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jeffersonlives posted:There's a hidden problem with the three hour shows which is that nothing remotely important ever happens outside of the top of the hour segments, and usually you can even skip the top of the 9 PM hour segment at this point. I attack RAW in a different way to condense it, but if you want you could probably get it down to 30 or 40 minutes live just by skipping everything except those key hour break segments. or the more glaring problem, which is you could skip p.much all the wrestling, watch the recaps and get the exact same WWE experience. WCW Nitros all had a gem of a match hiding in them. Plus the promo work was tons better.
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Oct 7, 2013 07:43
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The promo work was better because usually you'd get Mean Gene interviewing a wrestler in the ring or at the top of the ramp, and that alone would provide some hype. In today's WWE you get a wrestler standing in the middle of the ring giving a monologue. When you have an interviewer announce who's he talking to next, people pay attention. When a wrestler just walks down the ring and takes out a mic, it's more meh than anything. Three-hour Nitros worked a lot better than today's three-hour Raws. The pacing was much better, there were quick matches ever now and then, the Nitro Girls, plus, the commentary work was better. I work in media, and speaking from experience, the WWE's current production concept must be incredibly exhausting, to the extent that their creative department suffers because they have to write a lot in a short amount of time, and what they do write gets watered down by many, many recaps.
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Oct 7, 2013 12:11
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I'm another guy that works in marketing/media and yeah, I have no clue how WWE does it. They have a job which must be exhausting mentally by itself, but then you throw in the road aspect (although I know a lot of the production stuff is done at Stafford all the time) and the fact you have an overbearing power structure (Vince, Steph, Dunn) and I don't know how they keep key people at all.
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Oct 7, 2013 13:39
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It's because Vince takes really good care of people he likes. You think Orton wouldn't have a job for life if he got a career ending injury tomorrow?
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Oct 7, 2013 13:49
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coconono posted:or the more glaring problem, which is you could skip p.much all the wrestling, watch the recaps and get the exact same WWE experience. WCW Nitros all had a gem of a match hiding in them. Plus the promo work was tons better. I'd say that there's usually one good match on Raw per week. Obviously there's weeks that everything is bad and nothing is happy, but at least since the Shield showed up the match quality on Raw has been pretty good.
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Oct 7, 2013 14:30
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Rad R. posted:I'm jonesing for an update in this thread. While I've seen a million EWR diaries that read like this (except Bret is great on the mic in those), I think Bret Hart, top babyface in WCW in 1998 is pretty out there. Bret was an "outsider" to the WCW audience, was in his 40's, not a very good promo, and wasn't all that big. Yes, he could work, but outside of Canada, who were going to cheer him no matter what, he just wasn't going to get the "Goldberg" type response. Having great matches with "home-grown" WCW guys and being a heel champ might've worked fine, but I just don't see WCW's audience embracing a "New York" guy as a top babyface. I mean they wasted him, sure, but only because they didn't give him strong matches on PPV every month, since that was the one thing Bret could consistently do. I just don't see where it would make any sense with WCW's roster to make Bret Hart the top guy in the company.
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Oct 7, 2013 14:46
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Rad R. posted:The promo work was better because usually you'd get Mean Gene interviewing a wrestler in the ring or at the top of the ramp, and that alone would provide some hype. In today's WWE you get a wrestler standing in the middle of the ring giving a monologue. When you have an interviewer announce who's he talking to next, people pay attention. When a wrestler just walks down the ring and takes out a mic, it's more meh than anything. 
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Oct 7, 2013 14:47
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The major hindrance to promos these days is that everyone sounds the same, because almost the entire roster's promos are written by committee. Punk stands out because Punk goes out there and does his own thing; the performers are hamstrung by a script, whereas if they were given bullet points to hit and left to their own devices, you'd have a product that feels a lot more natural.
