The Bitter Cost Of Taking Wrestling "Mainstream."
 
Do you watch any current WWE?  I try to watch a little bit just to try to keep up with what's going on, but I honestly don't enjoy their product anymore and I feel that Vince McMahon in many ways is responsible for ruining wrestling.  I hate some of the kids and young adults I find on message boards who defend Vince and say "Vince made wrestling what it is today."  My response would be "Yes, my point exactly - that's why I hate him."  As far as I'm concerned, making wrestling what it is today is something to be ashamed of.  They say he made wrestling mainstream.  Well what has that gotten us?  Sure, a few guys like The Rock, Steve Austin, and Hulk Hogan have made amounts of money unheard of in the old days, but at what cost?  
 
Look at how many places there used to be for a wrestler to get full time work.  At least 30 or so just in The U.S.A.  Look at how many more wrestlers were employed in the 70's and early 80's compared to today.  And attendance at wrestling shows is way down.  In the days of Georgia Championship Wrestling there were more wrestling shows held in Georgia in a week than there are these days in a year.  I'm talking about wrestling shows that draw at least three or four thousand people, not tiny indy shows that draw 50 people or 150.  So this is what getting wrestling mainstream has gotten us.  Vince doesn't even use the word "wrestling" or the word "wrestler" anymore.  He has "sports entertainment" and "superstars."  It's as if he feels "wrestling" is a dirty word that is beneath him.  
 
All the high production values, huge pyrotechnics, and glitz and glam of "mainstream wrestling" or "mainstream sports entertainment" should I say, means nothing to me.  I'll take the gritty production values and the wrestling shows presented from TV studios that only held a few hundred people any day over the Vince McMahon freakshows of today.  Maybe wrestling was never meant to go "mainstream."  If it's true (and I'm not sure that it is) that wrestling was very much just an underground phenomenom in the 70's and early 80's, I would gladly keep wrestling in the underground if I had any say in the matter and if the current state of wrestling in The U.S.A. and Canada is the inevitable cost.  
 
Maybe some things are never meant to be mainstream.  Is that so bad?  If the end result of going mainstream is far less wrestlers employed full time, far less wrestling shows held each year in our country, only one or two places where a wrestler can make a full time salary as compared to 30 or more places during the 70's, and we still have no health insurance or pension plans for wrestlers, what has been the benefit of "taking wrestling mainstream"?
 
Russell

Thank you MidAtlantic4Ever!  I felt like writing a mini column (I don't regularly write columns anywhere, I've had a few columns put out on the internet by various people over the years, but nothing within the last couple years).
 
You are correct in that there was infighting and to an extent Vince did let the various promoters of The NWA kill each other off.  Then there were some simply bad business decisions.  When World Class was HOT they started being shown nationwide on ESPN and had very good ratings in many large cities.  Las Vegas was one that comes to mind.  But ultimately it cane down to FRitz's decision and he said words to the effect of "Dallas is big enough and all my boys will ever need."  There were many in the company who felt otherwise and really wanted to go national.  Finally Fritz said, OK we'll show our shows on TV in places like Las Vegas but we're not going to travel outside of Texas.
 
If all the tragic Von Erich deaths had not happened and Fritz had agressively pursued going nationwide, he would have been STRONG competition for Vince.
 
Dusty Rhodes says that Eddie Graham had plans to go national as early or earlier than Vince did, but tragically Eddie took his own life.
 
If The Briscoes hadn't sold their shares of GCW behind Ole's back (when Ole was in Minnesota at his mother's funeral!!!) and they had kept progressing from Ohio and West Virginia onwards into more states they could have been a huge force to reckon with.  They had The Superstation for TV coverage which was a HUGE asset!
 
Jim Crockett Promotions, wow, there are so many different stories as to whose fault it was that they mismanaged their money so badly, whether it was Dusty's fault or The Crocket's fault?  Many people blame Dusty but many blame The Crockets for not having a good accountant and not keeping on top of their financial condition.  There were also claims of extravagant, unecessary spending like buying the 5 person jet (I think it was a 5 seater but can't remember exactly), or the highly unnecessary expenditures to move to Texas and to pay for the building there that they used for headquarters.
 
The AWA - Verne Gagne was not a progressive thinker and also angered many of his valuable stars with contracts that gave Vergne a large percentage of their earnings such as when they went to Japan HALF their earnings went to Verne. He made a huge blunder in running shows in New York City with barely any advertising or marketing behind them instead of taking care of his homefront.
 
Bill Watts was the victim of an terrible economic depression that hit the part of the country where his UWF operated.
 
Above all, the value of Jim Crockett Promotions was VASTLY underrated.  When they went to Philadelphia and ran head to head with The WWF, Crockett Promotions drew a considerably bigger gate!!!  Just imagine that company with accountants who were competent and a president who kept spending under control combining forces with Georgia Championshp Wrestling if The Briscoes had sold their shares to Ole or to one of the other shareholders in the company that wanted to keep on with the company instead of selling it.  Or perhaps another investor who would become partners with Ole and the others who wanted to continue instead of a guy who bought it to destroy it (and to gain their TV coverage).  Perhaps a guy like Don Owens or Joe Blanchard.
 
I love the fact that Vince's ratings after Black Saturday were lousy and that the fans were so vocal in expressing their displeasure with the replacement of GCW with WWF.  
 
I can only imagine what a powerhouse could have been created if when Vince was forced to sell because his show was a failure on The Superstation and he breached his contract with Tiurner by not providing an all new set of programs for The Superstation, if he had sold to a combination of Crockett, Ole and friends from GCW, and Bill Watts!  With Crockett being the money man but Ole and Bill Watts keeping costs under control and ensuring that there was a bottom line (meaning you cvan't spend more than you make) and Eddie Graham as head booker with Ole and Bill in high level positions as well it could have been a massive powerhouse.  The big thing is they would have had to agree to work together and get along.
 
