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To: <skeith@gmail.com>
Is it just me or is Vince McMahon himself the world's biggest mark? I mean, he absolutely refuses to make his guys look even slightly inferior to anyone, even if it will make him a boat-load of money. See Invasion, The - WCW guy vs WWF guy - WWF dominant! Even Sara Undertaker pinned DDP! Now Lesnar, Brock - UFC guy vs WWE guy - WWE guy wins, even if it's bad for business. Heaven forbid the WCW guys or the UFC guy look superior - Even though they ALL WORK FOR HIM!!! Work of course being the key word there.
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Hey now, don't be so negative. Let this Invasion thing play out and see where it goes!
He put K-Fed a Z-list celeb over John Cena, he put Lawrence Taylor over Bam Bam in the main even of Mania... just saying.
ReplyDeleteThey weren't his direct competition. I doubt McMahon wasn't too concerned about K-Fed setting TNA ticket sales records as their champion.
ReplyDeleteWhen you have a monopoly on the business and a built in group of fans that watch no matter what, does it really matter what happens?
ReplyDeleteHmmm perhaps from a financial stand point, but Football/Wrestling has a very competitive macho image... and putting a Grid Iron guy over one of his performers seems like a big deal too.NFL > WWF... seems quite an ego buster to me! That is what it comes down to, EGO.
ReplyDeleteAre you correlating putting Lesnar will directly increase UFC business?
ReplyDeleteI've always gotten the impression Vince is a big mark for himself considering the feuds he's booked himself in. While his feud against Stone Cold drew money and his match against his own son Shane at Wrestlemania X7 was very entertaining, his feuds against Zach Gowen and his own daughter Stephanie were excruciating. He seemed to think having a McMahon involved in any feud would produce good results really there were only a few that I felt actually benefited the company, while the rest were predictable and made viewers bored with the product. Stephanie as owner of ECW, Shane going toe to toe with the monstrous Kane after he lost his mask and even Shane taking out Legacy seemed to hurt all the other wrestlers involved. Also the less said about the Vince versus Stephanie I Quit match at No Mercy 2003 the better, as it was one of the least pleasant matches I've ever seen verging on totally disturbing to anyone who had to endure watch it.
ReplyDeleteEric Bischoff is the world's biggest mark: he had a bunch of talent that was basically homegrown that he could have put over as the best wrestling had to offer, and he still pushed all the washed up guys that Vince had gotten over first. It's like no one ever told him that everyone is exactly as big a star as their promoter makes them, give or take a cult following or a never-ending crony push.
ReplyDeleteHe does mark out for and push the absurdly huge guys too. Much like an 8 year old would see Khali vs. Kane as a compelling matchup. Mabel is probably the most ridiculous example.
ReplyDeleteNot at all. I'm just justifying Vince McMahon's silly logic.
ReplyDeleteHere's what I didn't like about Vince, or Shane, as an in ring character. When they first started wrestling, they were booked accordingly. They're not wrestlers, not overly tough people, but they have egos that over-come them and make them believe they can go toe to toe with tough, trained wrestlers in wrestling matches. And they fittingly got their ass kicked.
ReplyDeleteThen somewhere along the line, they started promoting McMahon matches as even contests, like they could go either way. Actually sometimes they made it seem like the wrestler was in trouble because he had to face Vince McMahon in a street fight.
Completely agree here 100%. The Mr McMahon character was booked accordingly for the most part throughout the Stone Cold Steve Austin feud. Shane McMahon had some thoroughly entertaining matches against Test, Big Show and Steve Blackman where he would need assistance and take some mental bumps. Stephanie McMahon was an awesome heel as Daddy's billion dollar princess and Triple H's wife. Hell even Linda McMahon as robotic as her delivery was worked as the voice of reason against her dysfunctional family. I actually was drawn in and became a hardcore wrestling fan during The Rock's feud against the McMahon-Helmsley Regime. Shane and Vince's feud which culminated in their match at Wrestlemania X7 was well booked up to the match and resulted in an enjoyable affair of right booking and drama. I feel though that after this is where the McMahons as TV characters and draws against the right opponents with the right booking started to fall apart. Stephanie being announced as the new owner of ECW was the first major catalyst of this as it resulted in an exciting invasion storyline that fans had been dying to see for years being changed into yet another McMahon feud. Then Shane was being booked as a bigger player during the invasion sharing main event slots making the WCW/ECW wreslters look inferior. After the invasion saw the start of the Vince McMahon and Ric Flair feud which started off ok but deteriorated after their Royal Rumble 2002 match which led to the crazy over-the-top Vince McMahon character. In fact the Royal Rumble match to me marked when Vince went from normal-looking to freaky-looking making me wonder whether whatever he was injecting into his body had an effect on the way he booked himself and his family. This is where anything involving a McMahon drove me away from WWE television. Also I wonder when exactly did Vince start doing his stupid power strut to the ring as no human being alive has any reason to walk around like that. It actually makes me want to see him blow both his quads out again just for walking that way.
