Who’s buried in Savage’s Tomb?
Savage, and possibly Lex Luger as well (yes, I know he’s alive).
Vince did a good job of burying Savage with that DVD release that, IIRC, doesn’t include anything other than matches - no documentary or other “special features” (not even when Savage “taught Miss Elizabeth how to dive” by pushing her off a 15-foot-or-so ledge at some water park).
Luger was buried when WWE Confidential (a late Saturday night show on Spike in the early 2000s that broke kayfabe on occasion) had an episode where they played his 911 call when Miss Elizabeth had her fatal drug overdose.
Cable TV killed the territories more than Vince did. Even before WTBS’s Saturday WCW show, the seeds were planted when Spanish International Network (now Univision) had a Wednesday night show of the NWA Los Angeles promotion; while the commentary was in Spanish, most of the interviews were in English, and it must have come as a shock to some people to see someone who was a “good guy” in San Francisco acting like a “bad guy” in LA.
That’s Vince for you. Fuck his daughter and he’s not going to do a good job when he markets your video.
Have to agree. My introduction to the bigger world of wrestling came when I fist saw Florida Championship Wrestling even before we got cable on one of the Spanish UHF networks - completely in English. Before that, wrestling to me was just Vince McMahon Sr.'s vision, Bob Backlund beating Billy Graham for the belt (that’s about the time I came in), Pedro Morales as IC Champion, and the predictable rotation of heels (two - three months of squashes, two months against Backlund, two months against Morales, two - three months of putting over the incoming talent). Soon after I learned that the Boston and Philadelphia markets were actually two months behind the NYC market, so that when they were promoting, for example, Greg Valentine vs. Pedro Morales for the IC belt in NY, they were promoting Valentine vs. Backlund for Boston. Don’t know why, though.
n a few years you guys are gonna have to chisel over someone to make room for Daniel Bryan.
Glad someone mentioned Bobby Backlund.
Backlund was a great athlete, a skilled technical wrestler, but weak as an entertainer. I liked him, I liked the idea that the champion was good enough to be a champion if the sport was a legitimate competition. That was the appeal of other champions from the prior era, Bruno, Flair, Jack Brisco, Verne Gagne, and Lou Thesz among others. Backlund was just born too late to get that kind of recognition.
ETA: Actually Flair started just a little before Backlund did, they’re both from the same era.
Bruno and Flair were not shooters in the same zip code as Backlund, Brisco, Gagne, or Thesz.
Cable TV did not hire away the top talent, or freeze local promotions out of TV contracts and arenas. Vince won the “war” because he essentially starved the competition. Cable TV helped drive a few nails into the moldering coffin of Kayfabe, but that cat had been out of the bag for decades before cable was available.
I didn’t say they were shooters, and I don’t buy most of the stories about shoots anyway. Thesz was trained by the old hookers so I wouldn’t doubt his ability to injure people, the rest were great athletes who could have been* wrestling champions, not MMA champions.*
For me it would need to span the eras. Strangler Lewis, Gorgeous George, Andre the Giant would be definite for me. Hogan and Andre are close time wise. The Rock was a crossover star like no other, but I found his promos repetitive and formulaic. The problem is I’m an old fart who doesn’t care for anything in the current millennium (although I think Bray Wyatt has huge potential). If I’m gonna stick to the territory days, I’ll include Hogan even though I don’t care for his body of work.
Vince Jr. was able to do that because most promotions weren’t being run professionally. Hell, the only reason WCW held on for so long was because Turner didn’t like McMahon (and vice versa) and opened his checkbook for a money losing venture.
Vince was the first to seize the opportunity to develop a national market, and he took a huge risk with PPV (especially considering that you essentially didn’t get paid for 12-18 months after the event). He was lucky to have the NE market, which as all our sports teams will verify, is a pretty good cash cow. Personally, I preferred the NWA product over the WWWF/WWF product, but I couldn’t see Omni shows. I could watch the MSG shows on cable (back when MSG was where anything that mattered happened in the WWF).
I’m not here to praise Vince Jr., but I won’t vilify him either. By killing the territories, he essentially killed the equivalent of Triple AAA baseball. Now, we get maybe Single A. We get a homogenized product that doesn’t take a lot of chances, because of the lack of competition. Like nearly everything else, the product has changed over the decades, some for the better (especially the treatment of the talent), some for the worse.
Well…he was the first to do it successfully. Ole tried it by expanding GCW into the Ohio/WV markets via TBS, but couldn’t seem to get over the hump…and lost out on some arenas due to Vince meddling. Fritz tried it with his syndication package that even reached into New York, but his top talent were drug-addled headcases. Watts made a full blown run at a national promotion, but picked the worst possible time to do it, and nearly lost his ass…but then sold his promotion to Crockett for a pile of money and came out financially comfortable.
That was the point of my first sentence. Vince Jr. was a businessman. Your examples were wrestlers who moved up to management. And Vince had what may have been the best overall market, with Boston / New York / Philadelphia filling his coffers.
There’s a great story from a pretty reliable source about Sammartino losing a friendly gym-shoot to Johnny Walker (who would later become Mr. Wrestling II). Sammartino was incredibly strong…but Walker was more skilled in amateur wrestling.
Absolutely. The biggest money for the wrestlers was always in that area, and the travel was a lot easier as well.
I’ll have to concede on that point. Bruno had great strength, he didn’t have the kind of wrestling background that others did. He was more suited to brawling and impact style wrestling that wouldn’t help much in a legitimate wrestling competition.
Since the earliest days I’ve read about, wrestling has always been a mix of real wrestlers, other tough guys, and people who can put asses every 18". Ric Flair is generally not considered a tough guy (by wrestlers’ standards) but he could fill seats, and when that happens, everyone wins. Same with Hogan. Wrestlers who could consistently sell tickets were/are few and far between.
There’s a huge difference between Flair and Hogan. Flair was an incredible athlete, he had remarkable stamina, and he was tough in his ability to take the bumps and keep on going. Hogan was an entertainer only, by virtue of his size and personality, and steroids, he didn’t need anything else. There were many pro wrestlers with limited training in true grappling, but still operated at a world class athletic level, but many more who were primarily just good at putting asses in seats. I don’t want to disparage the latter group too much, they made it possible for the true athletes to make a living in the business.
No doubt about it. I always preferred Flair, basically for the reasons you mentioned, and the time I liked Hogan best was his first WWE run as a heel managed by The Grand Wizard. Most wrestlers, especially those with long careers, can be considered “tough in (their) ability to take the bumps and keep on going”, even Hogan (though he was never the bumping machine Flair or Michaels or many others were). But for both of them, their charisma was their greatest asset, versus a Dusty Rhodes, who was as tough as they come (by wrestler standards) and had charisma to spare.
Flair, Hogan, Antonio Inoki, Gorgeous George. I hate everything about Flair, his in-ring performance most of all*, but you might as well just make it his face from four different angles.
*I know he’s The Greatest, but his matches are boring as fuck. I can only take so many knee drops.