Gavok posted:

That was actually One Man Gang. Tugboat went on to become Typhoon and, much more importantly, the Shockmaster.

Elephant Ambush posted:

Let's not skim over the One Man Gang thing. His new gimmick was "Hakeem The African Dream". Not only was this a stab at Dusty Rhodes, whom Vince loved to humiliate, but Hakeem's manager was none other than Slick, a black man who was also a walking racist stereotype of a hustling, jive talking soul brother.

SilvergunSuperman posted:

I loved Akeem as a kid, the charismatic big fat slob is a lost art.

Marshal Prolapse posted:

Seriously Mike Shaw as Bastion Booger loving ruled to my 10 year old self.

FilthyImp posted:

I think The Fiend was bullshit but Wyatt did have presence and his weird cult promos were decent.

Let's see which broken-body the pull out of retirement this time. What's... uhhhh.... All Snow doing.

Seth Pecksniff posted:

Yup!

Also the pic they chose here doesn't exactly scream "picture of health"

https://www.wrestlinginc.com/news/2022/02/vince-mcmahon-touts-major-wwe-revenue-milestone/

Gavok posted:

That was actually One Man Gang. Tugboat went on to become Typhoon and, much more importantly, the Shockmaster.

X JAKK posted:

and he was in a tag team with Big Boss Man called The Twin Towers, though for some reason they were never seen together after 2001.

SilvergunSuperman posted:

I loved Akeem as a kid, the charismatic big fat slob is a lost art.

quote:

MrQwerty posted:

Shockmaster was a great creative achievement

Xotl posted:

So out of the 64 worst things in a long line of worst things twitter contest, what was the worstest (with some context, because I stopped following this stuff in the late 80s).

TTBF posted:

Two or three of management were basically sexually assaulting all of the ring boys,

Kuato posted:

Lol they released Bray Wyatt? I quit following for a while. So apparently they managed to take one of their most over performers and make him unmarketable? Impressive.

His entrance was fire.

pretty soft girl posted:

If someone told me the shockmaster introduction was a scene from an uncompleted Chris Farley is a pro wrestler movie I'd believe it

Time_pants posted:

It's worse. They clearly tried to sabotage his even more over Fiend gimmick and then axed him while he was still topping merch sales.

Time_pants posted:

It's worse. They clearly tried to sabotage his even more over Fiend gimmick and then axed him while he was still topping merch sales.

Elephant Ambush posted:

He must have really hurt some feelings in creative because firing someone who is selling the most merch is one of the few things they almost never do.

Hefty Leftist posted:

Time_pants posted:

The one thing you absolutely do not do in WWE is get over with fans when it wasn't Vince's idea.

Elephant Ambush posted:

Didn't Danielson and Punk both do that though?

I know Punk hates WWE but after Danielson went to AEW he wrote a glowing article about how he enjoyed his time there and how he had a great relationship with Vince and all this poo poo. There's no way he'd lie about that so I really wonder what happened.

Time_pants posted:

Exactly.

Danielson and his fans had to fight tooth and nail for months to actually get WWE to relent (same with Kofi Kingston). Punk's experience at WWE was so awful it put him off of wrestling for 7 years.

I guess it would be more accurate to say "Vince will do everything in his power to punish people who get over when it wasn't his idea." Remember Rusev Day? Zack Ryder?

Ghost Leviathan posted:

Executives are like this in literally every industry, the only thing they hate more than a pet project tanking is someone getting successful that they can't claim credit for.

Sydney Bottocks posted:

In the case of WWE, though, you have to add in that Vince has the attention span of a gnat and so even if someone gets successful doing things exactly the way he wanted them to, at some point he will get bored and forget about them (if they're lucky) or will decide to revamp their gimmick (if they're unlucky).

Ghost Leviathan posted:

They all do this too.

Cornwind Evil posted:

Vince has always succeeded in spite of himself rather than because of it.

(But yes, expect a massive amount of armchair psychology here)

People have already mentioned that there is a strong indication that Vince's family life was abusive: his stepfather might have been physically abusive and his mother MIGHT have sexually abused him, but there was a third story in a book called "Sex, Lies, and Headlocks" that stuck to me even moreso and I think crystallized the exact shape of Vince's trauma, wrath, and curse. Supposedly, he and his older brother Jesse were being raised in a classic Southern hick town, trailer park, nothing to do, a very "Day They Missed The Horror Show" type of place (note: Do not read "Day They Missed The Horror Show" unless you have some steel, it's BRUTAL) and then the U.S built a military base near the town. So the 'thing to do' amongst the teenage and young adult male youth was to go and try and pick fights with the black marines that came there to train. And while part of this little gang racism boredom, supposedly, Jesse innately got respect, he was a genuine article that people would listen to, admire, and so on. Vince supposedly tried to be the same way and got nowhere: not only did he want it and not get it, he was seen as probably the worst thing he could think of: a wannabe. A tryhard. Not worthy and never will be.

