fact he was skinny and had a terrible physique most of the time and a lot of smarks are size queens at times. Of course Greg's probably going to live a long life like his dad while guys with acceptable builds are dropping dead in their 40s, but if that's the price that needs to be paid to satisify people then so be it according to some folks.

[goodhelmet]

You aren't KHawk

[khawk20]

You aren't KHawk

No, no he isn't....but he has it pretty much bang-on as I see it the same way.

 

Greg's singles "pushes" were about the same as anyone else that was a face in the AWA for a lengthy period of time. By comparison, Brunzell probably got more title matches than Greg did. The High Flyers as a team were really, really over during both of their runs with the belts and they would occasionally end up with some singles title matches through it as well.

 

Greg get shat on a ton these days for two reasons:

 

1) Most of the people commenting on how awful Greg was as a wrestler speak from a post-1984 viewing pespective. If your first exposure to Greg Gagne was his Rambo gimmick with Slaughter, or his run with the TV title, it's an easy step to take to call him overpushed and a bad worker. This is mostly derived from the time...Hogan, LOD, and other larger wrestlers were reshaping the wrestling landscape and it was a landscape that Greg obviously didn't fit.

As a side point to it, sek mentions Greg wouldn't "jump ship" (obviously). This makes Greg getting pushed in an era where Vince could potentially steal anyone of your guys in a major feud or program logical. Unfortunately it didn't translate well on TV.

 

2) A lot of AWA discussion focuses on "Why did the AWA die?", "How bad was the booking?" and "Stupid decisions by Verne in the late 80's". Greg being "pushed" ends up being a big part of these discussions and over the years the myth of the overpushed Gagne has taken root. A lot of it also has to do with the fact that it's an easy trolling point towards long-time AWA fans.

 

Those that saw Greg pre-1984 will say he was fairly pushed and was a talented, over wrestler in that area. Those that only saw him post-1984 will argue the opposite. Both sides will always agree to disagree. These days, there are many more post-1984 people on the boards than pre-1984, so the myth of Gagne as a poor overpushed worker will probably take even greater hold as the years roll along.

 

That is a shame.

[tsurutaman]

Hogan was Hogan

 

He did what he had to, to get over

 

As recently as 1990 he had a really good match with Stan Hansen at the Japan SWS show. Sad Vince didn't bring Stan the Man over to feud with Hogan. I mean, he had him in that damned movie.

[Cox]

I don't think Vince could have offered Hansen enough money to work in the US full-time, he was likely making more money working tours for All Japan than he would have made working 300+ days a year for Vince, plus he was able to work for WCW part-time on top of it.

[Bob Morris]

In watching some of the AWA shows aired on ESPN Classic, I thought Greg Gagne was solid, but at the time, more wrestlers were coming up with bigger moves to finish off opponents. Between that and wrestlers with bigger physiques, Gagne didn't really stand out from the pack.

 

It's worth noting, though, that as much as Verne protected Greg, he spent more time grooming other wrestlers to be the AWA heavyweight champion, even as several of them jumped ship to WWF.

 

And one of those wrestlers, Curt Hennig, wasn't really that big in terms of size when he got his push. In fact, in his WWF run, it's worth noting how much smaller Curt was at the 1989 Royal Rumble than he was at Summer Slam about eight months later.

[Bob Morris]

Another thought: How much of the "Greg Gagne got an undeserved push because he was Verne's son" resulted in smarts carrying over that same mindset to any wrestler who happened to be the son of a famous wrestler, especially if the wrestler was a booker?

 

While I understand the mindset to an extent with guys like Erik Watts and David Sammartino, I never got why it was carried over to Dustin Rhodes, who I thought did well for the most part, even if he lacked the charisma Dusty had.

[Cox]

Some of that might have been because Dustin was the son of Dusty, who was far from a "smark" darling in the early 90's. It took until Dustin got really good in 1992 for the "smark" fan base to really accept him as capable of handling his push, which may have also been aided by the start of the ill-advised Erik Watts push.

[Loss]

The frustration with Dustin seemed to stem more than anything from him doing no jobs for so long early in his stay, along with his push coming at the expense of pushing Brian Pillman. At least that was the perception ...

 

But Steve Austin came in at the exact same point, and I would say Dustin at that period in time was better than Austin, and Austin wasn't doing jobs either. Isn't that what is supposed to happen when you're trying to push new talent, which WCW desperately needed at the time?

 

He was already more established from his WWF run, but even Rick Rude came in and didn't do jobs for a while.

[Jingus]

3. Bobby Heenan says Greg sucked. Heenan is one of those guys who does a ton of interviews, is loved by most smarks, and isn't seen as a Sheiky-style joke. Lots of his opinions tend to osmote into the general IWC conciousness. See also Cornette, James E.

[sek69]

For a guy who's supposedly a bad worker, I don't ever recall seeing a Greg match where I thought "wow, he really shouldn't be in there with these guys". Even toward the end of his career, he was able to hang in there with whoever the AWA had left to offer.

 

 

Also to the "overpushed by Verne" point, watching the AWA on ESPN shows it's clear that Greg was used to put over Curt Hennig and groom him to be "the guy". The feud with Greg that was pushed as the continuation of the Verne vs Larry was the one that established Curt as a main event guy.

[kjh]

I think Cox is right, fans wouldn't have complained about Dustin's early push so much if it wasn't for his father being such a heat magnet at the time, having aided and abetted Jim Herd in undermining and then running their hero, Ric Flair, out of the promotion at the time.

[MikeCampbell]

Bumping this after two plus years, because I've been watching a fair amount of AWA lately and wonder what others would have to say about this potential myth.

