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CSammich posted:And then after loving everything up, they just had Sting join the nWo Wolfpack and start smiling and saying "hoody hoo" and poo poo. It does strike me that this was where things started to go off the rails. The relative failure of the two attempts at "nWo-only" shows (the Souled Out PPV and the nWo Nitro show) should have been a sign that there was only so far the brand could go, and maybe that it was time to start bringing the story to a conclusion. You wouldn't have to destroy the nWo altogether, just hand them a decisive loss and stop their momentum, and start building up other threats. Instead, it became the pro wrestling equivalent of the Spider-Man Clone Saga: a really great idea at first that gets everybody's attention, but is too successful to end and instead just spirals out of control, becoming too convoluted and complex for people to care about anymore.
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Feb 14, 2011 21:53
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Sue Denim posted:A Vince Russo and Warrior collaboration would be amazing and the Warrior could probably flourish in Russo's crash TV environment. I can't believe they said no to that but said yes to so many things with assured failure. I'm not saying it would be great, but it would be memorable. I dunno, the WCW were probably remembering all that happened the last time the Warrior was there.
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Mar 17, 2011 00:53
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Red posted:He got fired for making a dumb comment that he didn't think was racist, but Hank Aaron saw it (who worked for TBS), and pushed to get him fired. Hammerin' Hank put up with a lot of racism when he played, and once he had a position with some measure of authority, he (rightfully) had no tolerance for it. According to Death of WCW it was the guy just before, a man named Frye? It's not clear why he left.
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Mar 24, 2011 15:30
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Minges posted:Kip Frye was a badass and would have turned the company around given time. He was excited to run WCW and gave said bonus to whomever had the best match that night on big shows. He liked people that the crowd liked and didn't seem to care about politics because he didn't know or care. He was like if Jim Herd had fun with his job and the wrestling world would have been mad different if he were Vic Venom. So does anyone actually know why he left/was replaced? It's weird because this was apparently the one levelheaded man in the entire industry.
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Mar 24, 2011 21:37
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MassRayPer posted:You know what, I will complain about Goldberg vs Hogan on free TV. Hot shotting that angle made for bad TV the next few months. Goldberg went from having US title level feuds for the US title to US title level feuds for the World title. It made for bad TV and made the title look so secondary to the Hogan vs celebrities sagas. True- I think even from the "getting something for free" perspective, fans would have enjoyed a build to a big match between an unstoppable juggernaut and the legend Hogan more than just getting it over with in a week. Changing the title on free TV, even with a really good match, isn't always a bad idea, but it was in this case.
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Apr 2, 2011 01:20
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I posted:You know, sometimes I dream of working for WCW at it's peak... as Lanny Poffo, getting paid over $200,000/ year to stay at home and do nothing. And if you ever do want to go anywhere, free air travel!
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Jul 18, 2011 07:18
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Lone Rogue posted:It always seemed smokey at WCW shows. Raw is War would be the same way for the first half hour or so of the show. Raw circa the late 90s did have a weird hazy look that bugged me. I guess that's the reason for it.
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Sep 20, 2011 06:25
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Cardboard Box posted:So a number of us just watched Bash at the Beach '98. It really sums up the whole thing- the undercard does some solid work, there are some fun matches, and then the main event is something that shouldn't even be on free TV let alone something you pay money for.
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Oct 16, 2011 06:08
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MassRayPer posted:Nitro was often being rewritten while the show was on the air. And to make things better the announcers were never told anything. So you'd get sequences like where they bragged about not having DQ finishes like at the competition, then three matches would end in DQs.
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Oct 17, 2011 22:24
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That one was actually tolerable. It started out horribly, but then the Cruiserweight match, Jericho put on a decent one with... uh... the cowboy guy, the battle royal was a clusterfuck but vaguely entertaining, and the main event was legitimately quite good.
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Oct 20, 2011 05:56
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flashy_mcflash posted:If you're a professional wrestler of a certain size, is it really so much of a stretch to play 'angry, screaming, incoherent maniac'? I mean, strip away the pyro and the camera following him from the dressing room and you've basically got Ezekiel Jackson. I'm not saying he didn't play that role to the hilt, but is it really something that many big guys couldn't have played? I'm not sure. He looked stronger because he was booked stronger (as opposed to being legitimately stronger and more athletic than most guys in the way that Lesnar and Vader were). I dunno, I think Goldberg is a very rare case of a "juggernaut" face working really well- he works on a level that, say, Randy Orton doesn't (or even Triple H, who I think still works best as a heel.) Normally it's no fun if it's obvious that one guy in the ring stands no chance, but Goldberg was basically Godzilla- the spectacle was seeing him wreck poo poo.
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Oct 24, 2011 20:32
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Lone Rogue posted:You know what is the best way to push Benoit? As the hard working wrestler who beats a lot of people until he receives an opportunity to win the Championship. Which is what both WCW and the WWF did to push him. And what TNA hosed up when pushing Robert Roode. Sure it won't set box offices on fire, but it's also what the WWF did to push Bret Hart and he was a pretty solid international star for them at a time when they couldn't make money in the U.S. This seems to be the approach in general for good technical guys whenever the bosses decide they want to push one. You can see them work hard in the ring and not just overpower their opponent, so I guess they draw on that for the general story.
