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Re: The Wrestling thread
I agree 100% WCW was really terrible. Yes they had a lot of star power but the writing was awful, the big matches were always poorly executed and they always went with the old stars as the winners. Plus they were trying to hold onto that 80's flavour of wrestling and announcng. It was so incredibly lame compared to RAW. They pushed all the wrong guys. Their motto was to rest on the star power of the past where WWF was moving forward with new stars(The Attitude Era guys) partly out of necessity but partly by choice. Nitro was a terrible show. Like you said Atari it always ended on such a ridiculous note and he whole NWO thing was cool in the begining for about 5 minutes and then it got so over blown and stale. WWF was always the better, more interesting product even whe it fell behind in the ratings for a bit. You could see which company was gonna come out on top.
I'll never argue that Austin didn't play a big part but he wasn't the sole saviour of the company. I mean watch this clip. No Austin to be seen and the crowd is going fucking insane. You don't see this kind of stuff anymore. I remember watching this and it was like holy fuck the Undertaker is back. Wrestling was way better back in the day before everything leaked online before it took place.
Re: The Wrestling thread
@Bono:
I see what you're saying about DX now. Had DX not broke that door of pushing the envelope, Steve would've never been allowed to push his character.
Regardless, with DX and without Austin -- WWE is called WCW today. Maybe with Vince McMahon as president, but WCW was immensly popular with a horrible product, but better promo. Most of the wrestlers would've eventually jumped ship to WCW, and McMahon wouldn't have even had them without Austin. Austin might not've BUILT WWF, but he SAVED WWF from it's envitable end.
Re: The Wrestling thread
@Bono:
I see what you're saying about DX now. Had DX not broke that door of pushing the envelope, Steve would've never been allowed to push his character.
Regardless, with DX and without Austin -- WWE is called WCW today. Maybe with Vince McMahon as president, but WCW was immensly popular with a horrible product, but better promo. Most of the wrestlers would've eventually jumped ship to WCW, and McMahon wouldn't have even had them without Austin. Austin might not've BUILT WWF, but he SAVED WWF from it's envitable end.
It's kind of ironic when you think about it. On some level Steve Austin's character Stone Cold was playing Shawn Michaels. You watch some of those old clips with DX and look at Vince's face. He's not acting. He's legitimately pissed. In that video of how DX formed there's one part when Shawn is mocking him cause they made him look like an ass. Look at Jerry Lawler's face in that. You can tell they weren't acting. Jerry's tinking "oh fuck". Like Hunter said inthe video Jim Ross thought they were shitting on him basically when Vince wasn't around cause they id almost anything they wanted. Incredibly "RAW" and lots of it offthe cuff. I think back then WWF execs were probably super nervous every time Shawn went on air 
I think Shawn knew Vince needed him at that time and he really took advantage of it. Like Vince said they crossed the line a lot but in the end it's good they did cause the crowd loved it and opened up an entirely new direction for the company to go. Austin was able to take it to a different level with the whole common man vs Boss thing that worked great. And yeah I'lladmit probably the greatest angle in pro wrestling ever.
The thing that WCW had in the corner when it came to branding and promo was TBS. They had their own network to work with so they didn't have to answer to as many people. yeah they hd to follow FCC guidelines a well but they didn't have to worry about the network dropping them and on their own network at least advertsing would've been so much cheaper and they could advertise all day long all week long. WWF had to be careful not to upset people, that's why it's so cool/crazy that when WWF was threatened by the FCC with being taken off the air that HBK and HHH took it to another level and mockedthe FCC on air Classic.
Re: The Wrestling thread
Also don't forget, in those days Ted gave WCW a BLANK CHECK. They had as much money as they wanted to do with what they wanted.
But because he put the WRONG people in charge, he had nothing.
It would've made more sense if when WWF was in the toilet in the mid-90's, Ted would've came in, bought out WWF, and told Vince he could keep his roster and all of his shit, and roll WCW and just call it WCW, but with Vince remaining president, but Turner as CEO.
Re: The Wrestling thread
WCW's problem was that they didn't believe in pushing new talent. They just didn't, they wanted an established product, no matter how stale and out of date it was becoming. That's why people like Jericho and Big Show jumped ship and became HUGE stars in the WWF. That's one thing you have to hand to McMahon, he was never afraid to push unknown talent.
Re: The Wrestling thread
btw Shows might not be that great, but Royal Rumble was still pretty exciting PPV.
Countdowns and that Rock vs. Punk match made me feel like little kid again. I haven't got that in long time. It's a shame Cena won though, rest was fun.
Re: The Wrestling thread
misterID wrote:That's one thing you have to hand to McMahon, he was never afraid to push unknown talent.
Emphasis on was. Now he's terrified of actually following through on pushing new talent.
He never wanted to do it, he just didn't have a choice because Turner was poaching all his established stars.
I also read once that he actually hated the "Attitude Era" he just saw it starting to make money and went with it because they had to try something because WCW was killing him. What he's been doing the last 10 years or so shows what he does when he doesn't have real competition.
