“Plans changed” - I call bullshit.

[air_raid]

My recent reminisce * over the September 93 WWF Mag with a glistening Luger’s abs on the cover got me thinking - what’s the best examples you can recall of hearing/reading someone claim a booking plan that ended up scrapped, which was so outlandish that you know it’s total fiction?

The reason I mention Luger… we all heard stories that he was pencilled in to win the belt at Mania X, right? However, my story in question is not that after winning the Rumble he’d have gone on and dethroned Yokozuna at Wrestlemania… that would have made sense! No, there was some poor misguided corner of the web where I once read that if Borga had not done his ankle at MSG… the mind boggles. Allegedly they’d have had Taker actually beat Zuna in the casket match instead of him getting Bloodlined, then Lex would have won the Rumble, at face value setting up Undertaker vs Luger for Mania. However… at some indeterminate point between PPVs (a Raw? A house show???) BORGA would win the WWF title from “the Dead Man” who would then head off for his hiatus to sort his back out.

What do you make to THAT?? Taker getting a Three Years Long Service medal of a “thanks for selling so many foam urns” second title reign again lasting no time at all? Luger avenging his “being robbed” (by his own stupidity) at SummerSlam by winning the belt from someone else? Yoko getting built up by squashing every decent babyface on the books and ending Hulkamania then NOT being vanquished at Mania? Ludvig Borga, WWF Champion?? I mean… yes, they were doing everything to build up “anti American” heels around the time - Luger had already been on the road with Borga for near 6 months at this point and they’d had “sympathiser” Crush going over Randy Savage in every town on the loop to make him look a threat too but… are we really cutting Yoko off before Mania just to give Taker another “stat” as the kids would say? And crown Borga, who was never better than “limited”? I don’t think so.

So… what was your favourite piece of booking bullshit anyone ever purported to believe?? Bonus points if any suggestion winds up something a Prichard or JR has actually confirmed as discussed as a possibility… LOL.

* Not a euphemism.

[JakeRobertsParoleOfficer]

There's multiple versions around the 'Luger' story.

1 that got played alot (before Luger suffered his health issues and become 'loved' by all) was that he was down to win the title at Summerslam but got pissed up, spilt the beans on this a few days before and therefore the then WWF changed lanes!

The WWF was a mess 93-96 creative wise. They couldn't decide if they wanted to go with the smaller guys (Bret etc) or still keep the big guys as the headliners....or go more 'real' or go totally cartoon

There's alot of 'gold' in there but also some baffling choices and I wouldn't be surprised if alot of the rumours aren't at least half true (e.g. the returning Quake to feud with Shawn michaels over the WWF title??)

 

 

 

 

[Chili]

3 minutes ago, JakeRobertsParoleOfficer said:

(before Luger suffered his health issues and become 'loved' by all) 

What's all this about?

[Kamaras-Tash]

1 minute ago, Chili said:

What's all this about?

 

I guess he means before he suffered the spinal stroke or whatever it was which left him like he is now. He was pretty much hated by most who blamed him for the death of Elizabeth with the drugs etc

[JakeRobertsParoleOfficer]

That's correct.

Prior to the spinal stroke, barring a few everything was negative about him in shoots:

Arrogant, dismissive, couldn't work, stitched up vince (by leaving even though no contract???....which kind of contradicts the wwf contract that nash and Co said had a rollover unless you issued a letter of intent  and requested it not to), got Liz on "stuff" which killed her

Virtually every shoot had a negative view on him ranging from disliked to abject hated.

I think the only ones who didn't outright cain him where his mates from the time: Sting, and the Steiners

Now he's referred to in much more positive tones than he was in all those mind 2000 shoots.

 

 

Edited April 22 by JakeRobertsParoleOfficer

[Chris B]

I can easily believe there are multiple backup plans discussed, that get taken to various levels of 'confirmed'. The Borga thing doesn't sound likely, but the idea that - if Yoko got injured, or they thought they may have problems with Taker's back - the plan was 'Luger wins from Yoko, but if Yoko doesn't get/stay over as champ, or if someone's injured, we'll take a punt on Borga'. They didn't seem to believe in Razor at that time, and who else did they have? Crush? It wouldn't be a surprise to me that Borga's name was in the mix at that point. But I doubt it was ever 'the plan'.

[air_raid]

22 minutes ago, JakeRobertsParoleOfficer said:

There's multiple versions around the 'Luger' story.

1 that got played alot (before Luger suffered his health issues and become 'loved' by all) was that he was down to win the title at Summerslam but got pissed up, spilt the beans on this a few days before and therefore the then WWF changed lanes!

