Was the Invasion angle always destined to fail?

[Shane O' Mac Version 2]

a) I didn't know WCW that well at the time, being a WWF fan all my life, but having seen the occasional Nitro and a PPV here and there on VHS (Spring Stampede 99 stands out in my mind), the things in WCW I liked were Goldberg, Sting, nWo, and cruiserweights like Rey Mysterio. I only had the vaguest idea of who Booker and DDP were, and had no idea who Lance Storm or Mike Awesome were.

 

b) I was 11 when this whole thing went down, so I wasn't privy to the workings of the IWC or anything, but I remember feeling like having Shane as the WCW head immediately made the whole thing feel like just another WWF feud. If Bischoff and Heyman were brought in at the time as the owners of WCW/ECW- and had Shane and Steph emerge later as financial backers or something, it would have worked a lot better. Making it the McMahon show made it seem like just another angle rather than a big invasion. That's why, for me, the ECW revival in 2005 worked so well- Bischoff and Heyman were involved, and using those players made it feel like an individual entity to WWE.

 

c) I had no idea who any of the Alliance were, really, but I remember thinking RVD was the coolest wrestler ever. I wish he got the feud with the Rock instead of Jericho at the time. That ladder match with Jeff Hardy at Invasion was unlike anything I had ever seen.

[Smokin']

WCW went out of business because people in general, not wrestling fans, stopped caring about their product, even the big names that they had on the roster. Take away those big names and you had a bunch of midcarders who nobody cared about and there's no reason for them to have parity with the star WWF talent. There were four options in this feud; one, water the feud down by sending WWF talent to the Alliance side. Two, have a one sided feud because the WWF's talent was so superior. Three, have a competitive feud regardless of the difference in star appeal on both sides or four, have the WCW midcarders feud with the midcarders the WWF had in a meaningless but competitive feud whilst the big name WWF stars did something else. Of those options, the only ones which make any sense are the first two, which is what happened, but neither makes for a long term angle.

 

Ideally, the big names in WCW would have been available and then the feud could have gone on, potentially, for years. The talent that was available weren't worth it though and as good as the idea was, the WWF's roster was making them massive amounts of money whilst the other two companies had gone out of business. It made no sense from a business perspective for it to be a competitive feud, the WCW and ECW roster just didn't have enough value to be worth it.

[IronSheik]

a) The top WCW talent clashing with the top WWF stars i.e. Goldberg, Steiner, Hogan, Hall, Nash, Sting, Bischoff etc...

 

c) RVD vs Jeff Hardy

 

b) The second Shane / Stephanie were involved with the alliance it killed any reality-based angles.

[garynysmon]

1. What I was hoping for was for WCW to keep going, I loved WCW and watched until the end and I hated seeing it being bought by Vince and even though it had become an awful product compared to what it was just a few years before, I still didn't want WCW to finish. What I was expecting was for Shane to carry on WCW as a separate brand and I was expecting it because of mainly internet rumours saying that it was going to happen. 

 

Same here. To this day I still wonder what the rebooted, fusient owned WCW would have been like. There was talk of filming Nitro on the roof of a Las Vegas casino wasn't there?

[unfitfinlay]

A) I'm another who wanted WCW to continue as a separate company. I was pretty excited about it because I felt that the company had a lot of talent that was being let down by lack of proper leadership under Time Warner. The WWF was arguably the best that it's ever been creatively and I figured that they'd have had no trouble turning the company around and making it great again.

 

B) Summerslam killed it for me. Invasion was a narrow win for the Alliance, as it should've been, but Summerslam killed them dead. RVD was the only "Invader" allowed to look like a star and the WCW guys that made the card were completely outclassed.

 

I should add that I also hated that the locker room emptied and beat down Palumbo and O'Haire on their first appearance a couple of weeks after the storyline started. Surely the WWF guys putting their differences aside and uniting to repel the Invaders is something that should've been drawn out until the crowd were fucking desperate to see it. Not done almost immediately, against guys with no heat. Where's the drama there?

 

Actually, they did it to Bagwell before that didn't they? Point still stands, I suppose.

 

C) The beginning of the Alliance for me as well. It was a total shock and, as much as I wanted them to push the WCW guys, there were far too many that were bland and colourless. Adding ECW gave them credibility, even if most of the additions were established WWF undercard guys.

