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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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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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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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triplexpac posted:Did the Fingerpoke really turn off that many loyal WCW viewers? Like, they immediately just gave up on the show after that? For me and my friends, it wasn't just the fingerpoke, but the next few months weren't great, and that summer of '99 was dire.
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Jul 15, 2014 01:22
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