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Oct 7, 2013 15:03
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laz0rbeak posted:While I've seen a million EWR diaries that read like this (except Bret is great on the mic in those), I think Bret Hart, top babyface in WCW in 1998 is pretty out there. Bret was an "outsider" to the WCW audience, was in his 40's, not a very good promo, and wasn't all that big. Yes, he could work, but outside of Canada, who were going to cheer him no matter what, he just wasn't going to get the "Goldberg" type response. Having great matches with "home-grown" WCW guys and being a heel champ might've worked fine, but I just don't see WCW's audience embracing a "New York" guy as a top babyface. I mean they wasted him, sure, but only because they didn't give him strong matches on PPV every month, since that was the one thing Bret could consistently do. I just don't see where it would make any sense with WCW's roster to make Bret Hart the top guy in the company. I don't think the audiences were split that rigidly... like, following your thinking, the audience "up North" should have had no idea who Jericho was, since they were WWF fans. Why would they know some cruserweight midcarder from down south? But Jericho got a big reaction when he debuted, there were Jericho signs in the audience even. Bret Hart was a main eventer for years in WWF, him jumping ship to WCW after one of the most controversial moments in wrestling history should have been enough to make him a top guy for sure. Not sure I'd build the company around him, but it's not like the WCW fanbase would have just rolled their eyes at The Hitman
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Oct 7, 2013 15:13
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laz0rbeak posted:While I've seen a million EWR diaries that read like this (except Bret is great on the mic in those), I think Bret Hart, top babyface in WCW in 1998 is pretty out there. Bret was an "outsider" to the WCW audience, was in his 40's, not a very good promo, and wasn't all that big. Yes, he could work, but outside of Canada, who were going to cheer him no matter what, he just wasn't going to get the "Goldberg" type response. Having great matches with "home-grown" WCW guys and being a heel champ might've worked fine, but I just don't see WCW's audience embracing a "New York" guy as a top babyface. I mean they wasted him, sure, but only because they didn't give him strong matches on PPV every month, since that was the one thing Bret could consistently do. I just don't see where it would make any sense with WCW's roster to make Bret Hart the top guy in the company. I think you're actively wrong.
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Oct 7, 2013 15:32
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Bret Hart is one of the greatest wrestler of all time, and Sting should have taken the title off Hogan clean and feuded with Hart and won so WCW's top baby face at the time didn't look like a complete chump. I feels like WWE is making the same mistake with Daniel Bryan right now.
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Oct 7, 2013 15:37
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triplexpac posted:I don't think the audiences were split that rigidly... like, following your thinking, the audience "up North" should have had no idea who Jericho was, since they were WWF fans. Why would they know some cruserweight midcarder from down south? Except that doesn't follow my thinking, since I was talking about WCW audiences? Nowhere did I say they were the equivalent of each other. WCW always had a bit more of an old school territory segment of their audience, and I don't think it's any surprise that they always responded more positively to "their" stars: Luger, Sting, DDP, Flair, etc., then they did to outside babyfaces like Savage, Hogan, or Piper. My point is I just don't see that crowd suddenly embracing Hart, even though he's obviously a better worker than Hogan and Piper at that point, as a top babyface. A babyface has to "earn" a crowd liking them, and not only had Bret not earned a big following in the south, most of the fans probably knew him as much for his "USA sucks, Canada rules" shtick he had been doing for the past year or so in WWF as they did for his babyface run in the New Generation period. I'm just saying, "Bret Hart, top babyface" is all-around a silly idea and people should stop acting like it killed WCW. The biggest thing I would've done differently with Hart is give him more matches with young up-and-comers. He spent 1998 working with Flair, Hennig, Randy Savage, Sting, and DDP, with a brief little program with Booker T. It re-enforced the "WCW is where old guys go to retire" line of thinking WWF promoted that they almost exclusively had him working with guys in their 40's, when he could've been used to help get over new talent. I mean if they were going to make him U.S. champ, why not let him feud with Benoit and Malenko and Mysterio for the belt? And as for Jericho, WWF did build up to his debut for weeks, then debuted him against one of the best promo guys they had. He was treated like a big deal to fans that weren't paying attention to the internet. And it's not like he became the face of the company the next year. Six months after his debut, he was in a program with Chyna and Hardcore Holly. So it's just not a very good comparison.
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Oct 7, 2013 15:41
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Writer Cath posted:The major hindrance to promos these days is that everyone sounds the same, because almost the entire roster's promos are written by committee. Punk stands out because Punk goes out there and does his own thing; the performers are hamstrung by a script, whereas if they were given bullet points to hit and left to their own devices, you'd have a product that feels a lot more natural.
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Oct 7, 2013 15:44
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Mean Gene aged really gracefully since that trip to Thailand.
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Oct 7, 2013 15:46
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Halloween Jack posted:the wrestlers wrestle for the same reason the Smurfs eat smurfberries. For sustenance?