 

Edit: Bad Grammar makes me cry

[Pinc]

There were four options in this feud; one, water the feud down by sending WWF talent to the Alliance side. Two, have a one sided feud because the WWF's talent was so superior. Three, have a competitive feud regardless of the difference in star appeal on both sides or four, have the WCW midcarders feud with the midcarders the WWF had in a meaningless but competitive feud whilst the big name WWF stars did something else. Of those options, the only ones which make any sense are the first two, which is what happened, but neither makes for a long term angle.

This is all with the benefit of hindsight of course, but had they known that Flair, the nWo, Bischoff, Steiner and Goldberg would all arrive over the following two years I wonder if they could have staggered the Invasion that long to allow them to be involved as they should have been.

 

You could have spent most of 2001 having your Lance Storms run-in to spoil midcard matches, but for the most part the WWF keeps a lid on any trouble.

 

This changes when Booker T runs in on the main event of SummerSlam (Rock vs. Austin rematch for the title), resulting in a schmozz that allows Austin to stay heel and keep the belt without Rock taking a fall.

 

The WWF continue to resist WCW's increasingly problematic interference until Flair shows up around Survivor Series in a kind of player/manager role, and the inaugural brawl ends up being a 5-on-5 Survivor Series tag. Flair, Booker, DDP, Bagwell aaand...someone else (Shane McMahon? Mike Awesome? Sean O'Haire?) would be a serviceable team of five, and you could run a dissension-in-the-ranks thing between Rock and Austin on Team WWF.

 

WCW narrowly take the win, possibly because of Rock and Austin's failure to co-exist (though I wouldn't have Austin defect). You could still do something big with the title at Armageddon, but instead of Jericho winning a mini-tournament say that a WCW challenger gets a crack at Austin as a condition of their winning the inaugural brawl. This could even be a recently-defected Jericho if you must put the title on him; but the match would likely have more intrigue if it was Booker or DDP.

 

Around Rumble time you start running promos saying the nWo are coming to help WCW (and Triple H is returning to help WWF?), and WrestleMania X8 becomes the first top-to-bottom WWF vs WCW card. A series of singles between Rock, Austin, Taker, Hogan, Nash, Hall, DDP, and Booker is a belting card, especially as most would be happening for the first time/the first time in ages.

 

From there you have enough star power and dream matches to have the angle go on for a good while. With Steiner and Goldberg still to come and freshen things up. Had Triple H not done his quad I think a more patient Invasion along these lines would probably have been the plan.

[Vamp]

A) That's a bloody long time to keep that storyline going, and what you do for the first bit of that is well and truly establish WCW as a place of midcard scrubs like Lance Storm.

 

B) Anything that's in hindsight and still uses Buff Bagwell as a big part of the angle at that time is questionable...

 

C) Why are the New World Order helping WCW? Actually that last one doesn't really matter because it's wrestling and you can fudge logic but it's pretty odd. Plus the nWo didn't go to well in reality anyway. Hall was a mess and Austin wasn't willing to job to any of them and Hogan was always going to be turned face by the WWF audience.

[buba3d]

I honestly thought by having lance storm and justin credible in the same alliance, they could have reformed the impact players and go after the belts

[herbie747]

What killed it for me was when Austin joined the Alliance. He was a WWF guy through and through, and I wanted Austin to be the guy to beat WCW - not join them! It sucked balls.

 

What should have happened is they should have had a Battle Royal at the end of a RAW episode; with all the top WWF guys in it. Then with 10 or so guys left, at the top of the ramp recognisable/key WCW guys start appearing 1 by 1; DDP, Booker, Rey, Sting, Steiner, Hall, Nash, Goldberg, Flair, Hogan, and finally Bischoff. And still in the ring you have all the main WWF guys like Austin, Rock, HHH, Taker, Bradshaw, Farooq, Outlaws, Xpac, Rikishi, Angle, Kane, etc.

 

Imagine that for a face-off? But that's an ideal world - a watered down version of WCW was never going to work, and that's what we got. But imagine if they'd just bit the bullet & signed all of the top guys?

[King Pitcos]

And they could've brought Andre The Giant in to clean house at the end.

[Reznor]

I guess it depends on how you define 'fail'.

 

For most fans, it's a simple answer; Yes. As long as Vince was unwilling or unable to bring the big guns from WCW in, it was never going to be what we all wanted - dream matches, massive angles, WCW TV with WWF production, huge crossover PPVs etc. To 99% of fans, it was therefore a massive fail, and couldn't possibly have been anything else, considering the midcarders who were involved.