And why was he in this messed up situation? Because his dad abandoned the family to go run WRASSLIN' in New York and the Northeast.

I would bet money that Vince, among all other things, has never left that little gang of punk racists mentally. Between it and the extreme desire for control a physically and sexually abusive upbringing can implant, Vince (again, all theorizing) when he grew up didn't go to join up with the family business. He went with the long term goal of DESTROYING the family business, using it as a springboard to 'better things' in 'proper' entertainment, like how people can core out companies with stuff like junk bonds and leave their shell to collapse while they skip away with the money. Vince hates 'wrestling' as someone like Jim Cornette would define it (and while the man has his own severe GET OFF MY LAWN and "Too close to wholly accurately assess" issues, there's few others who could assess things as well as Cornette could about the concept of 'wrestling') and he hates, hates, HATES 'wrasslin', the idea that wrestling is solely for brain dead toothless hicks who only drive rusty pickup trucks and gently caress their sisters. Of course, 'wrasslin' being the majority if not near absolute of the wrestling audience has always been an incorrect and prejudiced based concept: wrestling can and has drawn an audience from just about any sort. A very good example was (mainly big in the 80's territories) wrestler Ricky Morton, who drew large gates of teenage girls who would shriek for him like the Beatles, and was so good at getting 'sympathy heat' (getting beat up repeatedly by the bad guys until, after a false hope or two or three, he finally tagged in his tougher tag team partner to clean house) that he would sometimes risk mobs of these girls being one step away from jumping into the ring to save their precious Ricky from the big bad dastardly heels (one term for doing this as part of a match in some online circles is 'playing Ricky Morton', that's how much he defined it). But again, this is all coming from pain and rage.

Vince succeeded because he broke all the rules and got very lucky. When he started, he refused to play ball and went around doing stuff like stealing other promotion's stars, running shows in their territories, and getting high quality production companies to videotape his shows and then go to local networks that ran, or would pay for, local wrestling, and offer to pay THEM to put his (looking much better in terms of visuals, lighting, camerawork, etc) shows on the air in their place. He basically bluffed all his competition in a game of chicken where his 'side' was mostly made up of potential future earnings, and no one called it: if some people had decided to, odds are Vince would have flamed out and been a cautionary tale these days about not rocking the boat. But at the same time, Vince did everything to drive out 'wrestling and wrasslin' and rework the business to his ideas. Larger than life characters, gimmicks, spectacle, forget all the actual WRESTLING, and in fact many of these sorts couldn't wrestle well at all, but Vince was in charge and he would tell people what they wanted, and once again, luck served him and for a time, it was. (Hulk Hogan, Rock N' Wrestling)

Thing is, Vince never changed while his audience did. I'm sure that he didn't intend to be around for when the bottom dropped out, though. He'd succeeded in revenging himself on his hated father (joining the company, leveraging him out of it) and rebuilding the business in his own image (which is sort of like saying Alexander the Great conquered the whole world). Now he would use it to actually get into proper circles of entertainment. If he had to burn the WWF to the ground to do so, fine. He wasn't a wrestling promoter, he sure as gently caress wasn't a WRASSLIN' promoter, and this business could go hang for the 'wrongs' it did him.

Except, much like his so-called friend Donald Trump, it was a futile gesture. Just like Trump would always been seen as a wannabe upstart by the minted rich he wanted so badly to be a part of, even before it became clear just how vastly that understated just what a failure he was, the larger entertainment world would never see Vince as anything but a wrestling promoter. This would be made clear when everything he tried outside of wrestling according to his vision failed. He tried bodybuilding with the WBF: it failed. He tried the XFL; it utterly failed, and at the tail end of the WWE's biggest hot streak ever, which really says it all (and it probably would have failed a second time if COVID hadn't strangled it in his crib). His wife tried running for senate: failed repeatedly. WWE Studios didn't exactly FAIL, but it hardly set the world on fire and that's what Vince would have wanted. Time and time and time again, the world told Vince: you're a wrestling promoter. That's all you will ever be.

