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Random Thoughts III.


PowerButchi

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It could have been done a lot better while they waited to bring those guys in. Staggering debuts would have been far more effective for presenting them to a new audience. I didn’t have a clue who Booker T or DDP was really, at that age I’d have given up watching if too many randomers had shown up all at once.

Sending Austin to team WCW was really stupid, because they fired him over the phone. Austin shouldn’t have stuck with WWF either because he hates Vince. Natural thing for him to do is a lone wolf DTA guy focuses on the title and not fussed about a brand war. Why would Austin care about a brand war? They could tease it out and eventually have him join the WWF for Survivor Series when WCW had pissed him off one too many times. 
I’d have put Jericho as the face of WCW. Had a mystery man as the financial backer who eventually gets revealed to be Flair. Dunno if Big Show was off injured or just not being used but I’d have sent him to team WCW. They could have dragged the story out, with WCW bringing in a new wrestlers whenever they would be on the verge of losing. Id drag it out right up until Bischoff debuts, with him turning on WCW and killing it, only to align with Vince as a scummy sell out. 

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I think what stings (no pun intended) with the Invasion finishing up by the end of 2001 is, the very next year you had Flair, Bischoff shows up, the nWo shows up… if the WWF has extended it out just a few months then more credibility could have been extended to the WCW faction and given it legs to go on. Shawn turns up. If Hogan, Nash, and Hall had to reform the nWo, then you could have had DX vs. nWo in 2002 and not 15 years later as a side piece to a WrestleMania bout. There could have also been an angle where X-Pac is caught in the middle and basically have the nWo and DX fighting for him. As a former member of both, would he go back to nWo where he started out, or re-join DX? So much scope…

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Yeah, even with what they had it could’ve been so much more.

it was ego that killed it more than lack of stars I think. Look at the buyrate for Invasion, that didn’t have Goldberg and Sting and people still wanted to see it.

If they’d presented your Storms and O’Haire’s as stars (It seems odder now than it would have then) and had RVD or someone join WCW as he was apparently going to if they’d continued you can keep it going for months until Flair/Bischoff/NWO/Steiner start showing up bit by bit.

Should have definitely been a 2-3 year story, having it done by Survivor Series was a huge failure.

Now, I know they’d never have presented DDP, Booker, RVD and Lance Storm as threats to their top lads but they fucking should have or not done it at all.

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There is nothing more boring than people fantasy booking the invasion by bringing in guys who were sitting out their contracts. There seems to be this base assumption that all WWE had to do was offer the same amount of money. If I'm being paid a fuck load to sit at home you're going to have to pay me a double fuck load for me to even consider going to work. If I'm in the WWE and I've helped you win the "war" and you pay a double fuck load to bring a WCW guy in then I want a triple fuck load. 

It all spirals out of control. That's not even considering house show dates and creative control. It's also not considering the general morale of the locker room when you bring all these guys in in one go. The Undertaker clearly felt threatened by DDP and Kronik taking up spots, imagine how he would have reacted to the others. 

The Undertaker's reaction, as selfish as it is, is indicative of a bigger problem. Your biggest blue eyes is out making movies, your biggest star is a heel and The Undertaker is clearly the next big blue eyes you've got. Then suddenly you bring in a bunch of guys you've been calling shit for years who are going to take some of the spots.

I just don't see anyway of making it manageable offscreen. 

As for keeping it going, by the time they've become The Alliance its deflated anyway. By the time 9/11 happens it's clear that they don't want to be doing an invasion story at all. When Flair comes in, finally a bigger name, it's clear he doesn't want to wrestle and has been running about in mental asylums and wearing a tshirt in the ring. Hoping the nWo will fix it won't work, Hall has personal issues, Nash is going to fall apart physically and Hogan is always going to get cheered. Plus it makes no sense for them to help WCW. Steiner doesn't wrestle until 2003 and even that's too soon. Nobody has a clue what to do with Goldberg when he comes in because nobody had a clue what to do with Goldberg after 1998. It would take about another 2 decades after that for someone to figure it out.

There's stuff I think they could have done. I think there should have been paranoia amongst the WWF guys that any of the more recent arrivals from WCW (Jericho, the Radicals, etc.) could be helping the WCW guys get into the building. That might have given those guys a recent to turn and a storyline. Its tempting to argue that they should have had DDP come in and feud with Austin from the off, though I'm not sure WWF fans buy it. In hindsight, maybe (very maybe), you get away with Shane McMahon doing a WCW PPV promoted though him buying time on WWF TV to show promo videos, before the WCW guys appear on WWF TV with the extra hooks that no one knows who he has recruited and that Vince is going to be there with a group of WWF wrestlers. I'm not sure anyone buys it though. 

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I think aligning WCW and ECW was probably a bad move, too. No one’s going to take WCW as a viable threat if they have to join forces with a third party, and then still come out second best when going toe-to-toe with WWE talent. Absolutely correct it was ego. “We’ve beaten WCW. Now let’s bury them.”

I saw a Tweet from Bully Ray a few days ago when he essentially buried WCW and lauded ECW as being a more valuable brand than WCW ever was as it’s still talked about today. That’s ignoring the fact that WWE have for 20-plus years buried WCW whilst somewhat celebrating ECW. ECW under WWE had two PPVs, was re-launched as a third brand, and celebrated as this quirky, different underdog promotion. WCW’s been painted as this mess of an organisation that had all the gear but no idea. What person coming to wrestling is going to go, “Oh, WCW was still alright?” after hearing that guff from WWE? That derision’s gone on for even longer if you go back to the “Billionaire Ted” and Huckster and Nacho Man skits from the mid ‘90s.