To be blunt, (1) that's not quite the ridiculous, implausible bollocks I'm going for, It's very plausible that Luger winning the belt was planned, because it was at one point, (2) the common version of that story is concerning Mania X rather than SummerSlam and (3) it's been refuted many times by all involved.

[wandshogun09]

One that springs to mind for me is Shane Douglas claiming that when he came into the WWF in 1995, the plan was for him to beat Shawn Michaels for the IC title (fair enough, maybe) then they’d rematch for the World title at WrestleMania 12. 

There’s just…no way, is there? I’ve seen him say it in a couple of different interviews and it seems like somewhere along the line he genuinely convinced himself it was supposed to happen. But;

1) Clearly Vince had no grand plans like that for the Dean. I can see him winning the IC title, and he kind of did (via forfeit), but he was never gonna be in the mix to win the big belt, was he? Especially in that rancid powder blue girls swimming costume with the big exclamation mark on the back. Even in the lean times of 95, there were always a bunch of better options than that. I give that a ‘D’ for ‘delusional’, Mr Douglas.

2) The talk from almost everyone who was around in that mid 80s - early 90s era has always been that, back then at least, Vince used to plan his top Mania matches way ahead. There’s no way Douglas, who came in around the summer of 95, would’ve been pencilled in to headline the Mania that would happen about 7/8 months later. I’m guessing that it wasn’t long after Mania 11 that the plan became for Shawn to become champ, and him being turned babyface right away set the wheels in motion. But it was never gonna be Shane Douglas in the opposite corner. If he was Hulk Hogan returning in 95 or something then no doubt Vince would’ve shuffled the deck. But plans weren’t gonna change for the Dynamic Dude.

3) What about Bret? And how in the fuck would they have gone about the title changes? I’m presuming Douglas reckons he would’ve gone into Mania as defending champ, with Shawn’s “boyhood dream coming true” the same way it did, only against a sodding teacher instead of the Excellence Of Execution. So Douglas would’ve still presumably ‘won’ and then lost the IC belt to Razor in October, then somehow became the World champ within the few months spell leading into Mania 12? Dean Douglas dethroning Diesel or Bret Hart? Sounds likely. Would’ve been a total clusterfuck. If the logic was that it would be better if Shawn took the belt off a heel, surely they’d have gone with Owen for that role considering he was the one who worsened Shawn’s concussion issues in the storyline. Shawn vs Owen doesn’t scream Mania headliner in 95 either but it would’ve had more legs to it as a redemption story and no doubt the match itself would’ve been better than hastily throwing Shane in there. 

4) It simply was just never happening, was it? The Franchise? More like The Fantasist. 

I know this is all coming from Douglas himself and I’ve never seen Bullshit Bruce or…frankly anyone else talk about this scenario as being ever in the plans. But I find it hilarious picturing Vince signing Shane Douglas in summer 95 and immediately turning to Patterson, Prichard and whoever and going “god damn pal, scrap all those plans for WrestleMania. That’s my new headliner”. In a time of struggle for the WWF, the thought of Vince seeing a teacher main eventing Mania as being something that was worth reshuffling plans for is comical to me. Of course, how it went from that to Vince holding him back and ‘not using him properly’ is all 100% the Kliq’s fault. 

[Hannibal Scorch]

Was there any back ups to the Adam Cole being Keith Lee's manager rumours which were circling before their releases from WWE? That seemed unlikely to me.

[air_raid]

41 minutes ago, wandshogun09 said:

One that springs to mind for me is Shane Douglas claiming that when he came into the WWF in 1995, the plan was for him to beat Shawn Michaels for the IC title (fair enough, maybe) then they’d rematch for the World title at WrestleMania 12. 

Brilliant example. Fucking awful twaddle. They thought he’d win the ICT before Shawn got concussed and wouldn’t be able to work Winnipeg, but WWF title? Dean Douglas? Fuck right off.

43 minutes ago, wandshogun09 said:

3) What about Bret?

He’ll tell you. Around SummerSlam 95 is when is Vince told him he’d transition the belt from Kev to HBK. So the plans were already made before “The Dean” had a single televised match.

[Loki]

How much stock do we put in the rumour that the original plan for the "brand split" was to give Raw over to be rebranded WCW Nitro?  This would be in 2001 during the Invasion storyline, and the story goes this plan was nixed after the Bagwell/Booker match was shite.

Does it really sound likely that Vince ever would have given over his flagship show to be rebranded in the colours of his rival?  Chinny reck-on.  Also, I can't imagine the network having any interest in rebranding its hit wrestling show to a different company.

[Infinity Land]

41 minutes ago, Loki said:

How much stock do we put in the rumour that the original plan for the "brand split" was to give Raw over to be rebranded WCW Nitro?  This would be in 2001 during the Invasion storyline, and the story goes this plan was nixed after the Bagwell/Booker match was shite.