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Oct 24, 2011 20:33
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I'm listening to the Bryan & Vinny review of the nWo Souled Out show, and I really want to see this. It sounds so odd. Fish-eye lenses, poorly lit interviews, unattractive biker chicks- it's almost avant garde.
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Sep 21, 2012 05:40
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AKMoose posted:The other problem with Souled Out was that it was nothing but screwjobs and Dusty finishes in favor of the NWO all night. That's expected to an extent, but the fun of a PPV like that should come with at least a few of the faces getting one over on the bad guys. I looked at the card, and there were only three non-NWO victories: Jeff Jarrett beat Wallstreet (who gives a gently caress?), Steiner Brothers winning the tag titles over Hall and Nash (meaningless because they were stripped of the titles on Nitro) and Eddie Guerrero beating Syxx in a ladder match. In some ways WCW and WWF have had opposite problems in booking. WCW kept having the bad guys win so often that the faces could never really build up credibility- WWF/E didn't and still doesn't let the heels win often enough for them to be credible threats to the babyfaces.
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Sep 23, 2012 02:19
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LordPants posted:This is all good, people keep saying that "oh kids used to put each other in torture racks" or "they cheered him in the building" the point is, he didn't make anybody go to the arena to pay to watch him perform, which is where the money is. Is it always possible to tell, though? I mean, sure, it's obvious sometimes, John Cena is clearly a bigger draw than Justin Gabriel, but with a high-card-but-not-quite-over-the-top guy like Luger it's hard to say. I'm always skeptical of "never drew a dime" claims.
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Oct 27, 2012 01:30
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Nash definitely shoulders some of the blame- he kept himself and his buddies near the top of the card for a long time.
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Nov 9, 2012 02:34
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Saul Goode posted:He's the "biggest draw in the world" and the world doesn't care about wrestling anymore, that's all the data I need. That's a post hoc fallacy. You're discounting a lot of other variables, from the overall quality of WWE's content, to Cena being booked similar to Hogan in a climate where that doesn't work as well, to UFC as a competitor, etc. It's not just that "wrestling is cyclical", it's that there are a bunch of factors in WWE not being as big as it was and it's foolish to pin it all on one guy.
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Nov 12, 2012 15:19
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Saul Goode posted:Weren't you the poster defending George Lucas, the Vince Russo of the entertainment industry, in the Star Wars thread? This is an odd comparison. George Lucas made money. Anyhow, I view Cena as basically being sort of a port in a storm. WWE was cooling before he became their big star, and the problem really is that he's reliable enough that they don't want to take the hit that would come with actually having him step back for a new generation. With Hogan they basically had little choice because WCW offered him a lot of money and the company was starting to get kinda sick of him throwing his weight around, and of course even then they spent a few years in the wilderness. Cena apparently is not flexing any creative control muscle, and there's nobody offering him huge amounts of money to leave (and he's a loyal company man anyway), so the only way he'll stop being their top guy is if they make the active choice for him not to be, and that's a short term loss without a guarantee of long term gain. Maxwell Lord fucked around with this message at 00:00 on Nov 13, 2012 |
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Nov 12, 2012 23:53
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Big Coffin Hunter posted:They both made money and are best known for what they did when their creative efforts were working with other people. They then convince themselves/those around them that they are the sole creative genius behind the Attitude Era/original Star Wars. They are then exposed when they work by themselves with no one working with them/questioning their decisions, as seen with the prequels/everything else Vince Russo has booked. Except the prequels also were commercial successes. It's not like Lucas went bankrupt when he "struck out on his own".
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Nov 13, 2012 00:36
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They should have compromised and said Grenada.
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Nov 15, 2012 05:16
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bobkatt013 posted:Its just another example of WCW stealing from movies. Thank god OZ failed since Turner just got the rights to the Wizard of OZ and was planning on making wrestlers based off their movies. I dunno, the MGM library has some possibilities. Citizen Pain Rack Butler with his finisher, the Don't Give A drat backhand Captain Bligh Nick and Norah Snarl Ben Hurt
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Jan 23, 2013 19:12
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It's as though he's some variety of freak...
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Aug 22, 2013 05:23
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Willninho posted:The Benoit/Malenko match is fascinating to me. It might be the most tone deaf match to an audience ever. They booked 2 overtimes; they continue to work a New Japan juniors workrate match to a crowd that could not give a gently caress. Like if it was a hot crowd it could be a classic but with what you got it's boring as hell. Well the two overtime thing is kinda bullshit. It's one thing to have a good long match, it's another to basically just interrupt it twice to no consequence.
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Aug 28, 2013 04:21
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Sting does have a certain iconic status re: WCW- he was their homegrown face, didn't come from WWF, was their comic book hero type, always was treated as an important person even when the booking didn't match. Goldberg did usurp the main face position for a while, though.