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Oct 7, 2013 15:46
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laz0rbeak posted:Except that doesn't follow my thinking, since I was talking about WCW audiences? Nowhere did I say they were the equivalent of each other. WCW always had a bit more of an old school territory segment of their audience, and I don't think it's any surprise that they always responded more positively to "their" stars: Luger, Sting, DDP, Flair, etc., then they did to outside babyfaces like Savage, Hogan, or Piper. My point is I just don't see that crowd suddenly embracing Hart, even though he's obviously a better worker than Hogan and Piper at that point, as a top babyface. A babyface has to "earn" a crowd liking them, and not only had Bret not earned a big following in the south, most of the fans probably knew him as much for his "USA sucks, Canada rules" shtick he had been doing for the past year or so in WWF as they did for his babyface run in the New Generation period. I'm just saying, "Bret Hart, top babyface" is all-around a silly idea and people should stop acting like it killed WCW. I think your thinking is wrong, because it was literally a storyline featuring a bunch of ex-WWF guys that made WCW hot and they were super duper over. Like, they were heels in theory, but everyone loved the nWo. You're mixing up the NWA audience of 1987 with the people who watched Nitro in 1997. Where do you think all those people came from when Nitro's ratings were up? They weren't old school NWA fans. WCW was trouncing the WWF in the ratings in 1997 because all the people who used to watch the WWF were watching WCW. I am thinking you weren't into wrestling back then, because if you were a WCW mark, you didn't resent Bret for coming from the WWF, you bragged to your friends that watched WWF because this great wrestler jumped ship. You'd be like, "Oh man, Bret Hart is coming to WCW because the WWF sucks dick." Like, I think you have a fundamental misunderstanding of how the Monday Night Wars worked. When someone jumped to the other promotion it was a HUGE deal. All those guys you mentioned got over because they were entertaining, not because they weren't ex-WWF guys. You are approaching the situation with the same mentality Vice used to approach the Invasion. "These aren't WWF guys so they can't go over." Zack_Gochuck fucked around with this message at 16:00 on Oct 7, 2013 |
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Oct 7, 2013 15:48
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Zack_Gochuck posted:I think your thinking is wrong, because it was literally a storyline featuring a bunch of ex-WWF guys that made WCW hot and they were super duper over. Like, they were heels in theory, but everyone loved the nWo. You're mixing up the NWA audience of 1987 with the people who watched Nitro in 1997. Where do you think all those people came from when Nitro's ratings were up? They weren't old school NWA fans. WCW was trouncing the WWF in the ratings in 1997 because all the people who used to watch the WWF were watching WCW. I am thinking you weren't into wrestling back then, because if you were a WCW mark, you didn't resent Bret for coming from the WWF, you bragged to your friends that watched WWF because this great wrestler jumped ship. Yes, it was literally a storyline featuring dudes calling themselves "The Outsiders" doing an invasion angle that made WCW hot. Hogan as a babyface just prior to that didn't really move the needle at all. Hogan as the leader of an invading force of WWF guys with Flair, Sting, and Luger fighting them drew like crazy. It's almost like a big section of WCW fans didn't appreciate Hogan suddenly showing up and being treated like the top guy. My point is, Bret Hart, top WCW babyface, is a bad idea, no matter how many EWR diaries seem to think it's a great idea.
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Oct 7, 2013 16:00
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coconono posted:Mean Gene aged really gracefully since that trip to Thailand. You can barely see the mustache!
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Oct 7, 2013 16:01
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laz0rbeak posted:My point is, Bret Hart, top WCW babyface, is a bad idea, no matter how many EWR diaries seem to think it's a great idea. Except that this completely ignores the fact that Hart's exit from WWF was completely different from anyone else's and made him instantly sympathetic. By December, when he debuted in WCW, it was clear that he was screwed on his way out.
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Oct 7, 2013 16:11
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laz0rbeak posted:It's almost like a big section of WCW fans didn't appreciate Hogan suddenly showing up and being treated like the top guy. It's impossible to get into the minds of all the WCW fans who were booing Hogan pre-NWO, but keep in mind that WWF fans were turning on Hogan too. It's not like he was the #1 babyface when he left, people were booing him much like WCW fans did. One example is when the Royal Rumble crowd turned on Hogan when he eliminated Sid in the 1992 Rumble. So it's possible the WCW fans were booing Hogan because they were sick of him stinking up matches and doing the same old thing, similarly to how WWF fans felt.
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Oct 7, 2013 16:24
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triplexpac posted:One example is when the Royal Rumble crowd turned on Hogan when he eliminated Sid in the 1992 Rumble.
