Shining a Spotlight 7.21.06: Killing the Golden Goose
Posted by Michael Weyer on 07.21.2006
A look back at the Invasion and other seemingly perfect angles that promoters manage to ruin. Plus, another Warrior mark-out moment.
With all the talk on anniversaries of the New World Order and Austin 3:16, this weekend marks another anniversary. It's one that many would rather ignore but is notable none the less. It's been five years since the Invasion.
Yep, the Invasion. The big showdown with WWF, WCW and ECW that fans have dreamt of for years. I've lost count of how many columns and articles I saw imagining and predicting the matchups and the outcomes. With both WCW and ECW now owned by Vince and his plans to get WCW running as a separate promotion again, how could this fail?
We all know the answer to that one. The dream encounter turned into possibly the biggest disappointment in the history of wrestling, blowing not only the expectations of millions of fans but also millions upon millions of dollars that could have been earned.
As with a lot of things in wrestling, you really need a few years distance to take things in perspective. Yes, it's true, WWF blew it totally. They had the dream angel of a lifetime and they failed to make it work because the "Alliance" were never given the chance to be on an even par with the WWF guys. Shane and Stephanie were given control of the Alliance, turning it into another version of the McMahon feud and WCW was turned into even more of a joke than it had been in the years before it went under. And an angle that could have run over a year and got fans majorly excited instead died in only months and at the cost of millions of dollars.
Looking back however, with a clearer eye, you have to ask one simple question: Why should we be surprised it happened this way?
Now it's often forgotten that when Vince bought WCW, his initial plan wasn't to bury it like he did (at least, he says it wasn't). Vince had planned to make WCW another promotion under his watch, to try and keep things going and increase competiveness and perhaps use it as a "farm system" for future WWF superstars. Sort of like what he later did with the brand extension and to a lesser degree, OVW and the current ECW. Also, Vince did try to get Hogan, Goldberg, Sting and Flair among others right off the bat but they declined for various reasons so he had to go to the "second-raters" like DDP, Steiner, Booker T and others.
I do think Vince waited too long. He bought WCW in March and yet it wasn't until June that he tried to really push the promotion for a match on RAW. I'd like to think that if the show had taken place in a key WCW market, like Greensboro or Atlanta, things might have gone differently. But the moment the WCW logos and music came on and Booker T and Buff Bagwell got in the ring, the fans turned against it big time. It was irony O'Henry would have loved. After years of conditiong fans to reject anything involving WCW, McMahon realized he'd done too good a job when he needed them to cheer WCW on. The reaction that night was so bad, it caused an immediate panic for the WWF higher-ups. And for all his intelligence and savvy, when Vince McMahon panics, he has an unfortunate tendency to jump to the wrong idea.
And thus Vince decided that WCW and ECW needed to be brought together. To me, having ECW join WCW so fast was one of the biggest missteps of the Invasion. Seeing ECW break away and Heyman rant about how "This Invasion is going to the Extreme!" was an awesome moment and you could have spent weeks or months having the three groups battle it out. Instead, the Alliance was created in one night and Shane and Stephanie were in power as Vince evidentially thought only they could get the fans interested in the Alliance. That same thinking led to Stone Cold being made to join, despite his history with both groups.
I don't think I have to go into a litany of what happened as that's been covered many times by many people, in various books and columns. Suffice to say, the Alliance was never presented as anything other than inferior to WWF and thus the entire point of the Invasion was made moot. Seeing as how so many stars of the Alliance ended up working with WWF afterward, there was no real impact of the Invasion other than a truly missed opportunity.
But as I mentioned before, this should not have been that big a surprise. The sad fact is that when promoters are given a golden opportunity to boost a battle with stars from another promotion, they inevitably blow it. WWF certainly had that history in spades. In 1991, Vince was given on a silver platter the jump everyone had waited years for. Ric Flair had been fired from WCW, taking the world title belt with him and soon appeared on WWF TV, proclaiming himself "the real world's champion." Thus, fans were given the opportunity to finally see the dream matchup of Flair and Hulk Hogan.
