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I watched WCW. It got so unbearably bad towards the end that I stopped watching wrestling for probably ten years. It wasn't even entertainingly bad, it just towed the line so perfectly between boring and straight up lovely. The thought of crossing the line and just watching WWF was a crime worse than murder though. gently caress you Vince McMahon. nWo 4 lyfe
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Jul 14, 2014 02:50
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Jason Sextro posted:Same - I was never really a WWF kid though, really more of a Bret Hart kid and haven't really watched WWF/WWE regularly since. I legit liked a lot of the guys WCW had better, too even if the nWo angle was going downhill by that point. drat right. Stampede Bret Hart was 100 times better than Hulk Hogan!
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Jul 14, 2014 03:03
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Chain Saw Charlie. Bring him back McMahon!!
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Jul 14, 2014 03:08
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I watched both but was mainly a WWF kid. I'd flip channels when the Monday Night Wars were on but usually I'd tape Nitro.CombineThresher posted:I loved the pre-TNN ECW show though, and it's still my favorite to this day. Half the fun of watching pre TNN ECW was waiting til 2am on a saturday night to see if I'd get some extreme wrestling or if there would be a really badly produced local black church Gospel hour.
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Jul 14, 2014 03:09
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I was a WWF kid from the start, my stepdad got me into it when I was 7 or 8, back in the late 80s. I never watched the NWA/WCW stuff back then and only watched sparingly when the Monday Night Wars thing happened. A lot of the WCW stuff at that time just felt like they were grasping at straws when they brought in former WWF talent, and when stuff started happening like the announcers giving away results from pre-taped Raw shows, or seeing some of the mocking like the Oklahoma/JR and stupid gimmick matches, I lost interest. Granted WWF weren't exactly saints either and the Gillberg and Huckster/Nacho Man/Scheme Gene was pretty stupid too.
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Jul 14, 2014 03:18
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I grew up a WWF kid and always saw WCW as the busch league promotion. Then I became a huge NWO fan because it was a bunch of former WWF wrestlers kicking WCW's rear end and telling them they sucked.
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Jul 14, 2014 03:29
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TheJoker138 posted:If you lived in Canada you weren't supposed to be cheering for Shawn Michaels. Bret Hart - Heel in America, Super Babyface in the rest of the world - was such a great storyline. By comparison, whatever they were doing in WCW at the time was just a big ol' mess to me (to be fair, with some really awesome stuff peppered in there as well).
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Jul 14, 2014 03:44
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Watched WWF through most of the cartoon era and then dropped off when WCW started getting good and watched that until about 1998 or whenever the downward spiral really hit. I didn't stick around until the very end, just stopped watching altogether for quite a few years. Something about WWE's production values during the 'attitude era' always bothered me. It's still hard for me to get into clips nowadays from around that time and I don't know if it was the way it was filmed or how everything was always covered in pyro smoke or whatever but aesthetically it just didn't do anything for me around that time. WCW for whatever reason just looked better to me production wise (though their entrance music never sounded right) and the cruiser weights and tag teams kept me around. And with like 200 wrestlers being on the paid roster at once you could see pretty much any stupid combo of people facing each other randomly on a Nitro. The beginning of the NWO stuff was pretty fun too. Felt like WCW was geared more toward actual wrestling matches with a good variation of things happening outside of the Hogan main event funhouse and WWF was trying really hard to be that ~wacky~ uncle who said suck it a lot to offend your parents, told dirty jokes because hardly anyone on the roster at the time could actually wrestle and had the same people facing each other all the time.
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Jul 14, 2014 03:52
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It's weird (and I'm not saying you're wrong! It's just a matter of preference/opinion) but for me it was the opposite. WCW's production values seemed really amateurish and lovely, with terrible sound mixing and pretty poor camerawork. WWF, on the other hand, I found a slicker and more professional production even when it was being cartoony (perhaps BECAUSE it was being cartoony) where everything was carefully managed so even the most chaotic moments, while feeling organic, made sure you could see and hear everything that was going on in a way that made sense. Really though it was the sound-mixing that really pissed me off about WCW. You've got the "Huuuu huuu hu huuuu HUUUUU HUUUUUUUU!" of the ring announcer, the commentators talking over everything, the crowd is just a mass poorly micced noise that often overrode the theme music, and then you've got wrestlers cutting promos to camera as they walk down the aisle only you can only make out every 3rd or 4th word. "....Malenko.... out because..... to..... then you'll.... with me!"