That's why Vince never stops, I think. He thinks if he does, his chance to finally break through will slip him by. It also means that he needs absolute control over everything and will never accept anything less. He's so determined that sometimes it even manifests in good or impressive things, like being willing to be destroyed on his own show (something that Triple H and Stephanie never really, wholly learned, to their and the product's detriment) or the whole 'blew out his quads, walked backstage anyway' thing, which has a follow up: twin muscle tears like that usually take a good six to eight months to fully rehab so you can walk properly again. Vince was utterly determined to be able to walk out at Wrestlemania, which was about 2 1/2 months away, and rehabbed so hard and thoroughly that he did just that. People say the writing at WWE is terrible and has been for years if not decades: I think it's less that it's terrible and more that anyone who works in that field eventually gives up and just goes through the motions because you never know when Vince is just going to show up and tear everything up and demand something brand new: would you feel like trying if that was constantly happening with no rhyme or reason to it? It's why I take any rumors of sale with several grains of salt: the WWE's is Vince's, no matter how much he subconsciously hates it, and no one is going to take it from him. He will never, EVER again feel like he's not in control.

In all honesty, Vince would probably have had a happier life if his efforts had flamed out in the mid 80's. Maybe, MAYBE he would have been forced to do some self-introspection: I think he had that possibility, unlike Trump. As it is, this is a man running on a hamster wheel with his fingers in his ears and his eyes on a hallucination of a brass ring, thinking that soon, very soon, he'll show them he's not just some wrasslin' promoter. And much like 'everyone' knows Aquaman is lame and talks to fish, or anyone who likes Star Trek and D&D is a pimpled, bespectacled virgin failure at life, it won't ever work. He will die as he lived: a wrestling promoter.

Cornwind Evil posted:

Mumpy Puffinz posted:

I did not read a word of that

Sydney Bottocks posted:

The tl;dr is that Vince, like Trump, is a crass lout who thought having money meant you were automatically part of high society, only to get repeatedly reminded that he's just the biggest carny on the fairgrounds and that's all he's ever gonna be, and it's driven him completely insane

Seth Pecksniff posted:

This is a fascinating analysis and I wouldn't sleep on it

Mumpy Puffinz posted:

I did not read a word of that

dangerstepp posted:

Lmao wrestling has never been more dead.

Neckbeards keep it on life support.

Cornwind Evil posted:

Vince has always succeeded in spite of himself rather than because of it.

(But yes, expect a massive amount of armchair psychology here)

People have already mentioned that there is a strong indication that Vince's family life was abusive: his stepfather might have been physically abusive and his mother MIGHT have sexually abused him, but there was a third story in a book called "Sex, Lies, and Headlocks" that stuck to me even moreso and I think crystallized the exact shape of Vince's trauma, wrath, and curse. Supposedly, he and his older brother Jesse were being raised in a classic Southern hick town, trailer park, nothing to do, a very "Day They Missed The Horror Show" type of place (note: Do not read "Day They Missed The Horror Show" unless you have some steel, it's BRUTAL) and then the U.S built a military base near the town. So the 'thing to do' amongst the teenage and young adult male youth was to go and try and pick fights with the black marines that came there to train. And while part of this little gang racism boredom, supposedly, Jesse innately got respect, he was a genuine article that people would listen to, admire, and so on. Vince supposedly tried to be the same way and got nowhere: not only did he want it and not get it, he was seen as probably the worst thing he could think of: a wannabe. A tryhard. Not worthy and never will be.

And why was he in this messed up situation? Because his dad abandoned the family to go run WRASSLIN' in New York and the Northeast.

I would bet money that Vince, among all other things, has never left that little gang of punk racists mentally. Between it and the extreme desire for control a physically and sexually abusive upbringing can implant, Vince (again, all theorizing) when he grew up didn't go to join up with the family business. He went with the long term goal of DESTROYING the family business, using it as a springboard to 'better things' in 'proper' entertainment, like how people can core out companies with stuff like junk bonds and leave their shell to collapse while they skip away with the money. Vince hates 'wrestling' as someone like Jim Cornette would define it (and while the man has his own severe GET OFF MY LAWN and "Too close to wholly accurately assess" issues, there's few others who could assess things as well as Cornette could about the concept of 'wrestling') and he hates, hates, HATES 'wrasslin', the idea that wrestling is solely for brain dead toothless hicks who only drive rusty pickup trucks and gently caress their sisters. Of course, 'wrasslin' being the majority if not near absolute of the wrestling audience has always been an incorrect and prejudiced based concept: wrestling can and has drawn an audience from just about any sort. A very good example was (mainly big in the 80's territories) wrestler Ricky Morton, who drew large gates of teenage girls who would shriek for him like the Beatles, and was so good at getting 'sympathy heat' (getting beat up repeatedly by the bad guys until, after a false hope or two or three, he finally tagged in his tougher tag team partner to clean house) that he would sometimes risk mobs of these girls being one step away from jumping into the ring to save their precious Ricky from the big bad dastardly heels (one term for doing this as part of a match in some online circles is 'playing Ricky Morton', that's how much he defined it). But again, this is all coming from pain and rage.

