Booking on the fly

[Max Power]

Does "make sure you count to 3 at normal pace Nick" at Starcade 97 count?

If only Sting had been on the sunbed that day.

[wandshogun09]

On 4/4/2021 at 2:47 PM, Chasingamymatt said:

Bret mentions in his book he was meant to face Steamboat at 4 but ended up in the battle Royale.

Think the timeline is a bit wonky here. Bret claimed he was meant to wrestle Steamboat at WrestleMania 2 not 4 but yeah, ended up in the battle royal and Steamboat faced Hercules instead. Whether that was actually ever the plan or not I don’t know but that’s what Bret has said. Think their match at Boston Garden that’s on Bret’s DVD was from right around the time of Mania 2 as well if I recall right. Is this bollocks @air_raid? Seems a bit random to me that they’d have planned to put Bret in a singles match at Mania like that in 86 when he was right in the thick of the tag team scene with Anvil but I don’t know. 

[air_raid]

52 minutes ago, wandshogun09 said:

Think the timeline is a bit wonky here. Bret claimed he was meant to wrestle Steamboat at WrestleMania 2 not 4 but yeah, ended up in the battle royal and Steamboat faced Hercules instead. Whether that was actually ever the plan or not I don’t know but that’s what Bret has said. Think their match at Boston Garden that’s on Bret’s DVD was from right around the time of Mania 2 as well if I recall right. Is this bollocks @air_raid? Seems a bit random to me that they’d have planned to put Bret in a singles match at Mania like that in 86 when he was right in the thick of the tag team scene with Anvil but I don’t know. 

@wandshogun09Yeah the match in Boston was a dry run. They wrestled in Washington the night after too. Bret wrestled in singles on loads of house shows at the time against Dan Spivey too, not for the last time he was in a tag team on TV but being looked at in singles on the road. He had loads of singles matches on house shows in 88 and spent virtually all of 89 wrestling singles against (most famously) Mr Perfect, Rick Martel, Honky Tonk Man and a couple of matches with Rick Rude. They were permanently checking what live crowd reactions were to Hitman on his own.

[wandshogun09]

Cheers for the info. I remember him saying in a shoot interview that they kept promising to split him and Neidhart up as far back as the late 80s and give Bret a big push as a single so all those single matches on the house shows all adds up. But he also said that the reason they were thinking of pushing him was because he was getting more fan mail than Hogan (in 88/89?) so I didn’t know what to take seriously after that. 

Edited April 5, 2021 by wandshogun09

[theringmaster]

On 4/4/2021 at 7:52 AM, LaGoosh said:

Wasn't Hogan beating Triple H for the title a last minute decision? I remember reading that Triple H was really upset about it but Vince was determined to cash in on the big Hogan nostalgia run while he could.

Apparently Trip H was a big Hogan mark as a kid and was actually quite up for it but the plan was for him to take the belt back at next PPV but somebody (I'm guessing Vince) thought it would be best if Hogan lost it to Taker.

On 4/4/2021 at 10:43 AM, WyattSheepMask said:

There was that time that the referee decided to end The Undertaker’s Wrestlemania Streak when he changed the ending in the ring...

In all serious though, Hogan is the king of on the fly/late change booking. The World War 3 Battle Royale has already been mentioned plus two separate occasions where Randy dropped the belt to Hogan on Nitro 24hrs after winning it, and of course there’s Wrestlemania 9.

So the story goes, he was meant to return the favour to HBK and lose to him the month after Summerslam, leading to  a rubber match at Wrestlemania 22. Hogan goes all Apollo Creed at the 11th hour saying “there ain’t gonna be no rematch”, so Shawn decides he’s going to oversell everything Hogan hits him with, and welll, we’ve all seen what happened there.

One of wrestling's great mistruth's. Hogan was bought in specifically to win the belt from Yoko so they could get a high replay buy rate and then tour with him as Champion in Europe. Bruce Pritchard details it in an episode of STWW. I'm pretty sure Bruce also said something along the lines of 'If Hogan wasn't up for it, somebody else would have beaten Yoko, Vince wanted that finish regardless"

 

But on the topic of Hogan and 'on the fly', didn't he like tell Shawn Michaels about an hour before their match he can't do the rematch so that whole match plan basically went out the window?

[WyattSheepMask]

35 minutes ago, theringmaster said:

 

One of wrestling's great mistruth's. Hogan was bought in specifically to win the belt from Yoko so they could get a high replay buy rate and then tour with him as Champion in Europe. Bruce Pritchard details it in an episode of STWW. I'm pretty sure Bruce also said something along the lines of 'If Hogan wasn't up for it, somebody else would have beaten Yoko, Vince wanted that finish regardless"

Ok, maybe WM9 wasn’t on the fly per se. but I’d bet it was a late decision to put the belt back on Hogan. As for taking Bruce Prichard’s word as the truth, it’s not like he works in a business full of carnies or anything.

If they were trying to drum up ticket sales for a European tour, it could only have been the one in July that started in Germany because Hogan wasn’t on the one immediately following Wrestlemania (he didn’t even start working House Shows again until the end of May), a tour by which he’d already lost the belt. The only match he had between Wrestlemania and the first European tour was for New Japan in Fukuoka.

Had Hogan won the belt at King of the Ring en route to a match with Bret Hart at Summerslam, that second European tour reason might hold true. But what we got was Hogan “winning the belt to sell a tour” that he wasn’t on, went home for a month, then worked a different promotion (famously comparing the WWF Title belt to a Christmas Tree ornament), worked 8 House Show tag matches (a rerun of Hogan/Beefcake v Money Inc) then dropped the belt before the European tour that he was supposedly the champion to draw for, where he beat the champion every night by DQ any way

[theringmaster]

1 hour ago, WyattSheepMask said:

Ok, maybe WM9 wasn’t on the fly per se. but I’d bet it was a late decision to put the belt back on Hogan. As for taking Bruce Prichard’s word as the truth, it’s not like he works in a business full of carnies or anything.

If they were trying to drum up ticket sales for a European tour, it could only have been the one in July that started in Germany because Hogan wasn’t on the one immediately following Wrestlemania (he didn’t even start working House Shows again until the end of May), a tour by which he’d already lost the belt. The only match he had between Wrestlemania and the first European tour was for New Japan in Fukuoka.

Had Hogan won the belt at King of the Ring en route to a match with Bret Hart at Summerslam, that second European tour reason might hold true. But what we got was Hogan “winning the belt to sell a tour” that he wasn’t on, went home for a month, then worked a different promotion (famously comparing the WWF Title belt to a Christmas Tree ornament), worked 8 House Show tag matches (a rerun of Hogan/Beefcake v Money Inc) then dropped the belt before the European tour that he was supposedly the champion to draw for, where he beat the champion every night by DQ any way

The dates of this tour are actually talked about in detail in the same episode, Conrad pretty much points out everything you just said. Bruce's explanation is Hogan was the draw not the belt so he didn't really need to keep it (Conrad pointed out how stupid this logic was when he got the belt to tour with) and Bruce's reply is regardless what we later thought those were the reasons and I get where he is coming from, In my job we make loads of decisions which appear to contradict earlier decisions but its a case of 'what we aimed for at the time'. Also worth remembering Vince is notorious for hot/cold booking, its pretty much all that Foley talks about in his 3rd book, one day he's all for something, next he's lost interest. Vince wanted Hogan to win the belt to tour with, when he got the belt Vince was happy for him to lose the belt, it doesn't take away why they done it, people are allowed to change their minds, that's kinda what this entire thread is about....

 

I can't be bothered to look it up right now but the whole WrestleMania 9 finish came from a Boxing match with a surprise winner, the Replay buy rate on Monday/Tuesday was extremely high and it was put down to people talking about it at work on Monday morning (Got to remember this was pre internet). The pitch was people going to work and saying "Did you see Hogan won the belt?" "But he wasn't even wrestling for the belt?" Then they go home and buy the show to see exactly how it went down. Hogan was seen as the 'needle mover' to get people's attention.

[Perry]

Hogan's win at Mania 9 obviously wasn't done on the fly. The Raw episode that aired the night after was taped 2 weeks prior and at the start Vince was standing infront of the camera talking about Hogan being crowned the new champion. I guess most people in the Manhattan Center found out what was going to happen at Mania 9 in advance too.