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Jul 14, 2014 03:58
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I think all of us are this kid: 
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Jul 14, 2014 04:08
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Jerusalem posted:It's weird (and I'm not saying you're wrong! It's just a matter of preference/opinion) but for me it was the opposite. WCW's production values seemed really amateurish and lovely, with terrible sound mixing and pretty poor camerawork. WWF, on the other hand, I found a slicker and more professional production even when it was being cartoony (perhaps BECAUSE it was being cartoony) where everything was carefully managed so even the most chaotic moments, while feeling organic, made sure you could see and hear everything that was going on in a way that made sense. I understand what you mean and I'm also not saying you're not right - the WWF's production at the time probably was better from an actual production standpoint but for whatever reason the look and feel of WCW just worked better for me. I honestly can't pinpoint what exactly it was and I agree the audio for entrance music and some other things was garbage but it was just more visually easy to watch. WCW's commentary team worked much better for me as well. Having Heenan helped on the days he gave a poo poo. Orange Carlisle fucked around with this message at 04:11 on Jul 14, 2014 |
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Jul 14, 2014 04:08
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GAYMIEN SANDOW posted:I think all of us are this kid: Nope this was me:  and this 
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Jul 14, 2014 04:29
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I don't even remember seeing WCW as a kid, as it was the tail end of Hogan's run and the beginning of Warrior's failed run, and it seemed like that was pretty much all the wrestling there was. I was vaguely aware that WCW existed because I had seen some trading cards for them when I was collecting WWF cards, but the only guys I really knew were Flair and Sting. I eventually quit watching around the time Hogan stopped being a full-time performer, and didn't get back into wrestling until I played WCW World Tour with friends and really enjoyed it a lot. I started watching WCW in around 97, and while I started following WWF too, and played their shittier Acclaim games, it wasn't until 99 when WCW got really unwatchable and WWF stopped running Austin vs. Undertaker that I switched over for good. It probably helped that AKI jumped ship to make Wrestlemania 2000 and No Mercy.Mr. Carlisle posted:Felt like WCW was geared more toward actual wrestling matches with a good variation of things happening outside of the Hogan main event funhouse and WWF was trying really hard to be that ~wacky~ uncle who said suck it a lot to offend your parents, told dirty jokes because hardly anyone on the roster at the time could actually wrestle and had the same people facing each other all the time. This is kind of an odd way to see things, considering that most of WWF's main event Attitude era guys were very good wrestlers. It was just that the garbage wrestling fad was at its height so nobody wanted to see Austin work the leg for 10 minutes. I think it was Shamrock/Undertaker in late 98 or early 99 that honestly tried to get the crowd to care about limb work and submission moves, and the crowd just chanted "boring" at them the whole match. Undertaker would finally get his way in his matches with Angle like, 7 years later.
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Jul 14, 2014 04:40
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laz0rbeak posted:I don't even remember seeing WCW as a kid, as it was the tail end of Hogan's run and the beginning of Warrior's failed run, and it seemed like that was pretty much all the wrestling there was. I was vaguely aware that WCW existed because I had seen some trading cards for them when I was collecting WWF cards, but the only guys I really knew were Flair and Sting. I eventually quit watching around the time Hogan stopped being a full-time performer, and didn't get back into wrestling until I played WCW World Tour with friends and really enjoyed it a lot. I started watching WCW in around 97, and while I started following WWF too, and played their shittier Acclaim games, it wasn't until 99 when WCW got really unwatchable and WWF stopped running Austin vs. Undertaker that I switched over for good. It probably helped that AKI jumped ship to make Wrestlemania 2000 and No Mercy. It's not an odd way to see things, WWF's roster was dire outside of those main event guys. Most of the card was utter garbage.
