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Random Thoughts III.


PowerButchi

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I never understood that, “WCW were meant to be the faces” line. Like, who would have ever expected that to work? WCW invading the WWF, and the WWF trying to tell WWF fans: “Oh, no. Our guys are the bad guys. You need to cheer the people ‘invading’ us from the company we’re been battling for the past decade.” It just sounds like absolute bollocks.

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1 hour ago, Your Fight Site said:

I never understood that, “WCW were meant to be the faces” line. Like, who would have ever expected that to work? WCW invading the WWF, and the WWF trying to tell WWF fans: “Oh, no. Our guys are the bad guys. You need to cheer the people ‘invading’ us from the company we’re been battling for the past decade.” It just sounds like absolute bollocks.

Welcome to 2001 WWF.

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3 hours ago, Your Fight Site said:

I never understood that, “WCW were meant to be the faces” line. Like, who would have ever expected that to work? WCW invading the WWF, and the WWF trying to tell WWF fans: “Oh, no. Our guys are the bad guys. You need to cheer the people ‘invading’ us from the company we’re been battling for the past decade.” It just sounds like absolute bollocks.

It's not even just a line - look at the first steps of the angle, prior to the Invasion build.

The WWF belonged to Vince, WCW to Shane. It was an adjunct to their original feud. Shane would try and entice WWF wrestlers to sign with WCW, and Vince would send dickhead heels to punish them for it. Shane had to wrestle a heel Big Show because of it all. When Booker T debuted, he attacked a heel Steve Austin.

It's not all as cut and dry as that - DDP debuted as a heel, prior to the Bagwell/Booker match that generally gets credited as the point where they saw that WWF had to be the faces in the feud - but it really seems like at least some sections of the creative team were enough in the WWF bubble to assume that people would be more invested in the continuing adventures of Heel Vince vs. Babyface Shane than in WWF vs. WCW.

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It would have only worked if they had scooped up most, if not all of the talent on the big Time Warner contracts, but I'd have liked them to not present either side as face/heel, and just let the fans gravitate to one or the other. In an ideal world, you would have had a crowd split 50/50. The crowd interaction would have been great! 

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1 hour ago, Cod Eye said:

In an ideal world, you would have had a crowd split 50/50. The crowd interaction would have been great! 

Would you then have to separate them on opposite sides of the arena like at football games? Careless WCW fans getting battered by a rival mob for walking into the wrong pub in their purple and gold outfits? The odd Raw taking place without a crowd not because of a pandemic, but because last week three eejits powerbombed a lad through the merch table during the divas match and spraypainted letters on his back.

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19 hours ago, BomberPat said:

some sections of the creative team were enough in the WWF bubble to assume that people would be more invested in the continuing adventures of Heel Vince vs. Babyface Shane than in WWF vs. WCW.

This is the key, really. They thought fans would be so invested in their inter-McMahon feud that it’d just transfer to the whole angle. 

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4 hours ago, Uncle Zeb said:

Would you then have to separate them on opposite sides of the arena like at football games? Careless WCW fans getting battered by a rival mob for walking into the wrong pub in their purple and gold outfits? The odd Raw taking place without a crowd not because of a pandemic, but because last week three eejits powerbombed a lad through the merch table during the divas match and spraypainted letters on his back.

Y'know what? I think that's superb; I'd have loved to see angles like that. The idea of making "fans" part of the angle/storyline is such a simple yet impactful one, it makes a lot of sense. I don't know if it would've worked if they'd done it during the first brand split, as it was a very artificial divide, and probably no-one would've bought that fans liked RAW more than SD or vice versa, but there were historical and cultural reasons to be a fan of one promotion over the other, built up over years. Feels like a sorely missed opportunity (like everything else about the Invasion). 

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41 minutes ago, Carbomb said:

but there were historical and cultural reasons to be a fan of one promotion over the other, built up over years. Feels like a sorely missed opportunity (like everything else about the Invasion). 

The problem with that is how many fans did WCW have left, and of those how many watched both shows anyway and how many wouldn't have watched WWF to cheer a WCW faction?

By 2000 ECW were doing a better ppv buyrate than WCW. WCW was on it's arse and lost it's fan base to WWF long before the end and anyone strongly pro WCW and anti WWF had stopped watching wrestling long before the final blow fell and moved on to something else.

The only way I can see the invasion working well on that footing is buying out the big names and pretending 99 onwards didn't happen. 

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5 hours ago, Uncle Zeb said:

Would you then have to separate them on opposite sides of the arena like at football games? Careless WCW fans getting battered by a rival mob for walking into the wrong pub in their purple and gold outfits? The odd Raw taking place without a crowd not because of a pandemic, but because last week three eejits powerbombed a lad through the merch table during the divas match and spraypainted letters on his back.

Definatly!  Imagine the arena split in two with each half going mad for the "brand" they liked best(except when X-Pac was wrestling, obviously!).

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9 hours ago, Uncle Zeb said:

Would you then have to separate them on opposite sides of the arena like at football games? Careless WCW fans getting battered by a rival mob for walking into the wrong pub in their purple and gold outfits? The odd Raw taking place without a crowd not because of a pandemic, but because last week three eejits powerbombed a lad through the merch table during the divas match and spraypainted letters on his back.

There would be unwritten rules in place. Any fans with replica WWF/WCW shirts would be left untouched, scuffling would be restricted to smartly dressed fans of either side via prior arrangement 

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6 hours ago, Cod Eye said:

Definatly!  Imagine the arena split in two with each half going mad for the "brand" they liked best(except when X-Pac was wrestling, obviously!).

IIRC, they did this during the CZW vs ROH feud.

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5 hours ago, JNLister said:

IIRC, they did this during the CZW vs ROH feud.

They did and it came across really well, I think they even blended the ring styles for a couple of shows too. By 2000 though WCW would have needed a huge amount of rehab to have fans invested in the product enough for that to work. CZW/ROH both being independents with cult followings at the time worked more because of the differing styles meaning their were defined fans of each.

The FWA/ IPW:UK feud was a good but very short example where they had a side of the ring for FWA and IPW fans at the time too, although that was quite a gentlemanly affair.

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So New Japan, Stardom and now TJPW have all had to cancel shows due to wrestlers testing positive for Covid or in New Japan's case a precautionary measure.

Surely it's only a matter of time until they pull the plug on shows entirely or at the bare minimum go back to empty arena shows?

How AEW have dodged an outbreak so far I don't know.

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