Today, it would have been handled differently, what with RAW and monthly PPVs. However, in 1991, there was no prime time shows and only four WWF PPVs in the entire year. Thus, Flair vs Hogan was forced to take place at various house shows, with little of the hype people expected for such a major event. While it did increase house show tickets, fans had been hoping for a big televised showdown which never took place. The Survivor Series had Hogan losing the belt to the Undertaker, which while a big thing as UT was seriously over, wasn't as huge as dropping the belt to Flair could have been. They were going to go at it at Wrestlemania but Hogan was planning on possible retirement and hated the idea of losing in his last go-round so it got switched to Hogan vs Sid and Flair vs Savage. While Flair was hardly a loser in WWF (two title reigns in '92 and getting major attention for the company), the seemingly no-brainer dream match was never delivered to fans.
A similar moment occurred in 2000 when then ECW champ Tazz faced HHH on RAW. True, Tazz was under WWF contract but the fact that he was a champion of another promotion facing the WWF champ was something really huge. Hell, it could have been a big buy rate for a PPV instead of given away for free. As it was, HHH ended up not only winning but doing so decisively so Tazz looked bad and thus ECW looked second-rate. To his credit, Vince has come out on the "Rise and Fall of ECW" DVD admitting he made a bad move here.
The Invasion debacle did nothing to stop that pattern as proven when McMahon tried to bring in the New World Order. Everyone thought it would be bad and it was as Nash was injured almost instantly and went out and Hall's personal demons came calling. To be fair, the thing that really killed it was something no one could have predicted: that the fans would welcome Hogan like it was the ‘80s all over again, ruining the idea of making him a heel. However, considering how the nWo had ended up killing WCW with their antics, even considering bringing these three in was a disaster in thinking that ended up doing nothing for the company.
That was nothing compared to the damage in bringing in Eric Bischoff the way McMahon did. Throughout the Monday Night War, it was clear to everyone that these two men really and truly hated one another and wanted nothing more than to crush the other out of business. Another failing of the Invasion, as brining in Bischoff would have given the WCW side some new heat. Even in 2002, having Bischoff come in and try to lead a faction against McMahon as revenge for what happened would have been great. Instead, the two smiled and even hug on stage, acting like good friends and once again another huge moneymaking angle was totally blown apart.
Before you think this is a litany on WWF's failings alone, NWA/WCW had more than its share of such failures. It's always amazed me that WCW, arguably the most ineptly run promotion in history, actually managed to make the nWo work, if only for a while. Anyone who thinks that the Invasion would have been handled better if WCW had won the Monday Night War is just being foolish. In fact, considering WCW's track record at ruining seemingly perfect setups, it might have ended up even worse.
I'm not the first to point out how eerie it is that the Invasion almost exactly mirrored the NWA's takeover of the UWF. When Bill Watts sold the Universal Wrestling Federation to Jim Crockett, he thought it would lead to some cross-promotional action that would give the UWF more exposure. Instead, Crockett absorbed the company and buried the workers and titles. Terry Taylor was forced to unify the UWF TV title by losing to NWA TV champ Nikita Kolloff. At least he got that as Steve Williams and the Sheephearders found themselves champions of nothing and were shoved aside. Pretty much the only ones to get anything out of the merger were Sting and Rick Steiner. I recall a 1999 interview where Dusty Rhodes, in a rare moment of humility, did admit to making a big mistake, being so focused on Vince that he failed to see the potential in the UWF. Besides putting himself in a hole by having to settle the UWF's debts, Crockett gave up an opportunity that could have allowed him to really compete with McMahon. Instead, only a year after buying and burying the UWF, Crockett was forced to sell to Turner.