ReplyDeleteAlso for him to bring Jim Ross out just to try and humiliate him every so often is clear proof that the guy is the biggest mark who is clearly out of touch for the most part with the current commentary team being further proof. I'd be embarrassed to show anybody anything from WWE no matter how good the wrestlers are due to the imbeciles on commentary. Personally I'd get rid of Booker, move Lawler to Smackdown with Josh Matthews on commentary and throw any amount of money it took to put JBL on commentary with Cole as Bradshaw was pure gold on commentary. Hell Regal is pretty good too or even try to resign Edge to a more lucrative contract and give him a try. Anything but the man responsible for 'shucky ducky quack quack, oh ma goodness' and other various verbal diarrhoea! His brother Stevie Ray during his WCW Thunder days was better than Booker! Sorry to go off topic slightly but I had to vent... phew, much better!
If anyone thinks Vince wouldn't sign Brock just to job him out, than you're not very familiar with Vince. He won the wrestling war, bought WCW, and despite the fact he spent money to acquire it and could make money from it, he buried it just to prove once and for all that he was superior.
ReplyDeleteI think that's been their philosophy since 2002.
ReplyDeleteBut the only thing he obsesses about more than wrestling is mainstream attention/acceptance. If it leads to the media talking him WWE he'd put Kanye West over Triple H.
ReplyDeleteI always wonder what would've happened if WCW won the war. Would Bishoff have phased out the older guys and let the Jericho's take over...or would we still be seeing Hogan vs Piper until one of them dies?
ReplyDeleteBischoff really loved the cruiserweight style. Didn't he say that he thought wrestling was going get "smaller" (as in the size of the wrestlers). I'd imagine that would've been the direction he would've gone in.
ReplyDeleteYeah but he could have done that in WCW, or at least moved in that direction, and he didn't. He kept them in their own little spot wrestling against each other, and that was fine, but he had a chance to work some of them into his main event scene and instead it was just more and more of the same. The fact that Vince ran with Jericho, Guerrero, Benoit, and Mysterio as World champion at various points says that clearly Bischoff was wrong.
ReplyDeleteWhile the Invasion clearly could have been handled better (again, nobody is disputing that), I think it's unfair to say that he "could" have made money off of it. Didn't he make a lot of money off of it? Didn't he purchase WCW for essentially chump change? And then he went on to do better-than-usual numbers for Invasion? And hasn't he released a number of DVDs with the library he acquired as well?
ReplyDeleteYes, the Invasion could have been handled better and yes, he could have made MORE money off of it. But let's not pretend that he bought the brand, pissed on them immediately, and hasn't done squat with it since. And quite honestly, WWE WAS superior at the time.
This is spot on.
ReplyDeletewell, you did leave out the part with him making LOTS of money with the invasion.
ReplyDeleteand that's really saying something because Vince seems to have a huge hardon for every "hoss" as well.
ReplyDeleteTo be fair you could apply "
ReplyDeleteHis brother Stevie Ray during his WCW Thunder days was better than Booker!" to pretty much every announcer in sports history, not just Booker.
Bring back Stevie Ray.
Rey Mysterio began to flirt with the main eventers in early 99. Bischoff couldn't just depush Luger, Hogan and Nash, because their contracts basically required they be treated as the stars, but he probably wouldn't have renewed their contracts over time, or at least not offered them anywhere near as much.
ReplyDelete