Imagine if along with that scenario Fritz Von Erich hadn't been content with just Dallas and instead agressively expanded northward and westward.  If Verne's AWA  had been a more progressive thinker and had just taken care of defending the midwest.
 
We could conceivable have World Class Championship Wrestling running The Southwest and The West Coast.
 
AWA running The Midwest From Minnesota down to Kansas and westward until somewhere around Colorado it met the area that World Class ran and eastward until Ohio.
 
Crockett, Ole, Watts and Eddie Graham running Florida up through Pennsylvania and as far out as Ohio and The Mid-South as well.
 
Vince running The Northeast.
 
Nice fantasy, huh?  
 
 
 

Quote from MidAtlantic4ever on May 27^th, 2009, 5:45pm:

 
Thank you very much!    I really appreciate your comments.  I haven't done anything remotely like a little column piece for quite a while.  I just felt a need to see get those creative ideas going again.  I really enjoyed writing columns in the past but pretty much had given up because until posting here (and I have already bought my Fanfest and Hall Of Heroes Banquet Tickets) I received such incredibly hostile reactions for my anti-Vince attitude.  But when I started posting here after buying my tickets, I realized I had found my kind of wrestling fans!  I did attend the 2006 Fanfest because I live in Maryland but never took the trip to Charlotte before.  This August I will!
 
You know, one kind of cool thiong did come from those waning days of AWA, and you may very well disagree with mr,  but that is where Diamond Dallas Page got his start.  And just after starting there he also got a job with the PWF wrestling promotion in Tampa.  It just so happened that I was going to school at USF in Tampa at the time and my roommate in my dorm had a TV that picked up the station that broadcasted the local TV wrestling show.  It had Diamond Dallas Page on color commentary and GORDON SOLIE on play by play!!!  Whatever you may think of Page's career in WCW, he was cool in PWF as the heel color commentator.  He sure could talk!  And his wardrobe was just outrageous, ha ha!  Realize this was 1990, right around the Guns 'n Roses era in music and he looked like a rock star and had great lines as color commentator.  I ended up going to one of their live events and saw "Dusty Rhodes' Homecoming" at The Tampa Fairgrounds.  I saw Terry Funk vs. a very young Dustin Rhodes!  And I saw Dusty win the first ever PWF Heavyweight Title when he and TheBig Steel Man (Tugboat, Shockmaster) the two top contenders for the title wrestled and Dusty went over.
 
Later on I found out that DDP was getting into the business at 35 years old.  You've gotta admire that.  It was such a cool little promotion.  With Dusty, Terry , Dustin, Dick Slater, Steve Keirn, Mike Graham, Manny Fernandez, The Nasty Boys, Sir Oliver Humperdink, Al Perez, a very young Scott Hall, and  Bam Bam Bigelow they had an amazing roster for a small promotion.  And Gordon Solie was just tremendous!
 
What part of TN is CWA in?  Anywhere near Nashville?  My best friend is planning to move to Nashville this fall although he lives in MD now.
 
I think I might have that same Ole/Arn match vs Rocky King and kernodle.  Was it from the time period just after Ric Flair had defeated Dusty Rhodes in Tampa City to become champion again in the summer of '86?  I have a tape from that time period where Ric doe this amazing promo where he starts out wearing sunglasses and then halfway through gets really intense and takes them off and looks into the camera and says (about the Horsemen)  "WE RUN THIS PART OF THE COUNTRY AND WE MAKE A LOT OF MONEY DOING IT!  SO IF YOU DON'T LIKE WHAT'S GOING ON AROUND HERE, GO SOMEWHERE ELSE!"  
 
And the Andersons could just be brutal working an arm over and over again until; the referee would just have to stop the match because they would be so relentless in attacking that one body part.  They also had The Double Gourdbuster which was a cool looking move.
 
Baby Doll was Tully Blanchard's Perfect 10 and Tully was so cool and Baby Doll was gorgeous.  And still is.
 
Magnum was in his best of 7 series with Nikita, it was just an awesome time period.  
 
Russell

Really good comments in this thread. It is sad that what part of the younger generation that watches the current WWE product have no clue what pro wrestling is (or was). The dumb skits, scripted promos, and writers with no wrestling knowledge as opposed to bookers have all hurt the business. The idea of seeing top stars against each other on free tv every week has made nothing feel special and there's a PPV every other week. Remember the build-up to Starrcade every year and the excitement it generated? There was no internet to have spoilers and inside information and we hadn't seen the big matches on tv already. Now there's nothing left, they can't top themselves. Meanwhile TNA with national exposure just imitates WWE instead of being an alternative. I realize you can't go back to all squashes now that the audience has seen the ADD style fast-paced television, but you could go to a more serious, no skit, action-based show that built to big matches on PPV and built new stars. The audience knows it is a work, but make them suspend disbelief willingly to be entertained. We know the actors in a movie are acting but they don't turn to the camera and tell us. Why should wrestlers be any different? Play your role and work on making us believe - when an actor does that everybody loves it. Most of us knew it was a work back in the day but we didn't even know the word "work" back then to use it. If you've ever taken a punch you had to know it was not all real back then too.
 Jim Cornette has some great commentaries on his site that fit this topic one about having "writers" and one about having to top something when you take it too far & the audience has already seen you take it as far as you can. Both those are excellent reads if you haven't seen them check it out.