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omgomgomg posted:And lastly, why did WCW not care about Bret / why did they want him at such a high price and not do anything with him? I believe Bischoff only wanted Bret so he could gently caress with Vince. He didn't care about him once he had him, all that mattered was that he was taking away a key star from Vince. Also you have to remember that Bischoff's best buddy was Hulk Hogan. The same Hulk Hogan that refused to work with Bret because he was "too small" or whatever.
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Sep 19, 2014 14:50
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triplexpac posted:Also you have to remember that Bischoff's best buddy was Hulk Hogan. The same Hulk Hogan that refused to work with Bret because he was "too small" or whatever. It's a shame too, because the one time they DID wrestle, it was quite impressive and one of those rare moments that Hogan chain wrestled. But of course this being WCW(and both wrestlers' egos I'm sure), it was for less than 10 minutes, on Nitro, with a bullshit finish. Since we're on the topic of the Screwjob, this thread had me wondering: how is the Bret/Shawn Rivalry DVD that WWE put out not too long ago?
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Sep 19, 2014 15:38
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Aku posted:Since we're on the topic of the Screwjob, this thread had me wondering: how is the Bret/Shawn Rivalry DVD that WWE put out not too long ago? It's really good, and up on the Network. You should watch it.
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Sep 19, 2014 16:26
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TheJoker138 posted:It's really good, and up on the Network. You should watch it. It's really good but awkward due to Shawn just sitting there with his head down as he's repeatedly hit over the head with how big a piece of poo poo he was.
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Sep 19, 2014 17:22
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ColonelJohnMatrix posted:It's really good but awkward due to Shawn just sitting there with his head down as he's repeatedly hit over the head with how big a piece of poo poo he was. Yeah I mean Shawn has been a lovely person sure and I didn't think he would ever come out a sympathetic person. But I think he didn't quite deserve the raking over the coals he got. Yes, he was a dick - you don't need to keep telling him. As for wrestlers not doing jobs. It's nothing new. When Flair first won the belt Dusty Rhodes refused to do the job anywhere that he had a following in case it hurt his image. He also refused to do it wherever Flair might've had a following so ultimately Flair won in front of an indifferent crowd to little fanfare.
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Sep 19, 2014 19:46
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ColonelJohnMatrix posted:It's really good but awkward due to Shawn just sitting there with his head down as he's repeatedly hit over the head with how big a piece of poo poo he was. I don't know, I think current Shawn actually came across somewhat better than current Brett who seemed to be just making poo poo up at some points. Shawn seems like he's totally aware that he was a drug addicted mess and is genuinely repentant, Brett is insisting that Shawn brought little kids into the ring and had them do strip teases with him, and often seems like a crazy person.
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Sep 19, 2014 20:33
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TheJoker138 posted:Brett is insisting that Shawn brought little kids into the ring and had them do strip teases with him, and often seems like a crazy person. ...Shawn did do that. During his initial face turn in 1995
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Sep 19, 2014 20:37
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EugeneJ posted:...Shawn did do that. During his initial face turn in 1995 I don't seem to remember him having any kids taking their pants off in the ring.
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Sep 19, 2014 20:39
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I wasn't implying that it was right or wrong that he's raked over the coals, just that it's sort of awkward regardless. It's a great watch though.
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Sep 19, 2014 20:46
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When you talk about a period when Shawn was a huge drug-addicted rear end in a top hat, a lot of the conversation is going to be about how Shawn was a huge drug-addicted rear end in a top hat.
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Sep 19, 2014 20:55
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TheJoker138 posted:I don't know, I think current Shawn actually came across somewhat better than current Brett who seemed to be just making poo poo up at some points. Shawn seems like he's totally aware that he was a drug addicted mess and is genuinely repentant, Brett is insisting that Shawn brought little kids into the ring and had them do strip teases with him, and often seems like a crazy person. I agree that Shawn comes off much better in that interview. Bret comes off as kind of petty, and Shawn comes off pretty apologetic. 2/3 of the conversation is the following - Bret: Hey, remember that time you said or did this very specific thing, and I have been clearly holding a grudge over it for more than ten years? Shawn: I really don't remember, cause I was high as can be at the time. But, if you say so, sorry about that. *repeat 10x* It's an excellent watch for the most part, but Bret having a mind like a steel trap for every perceived slight is cringe-worthy.