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Oct 7, 2013 16:29
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laz0rbeak posted:Yes, it was literally a storyline featuring dudes calling themselves "The Outsiders" doing an invasion angle that made WCW hot. Hogan as a babyface just prior to that didn't really move the needle at all. Hogan as the leader of an invading force of WWF guys with Flair, Sting, and Luger fighting them drew like crazy. It's almost like a big section of WCW fans didn't appreciate Hogan suddenly showing up and being treated like the top guy. As well thought-out as your sample size of one wrestler is, I'm still inclined to disagree. 1997 was an entirely different world than 1994. The most exciting part of the Monday Night Wars was guys jumping ship. Zack_Gochuck fucked around with this message at 16:52 on Oct 7, 2013 |
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Oct 7, 2013 16:34
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Zack_Gochuck posted:As well thought-out as your sample size of one wrestler is, I'm still inclined to disagree. Okay? Weird that one post didn't convince someone who thought my "thinking was wrong," that I have a "a fundamental misunderstanding of how the Monday Night Wars worked," and that I (somehow) am using the same mentality Vince used in another promotion wasn't convinced. Have you ever considered why the vast majority of "new guy comes into a promotion" signings show up as heels? It's not because "oh, Vince hates new guys." You have to build up a live crowd's support for a guy. And for all the "oh, WCW never created new stars" nonsense, they were actually really good at getting the crowd behind guys like Goldberg and DDP and Sting. And a big part of that build was feeding them heels that had been built up elsewhere. But again, sorry that one of my reasons for why Bret Hart- top babyface is a bad idea didn't convince you. To sum up, the others included that he wasn't a great promo, was already aging, and was never a huge draw even at his best. As mentioned already, Jericho is treated like the gold standard of Monday Night War signing done right, and he was feuding with Chyna for months, establishing himself with the WWF audience in the present, not going "hey you guys I got held back in WCW, remember that?"
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Oct 7, 2013 17:03
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laz0rbeak posted:Okay? Weird that one post didn't convince someone who thought my "thinking was wrong," that I have a "a fundamental misunderstanding of how the Monday Night Wars worked," and that I (somehow) am using the same mentality Vince used in another promotion wasn't convinced. Have you ever considered why the vast majority of "new guy comes into a promotion" signings show up as heels? It's not because "oh, Vince hates new guys." You have to build up a live crowd's support for a guy. And for all the "oh, WCW never created new stars" nonsense, they were actually really good at getting the crowd behind guys like Goldberg and DDP and Sting. And a big part of that build was feeding them heels that had been built up elsewhere. You are forgetting the most important thing. He was just screwed over by Vince and was seen as the victim. The reason why he could have come over as a babyface was due to that.
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Oct 7, 2013 17:08
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Except that Piper got a big reaction when he debuted, Warrior got a big pop. WCW fans in the late 90s did not have a problem with WWF guys showing up.
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Oct 7, 2013 17:09
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Well it's hard to judge how Bret Hart WCW baby face would've turned out, seeing as from day one when he had signed for the company they booked him in a manner designed purely to kill all his momentium and heat, and despite this it still took them 6 months to kill his pops. Bret Hart was tailor made for WCW at that point, and all the things you hold against him "he wasn't a great promo, was already aging, and was never a huge draw even at his best" could be held against every other main event guy they had with perhaps the exception of Hogan who could at least claim to have been a draw.
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Oct 7, 2013 17:15
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That's my point. Even loving Jeff Jarett got a pop when he came back in 1999. People loved it when guys jumped ship. I challenge you to find a guy who didn't get a huge pop when he jumped from WWF too WCW or WCW to WWF in the late 90s. The logic that WCW fans hated WWF guys who jump ship is bonkers. It simply did not happen outside of Hogan, and that's because people were sick of him.
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Oct 7, 2013 17:15
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Rodney the Piper posted:Except that Piper got a big reaction when he debuted, Warrior got a big pop. WCW fans in the late 90s did not have a problem with WWF guys showing up. Having a big debut reaction isn't really the same as connecting to a crowd long-term, though. Neither of those guys were consistent top faces in WCW, with Warrior flaming out pretty badly (no pun intended). I'm just not convinced that Hart would be embraced by the WCW fans the way Sting was in '97, or Goldberg was in '98, or that it would be a better idea to give him a Goldberg-style "best in the world" babyface push. And if you do push him as your top guy, what happens to Goldberg? Does he just squash guys through all of '98, win the US belt, and then peak there? And again, I do think he was mis-used, because I think he could've worked with guys like Benoit and Eddy rather than Curt Hennig and Randy Savage, but I just don't agree that he should've been the top guy in the company just because he was a very good worker.