 

But for Vince, hindsight makes it evident that what he wanted out of it was something entirely different to the fans. The acquisition of WCW was designed to result in a distraction in storylines for a few months with their inevitable burial at the end, a bit of a business boost (including having a free run with no competition in the future), and having his ego massaged by winning the war so he'd be able to pose on DVD covers 13 years later as the man who destroyed WCW.

 

Personally, I was never even all that bothered about an actual 'Invasion' per se. I don't even like the general idea of Invasion angles anyway, where all these warring wrestlers (particularly the heels) somehow still have this dutiful sense of company loyalty which makes them put differences and histories aside and fight for their fed above all else. It's stupid and more often than not, contradicts the nature of their characters they've been building up for years. Obviously, I wanted to see Hogan v Rock, Austin v Goldberg etc etc, but it was the matches and rivalries between individuals I was interested in - they didn't have to be a small part of a bigger angle. I prefer alliances and rivalries to be based on heel and babyface dynamics, rather than what fed they come from.

 

I'm another one of those who was more interested in seeing WCW continue rather than seeing them all assimilate into the WWF. I think just running the two feds separately, whilst running occasional cross promotional angles and matches, along with a massive WWE v WCW PPV ever year for example, would have been ideal, similar to how RAW & Smackdown ended up. It would also have had more impact than a full on invasion angle, spunking away matches over the course of months.

[patiirc]

I didnt think the Invasion was a fail. I'd not watched WCW since the early 1990's at that stage and whilst I was aware who people were, I'd not seen them properly. It could have been uber was most over bestest guy in WCW versus Funaki and I wouldnt have know the difference, despite being aware of the significance.

Okay, so the McMahon involvement was massive overkill, but when you have effectively squashed all of your competition you are going to gloat. The DDP booking and Kronik was odd, but aside from that I really enjoyed it seeing what would happen, and how it would pan out. The Invasion PPV gets watched regularly as is actually very decent and whether you think the wrestling is great (E+C botch early on) then it tells a story puts bums on seats.

Okay it wasnt on the hype machine level that some fans expect, however wrestling was starting to decline after it's massive peaks and that has to be factored in.

Basically I loved it, it was fun. That many people got too involved in what should of happened and fantasy booking etc totally spoiled it because they wanted the impossible. So it wasnt every one's wet dream it still won me over back to wrestling and I'd been lapsed for the best part of 7 years at that point because it was exciting

[Mr Tibbs]

The Invasion angle was doomed to failure for 1 simple reason.  Ego.  To present a successful long term angle the WWE needed to present WCW wrestlers as their equals (and even in some cases their superiors).  This was the only way WWE fans would have perceived the WCW wrestlers as a genuine threat.  Yes, not having the major players (Goldberg, Steiner etc.) did hurt the angle, but as noted already, Invasion drew 750,000 buys based on a team of Booker T, The Dudley's DDP and Rhyno against the WWE.  However, after the Invasion PPV the WWE refused to book the invaders strongly.  This in turn presented them as inferior to the group they were invading.  Couple that with their near total destruction at SS and the feud was dead after 3 months.  If you had pushed Booker and DDP strongly and had them go over clean at SS then the programme could have grown and drawn much better business.   The NWA (with Dusty booking) pretty much did the same thing when the bought Mid-South in 87.  What could have been a money drawing programme was wasted through Dusty Rhodes ego trip.  It's a shame really but I think we all knew that this would happen when the WWE bought WCW.

[King Pitcos]

But for Vince, hindsight makes it evident that what he wanted out of it was something entirely different to the fans. The acquisition of WCW was designed to result in a distraction in storylines for a few months with their inevitable burial at the end, a bit of a business boost (including having a free run with no competition in the future), and having his ego massaged by winning the war so he'd be able to pose on DVD covers 13 years later as the man who destroyed WCW.

That wasn't what he wanted out of it at all. He wanted to run WCW as its own brand (probably with Triple H as the top guy), but couldn't get any kind of television for it and then, after the Booker vs Bagwell flop, decided to jack in any idea of WCW continuing and just have them be a heel faction.

[Mr Tibbs]

I still to this day can't believe that they but Buff Bagwell in that match with Booker T.  What were they expecting!?  At least if you had put DDP in there (or even Mike Awesome) they could have had a great match which may have hooked the crowd.  There was a time in 97 and 98 when Bagwell was extremely entertaining in the NWO.  He was over with the audience too.  But by 2002, combined with the serious health issues he had suffered, those days were long gone.  All he had left was the strut and the pose.  It was going to take a lot more than that to turn this audience around and get them into the match.  A disaster on every level!