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Sep 19, 2014 21:01
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81sidewinder posted:I agree that Shawn comes off much better in that interview. Bret comes off as kind of petty, and Shawn comes off pretty apologetic. That's because Bret kept a diary and wrote a book using said diary, so he remembers. Shawn was an immense piece of poo poo during that time and was hated by the vast majority of wrestlers. The Bret vs Shawn rivalry turning into a real life feud is mostly the story of Shawn being a completely insufferable human being who cared about no one but himself and a couple partners in crime.
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Sep 19, 2014 21:17
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I believe it was a work as well. Let me show you the narrative of what happened, if it was a worked shoot. First look at how Wrestling With Shadows frames the backstage "shoot" footage. WWF offers The National Film Board of Canada unprecedented access to their backstage to document Hart. During this time a company under the creative direction of Vince Russo just so happens to have the biggest shoot angle in wrestling history. Seems pretty shady to me. The circumstance that Vince allowed a kayfabe breaking documentary crew backstage for the first time, and it was during the Montreal Screwjob is too big of a coincidence for me to buy. The documentary crew catches Vince and company going to speak to Bret in his locker room. They do not follow. On the way back, Vince is sporting a black eye, and walking in a daze. That seems like a bluff to me. A magic trick. Look at the character of Bret Hart since his feud with Austin. Multiple times before Montreal, he flips out and curses, throwing fits in the ring, incensed by WWF management. If you look at the Montreal Screwjob in booking terms you'd see it was designed to take the focus of Bret leaving for WWF, and place the heat on McMahon. That is a big introduction to put over the Mr. McMahon character. This character had been ready to go since Vince's heel work in Memphis, and Montreal was one giant leap to make him the most over heel in wrestling. Financially, WWF needed a very over wrestler they didn't have to pay. If you are to believe the contract negotiation footage of Bret leading up to Montreal, he was loyal to WWF, but offered too much money to leave and Vince couldn't compete in wage matching. This seems to me like the perfect scenario for a wrestler to put someone over. And a wrestler who wouldn't mind putting over the promoter himself. Since Bret hated Shawn, I believe he agreed to put over Mr. McMahon himself on leaving instead. God Of Paradise fucked around with this message at 21:33 on Sep 19, 2014 |
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Sep 19, 2014 21:30
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Survivor Series was a late shoot addition for WWS, it wasn't originally even going to be a part of the documentary so I don't believe anyone would have worked a shoot to influence a small Canadian documentary crew, for a movie that wouldn't be released until long after the fact when Bret was working for a different company.
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Sep 19, 2014 21:36
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Sounds like those marks worked a shoot video shoot into a worked shoot.
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Sep 19, 2014 21:42
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God Of Paradise posted:I believe it was a work as well. Wrestling With Shadows was only scheduled to be filmed until Summerslam. When Vince told Bret he was breaching his contract Bret contacted the filmmakers that this might be worth covering. Beyond that Bret and Vince would never lie under oath during the Owen Hart trial, your conspiracy falls apart from the beginning because the documentary was supposed to be long over. Furthermore Vince thought he would come out of the screwjob as a babyface. He very clearly portrayed himself as one, tried to lie to the boys about it (this is where the Bret was going to Nitro the next day story begins) and sell it to the fans as Vince being the good guy. Your entire narrative doesn't work.
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Sep 19, 2014 21:43
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MassRafTer posted:Wrestling With Shadows was only scheduled to be filmed until Summerslam. When Vince told Bret he was breaching his contract Bret contacted the filmmakers that this might be worth covering. Beyond that Bret and Vince would never lie under oath during the Owen Hart trial, your conspiracy falls apart from the beginning because the documentary was supposed to be long over. Yeah, probably. I'm unfamiliar with the Owen trial. But I don't think they would lie in that situation.
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Sep 19, 2014 21:53
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How boring a documentary would "Wrestling With Shadows" have been if it had ended at Summerslam though?
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Sep 19, 2014 21:57
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Gonzo McFee posted:How boring a documentary would "Wrestling With Shadows" have been if it had ended at Summerslam though? The computer graphics lady was the original main event.