A much bigger problem occurred in 1994 when WCW brought Hulk Hogan in and gave him creative control. The first problem was when Hogan brought in a bunch of his old ‘80s running buddies and sent the promotion into a time warp with cartoonish antics and characters. WCW did do what WWF didn't, which was put Hogan and Flair in a PPV main event. However, Hogan refused to sell for Flair, even after getting hit with brass knuckles, did his usual "Hulk up" bit and pinned Flair to win the belt. He was to drop it to Flair two months later but instead changed his mind right before the show and came up with the idea of being attacked by a masked man who hit Hogan in the leg with a pipe. Despite not being able to use a leg, Hogan still beat Flair to retain the title.
What Hogan didn't seem to understand was that WCW's fans had a different mindset than the WWF ones. They were used to the hated heel like Flair or Vader reigning as champ instead of the unstoppable hero. Hogan, however, kept acting like it was 1986 all over again, right down to an angle of long time friend Ed Leslie turning out to be the masked man, which led to Leslie actually getting a shot at the WCW title at Starcade. That did seem to lead to a showdown most were looking forward to of Hogan vs Vader. Vader was just the sort of beefy powerhouse Hogan faced regularly in WWF so it made sense to have them go at it. Most thought the obvious and logical plan would be Vader humbling Hogan and getting the belt and Hogan trying to fight back to win it back.
Instead, Hogan completely wrecked everything when Vader attacked him a few weeks before their SuperBrawl showdown, giving him his devastating power bomb. You'd think after all his years and all the big money making matches he'd been involved in, Hogan would know the logical thing would be to play dead and build up the idea of Vader as a monster. Instead, he leaped right back up to his feet, acting like it didn't hurt at all, making anyone who'd taken the move look like a loser. Even the dimmest of marks realized that this mean a Hogan victory was inevitable. In that moment, Hogan not only wrecked the build-up but also damaged Vader's career to the point he never recovered.
When you talk about missed opportunities with talent, Bret Hart probably outshines Flair. Look at the facts: WCW signed on the hottest free agent in the business, the man who only weeks before had been WWF champion, who'd just been involved in the most infamous double-cross in wrestling history, who had a huge fan base in Canada (a country WCW had never been able to crack) and was getting $8 million a year. So what do they do with him? Have his first appearance be a referee for a match between Bischoff and Larry Zybsko to decide the fate of Nitro. So his first time out, Bret was made a pawn in the seemingly endless WCW/nWo war. That would turn out to be a high point of his run that saw him left behind, overlooked and pushed aside for more antics of the nWo, Goldberg, Jay Leno, Dennis Rodman and others. He would get the World title a few years later but it wound end up being the last run of his career thanks to a bad kick by Goldberg. In essence, WCW shelled millions to get one of the most respected stars in the world and failed to do anything remotely at the level he was capable of, yet another sign of how bad things were for the company.
One of the things Bret was pushed aside for was the entrance of the Warrior in late 1998. As much as we all know now had big a disaster this would be, you can understand the logic of bringing him in. They needed something big to counter WWF's ratings victories and having Hogan face one of the few men to get a clean win on him seemed just the thing. WCW had unfortunately failed to realize Jim Hellwig's…unorthodox mind-set would lead to some out there antics and moments that made a simple build-up totally nutso. That would lead to the catastrophe of a match as it became quite clear how important Pat Patterson had been planning their 1990 battle. Warrior would come down with an injury immediately afterward, leading to his fast exit so WCW once again spent millions for absolutely no pay-off.
Probably the final big talent bungle WCW made was getting Mike Awesome in 2000. I still have no idea how even Vince Russo could completely screw this one up. This was a man known for his incredible power wrestling and putting people through tables but also with surprising ariel skills. More importantly, he was the current ECW champ when he was signed and the heat he felt on his last show was unbelievable as Awesome was truly hated by the fans for jumping ship like that. But instead of having him continue that destructive path, WCW turned him into a comedy figure, first as "That 70's Guy Mike Awesome" and then the "Fat Chick Killer." Awesome never fully recovered from that debacle and pretty much the only joy felt from it was Paul Heyman no doubt laughing hysterically at Awesome's fate.
