Youtube Thread 2000

[BomberPat]

25 minutes ago, LaGoosh said:

Who was booking the main event scene in 97? It was such great stuff and so different to the hot shot style in 98. I'm presuming it was before Russo and Ferrera?

Someone once described it to me as a "main event matrix"; that is to say, rather than it being the standard WWF booking of one top babyface and a revolving door of challengers, you had a handful of wrestlers you could slot in a main event match together in any combination, plus a few just a rung down the ladder that could conceivably and believably step up to the plate. Short-lived, but such a great way to book wrestling TV - the closest comparison in mainstream wrestling is probably the Smackdown 6.

Edited January 22, 2025 by BomberPat

[wandshogun09]

I think what probably made early 97 especially so fun and unpredictable was because they were forced to get more creative because the original plan for Shawn vs Bret at WrestleMania 13 fell to bits. It felt like they were keeping their options open and having to find ways to make sure everyone at the top of the cards stayed at a strong main event level. And that resulted in some fantastic TV where you really didn’t know which way it was going. Probably because, for some of that time at least, they probably weren’t 100% sure themselves. There were a few of those multi-man in-ring interviews/confrontations on Raw around Jan/Feb where you’d have any or all of Bret, Shawn, Austin, Sid, Taker, Vader out there and it genuinely felt like almost any combination was possible for the Mania 13 title match. 

[LaGoosh]

3 minutes ago, BomberPat said:

Someone once described it to me as a "main event matrix"; that is to say, rather than it being the standard WWF booking of one top babyface and a revolving door of challengers, you had a handful of wrestlers you could slot in a main event match together in any combination, plus a few just a rung down the ladder that could conceivably and believably step up to the plate. Short-lived, but such a great way to book wrestling TV.

Feels like the type of booking you should see more of but you barely ever see. The closest I can think of is WWE in the late 2000s where it felt like endless combinations of Cena, Triple H, Orton, HBK, Edge, Batista and Big Show every PPV.

I love Austin footage from 97. He's so intense you feel like he's going to burst off the screen. You can just see that he was going to force himself into the top spot or die trying. A truly unstoppable aura - I can't think of anyone who has ever come even close to it.

The Bret stuff is obviously fantastic just because of the reality of it. It's not two guys standing 5 feet apart doing soliloquys or trading witty barbs or "shoot" comments. It feels like two very real and very dangerous men who genuinely despise one another (and like all best angles - it was 100% work) and desperately want to make the other feel incredible pain. Beautiful. 

[Chili]

Said it recently but Owen/Bulldog are MAGIC in that period. Bret's goons but with a real legit aura to them based on their credibility, but also completely down to playing essentially a wrestling version of a pair of panto dames. 

[Devon Malcolm]

1 hour ago, LaGoosh said:

Who was booking the main event scene in 97? It was such great stuff and so different to the hot shot style in 98. I'm presuming it was before Russo and Ferrera?

According to Cornette, it was just before they came on board creative. It was Cornette, McMahon, Patterson and Prichard with some contributions from Jim Ross.

[The Dart]

Funny how we all look back so fondly on a year that included so many Los Boricuas vs. Disciples of Apocalypse matches.

[garynysmon]

23 hours ago, wandshogun09 said:

I think Russo took more of a role in it around April/May 97, as a direct result of that rotten Raw in South Africa around that time. 

I refuse to believe that the godawful half South Africa/half US episode wasn't an elaborate rib.

Even given the time difference, pretending the commentators were talking to each other live and on the Network version half the South African commentary has gone missing.

Never has a year evolved so much from Royal Rumble to Royal Rumble than 1997 to 1998 (with a notable shoutout to 1992 to 1993 where star power just fell off a cliff).

Edited January 23, 2025 by garynysmon

[davertfnewman]

And while WCW was giving us Rey, Juvi, Ultimo Dragon, we were getting old Fantastics, Devon Storm and Ace Darling going twenty seconds and Eric Shelley ("Who?!").

