Everybody hates Vince, and they should. However, you do have to respect his acting abilities, and his penchant for whipping the crowd into a frenzy. I think Smackdown! often goes over the line with some of their stunts, but they are catering to a specific audience. As long as Vince is around WWE will do just fine. Last night’s Smackdown was a prime example as Lesnar and McMahon set up Kurt Angle in the cage match. The looks on their faces were priceless. These guys are great entertainers.
Your thoughts?
As a side note, is anyone else tired of seeing the same people matched against each other week after week? I don’t remember this much redundancy in wrestling matchups when I was a kid.
Back when we were kids, the same two guys would wrestle each other for months and years on end. Five or more times a week. It’s just that it wasn’t on TV every week back then, so we didn’t see it.
Remember the old but more recent bit where the Champion only had to defend his belt once every 30 days? Or would wrestle squash matches with some jobber* every week and only see a major opponent every month or so?
*Remember such Jobbers as Iron Mike Sharpe and Barry Horowitz? Wanna see Kurt Angle squash guys like this every week on Smackdown and only wrestle Brock at the PPVs? I don’t.
Frankly, Vince is going in my Deadpool for 2004 (which will be my first). He’s a 60 year old stress addicted steroid freak. I just hope for our sake that he doesn’t physically explode or have a stroke on national TV.
I’d put money on him and Steiner - I still think one day Steiner will literally explode or snap into a hardcore roid rage and eat his opponent’s head. If we’re lucky, it’ll happen during a match with Test.
I kinda liked the jobbers. They were very entertaining. You knew they were going to lose, but it didn’t matter. You make a good point though, I don’t think I would want to see them every week. Maybe mix it up with a few jobbers and a few big matches each week. I don’t know.
As for the death pool, McMahon is a good bet. I think Big Pappa Pump will be alright since he is so much younger. It probably won’t be long before they come up with the idea of having some sort of steroid competition. All of the 'roid addicts can stand in the ring and see who can take the most injections.
Vinny Mac has always been one of the smartest, shrewdest honchos in the business (remember, he came up with the concept of “sports entertainment” to avoid a heap of taxes for legitimate sporting events). But you know what they say about absolute power, and with all the serious competitoin either out of business or assimilated, he doesn’t really have any incentive to put out a good prouct. Plus, I don’t think he ever really learned to put a cap on the self-aggrandizement. An occasional grudge battle against Stone Cold Steve Austin or a few minutes of mike time a week, fine. Repeated, prolonged battles or being the focus of a dozen angles…eh…
If he doesn’t suffer a painful death, my guess is that he’s going to gradually tone down his involvement as age catches up to him, then quietly pass the reins down. Of course, we can expect the retrospectives and tributes to be on WWE television for weeks on end.
Vince McMahon is a genius.
To take a stuntman show like wrestling and add daytime soap-opera storylines to it and hook millions of adolescent males and make millions of dollars in the process is brilliant.
He’s the Aaron Spelling of the trailer park kids.
I went to a wrestling show once and didn’t even watch the wrestling. Watching the fans reactions who take it way too seriously was entertainment enough. They cheered, got angry, cried and they weren’t acting.
Some people strive to make it as bottom feeders in the “serious” world of acting and performance hoping to be someday paid for their talents.
McMahon took a step the other way to become king of the idiots.
His followers adore him and he laughs all the way to the bank.
I concure. Remember the image of his “bloodstained” face emerging from behind the ring with an iron bar in his hand, ready to whallop The Hulkster, at this years Wrestlemania? That will stay with me forever - never before has comedy evil been acted so well.
For all these years, I thought I was a person of above average intelligence who happened to enjoy a cooperative effort between two or more men acting as if they hate and want to hurt one another but now I see that I was living in denial… I’m nothing more than a bottom-feeding idiot that believes everything he sees and hears. :rolleyes:
