Bischoff Sacked

[PowerButchi]

1 hour ago, Tamura said:

I've already said Heyman wasn't a good businessman, even his staunchest supporters would agree on that point. However, was Bischoff a good businessman? Were WCW wrestlers paid in 1999 because of Bischoff's excellent business skills? Or were they paid, despite the company losing a fortune, because Time Warner were bankrolling the company? Take Time Warner out of the picture and Bischoff wouldn't be able to pay the wrestlers either would he?

No, but from 1995 to 1998 WCW was a profitable company with him over seeing it. I don't think ECW was at any juncture, and Heyman was pretty much done as a decent booker by the start of 1997. In fact I'd argue he was finished by the arse end of 1995. He's coasted longer than Bischoff has and got away with it forever, and I've never understood why. 

 

At least Bischoff tried new, creative and interesting things like ReAction as recently as 6 or 7 years ago (recently? Fuck).  What has Heyman done interesting and creative in 24 years? 

Edited October 17, 2019 by PowerButchi

[PowerButchi]

9 hours ago, tiger_rick said:

Stop being rational and allow this discussion on some of the most complex characters in wrestling history to be reduced to one liners about Turner's money and bouncy cheques.

And Heyman being smelly. 

[Max Power]

6 hours ago, Tamura said:

That only serves to underline the stupidity of the his decision to give away Goldberg vs Hogan for free. Rather than be patient with a long-term plan like with Starrcade 1997, he cost WCW millions just to beat the WWF in the TV ratings.
 

 I've already said Heyman wasn't a good businessman, even his staunchest supporters would agree on that point. However, was Bischoff a good businessman? Were WCW wrestlers paid in 1999 because of Bischoff's excellent business skills? Or were they paid, despite the company losing a fortune, because Time Warner were bankrolling the company? Take Time Warner out of the picture and Bischoff wouldn't be able to pay the wrestlers either would he?

I'm 1999 he would have been able to pay them using the 55 million profit he made in 1998.

[Undefeated Steak]

If it wasn't for Bischoff and WCW, Vince wouldn't have needed to push the WWF along so much in the late 90's and we wouldn't have had the boom period, which is by far the most influential time in wrestling, perhaps ever. Really, nothing much has changed since the turn of the millenium when it comes to the format of the company (and therefore industry as a whole), and the fact that WWE still relies so heavily on performers and inspiration from then demonstrates just how much of an influence those few years had.

I say this as a diehard Heyman fan, but there's no way you can say that he had a bigger influence on the industry than Bischoff did. 

Look at how different the WWF was between 1996 and 1999. It changed more in 3 years than it did in the previous 30. Apart from sticking an extra hour onto Raw and changing the ramps and lighting a bit, not that much has changed since.

Heyman has massively influenced the style of wrestling we've seen since then though. He demonstrated there was a need for more realistic characters and for more emphasis on the quality of wrestling for American audiences.

You can also argue that Heyman almost spawned a sub-genre of wrestling in the indies scene since then.

But Stone Cold, Rocky, all the stuff in the few years up until Wrestlemania 17, none of the would've happened if it wasn't for Bischoff.

The product in the late 90's was so good that it's kept a generation of fans hoping for a repeat of it. Bischoff did more to contribute to that than probably anyone else by a big margin.

[Guest]

12 hours ago, JakeRobertsParoleOfficer said:

I'm the last person to go with wwe version of events. 

I'd love to know exactly what I'm wrong about

Your obsession over Bischoff using the budget given to him being all he had, and ignorance of Heyman using the bank of mum & dad as his funds, just blatantly ignoring anything creative Eric done. 

Heyman was Bowler with richer parents

[Bus Surfer]

11 minutes ago, Louch said:

Heyman was Bowler with richer parents

There's a lot of shite in here and I'm not arsed about who had the biggest influence or whatever, but the above quote is some amazing hyperbole bollocks.

 

This place, fucks sake.

[BomberPat]

8 hours ago, PowerButchi said:

What has Heyman done interesting and creative in 24 years? 

In some ways, that's part of his skill. He's managed to cultivate the image of himself as a mastermind by not taking the kind of jobs that would expose him, when he could easily have taken a TNA paycheque and shown that he's lost it. 

[tiger_rick]

It's almost a pointless argument at the moment where almost everyone thinks they can just brush it off with a daft miopic view.

Bischoff made superb decisions at key times to control WCW's losses, hire Hogan and Savage, launch Nitro against Raw, steal Nash and Hall and use them to launch arguably the best angle ever, built a roster of incredible talent using an ever-increasing budget that increased in a lot of ways because of the revenue he was driving up and sparked the last boom period.

He also completely ran out of steam at it's height, allowed the greed for TV content to get out of hand, fostered an environment where the employees did what they wanted, didn't really know what to do after the nWo ran it's course, agreed a load of bad deals like Kiss, Master P and (as much as we all love the big lump) Sid and allowed Nash to run it into the ground in 1999 under his watch.

He was also a tremendous performer on TV and a passable announcer. At this point, if anyone is using him in wrestling, it should be for his douchey character and nothing else.

Heyman is a brilliant promoter. He's an incredible talker and showman, a phenomonally hard-worker and a personality who inspires people. He had his finger on the pulse in the 90s, produced a fantastic, alternative underground product and inspired change on a national level, albeit not with his company.

He was a victim of his own success with ECW turning over the real talent on a consistent basis and constantly trying to grow to the next level financially without having the investment or intelligence to do so. The losses were miniscule in the grand scheme of things and as much as it was shit that guys ended up out of pocket, some of them need to thank their lucky stars that they've made great money for 20 years on the back of ECW and Heyman.

Heyman is also an incredible on-screen performer and a superb colour guy. But he's also worked as a booker, consultant and mentor for WWE for years since ECW, either on the main roster, or with OVW and WWECW. Nothing about that has been brilliant but they clearly respect and trust him enough that he's working at the level he is currently.

It's impossible to judge Heyman's creative output at the moment because it's impossible to know how much is actually him and how much is him just doing what he knows they want. As much as we joke about it, I suspect the latter. But who knows, maybe he should get a kicking for the current terrible TV. I personally give him the benefit of the doubt because it's across the company and has been for years and years now. Putting it at his door seems crazy.

[Hannibal Scorch]

4 minutes ago, tiger_rick said:

It's impossible to judge Heyman's creative output at the moment because it's impossible to know how much is actually him and how much is him just doing what he knows they want. As much as we joke about it, I suspect the latter. But who knows, maybe he should get a kicking for the current terrible TV. I personally give him the benefit of the doubt because it's across the company and has been for years and years now. Putting it at his door seems crazy.

100% this. WWE has been on a downward spiral for a while now. The TV hasn't gotten much worse in the last 3 months then the previous 3 months, and while they continue to write and then re-write the shows as they do, they could hire anyone and they wouldn't be able to change the product. Vince needs to let it go and focus on the XFL instead. It certainly isn't Heyman's fault

[BomberPat]

There's a point in WWE's Heyman documentary a while back, I think it was, when they bring up Kevin Thorn gimmick in WWE's version of ECW.

Heyman said he wanted to do it, because he felt like vampires were going to be a big pop culture phenomenon any day now. If that's true, that's him making that call the year after the first Twilight book, but two years before the first movie, and two years before True Blood. It's a really minor example, but it shows Heyman being enough outside of the wrestling bubble to look at broader cultural/societal trends to inform his booking. Bischoff, by contrast, was booking KISS in 1999.

[WyattSheepMask]

KISS were out on a massive Reunion tour & album from the previous year. They weren’t in their prime, but were making a lot of money in the process. Booking The Misfits in 1999 was a much worse idea

[BomberPat]

1 minute ago, WyattSheepMask said:

 Booking The Misfits in 1999 was a much worse idea

Largely agreed. Though that was Vampiro's doing, so probably more a case of Bischoff needing to keep a tighter control of talent/the creative process - though it could be argued that's always been his biggest failing. 

[Carbomb]

1 hour ago, BomberPat said:

In some ways, that's part of his skill. He's managed to cultivate the image of himself as a mastermind by not taking the kind of jobs that would expose him, when he could easily have taken a TNA paycheque and shown that he's lost it. 

Something that I always thought was an indicator of how good a hustler Paul Heyman is that time when, very briefly, Dale Gagner's version of the AWA, just before it finally got shut down, put up a massive banner online about how Paul Heyman was taking over the booking, with a picture of him in the infamous arms-wide pose over the AWA logo. Round about the mid-2000s. Obviously it turned out to be just a bit of cheap promotion (I think it ended up just being an appearance at one of their shows), but the fact that a promoter used even just the idea of Heyman booking the promotion as a means to generate interest shows how good he's been at cultivating this image as a wrestling mastermind.

17 minutes ago, WyattSheepMask said:

Booking The Misfits in 1999 was a much worse idea

Rather see Danzig than Zandig tbh

[WyattSheepMask]

3 minutes ago, Carbomb said:

Something that I always thought was an indicator of how good a hustler Paul Heyman is that time when, very briefly, Dale Gagner's version of the AWA, just before it finally got shut down, put up a massive banner online about how Paul Heyman was taking over the booking, with a picture of him in the infamous arms-wide pose over the AWA logo. Round about the mid-2000s. Obviously it turned out to be just a bit of cheap promotion (I think it ended up just being an appearance at one of their shows), but the fact that a promoter used even just the idea of Heyman booking the promotion as a means to generate interest shows how good he's been at cultivating this image as a wrestling mastermind.

People have done the same thing for Vince Russo (was it IPW over here here?), is he a wrestling mastermind too? One good run does not a mastermind make

[Carbomb]

4 minutes ago, WyattSheepMask said:

People have done the same thing for Vince Russo (was it IPW over here here?), is he a wrestling mastermind too? One good run does not a mastermind make

I'm not saying he is one, I'm saying that's the image he's cultivated. When you think about it, they all have, really - Bischoff, Heyman, Russo (although his has been damaged a lot over the years), McMahon, Cornette. Vince definitely wins in being closest to one - he capitalised on his success so effectively that he and his company are now insulated pretty well against all problems caused by him losing it.