Vince succeeded because he broke all the rules and got very lucky. When he started, he refused to play ball and went around doing stuff like stealing other promotion's stars, running shows in their territories, and getting high quality production companies to videotape his shows and then go to local networks that ran, or would pay for, local wrestling, and offer to pay THEM to put his (looking much better in terms of visuals, lighting, camerawork, etc) shows on the air in their place. He basically bluffed all his competition in a game of chicken where his 'side' was mostly made up of potential future earnings, and no one called it: if some people had decided to, odds are Vince would have flamed out and been a cautionary tale these days about not rocking the boat. But at the same time, Vince did everything to drive out 'wrestling and wrasslin' and rework the business to his ideas. Larger than life characters, gimmicks, spectacle, forget all the actual WRESTLING, and in fact many of these sorts couldn't wrestle well at all, but Vince was in charge and he would tell people what they wanted, and once again, luck served him and for a time, it was. (Hulk Hogan, Rock N' Wrestling)

Thing is, Vince never changed while his audience did. I'm sure that he didn't intend to be around for when the bottom dropped out, though. He'd succeeded in revenging himself on his hated father (joining the company, leveraging him out of it) and rebuilding the business in his own image (which is sort of like saying Alexander the Great conquered the whole world). Now he would use it to actually get into proper circles of entertainment. If he had to burn the WWF to the ground to do so, fine. He wasn't a wrestling promoter, he sure as gently caress wasn't a WRASSLIN' promoter, and this business could go hang for the 'wrongs' it did him.

Except, much like his so-called friend Donald Trump, it was a futile gesture. Just like Trump would always been seen as a wannabe upstart by the minted rich he wanted so badly to be a part of, even before it became clear just how vastly that understated just what a failure he was, the larger entertainment world would never see Vince as anything but a wrestling promoter. This would be made clear when everything he tried outside of wrestling according to his vision failed. He tried bodybuilding with the WBF: it failed. He tried the XFL; it utterly failed, and at the tail end of the WWE's biggest hot streak ever, which really says it all (and it probably would have failed a second time if COVID hadn't strangled it in his crib). His wife tried running for senate: failed repeatedly. WWE Studios didn't exactly FAIL, but it hardly set the world on fire and that's what Vince would have wanted. Time and time and time again, the world told Vince: you're a wrestling promoter. That's all you will ever be.

That's why Vince never stops, I think. He thinks if he does, his chance to finally break through will slip him by. It also means that he needs absolute control over everything and will never accept anything less. He's so determined that sometimes it even manifests in good or impressive things, like being willing to be destroyed on his own show (something that Triple H and Stephanie never really, wholly learned, to their and the product's detriment) or the whole 'blew out his quads, walked backstage anyway' thing, which has a follow up: twin muscle tears like that usually take a good six to eight months to fully rehab so you can walk properly again. Vince was utterly determined to be able to walk out at Wrestlemania, which was about 2 1/2 months away, and rehabbed so hard and thoroughly that he did just that. People say the writing at WWE is terrible and has been for years if not decades: I think it's less that it's terrible and more that anyone who works in that field eventually gives up and just goes through the motions because you never know when Vince is just going to show up and tear everything up and demand something brand new: would you feel like trying if that was constantly happening with no rhyme or reason to it? It's why I take any rumors of sale with several grains of salt: the WWE's is Vince's, no matter how much he subconsciously hates it, and no one is going to take it from him. He will never, EVER again feel like he's not in control.

In all honesty, Vince would probably have had a happier life if his efforts had flamed out in the mid 80's. Maybe, MAYBE he would have been forced to do some self-introspection: I think he had that possibility, unlike Trump. As it is, this is a man running on a hamster wheel with his fingers in his ears and his eyes on a hallucination of a brass ring, thinking that soon, very soon, he'll show them he's not just some wrasslin' promoter. And much like 'everyone' knows Aquaman is lame and talks to fish, or anyone who likes Star Trek and D&D is a pimpled, bespectacled virgin failure at life, it won't ever work. He will die as he lived: a wrestling promoter.