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Sep 10, 2013 03:44
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nasboat posted:I absolutely hated everything about it at the time, mostly because of what it led to. As someone who had been a WCW sympathizer/supporter/defender throughout '98, that entire Nitro combined with Foley on Raw was close to the last straw for me. I'm pretty sure if you cocked one ear to the wind that night you would have heard the sound of hundreds of thousands of people changing the channel at once.
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Sep 17, 2013 02:40
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Jefferoo posted:Read the entirety of The Death of WCW today front to back. Blown away at how badly everything went to poo poo. Well recommend it if anyone else hasn't gotten around to it yet. I kind of want to do some dramatic readings of bits and pieces some time, it's loving hilarious. It's saying something that TNA has seemingly never attempted to get Warrior even for a non-wrestling role. Even they won't work with just anyone.
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Oct 25, 2013 21:09
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Pinstripe Hourglass posted:Putting Warrior on commentary would just be inviting FCC fines and hate speech suits. It's like when you give Scott Steiner a mic. It'll probably be entertaining but your lawyers may just quit en masse.
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Oct 26, 2013 01:36
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MassRafTer posted:The FCC does in fact have authority to regulate cable, but it is less regulated by the FCC than broadcast and you almost never hear them exercising their editorial power. However cable systems still must comply with a number of regulations, especially regarding political candidates, advertising, endorsements, etc. It'd be tough for Warrior to pull off, but he could do it. How does it have any authority? The whole idea with their regulation of the airwaves is that the airwaves are a public resource. Cable lines aren't.
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Oct 29, 2013 23:18
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Shiki Dan posted:How did Hogan get away with not having to work a full PPV schedule? Hogan was still a draw when he signed on (albeit not as much as had been) and the Hollywood/nWo angle helped him stay important. Plus he's good at politicking and Eric Bischoff seemed to do whatever he suggested.
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Nov 14, 2013 04:25
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Did he start talking to it, and everyone else in the room insisted it wasn't there, and then the reflection disappeared and he kept talking to it so we didn't know whether he was crazy or what?
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Dec 11, 2013 08:26
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I'd heard of papering but actively paying the audience to be there? I'm not sure even TNA has done that.
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Dec 26, 2013 21:17
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Toffile posted:It's the AWF. It was the XFL to WWF/WCW's NFL. Was the material itself so bad that they literally could not give away tickets, or was it just a really stupid gambit?
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Dec 26, 2013 21:41
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Toffile posted:It was a promotion that immediately opened and started with TV tapings as the Monday Night Wars started to ramp up. In a stroke of brilliance, the AWF copped the rounds system from MMA/Boxing. Ah, I remember reading about the rounds system in Wrestlecrap. The name didn't ring a bell. (Also some other stupid rules as I recall- didn't they have WCW's brief top-rope ban?)
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Dec 27, 2013 20:06
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Pope Corky the IX posted:That could very well be how it happened. It was just interesting to me that he starts that part of the story seemingly admitting to a mistake, then suddenly starts blaming it on Brad Siegel halfway through. So many of his shoot interviews are like that. It seems he's finally going to accept responsibility for something…almost there…but then it was actually this other guy's fault all along! In all forms of storytelling, the SWERVE is the most important thing.
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Jan 20, 2014 18:54
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Zack_Gochuck posted:Yeah, I think Nitro's presentation in the 90s was really similar to RAW, actually. I can't put my finger on when RAW went from dark and underground feeling to the way it is now, though. Maybe it was gradual? I definitely feel like it was sort of soon after the "Attitude Era" was being played out- wrestling was starting to cool down again so the WWF/E tried desperately to keep the momentum going by piling on the spectacle.
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Jan 23, 2014 18:05
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Bigass Moth posted:The pyro smoke on basically every Nitro made it look so low rent. Raw's was a lot better, not sure what they did differently. My memory's really the opposite on this- I remember Nitro being very brightly and cleanly lit and Raw being kinda hazy and grimy. Then again this may have been influenced by how each channel came in on cable- TNT always looked good.
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Jan 26, 2014 02:53
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Bischoff's major downfall seems to have been that he got sucked into this rock-star mentality with Hogan, Nash, Hall, etc.- he made himself one of the gang on screen, let them influence the booking off screen (apparently beyond the range of any creative control they had in their contracts), and generally turned the nWo from a dominant heel stable into a bunch of guys who were honestly convinced they were the future of the entire business.
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Feb 15, 2014 18:02
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haljordan posted:Why didn't WCW ever have entire matches in the pool? That's ratings gold right there. I'm confused as to why this gimmick ever went away. Like, Summerslam would have a lot more character to it if the ring were surrounded by water.
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Feb 22, 2014 21:31
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Red posted:Is it accurate to see Goldberg as the golden boy of WCW? If anything the WCW didn't back Goldberg hard enough. If you look at the mainstream publicity he was clearly their hottest star, but they ended the streak too early, his title reign too early, and kept him kinda second fiddle through '99 and 2000.
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Mar 8, 2014 03:06
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I honestly have to give the man credit for milking that one thing as much as anyone possibly could, and doing so successfully. Granted it helped that WCW spent money like a drunken sailor on shore leave.
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Mar 8, 2014 05:15
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