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Sep 19, 2014 21:58
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God Of Paradise posted:Yeah, probably. I'm unfamiliar with the Owen trial. But I don't think they would lie in that situation. There were a lot of people involved in it (at least HHH, Hayes, Russo, Vince, Shawn, and Hebner and I'm probably missing a few), and even more working for the company at the time (any wrestler bio where the guy was working for the company at the time has at least a chapter on what the locker room was like that night, including guys with no incentive to lie and ones that continue to defend the screwjob), and all of them have kept kayfabe on it? Not to mention, Michaels' story has changed over the years, from "I didn't know anything about it" to "Oh yeah I definitely planned it". The most recent episode of Monday Night Wars has all of the WWE version of events (McMahon did what he had to do to save the company and protect the wrestlers) instead of the actual events as chronicled by Dave Meltzer in the first post, which definitely establish McMahon as almost definitely the bad guy. How does that fit into the work?
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Sep 20, 2014 00:06
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AmbassadorFriendly posted:There were a lot of people involved in it (at least HHH, Hayes, Russo, Vince, Shawn, and Hebner and I'm probably missing a few), and even more working for the company at the time (any wrestler bio where the guy was working for the company at the time has at least a chapter on what the locker room was like that night, including guys with no incentive to lie and ones that continue to defend the screwjob), and all of them have kept kayfabe on it? Not to mention, Michaels' story has changed over the years, from "I didn't know anything about it" to "Oh yeah I definitely planned it". The most recent episode of Monday Night Wars has all of the WWE version of events (McMahon did what he had to do to save the company and protect the wrestlers) instead of the actual events as chronicled by Dave Meltzer in the first post, which definitely establish McMahon as almost definitely the bad guy. How does that fit into the work? Well. A promoter lying to his locker room? A wrestler working the boys? Neither of those are that rare. Still. Yes. It was definitely sold as entertainment by both Vinces before, during and after it happened. The black eye was make up. So even if Bret didn't know about it, I feel Vince was seizing the advantage to work the documentary crew to turn reality into an angle. So even if Bret not knowing about the Screwjob itself was a shoot, it was worked to death by McMahon. Everything is Philip K. Dickian in the reality of wrestling, as you must know, the parameters of what's real or not are hard to define for us as much as it is for the people involved sometimes. Crying fowl and suspecting a conspiracy in WWF is not the same as it is in the rest of the world. I will maintain that the whole situation was fishy. If it was worked, it was a brilliant way to screw over WCW on Bret's exit. It was a brilliant way to work the smarks. I'm going to remain undecided on it. How could I know what exactly is real in a kayfabe business?
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Sep 20, 2014 09:06
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Jim Cornette also gives a lengthy rundown on the situation, which is more or less the same as Meltzer's, but from a different perspective https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VfXWbsFAG8
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Sep 20, 2014 09:16
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God Of Paradise posted:I'm going to remain undecided on it. How could I know what exactly is real in a kayfabe business?
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Sep 20, 2014 09:29
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Endorph posted:so has owen been hiding under the ring for 20 years or Of course Vince capitalised on it, but I don't know why people have a hard time believing that it went down the way it went down. Vince played on it because he's a great businessman and he knows gold when he sees it. Remember though, as Cornette mentions, in the weeks after the WWF tried to paint Bret as the heel in that situation, with Vince being the put upon man in charge. He puts on his best 'sincere' voice and talks about how there's meant to be a tradition and Bret broke it. Even the genesis of the 'Mr McMahon' character was the man in charge who was just trying to run a business but these drat people like Austin won't let him. It's only when that failed did they go with the full-on villain thing.
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Sep 20, 2014 11:33
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and just where is the birth certificate?!?
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Sep 20, 2014 12:14
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MassRafTer posted:The computer graphics lady was the original main event. Just an hour and a half of Bret having a moan and winning at Summerslam. Although we could have gotten more footage of Stew Hart being the creepiest bastard which would have been nice.
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Sep 20, 2014 12:19
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MassRafTer posted:The computer graphics lady was the original main event. The best there is, the best there was, the best there ever will be. Or to put it another way, Then, Now, Forever.