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Jul 14, 2014 04:42
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MassRafTer posted:It's not an odd way to see things, WWF's roster was dire outside of those main event guys. Most of the card was utter garbage. I think your bias might be creeping in, but I don't think that's particularly true. Once the Attitude Era was actually rolling post screwjob, they had plenty of talent in basically every level of the company. 1997 is pretty top-heavy and the shows generally sucked, but even then there was Rock and Triple H working their way through the rest of the midcard.
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Jul 14, 2014 04:50
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laz0rbeak posted:I think your bias might be creeping in, but I don't think that's particularly true. Once the Attitude Era was actually rolling post screwjob, they had plenty of talent in basically every level of the company. 1997 is pretty top-heavy and the shows generally sucked, but even then there was Rock and Triple H working their way through the rest of the midcard. Until Jericho and the Radicalz came in the overwhelming consensus was the WWF had a weak undercard and strong main events while WCW had a strong undercard and weak main events. In 1997 Rock was no good, he barely had a year of experience and Triple H was still a work in progress. This isn't just my bias, look at some of the other posts in this thread, look at the kind of talent WWF was putting out there. WCW had an insane amount of talent signed at that time while the WWF could barely fill a Royal Rumble.
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Jul 14, 2014 05:22
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I know I didn't come in until the middleish to late 90s, but it started with WCW honestly because of the N64 games. Once they started making WWF ones though, I was outta there. At some point I would even tape Raws and Smackdowns and watch them the next day because I used to go to bed at like 9 and wake up at like 5am for some reason. It also didn't help WCW's case that WWF started getting all the cool WCW guys with like Jericho and the Radicals jumping ship.
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Jul 14, 2014 06:29
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laz0rbeak posted:I think your bias might be creeping in, but I don't think that's particularly true. Once the Attitude Era was actually rolling post screwjob, they had plenty of talent in basically every level of the company. 1997 is pretty top-heavy and the shows generally sucked, but even then there was Rock and Triple H working their way through the rest of the midcard.  Just clicked on a random PPV from 97 (D-Generation X: In Your House) and not only did the match list look pretty bad but FOUR matches end on a DQ on a pay per view show? Edit: Wasn't watching during that era so I don't know if match lists looked that bad overall but goddamn did that card look bad. It was D-X branded too so I assume they were basically the big deal at the time. Orange Carlisle fucked around with this message at 06:38 on Jul 14, 2014 |
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Jul 14, 2014 06:35
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Oh God, I remember the build to that HHH/Slaughter match. Slaughter was the Commissioner at the time I think, and he got so sick of DX's rebellious attitude and disrespect that he cut a promo where he quickly morphed from Commissioner Slaughter to Sergeant Slaughter... only I think it was supposed to get a pop and it didn't, because the fans mostly quite enjoyed DX despite them supposedly being heels.
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Jul 14, 2014 07:40
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WWF having a weaker undercard roster in 97-99 doesn't even mean the shows were worse. In 96 and 97 WCW had a better product, and in early 98 the PPVs were of roughly equal quality but by 99 it wasn't close. WCW had an amazing roster until the end of 99 and Spring Stampede 99 was the last good PPV they put on for 23 months. Slamboree 99 was decent and then the entire summer was the biggest pile of poo poo wrestling had seen up to that point. Literal poo poo too!
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Jul 14, 2014 07:54
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I was primarily WWF, because that's what I grew up watching. It's also just what I had access to: WCW never came to my city and all my wrestling fan friends would only order WWF PPVs and have people over. But when Raw and Nitro were head to head, I'd watch Raw and later go back and watch Nitro most weeks to see what they were doing. In the late 90s/early 00s though, my favorite was ECW up until they got bought out. Then after the big merge, for a while I got super into Toryumon for something different.