 

The failure of the AWA was ultimately due to Verne being too stuck in the past and unwilling to change with the times. I can understand that as far as Verne not being willing or able to expand nationally like Vince and Crockett were doing in the '80's. He seemed to be comfortable in his midwest-west coast region, with occasional trips to Jersey. But, when it came to things like angles and gimmicks and such, at least from the mid '80's period I've been watching, they seem relatively up to speed.

[jdw]

Verne tried to expand westward. Mixed success.

 

Once Hogan was in the WWF, along with all the other early raids through 1984 (not just of AWA talent, but from everywhere), I don't think the AWA had a long term chance. You really needed some anchor to counter Hogan. The AWA didn't have that, and it's really hard to point to who they could have turned to in that role.

 

John

[Dylan Waco]

84 was a strong year. Shockingly strong considering they had lost Hogan and Heenan who were in some respects the most important parts of their show. 85 was when the shit hit the fan. There are a ton of reasons for this including continued raids, Verne running insane split crews with an already thin roster, not booking there three top draws for big chunks of the year (though to be fair they may have had no say in this with Blackwell's health and the Roadies commitments elsewhere), the senseless Westward expansion, et.

 

But 84 was a pretty good year.

[jdw]

That's why I used "long term".

 

AWA had a good year in 1984. But:

 

* Hogan & Vince made massive in roads into AWA territory in 1984

 

It wasn't just a beach head. The took the beach, and moved inland to the point that they really had a base of opperations in the heart of AWA land.

 

* there wasn't a great deal in 1984 in the AWA that looked like the long term base to compete with the WWF

 

Martel? I don't think so. Not against Hogan, not against his and Vince's ability to get national attention onto Hogan.

 

Long term support down the card? Not really. Did the AWA even have anyone like say Piper and Valentine getting added to the WWF in 1984?

 

The key thing Verne had going for him was being the Home Team. It was the promotion people follwed for years. It put on "good product" for the fans based on what they'd been watching for years. But was it good enough to prevent the beach head? Didn't seem to be.

 

We had a bit of a discussion along these lines in another thread about Wrestlemania III being even more of the end of the War than Starcade '87. JCP was actually in decent shape in March of 1987: generally speaking, a great year in 1986. Added BW and Lex to close 1986 / open 1987, along with useful guys like Jimmy Garvin and Rick Rude in later 1986. Flair vs BW was a thrilling series of matches for hardcores. Things looked hopeful...

 

But the other guy just put on Hogan-Andre, drew 90K+, made tons of money, and got all that attention. JCP seemed to shrink from "rival" to "opposition", and one that would have to carve out it's chunk and ward off Vince stealing people. Rude jumping so soon after Mania was a bad sign. Just felt like it was a point at which the War was clearly eventually going to be lost.

 

AWA in 1984... WWF did well enough to such a degree moving into the area, and the AWA seemed lacking in being able to sustain competition other than based on the hope "people will get tired of the WWF and stop going". Not a business plan for hope.

 

John

[Johnny Sorrow]

The failure of the AWA was ultimately due to Verne being too stuck in the past and unwilling to change with the times

That reminds me off this thing I posted some years ago.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I picked up the current "Inside Wrestling/ The Wrestler" flip mag yesterday, and they have a REALLY awesome interview with Larry Z. It's not one of those awful fake "press conference" things, it's an actual interview. They do these every now and then. Anyway, there's one story that had me in stitches.

 

Q: Tell me a good Verne Story.

 

A: Verne was a typical old school promoter. In terms of modern technology, he didn't have a clue. When I started in the AWA in'85, all the spy movies were out and everybody was afraid of the Soviet Union. Verne was competing with Vince and every other territory at the time. And Verne became convinced that Vince had the office bugged.

 

Q:If the KGB did it, why not Vince?

 

A: That's right. When I went into his office one day, he had Jack Lanza standing on his desk. Jack's a tall guy, and he had pushed the tiles out of the way so he could look into the ceiling. He had a flashlight looking for bugs! He said, "I don't see any bugs up here, Verne." Verne was standing by his desk and said, "I know they're listening to us!" So Jack and I left Verne's office and then we heard Verne yell, "Jesus Christ!" Then the phone comes bouncing into the hallway. Verne came out and asked, "What the hell is that?" He pointed to the phone lying there, and one of those stick-on digital clocks had been put on the phone. He thought it was a bug!

 

Q: He must have really been convinced that someone was a secret agent there.

 

A: Well, listen to this. Shortly after that, who left Verne's company and winds up a longtime agent for the WWF?

 

Q: Jack Lanza?

 

A: Jack Lanza! Verne wasn't stupid. He knew information was getting out, but he thought it was bugs. The guy looking for the bugs was the stooge!

He also talks about the whole "what's in the envelope that Baby Doll has to incriminate Dusty" angle and why it was dropped, and that as the AWA was dying they were gonna do an AWA invasion of the newly formed WCW, but Herd killed it

Larry:

 

Sting had the WCW title at the time, and they wanted me to wrestle him in a title unification match. It would have worked out great, but someone told Herd, "You've got to be careful because Zybysko could really eat up Sting and make him look really bad." The idiot! Of course, the kid doing the broadcasting at the time, Eric Bischoff, went on to create the New World Order in the ultimate invasion angle.

[MikeCampbell]

I don't think Verne had anyone in '84 that could even hope to be a viable counter to the Hogan/Vince combo. Later on, he had Slaughter and then Snuka who may have been able to help.

 

I think it'd be more accurate to say that the AWA ultimately died because Verne didn't have the right tools to effectively compete with Vince. But it's certainly not because he was still living in 1973. I can only assume folks have that impression because of things like Baron/Crusher winning the tag titles (which itself was only to hand them to the Road Warriors) and Bock's '86 title win, and Bock was still damn good in the ring.