Edited April 6, 2021 by Perry

[Chasingamymatt]

14 hours ago, air_raid said:

@wandshogun09Yeah the match in Boston was a dry run. They wrestled in Washington the night after too. Bret wrestled in singles on loads of house shows at the time against Dan Spivey too, not for the last time he was in a tag team on TV but being looked at in singles on the road. He had loads of singles matches on house shows in 88 and spent virtually all of 89 wrestling singles against (most famously) Mr Perfect, Rick Martel, Honky Tonk Man and a couple of matches with Rick Rude. They were permanently checking what live crowd reactions were to Hitman on his own.

ahh cheers guys, i knew Bret ended up in a battle royal but thought it was the one he lost to Bad News not when Andre threw him onto Anvil. nice one

[stewdogg]

3 hours ago, Perry said:

Hogan's win at Mania 9 obviously wasn't done on the fly. The Raw episode that aired the night after was taped 2 weeks prior and at the start Vince was standing infront of the camera talking about Hogan being crowned the new champion. I guess most people in the Manhattan Center found out what was going to happen at Mania 9 in advance too.

That isn't what happened, it was mentioned in commentary but that can be added anytime I guess.

[Perry]

My mistake. For some reason I thought Vince mentioned it at the top of the show infront of the live audience. I'm sure there was a time when he actually mentioned the outcome of a PPV match this way without going down the usual route of it being added to the commentary after the show had been edited.

[WyattSheepMask]

1 hour ago, Perry said:

My mistake. For some reason I thought Vince mentioned it at the top of the show infront of the live audience. I'm sure there was a time when he actually mentioned the outcome of a PPV match this way without going down the usual route of it being added to the commentary after the show had been edited.

The only one that immediately comes to mind is the RAW after Wrestlemania 11 where they did an in-ring interview with Diesel. That, much like the example you used, was taped weeks earlier, so everyone in the building that night knew the result of Wrestlemania in advance. 
There could well be other examples from around that time, but I’d have to look them up.

Everything about WM9 reeks of Hogan going to McMahon and getting his ear. There was no reason to put the belt on Hogan that night. He could’ve won the belt from Yokozuna at KOTR and a match between Bret and Hogan at Summerslam would’ve done great business and cemented Bret as a top guy in victory. 
Leave Yoko off between KOTR and Summerslam and build him back up afterwards, and have Lex carry on as a heel but drop the Narcissus part. 
Hogan can leave after Summerslam to  go make Thunder In Paradise and the space-time-continuem is restored

Edited April 6, 2021 by WyattSheepMask

[air_raid]

43 minutes ago, WyattSheepMask said:

The only one that immediately comes to mind is the RAW after Wrestlemania 11 where they did an in-ring interview with Diesel. That, much like the example you used, was taped weeks earlier, so everyone in the building that night knew the result of Wrestlemania in advance. 

That’s not true. They taped three weeks of Raw the night after Mania in Poughkeepsie including the infamous Sid turning on Shawn angle the same night which aired live. There are websites that seem to list that episode as being taped 13th March, but they’re wrong. They did tape some Raws on 13/03 but in Stockton, Cali - nowhere near CT where Mania was. Go watch that episode on the Network and you’ll see that the actual powerbombs from Sid are missing, because on the live broadcast they fucked up and went to ad break just before Sid attacked Shawn and came back with him lying flat on his face. The first chance people got to see the attack in full was by watching WWF Mania at the weekend - never would have happened if it was pre-taped.

[WyattSheepMask]

I do remember reading about them having to redo the Sid/Shawn angle, but as you said, they listed that as happening prior to Mania, so thanks for correcting 

[air_raid]

I had another thought ;

1 hour ago, WyattSheepMask said:

There was no reason to put the belt on Hogan that night. He could’ve won the belt from Yokozuna at KOTR and a match between Bret and Hogan at Summerslam would’ve done great business and cemented Bret as a top guy in victory. 

About the only justification I can imagine is that Mania always ends with a good guy winning. At least for the first 15.

Mania IX is a really good shout for the topic. No idea how far out Vince changed the plans but he only told Bret he was no longer retaining the night before the show.

King of the Ring very nearly qualifies as well for that matter. Bret writes in his book about speaking to Vince on 29th May where he’s promised the belt back from Hogan at SummerSlam but he needs to speak to Hogan first. Vince calls Bret back “10 days later” to tell him Hogan won’t lose to him so will be dropping the title to Yokozuna... which makes it 5 days before the PPV.