Can’t say I’m a fan of Bully Ray’s new gatekeeper gimmick, either. He posted something about no wrestler should use the DDT when Jake Roberts turned up in AEW a little while ago.

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Long term, he's right. WCW as a brand was run into the ground. It was toxic. ECW had a romanticism that made it valuable. WWE fucked that over but you could argue they'd gotten the value out of it already. WCW didn't have any value beyond Invasion without spending big money. I think that's been well proven.

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WCW never had the brand identity that ECW did, either. It would be difficult to say, categorically, what WCW was whereas ECW always had enough buzz around it as counter-culture, hardcore, and so on. 

As for the Invasion, it was never going to work out with the amount of egos in the WWF locker room, people scared for their spot when there's a sudden huge influx of talent, and people resentful that some of the WCW guys were coming straight in on big money and major storylines and TV spots. That would only be exacerbated if they were bringing in the likes of Goldberg, Sting et al on even more money, probably more than all but one or two WWF talents were getting paid.

The problem with The Alliance set-up is that it marginalised WCW and ECW into a generic heel stable/invading force, which overly relied on the audience having a ton of goodwill for the WWF to the extent that they would support the company as a whole against an outside threat. When the Invasion should have been about dream matches - with the roster they had they were few and far between, but they could have better utilised DDP and Booker T better, at least, and been more logical about which WWF talent were moved over to the WCW side to better bolster their ranks.

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I think they were fucked from the start once they decided the shelve any idea of WCW being a separate entity after that Booker/Bagwell match. Invasion was never going to work due to Vince's ego and his reluctance to push something he didn't create, locker room politics, and the fact that WWE had spend the best part of decade of television training their audience to treat WCW like the devil. Only hope  to revive WCW  was keeping it separate from WWE altogether and appeal to WCW's old fan base, then gradually rehire big names when they became available. Once the Invasion was initiated that was it, no hope of it surviving.

Even then, I don't know how you'd keep WCW going on its own when the top available stars initially open to working for WWE were DDP, Booker T, and Bagwell. Maybe have to shelve it for 6 or 9 months and then start it back.

Edited by DCW
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2 hours ago, Vamp said:

The Undertaker clearly felt threatened by DDP and Kronik taking up spots, imagine how he would have reacted to the others. 

Pretty sure Kronik were brought in on Taker's recommendation

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I always thought it was a damn tough thing to book. You've got 2/3 companies with their own individual faces and heels. How exactly do you book that successfully while keeping them as separate entities/factions?

DDP for example. Absolutely loved him in WCW as the plucky face that you always wanted to get behind. But being in WCW made him an automatic heel.

I don't think it could ever succeed in the way it was approached.

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1 hour ago, DavidB6937 said:

 

I always thought it was a damn tough thing to book. You've got 2/3 companies with their own individual faces and heels. How exactly do you book that successfully while keeping them as separate entities/factions?

DDP for example. Absolutely loved him in WCW as the plucky face that you always wanted to get behind. But being in WCW made him an automatic heel.

 

Yeah it would have been a tough thing to book, but they should have been able to work it out. In theory they have collected all the best minds in the business together into one place. All three promotions having face/heel divides just opens them up for loads of possibilities and intriguing dynamics. I remember RVD being the only face member of the Alliance as being really cool. Having a few heels in WWF and a few faces in WCW shouldn’t have been that confusing 

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2 hours ago, DavidB6937 said:

I always thought it was a damn tough thing to book. You've got 2/3 companies with their own individual faces and heels. How exactly do you book that successfully while keeping them as separate entities/factions?

You’re on to something here, I’d say. The smarter thing to do would probably have been to bring in the small number of top guys they could get as individuals in a staggered way through 2001/02, and book them in big ‘Dream Matches’. Could’ve started with Austin vs Booker at SummerSlam to unify the two world titles. The unification element would’ve popped a big buyrate. DDP vs Rock at Survivor Series could’ve done a number in the battle of the People’s Champs. Flair vs Taker (or whoever) could’ve headlined the Rumble.

The “WWF vs WCW” part of the angle could’ve been pitched as a personal feud between Vince and either Bischoff or Flair, depending on who was willing to come in first. Without everyone in one company turning heel and the other all turning face.

The likes of DDP, Austin, Booker etc for the most part could just chase the gold with their face/heel alignments developing naturally in the conventional way. Maybe you could have the story build to a one night ‘winner take all’ thing at Mania X8; where everyone has to pick a side for the night to determine which company survives. A ‘Best of Seven’ set of single matches at Mania X8 pitting Flair, Booker, Hogan, Hall, Nash, Bagwell and DDP against Rock, Austin, Angle, Triple H, Taker, Kane and Jericho would’ve drawn big at that point. 

Edited by Pinc
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44 minutes ago, Pinc said:

You’re on to something here, I’d say. The smarter thing to do would probably have been to bring in the small number of top guys they could get as individuals in a staggered way through 2001/02, and book them in big ‘Dream Matches’

Well, that’s kinda what they did anyway. It’s just a case of if the invasion story would work with staggered debuts. 

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8 minutes ago, UK Kat Von D said:

Well, that’s kinda what they did anyway. It’s just a case of if the invasion story would work with staggered debuts. 

Aye. But I suppose doing it from the start would save budget on your Mike Awesomes and Tommy Dreamers who were non-entities in the Invasion.

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