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Jul 14, 2014 08:54
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Mr. Carlisle posted:
Yeah, this supports pretty much exactly what I said. It wasn't that the workers couldn't go, it was mostly the style of booking that was taking over at the time, where every match is angle development in disguise, so everything ends in a DQ or a run-in or a turn. In addition to Austin, Undertaker, Triple H, and an on his way our the door HBK, they also had Goldust, Owen Hart and Vader on their roster and didn't use them on that card, which gives you a clue of how bizarre Vinny Russo's talent evaluations can be. They also had guys that could genuinely work like Furnas and LaFon and 2 Cold Scorpio in the undercard, but they weren't over and WWF didn't bother trying to re-package them. But yeah, it's not as though nobody in the WWF could wrestle, and again, this is the nadir. By the time Vince started replacing 97's Team Canada with Edge, Christian, Val Venis, Test, etc., there's plenty of midcard talent, to the point that WWF was already solidly in control by the time everybody started evacuating WCW in 1999. WCW actually had more talented bodies by the numbers, but it's not as if they didn't showcase stiffs as much as possible. I mean the PPV opposite DX:IYH featured Buff Bagwell in the longest match of the card compared to HBK, and featured PPV paydays from Scott Norton, Vincent, and Mongo. Where the Big Boys Play!
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Jul 14, 2014 15:07
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I didn't really watch as a child (maybe some WWF here and there, and WCW wasn't even a blip on my radar), but my teens were in the height of the Monday night wars and I was mostly a WCW first two hours/WWF last hour teen until the Fingerpoke of Doom then it was WWF for another couple years when I dropped it until a couple years ago.
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Jul 14, 2014 15:17
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I was a WWF kid by default because my TV provider didn't pick up Nitro till around the Wolfpac days, and even then it was shown on Tuesday nights because the same channel showed both. If I'd had to choose I might have gone with WCW on the quality of their midcard alone. For me it was WCW midcard > WWF main event > WWF midcard > WCW main event. WCW Thunder was my favorite show because all the main eventers wanted nothing to do with it, which was just fine by me. Then again the Hart Foundation was the greatest thing in history, so that probably would have cemented my loyalty anyways.
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Jul 14, 2014 15:47
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As a teen I loving loved WCW. As an adult, what the gently caress was I thinking?
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Jul 14, 2014 16:48
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It's funny. I never watched WCW. Like, I don't think it was ever on our TV for more than 30 seconds at a time. My brother and I talk all the time about how we realized WCW sucked before everybody else did.
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Jul 14, 2014 17:03
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I didn't know what WCW was until I saw footage of the Triple Cage late one night on free TV. The one where Kanyon got thrown off the Triple Cage. Discovered ECW really late one night when Big Sal E Graziano was on TV. Lead to me thinking "Dream match: This guy vs. Rikishi". Other than that all WWF all the time.
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Jul 14, 2014 19:04
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laz0rbeak posted:Yeah, this supports pretty much exactly what I said. It wasn't that the workers couldn't go, it was mostly the style of booking that was taking over at the time, where every match is angle development in disguise, so everything ends in a DQ or a run-in or a turn. In addition to Austin, Undertaker, Triple H, and an on his way our the door HBK, they also had Goldust, Owen Hart and Vader on their roster and didn't use them on that card, which gives you a clue of how bizarre Vinny Russo's talent evaluations can be. They also had guys that could genuinely work like Furnas and LaFon and 2 Cold Scorpio in the undercard, but they weren't over and WWF didn't bother trying to re-package them. You are really stretching with some of those names, especially since Furnas and LaFon were completely wrecked and 2 Cold Scorpio was likewise past his prime. Goldust is great now but in the ring as Goldust in the 90s he was very average, worse when his gimmick was focused on being as homophobic as possible.
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Jul 14, 2014 19:04
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I started out watching both but if you asked kid me I would of said I preferred WWF because they had Bret Hart and The British Bulldog. Plus most of my friends were WWF fans. WCW had one thing over WWF in that they had my favorite wrestler, and fellow Cincinnatian Brian Pillman. Before you ask I do know what high school he went to only because the local news would always interview or do a profile on Pillman whenever WCW would run a show in the tri-state area. It was kind of a big deal that he was a former Cincinnati Bengal turned pro wrestler. Oh it was Norwood high school if want to get creepy about a dead wrestler.