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Oct 7, 2013 17:17
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laz0rbeak posted:Having a big debut reaction isn't really the same as connecting to a crowd long-term, though. Bret was able to connect with the crowd and get pops, however WCW did its hardest to completly derail him.
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Oct 7, 2013 17:20
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laz0rbeak posted:And again, I do think he was mis-used, because I think he could've worked with guys like Benoit and Eddy rather than Curt Hennig and Randy Savage, but I just don't agree that he should've been the top guy in the company just because he was a very good worker. "Very good worker" is more credentials than most WCW main event guys could muster up at that point. If your argument is "Bret couldn't work as a top face in WCW because WCW wouldn't know how to do it" then yeah I'm on board but to act as if it was a foregone conclusion because of some shortcoming of Bret's or some sort of disconnect between him and the fans is kinda silly. If you we're a wrestling fan in 1998, you knew who Bret Hart was.
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Oct 7, 2013 17:33
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Plus Bret had something that WCW craved as it continued to expand: world wide name recognition. It wasn't the popularity of Bret in the US that was as important as his his name recognition in Canada, Europe and the rest of the world.
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Oct 7, 2013 17:38
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Edit: nevermind, I think I misread
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Oct 7, 2013 17:40
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bobkatt013 posted:Bret was able to connect with the crowd and get pops, however WCW did its hardest to completly derail him. WCW and WWF fought over ratings for a hot period of viewership. WWF and WCW had built up their own fanbases over a long period, but WCW started to siphon off WWF's fans by signing ex-WWF guys. The two companies were battling over the same group of fans, for the most part. The WWF pulled ahead once they started doing live shows (and fans couldn't read results), pulled ahead once the Austin/McMahon storyline kicked in, and decisively won the war once the WWF had started creating entirely new fans with their shows and characters. Certainly, there were WWF die hards, and WCW die hards, but regardless of your loyalty, you knew who the guys in the other company were, and Bret Hart coming over was a big deal. Eric Bischoff wasted him. Simple as that. But, to be fair, what angle would've utilized Hart properly after the screwjob? Should he have joined the nWo to fight the power? No, of course not, you'd lose all of his sympathy heat. All of Bret's heat was around his situation with Vince - how would WCW properly focus on that? The Montreal Screwjob pretty much succeeded in turning Vince McMahon into the ultimate heel, who in turn, made Steve Austin the biggest hero on the planet. Red fucked around with this message at 17:52 on Oct 7, 2013 |
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Oct 7, 2013 17:40
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Karmine posted:"Very good worker" is more credentials than most WCW main event guys could muster up at that point. WCW actually had plenty of talent at the time. I just think he wouldn't be the best choice for a top WCW babyface based on the entirety of the guy's career and what actually happened. There's plenty that WCW did wrong, but I just don't know that not making Bret their top babyface was one of them. Again, I would've loved a Jericho/Hart feud in '98, or some matches between Bret Hart and the criminally underrated Perry Saturn, or a U.S. title feud with Rey Mysterio Jr. All of that would've been awesome. Or hell, if you're gonna have Hitman feud with a fossil, have him feud with Hogan. But I just don't think it's a "lol, WCW" level blunder not to build an entire promotion around an aging Bret Hart. Red posted:But, to be fair, what angle would've utilized Hart properly after the screwjob? Should he have joined the nWo to fight the power? No, of course not, you'd lose all of his sympathy heat. All of Bret's heat was around his situation with Vince - how would WCW properly focus on that? The Montreal Screwjob succeeding in turning Vince McMahon into the ultimate heel, who in turn, made Steve Austin the biggest hero on the planet. This is a good point. He could show up in WCW and get a huge reaction, but you can't just nurse that sympathy for being "screwed" indefinitely (the way Bret actually did in real life), you have to move on and have to do something in WCW. I mean Shawn Michaels and Vince McMahon are pretty off-the-table. And for all the "oh, they did nothing with him," they did sell a "dream match" of Hart vs. Flair in January 1998. It's just after that they clearly didn't have a confirmed direction for the character. laz0rbeak fucked around with this message at 17:47 on Oct 7, 2013 |
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Oct 7, 2013 17:43
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Karmine posted:"Very good worker" is more credentials than most WCW main event guys could muster up at that point. If you weren't a wrestling fan in 1998 you knew who Bret Hart was. I didn't watch Wrestling until the mid-00s and I still knew who Bret Hart, Stone Cold and The Rock were. I'm not even American so don't think for a moment that their popularity existed in some little closed bubble in America. I mean I didn't know about the Screwjob, or his feuds, but I knew who he was. He was pretty out there.