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Sep 20, 2014 12:28
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DrVenkman posted:Of course Vince capitalised on it, but I don't know why people have a hard time believing that it went down the way it went down. Vince played on it because he's a great businessman and he knows gold when he sees it. Remember though, as Cornette mentions, in the weeks after the WWF tried to paint Bret as the heel in that situation, with Vince being the put upon man in charge. He puts on his best 'sincere' voice and talks about how there's meant to be a tradition and Bret broke it. Even the genesis of the 'Mr McMahon' character was the man in charge who was just trying to run a business but these drat people like Austin won't let him. It's only when that failed did they go with the full-on villain thing. I think you're absolutely right, if it's a work, it's a work that doesn't make any drat sense. If they're selling it, they're doing a poor job of it. Michaels was working heel with Austin at the WrestleMania after Survivor Series, why not team up with evil boss Vince McMahon as the corporate champ, like they did with The Rock and Austin the very next year? Later, Shawn was working face, so why would he admit that he was part of the screwjob? And why continue with the WWE version of events in the most recent episode of the Monday Night Wars? There's still a lot of mileage for smarks with Vince as a heel and Bret as a face. And if you're working people, why do a work that risks people not watching your product or wrestlers not wanting to work for you? I don't think guys like Foley have a real reason to lie when he says he didn't show up at Raw the next night and considered leaving the company.
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Sep 20, 2014 16:44
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AmbassadorFriendly posted:I think you're absolutely right, if it's a work, it's a work that doesn't make any drat sense. If they're selling it, they're doing a poor job of it. Michaels was working heel with Austin at the WrestleMania after Survivor Series, why not team up with evil boss Vince McMahon as the corporate champ, like they did with The Rock and Austin the very next year? Later, Shawn was working face, so why would he admit that he was part of the screwjob? And why continue with the WWE version of events in the most recent episode of the Monday Night Wars? There's still a lot of mileage for smarks with Vince as a heel and Bret as a face. And if you're working people, why do a work that risks people not watching your product or wrestlers not wanting to work for you? I don't think guys like Foley have a real reason to lie when he says he didn't show up at Raw the next night and considered leaving the company. Exactly. People point to how it worked out for everyone in the end, and that's true to a degree. But Bret was always leaving for more money, and Shawn was still going to be the top guy regardless of what happened. It's only Vince who truly benefited and that wasn't until later. And there's no way that Vince could've known what it would've done. They pulled the trigger and capitalised on it that's all. What's funny is that if I think Bret didn't cause a huge scene on the night (And complain to the Newspaper) and Vince wasn't there right at ringside then things probably would've worked out differently for them. As for Foley, in that Cornette video I posted above he says he talked to Foley on the phone and Mick told him it wasn't right. Cornette told him of course it wasn't, but you shouldn't feel so bad for the guy who was making $1.5mil as he was about to go and make $2.5mil.
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Sep 20, 2014 17:14
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MassRafTer posted:The computer graphics lady was the original main event. will never tire of the Meltzer TitanTron video that contains this snippet
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Sep 20, 2014 17:27
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Big Coffin Hunter posted:and just where is the birth certificate?!? I think we'd be looking for a
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Sep 20, 2014 17:33
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DrVenkman posted:As for Foley, in that Cornette video I posted above he says he talked to Foley on the phone and Mick told him it wasn't right. Cornette told him of course it wasn't, but you shouldn't feel so bad for the guy who was making $1.5mil as he was about to go and make $2.5mil. Yeah Foley mentions in his book that he thought about it after the anger died down and figured that Bret was able to make a moral stand and still feed his family and Foley wasn't in that position.
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Sep 20, 2014 17:39
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DrVenkman posted:Jim Cornette also gives a lengthy rundown on the situation, which is more or less the same as Meltzer's, but from a different perspective https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VfXWbsFAG8 This was a great shoot -- MUCH better than most of Cornette's other shoots (which overall are decent, but many just go over the same things over and over.)
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Sep 20, 2014 18:17
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Timeline 1997, for those curious. Cornette even has The Book~! to help him make sure he gets facts straight.
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Sep 20, 2014 20:34
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fart blood posted:This was a great shoot -- MUCH better than most of Cornette's other shoots (which overall are decent, but many just go over the same things over and over.) Probably the nature of doing things from one point of history to another, keeps a good pace and doesn't retread much of the same ground except for "Shawn was a dick and Russo is an idiot"
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Sep 20, 2014 21:36
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Finished up on the Bret/Shawn Rivalry DVD and I'll agree that it was a great watch. At this point, I'm used to Bret having a moan and embellishing on certain stuff, being a mark for himself and so on, so I won't hold that against him here. With that in mind, I could at least believe what he talked about in terms of what happened. Shawn going from happy to droopy during the 2nd half was pretty sad, but at the same time it felt odd seeing him trying to hold back on detailing how much of a drugged up dick he was while admitting it at the same time. Chalk it up to being a born again I guess, but I thought it was an interesting contrast between the two guys. HBK did have a nice jab at Bret though, when he was talking about how bitter he was from hearing he had to fight Austin at Mania. Bret: "I mean we still had a great match, but I was just wondering what's the point?" HBK: "...to tear the house down?" The smirk on Bret's face was priceless.