It's not just the Big Two that made such errors. When the AWA, World Class and CWA began to work together in 1988, it looked like a great thing for all three promotions to get them attention and respect. Interest really did increase at the idea of the third biggest promotion of the time having its champion defend against people from rivaling promotions. However, it would become clear that the AWA was considering itself on a higher par than the other two companies. More often than not, champ Jerry Lawler would beat WCCW champ Kerry Von Erich, often winning the World Class belt. When Von Erich did pin Lawler, it was to get the WCCW belt back, not the AWA title. Sadly, the cooperation suffered because of Gagne's stubbornness and need to put the AWA belt above the other two. It all ended at the disastrous Superclash III where Lawler unified the two titles. However, when Lawler refused to put up with Gagne's wish to put AWA dates over CWA dates, Gagne stripped him of the belt and banned him from the promotion, which lead to the AWA's collapse.
These are just the inter-promotional jumps and missed opportunities. Both companies are filled to the brim with other missed opportunities to push fresher stars or feuds or angles that could have led to major money. When Randy Orton won the World title in 2004, there was the chance of an angle of Orton taking Evolution and fighting a face HHH. Instead, Orton was attacked the night after he won the belt, turned into a face the fans never got behind and stalled his career. WCW spent a year building up Hogan vs Sting only to have Hogan refuse to job cleanly and getting the belt back weeks later, killing what could have been a great Sting as champ vs Hogan feud. Even TNA has fallen prey to this mentality like Team 3D not getting the tag belts at Final Resolution as we thought but getting stuck in feuds with Team Canada and the James Gang.
The big question is how can this happen? How can promoters, men who should know how the business works, who should be able to tell what the fans want, just totally blow such perfect setups and, more importantly, fail to see how much money can be made by these moments? The simple answer can be summed up in one word: Ego.
As much as I respect and even admire Vince McMahon, his single greatest flaw and drawback is his own ego. Vince loathes the idea of acknowledging anything he didn't have a hand in as being equal to, let alone superior, to anything in WWF/E. I'm convinced that's a reason Sting has always gotten short shrift in WWE's DVDs, because he's the one major superstar to never work for Vince and he hates having to remind people of that. That's why he just couldn't give the fair shake to Flair, Tazz or all of WCW. That's why he felt he had to inject Shane and Stephanie and Austin into the Alliance, because he couldn't accept that WCW could run themselves. It's why he's put so much WWE emphasis on the new ECW, because he also thinks it needs it.
Actually, on a quick segue, Vince may not be totally off on that idea. As both he and Bischoff pointed out in "Rise and Fall," Heyman didn't seem to know how to take ECW, something that appealed to a narrow fanbase, and make it work on a national level. Plus, given the lightness of the ECW roster, putting in a few names more recognizable to the mainstream audience can help give it more attention. True, Vince could do better giving Heyman more creative control but he did get some points by having the WWE title showing up on an ECW TV show, a move I was surprised by. It's not Vince's fault RVD blew it with his legal problems.
Ego was also a flaw for Hogan, who couldn't quite wrap his head around the fact that the WCW fans didn't love him as much as the WWF fans did and kept right on plugging as the invincible hero. Bischoff didn't help matters with his belief that the nWo could keep going forever and shoving it to fans who were rapidly tired of it, seeming to ignore how it made WCW look like losers. Russo was more interested in putting his vision of "sports entertainment" over than actual wrestling and thus wrecked stuff like Awesome. Much like Hollywood, egos in wrestling cause people, wrestlers and promoters both, to lose sight of what could truly be amazing.
It's true that gauging exactly what fans will cheer for is an inexact science to say the least. But as has been mentioned before, a WWF/WCW/ECW battle would have led to a huge money making feud that could have gone for a long while. Instead, WWF blew it worse than anyone could have imagined and in full public view. Sadly, it was not the exclusive case that many paint it as but part of a long and sad tradition that continues today. Just look at Brock Lesner's refusal to put a young talent over and being kicked out of New Japan and stripped of the IWGP title (although he still keeps the belt). New Japan had hoped that Brock would be a great boost to business and crowds but his refusal to do the job has led to them literally losing their title belt. True, it's more Brock's fault than New Japan's but it's yet another missed opportunity, especially for Japanese fans.