Does it really sound likely that Vince ever would have given over his flagship show to be rebranded in the colours of his rival?  Chinny reck-on.  Also, I can't imagine the network having any interest in rebranding its hit wrestling show to a different company.

In 2001. The original plan was for WCW to be its own thing. With the belief there was a Saturday night slot on TNN. There's ads for cancelled shows that were going to be TV tapings.

By the time the brand split became an idea in 2002 there was the talk of Nitro/Smackdown. Which is something i've never really put much faith in beyond the people that talked to Meltzer were floating it as an idea in meetings.

[air_raid]

7 hours ago, Loki said:

How much stock do we put in the rumour that the original plan for the "brand split" was to give Raw over to be rebranded WCW Nitro?  

 

7 hours ago, Infinity Land said:

In 2001. The original plan was for WCW to be its own thing. With the belief there was a Saturday night slot on TNN. There's ads for cancelled shows that were going to be TV tapings.

Running WCW as a separate show, completely plausible. It was odd that initially they tried to babyface the whole of the incoming roster by them going after Vince, and even stranger they didn’t foresee a hostile reaction to Booker T lamping the boss and scoring one for the Monday Night Wars great losers in Madison Square Garden which was something akin to Napoleon performing a victory parade through Trafalgar Square after the dust had settled at Waterloo. The WCW roster ran house shows on their own for a few weeks, which you can read about at many worthwhile online resources. Give them a show, yes. Give them Raw? Fuck off was that ever happening. To further the analogy, that’s Napoleon losing and being captured but then given Wellington’s army to command. No fucking chance.

Speaking of WCW, brand splits and breaking my own rules completely, it always amuses me when Bischoff talks about the idea behind Thunder being to better utilise more talent and bangs on about thinking Bret Hart would have been a great focal point. Like he could have the nWo storylines on Nitro and a bit more wrestling on Thunder, headed up by Bret. Considering he had final say on virtually everything, it baffles me that he floats this as the plan but when it came time to execute, Bret gets introduced on Nitro as the ref for Hollywood Hogan vs Sting, and the first Thunder is built around the Hogan vs Sting fallout from the rematch and subsequent title vacancy. Doesn’t seem like the roster split was a plan Eric considered for very long at all, whatever he says.

Unless it was TBS saying “We wanted another Nitro, you can’t make us the B show.” Which is funny, because it didn’t take long for it to become so.

[Loki]

2 hours ago, air_raid said:

Give them Raw? Fuck off was that ever happening.

And yet it's become accepted internet fact - it's even on Wikipedia, unsourced of course.  

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WWE_brand_extension#2002_split
 

Quote

One year prior, the original plan was to create a new WCW (which would be an independent entity in the storylines but would be under the WWF's auspices in reality), and for this new WCW to take over Raw and use the show to recreate its WCW counterpart, WCW Monday Nitro. 

I mean, they DID do the match at the end of A Raw, with the Nitro branding but I think that's been expanded into a whole "plan" by Meltzer and other "journalists", I can't see it ever being the actual idea on Vince's part.

I'm generally against roster splits, I don't think it works and the WWE ones have derailed more careers than they've made I'd argue.  One of the nice things about WCW was the ever-rotating roster which made the shows feel a lot more "international" if you know what I mean, a bit like AEW nowadays except they weren't putting Scott Norton into a feud with Hogan.  But WCW could easily have split off an entire WWF roster's worth of talent and made Thunder a completely separate brand at that point they had the bodies.

[air_raid]

23 minutes ago, Loki said:

I mean, they DID do the match at the end of A Raw, with the Nitro branding but I think that's been expanded into a whole "plan" by Meltzer and other "journalists", I can't see it ever being the actual idea on Vince's part.

Amazingly, the Meltz has been Tweeting about this very topic as recently as February ;

Quote

Why did the Vince McMahon divorce angle in 2001 get stopped cold?  Because the end result was for Linda to get Raw, give it to Shane, and Shane "run's (sic) WCW" as a separate show on Monday  Then the crowd in Tacoma in one fell swoop changed the plans and everything was dropped by Wednesday.

I can see both sides. The WWF weren't even one year into their 5 year contract for Raw with TNN, I doubt their brass would have been thrilled with a total rebrand of the show they'd paid big bucks to lure away from USA. It also would have been a huge gamble for the WWF, if ratings for "the flagship" had dropped because their viewers didn't want Booker T, they wanted Steve Austin. That said... Prichard has pointed out that more homes having access to UPN than TNN at the time made it appealing to make SmackDown the flagship show. There's a logic there I suppose, but I can't help the feeling that at the crunch they'd have wussed out regardless of Tacoma shitting on Booker vs Buff.