[air_raid]

18 hours ago, garynysmon said:

Never has a year evolved so much from Royal Rumble to Royal Rumble than 1997 to 1998 (with a notable shoutout to 1992 to 1993 where star power just fell off a cliff).

Let's not go too far, to fill 30 spots in 1998 they still had to let Mick Foley trot out three times and call The Honky Tonk Man.

[Snitsky's back acne]

That time Barry Horowitz became an honorary Fabulous Freebird.

 

[The Gaffer]

I have no idea where to stick this and it sure doesn't deserve its own thread. Possibly one of the most hilariously underwhelming teasers I've ever seen for anything:

 

 

[wandshogun09]

Just watched this clip of an old Lex Luger shoot interview where he’s on about Goldberg…

I’d heard the story of him almost signing with the WWF before eventually going with WCW and debuting in 97. Makes me wonder what would’ve become of him if he had signed with the WWF at that time. It’s easy to look back with the benefit of hindsight and assume he’d have caught on just the same as he did in WCW but I’m not sure he’d have even been in the position to. Obviously he had a great look but so did a lot of guys who never amounted to much. It seems like, more than anything, WCW lucked out with him. The crowds took to him and, miraculously for WCW, for once they just ran with it. But at a time like 97 in the WWF, when they had Austin soaring in popularity, Rock on the rise, Foley properly catching on, Undertaker being a constant at the top of the cards and Bret, Shawn and Sid still knocking about, I’m not sure where a big green rookie would’ve fit in. You’d at least have to assume they’d have presented him differently looks-wise than the Goldberg we ended up getting just because it was too close to Austin’s look. Fuck knows what they’d have had him doing. Maybe he’d have still caught fire, maybe he’d have got lost in the shuffle and ended up as just another musclebound midcarder like Luther Reigns or something. Stuff like this fascinates me though. You change that one little thing in history and Goldberg signs with the WWF in 97 instead and so much might’ve been different. In good and bad ways. 

[simonworden]

There's no way he would've been pushed to the top so quickly. The WWF wasn't presenting anything like what WCW was doing in 1997 and didn't really have the roster for Goldberg to run through. I don't think they would have been so willing to let a limited rookie just smash people on their way to the top. 

There's a high chance in 97 he ends up as a member of DOA, Truth Commission or the Oddities. Maybe at a push he gets to be a bodyguard for someone. Then in 98 he almost certainly would've ended up as Brawl for All fodder and I expect fucking it all off. 

I really don't think Goldberg would have had the patience for wrestling if he had to grind as a lower carder back in the day with endless house shows, cheap rental cars and bunking in a motel room with Foley in his pants. He'd have been right on Taker's shit list and out the door. 

[BomberPat]

Goldberg in the WWF wouldn't have got the Streak, wouldn't have got the pseudo-MMA packaging, so would have been a completely different beast. He'd have probably spent a few months, if not longer, working in Memphis or training with Dory Funk Jr. before making it to the main roster, and then I think the estimate that he would have been faction or tag team fodder is probably the most likely place for him to land.

If he wrestled the same in the WWF as he did in WCW, there's no way he's working with Steve Austin, which limits his ability to ever be a top guy. But if he came up through the WWF's system rather than WCW's, then he probably wouldn't wrestle the way he did anyway, he'd have been trained into a completely different worker - which, again, likely shaves off some of the things that made him stand out and made him a star.

Another fascinating What If? - we all know that Taz and Shane Douglas tried to bring Kurt Angle into ECW, and that he could have debuted there in 1996, where it not for the crucifixion angle. But there's actually a newspaper article from 1987, that Koko B. Ware had tried to recruit a 19 year old Kurt Angle to the WWF. Again, I can only see him being a tag team worker or an undercard guy at that time.

[Chili]

Goldberg in WWF is Brakus, right down to Savio Vega caving his face in. Russo probably gives him some sort of gimmick related to his surname. Shitcanned in the post Wrestlemania XV spring clean. Much like Big Show, I don't think they'd have had a clue what they had in the moment, but WCW didn't either for a while.