Can this change? Maybe. Sometimes a new arrival can make it big in another company. Some may criticize WWF for making the Radicals lose to DX in their debut but considering by March Benoit was IC champ, Eddie was European champ and Malenko was the Light Heavyweight champ, you can hardly say they were buried. And there's Christian winning the NWA title in TNA. So there's a chance such things can work but only when promoters (and to lesser degree, the talent) are able to let go of their egos and their pride and admit that yes, some people are equal to, if not better, then themselves. But in a business long built on the philosophy of "whoever has the most toys wins," that's something that may not happen for a long, long time.
All this talk of missed opportunities has reminded me of one time when WWF did give fans what they wanted. An opportunity that led to a true epic clash that resulted not only in a better than expected match but also one hell of a payday.
1990 Royal Rumble. Orlando, Florida. January 21, 1990
It was only the second year the Rumble was presented on pay-per-view and there was no "winner gets title shot" stipulation. It was just a chance to see 30 of the best in the WWF go at it in a great battle royal setting. Ted DiBiase made his presence known right off the bat, drawing number one and lasting 45 minutes before being eliminated by number 21, the Ultimate Warrior.
When Hulk Hogan entered at 25, the crowd naturally went wild. He and the Warrior were soon clearing people left and right. Shawn Michaels was 26, entering just as Hogan threw out the Honky Tonk Man. Michaels was almost immediately thrown out by Warrior, followed by Rick Martel and that left Hogan and the Warrior all alone in the ring with a minute and a half until the next entry.
Today's fans, having heard all the bad stuff about both men in the years since, are probably not going to understand just how awesome a moment this was. Face vs face encounters just did not happen then, especially on a scale like this. This was the WWF champ and the Intercontinental champ. This was the most popular man in wrestling against someone who, at the time, truly seemed like he could be the successor to that title. This was two men of sheer power and charisma ready to go at it.
They stared at each other as if unable to believe themselves this was happening as the crowd's roar grew louder. For once in his life, Tony Schivone wasn't overly exaggerating when he declared "There is not a person sitting down! Everyone on his feet!" Hogan and the Warrior began circling each other, Warrior pumping his arms and Hogan slapping his shoulders. They moved in, foreheads touching as they yelled and the roar reached a crescendo.
They shoved one another and then Hogan rushed to the ropes, ran in and shoulder-blocked Warrior. The Warrior stood firm, then bounced off the ropes to do the same but Hogan stayed strong. After a long glare, they began to run criss-crossed across the ring. Hogan hit the mat so Warrior ran over him, then tried a clothesline. The Warrior ducked, Hogan turned and with a smack that echoed in the entire building, they clotheslined each other and hit the mat.
They stayed there motionless for several moments, allowing the Barbarian and Rick Rude (who rushed in early) to attack them both. They tried to toss the Warrior out, hanging him by the ropes as Hogan rushed over. He clotheslined them both so Warrior went out. The Warrior wasn't done, running in and hitting both Rude and Barbarian before running back to the dressing room.
From what I've heard, the plan was for Curt Henning to win the Rumble but Hogan had it switched to him eliminating Henning to win. This is one time I think Hogan made the right choice. The fans were so ultra hot after the Hogan/Warrior encounter, having a heel win would have been a huge letdown. As it was, what people remember was that one moment, the first meeting of Hogan and the Warrior that would lead to their classic showdown at Wrestlemania VI. It was a great example of a golden opportunity put to good use, a moment that comes along far too rarely.
Be sure to check out JP's Top Ten Promos
Meehan checks on Hulk Hogan's latest comeback
Ronny continues his great look at McMahon's Wrestling Empire
And Hidden Highlights, Column of Honor, Ask 411, 3R's and the rest.
And don't forget….
"How can Kim guarantee that a snake will bite the kid?"
"He doesn't have to. He just needs to guarantee the snakes bring the plane down."