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Jul 14, 2014 19:33
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Oh and I will not stand for someone implying that 2 time IWGP Champion Scott Norton was an inferior talent. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kKxXr1s2TDw He once ate 298 pancakes, five more than the world record.
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Jul 14, 2014 19:36
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I was WWF all the way in the 80's and early 90's. My opinion of WCW was they were where the retired WWF boys play. Even with as cartoony as New Generation Era WWF could be at times, it wasn't nearly as bad as the Dungeon of Doom stuff I saw on TBS as a kid. Then 2.5 members of The Kliq showed up on Nitro, made Hogan cool again to watch, and I split my viewing between the two promotions. Right now I'm starting to realize I may be the only one here that marked out during the fingerpoke. My boys were back together once again.
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Jul 14, 2014 20:34
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Two Beans posted:Right now I'm starting to realize I may be the only one here that marked out during the fingerpoke. My boys were back together once again. I feel like there's a lot of stuff that people have gotten "too cool" for. Like, I loved WCW putting the title on Arquette. I thought it was hilarious and I wanted to see what crazy thing they'd do next. I think Vince Russo was writing explicitly for me as a teenager.
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Jul 14, 2014 20:36
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i was a WWF kid but i quickly became a proto-smark and started reading all the history of everything when i was in high school. the kid that introduced me to wrestling was mostly into WCW and i had to explain to him what Bischoff meant when he kept asking Sid where his scissors were.
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Jul 14, 2014 21:08
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I didn't start watching wrestling until after the WCW was dead, but almost all my favorite wrestlers came from WCW. Jericho, Eddie, Booker T, and Benoit
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Jul 14, 2014 21:16
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WWF kid all the way. I watched it occasionally in the early-mid 90's, kinda lost interest for a couple of years then got back into it around 99 when the Attitude era was in full swing. I was never interested in WCW - to me it was always the inferior product and after watching a couple of episodes of Nitro I felt fully justified in my opinion. It just looked so cheap and gaudy compared to the WWF.
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Jul 14, 2014 21:21
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I just think about how in the 90's DX was so over, and because of that my middle school was full of 11 and 12 year olds running around telling each other to suck it. I seriously want to know what teachers thought about that when it was going on.
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Jul 14, 2014 21:23
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Roman Reigns posted:WCW Kid up until the Finger Poke of Doom. Then my Dad and I were basically like "gently caress this company" and watched WWF/E. Exact same for me, other than the watching with dad part. Watched both during monday night wars, but finger poke of doom/foley's title win was the day I switched. Based on the ratings, there has to be 400,000 to 1 million people with a similar story.
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Jul 14, 2014 21:25
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n.W.o. Wolfpack, baby! ...and then I got tired of it once Nash and Hall stopped showing up; one can only take so much Hogan and the other old farts. Booker T and Benoit always seemed to have great matches, though.
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Jul 14, 2014 21:32
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Did the Fingerpoke really turn off that many loyal WCW viewers? Like, they immediately just gave up on the show after that? The alternative was a Kevin Nash vs Hogan match, that would have gotten them to stick around??
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Jul 14, 2014 21:40
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triplexpac posted:Did the Fingerpoke really turn off that many loyal WCW viewers? Like, they immediately just gave up on the show after that? The ratings don't reflect an instant change, but over the next six weeks, WWF starts pulling away. I may over-rate it because at my high school, there were about nine or ten of us who watched wrestling, and our hatred of that angle was unanimous. triplexpac posted:The alternative was a Kevin Nash vs Hogan match, that would have gotten them to stick around?? The alternative was to make the Goldberg loss mean something. If the finger poke set up an interesting angle, you could almost forgive it. Instead, Hogan lost the belt to Flair in an attrocious double turn. It was the height of lolwcw
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Jul 14, 2014 21:57
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