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Sep 20, 2014 22:42
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Eat My Fuc posted:The more time goes on and the more that gets revealed it's pretty obvious that a WCW that had never signed Hogan would probably still exist today. Hogan killed that company all the way up into the Russo days. He's also probably the guy most responsible for a huge upswing in business (the second one he was at least involved in) across the board, including generating millions for a company that had almost never been profitable in the time it existed before him. Even 94-96 Hogan made WCW attendance take a considerable jump after years of decline. If WCW had never been culturally relevant, what chance do you think it has of surviving the cost-cutting created by the AOL/Time Warner merger? Eat My Fuc posted:The WWE Doc makes it look like Bret was no longer a draw for WWE. Is this true or not? It's not true: Bret was never a draw. That's an exaggeration, obviously, but Bret's first run on top coincided with a huge downturn in business in 92, as the old guard left and he was never seen as being on the same level as guys like Hogan. His last run was in 96, and after he dropped the belt, WWF house show attendance finally started improving, after years of stagnation and decline. Outside of Canada, he was a below average draw for WWE for the majority of his run. Maybe that's not fair, since Hogan, Austin, and John Cena are his competition, but he never had a year as good as any of them. From a purely financial perspective, Bret was a complete known quantity. He was 40 years old, had never been a great talker, and couldn't hugely spike ratings or buyrates outside of Canadian tours, but he was a great foil because he was such a good worker. So while I agree that WCW didn't do anything with him for two years, I also never really buy the fantasy booking of him coming in as a world-conquering babyface in WCW. Using him to put over guys like DDP and Goldberg probably wasn't a bad idea, they just shouldn't have goofed around for a year figuring out what to do with him.
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Sep 20, 2014 23:56
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Dario the Wop posted:Timeline 1997, for those curious. Cornette even has The Book~! to help him make sure he gets facts straight. It's so great, it's like three hours of "I'm Jim Cornette, wrestling promoter trying to run a loving wrestling company the right way but people wouldn't listen to me" 
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Sep 21, 2014 02:48
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laz0rbeak posted:He's also probably the guy most responsible for a huge upswing in business (the second one he was at least involved in) across the board, including generating millions for a company that had almost never been profitable in the time it existed before him. Even 94-96 Hogan made WCW attendance take a considerable jump after years of decline. If WCW had never been culturally relevant, what chance do you think it has of surviving the cost-cutting created by the AOL/Time Warner merger? Bret was big in Europe as well as Canada. The rest is pretty accurate. As for WCW it depends what kind of stigma the product had. If it was the terrible garbage it was for most of the early 90s that lost lots of money (though nowhere close to the 2000 losses) it probably doesn't make it. It's hard to judge just because things changed so much between 94 and 2001. The ratings WCW had in the early 90s were pretty good, but by 2001 its ratings were barely average for their stations even though the cable rating was about the same. At the same time the ad revenue was just atrocious and both stations would still make more rerunning networks and dramas. MassRafTer fucked around with this message at 07:45 on Sep 21, 2014 |
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Sep 21, 2014 07:41
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Manic_Misanthrope posted:Probably the nature of doing things from one point of history to another, keeps a good pace and doesn't retread much of the same ground except for "Shawn was a dick and Russo is an idiot" Though his rant on Kevin Dunn (one of many) is priceless and the entire 1997 Timeline shoot is one of the better Cornette shoots. Though for the interest of this thread he didn't have much to say there other than "Vince kept interrupting Creative meetings to take phone calls so we twiddled our thumbs until he came back" and "I laughed my rear end off seeing that on the monitor and left the loving building because I didn't want to be around for THAT!". Aside from the usual observations on HBK and Bret hating each other which is nothing new. That said, don't watch this one if you want Montreal stuff.
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