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Oct 7, 2013 17:46
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They could have done anything they wanted with Bret Hart that they possibly desired (except for reunite the hart foundation) but their plan ended up to use him in the most directionless way possible after inserting him into a non wrestling role at Starcade. It's not even that you can argue that they had to rush to find a way to fit him in as they had pursued him for an age, signed him months before his debut and still had zero plans for how to use him. The Flair feud was a perfect example of it as they had no direction within the feud, the presentation of the build was bad, and when the match finally occurred it was meaningless because there were no consequences to it. Then for months following that feud he was barely used, and booked in such a wishy washy way as to never establish a character or even an alignment. They had the top guy in the other fed, a month after he dropped the title in that fed and they had no ideas for how to use him, even to the extent that they didn't just put all their top stars over him. I'm not saying the WWF was above the same bullshit, as shown by how badly they used Big Show months after signing him. But the booking of Bret Hart is just a bizzare mystery to me, and reeks of backstage politics from day 1.
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Oct 7, 2013 17:59
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laz0rbeak posted:WCW actually had plenty of talent at the time. I just think he wouldn't be the best choice for a top WCW babyface based on the entirety of the guy's career and what actually happened. There's plenty that WCW did wrong, but I just don't know that not making Bret their top babyface was one of them. Again, I would've loved a Jericho/Hart feud in '98, or some matches between Bret Hart and the criminally underrated Perry Saturn, or a U.S. title feud with Rey Mysterio Jr. All of that would've been awesome. Or hell, if you're gonna have Hitman feud with a fossil, have him feud with Hogan. But I just don't think it's a "lol, WCW" level blunder not to build an entire promotion around an aging Bret Hart. It would have been a far bigger blunder than what they actually did to pay Bret Hart $3m per year coming in as the hottest guy in wrestling to work US title programs in the midcard. Which is saying something because before you started posting in this thread I thought they booked him as dumb as possible.
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Oct 7, 2013 18:03
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Skinty McEdger posted:They could have done anything they wanted with Bret Hart that they possibly desired (except for reunite the hart foundation) but their plan ended up to use him in the most directionless way possible after inserting him into a non wrestling role at Starcade. It's not even that you can argue that they had to rush to find a way to fit him in as they had pursued him for an age, signed him months before his debut and still had zero plans for how to use him. Yeah I think WWE's use of the Big Show is in some ways worse because they took a guy who had all the tools to be a huge star but needed some work in the ring, and basically mangled his character, turned him about six times, and had him feud with Big Bossman for an extended period of time. I think part of it is he had some bad habits after working in WCW and wasn't as main event ready as they originally thought, but dang did they do an awful job with him in 1999. "jeffersonlives posted:It would have been a far bigger blunder than what they actually did to pay Bret Hart $3m per year coming in as the hottest guy in wrestling to work US title programs in the midcard. Which is saying something because before you started posting in this thread I thought they booked him as dumb as possible. Yeah, using him to have great matches with new talent would've truly been the worst of all possible worlds. Except they DID give him the US title in WCW, and he did work programs in the midcard, they just had him feud with guys in their 40's and guys he had already worked with. laz0rbeak fucked around with this message at 18:08 on Oct 7, 2013 |
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Oct 7, 2013 18:06
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laz0rbeak posted:Yeah I think WWE's use of the Big Show is in some ways worse because they took a guy who had all the tools to be a huge star but needed some work in the ring, and basically mangled his character, turned him about six times, and had him feud with Big Bossman for an extended period of time. I think part of it is he had some bad habits after working in WCW and wasn't as main event ready as they originally thought, but dang did they do an awful job with him in 1999. They stuck him in a program with Foley and he was not able to get over. Also yeah the big problem was his WCW habits where he had everything given to him and him not giving a gently caress. They really should have let him smoke in the ring like they did in WCW.
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Oct 7, 2013 18:08
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laz0rbeak posted:Yeah, using him to have great matches with new talent would've truly been the worst of all possible worlds. Except they DID give him the US title in WCW, and he did work programs in the midcard, they just had him feud with guys in their 40's and guys he had already worked with. He didn't work midcard program with guys that were long established as midcard guys or job guys, they used him in US title programs as the number two regular heel against other top guys in second or third from the top programs, which was also stupid because booking him like a moron and then turning him heel as Hogan's number 2 was indeed quite stupid, but far less stupid than what you're suggesting. There's a huge difference between a US title program with DDP or Sting and a US title program with Perry Saturn.
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Oct 7, 2013 18:10
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