Bluegrassrivals

I'd love to hear what others thoughts on are on this. LWC, Worker, I'm possitive you have opinions on this that could go into a bit more detail.

Vince McMahon in 1983 launched his global empire that changed wrestling forever. Before Vince turned the WWF into the mega Sports Entertainment business that is is today, the wrestling culture looked a lot different.

Wrestling was made up of 3 giant territory that all had their version of a World Champion. The support system for them were territories made up from across the rest of the nation. WWF had the East Coast, NWA was spread through-out the Midwest and the South, and the AWA was West of the Mississippi. There were many other organizations that were strong in their own right such as WCCW in Texas, Mid-South and Memphis in the south, and various other organizations in the west that I'm not that familiar with. But, all of these smaller territories had their own version of a champion, and the World Champion from the bigger organizations would come and it would be a unique and special event. The territories built their own stars and then those stars would travel or be booked out to another territory to keep from burning out the local territory.

Fastforward almost 30 years, and we have ONE organization and a wanna-be in TNA and a possible up and comer with ROH. LWC is in the process of getting the ground work of a promotion started. I could not help but think of what he is doing and how it must have been 30+ years ago. Now we have PPV's on monthly with a $45-$55 price tag and television shows that focus on television ratings that are more important to television execs and stockholders than the wrestling fan who is there to be entertained.

So, what's your thoughts?

This is one of those questions that have a dual answer of yes and no.

Creating the mega-company really seems to have elevated wrestling as a global market. However, as we can attest to with ECW, WCW, even NWA at one point, competition drives a market. Wrestling is at its best when someone is challenging WWE. I believe TNA is perfectly content with what they are, and are not going to take the risks to compete with WWE, because they feel no need to. The times they have tried to go head-head they have been demolished.

Vince McMahon, to me, has been more lucky than good. EVERY business venture he has tried aside from Wrestlemania and territory merger has not just failed but Mega-Failed.

I believe that Wrestlemania might have been his biggest impact on the wrestling world, even more than creating a true WORLD champion or territory merger. Because the territories in some ways were good for wrestling, and Japan has a legitimate claim to some of the best wrestlers in the world. However, at one time, the best talent in the world was on the WWE roster when Vince bought WCW and ECW.

Tough question.

For wrestling fans.....yes.

For his own personal gain.....no.

But you can't hate on the man for cornering the market on wrestling.

I for one LOVED it when the Monday night wars were going on and you had the option of either/or.

ECW wasn't half bad and you could watch it as well.

I say yes he did. Growing up watching wrestling in the 60s I have gone from seeing Bobo Brazil at Cobo Arena to the acting we have now! If you turn on WWE on Monday night you can miss the first 20 minutes because they talk the show to death. What Vince did was flood the market with wrestling we started seeing too much on tv. The product became watered down we went from just seeing wrestling on Saturday afternoon from Detroit or Mid Atlantic wrestling. No matter what side you take I think you are going to be right.

^ That's a great post AD. But do you think we can blame Vince on flooding the market with Wrestling. Both of us grew up collecting Topps baseball cards. By 2000, there were probably 100 different trading card companies, and during the year, each companies will put out one or two "Revised" editions. Look at television today. American Idol was the "Big Thing". Now look at the number of reality talent shows that have flooded the market. And if you just want to get down to sports specific on flooding the market and killing the local industry, hasn't ESPN done more damage to sports than anything possible!

I like your thinking, but is it really something we can blame on Vince? I'm not taking up for, just the "devils advocate" stance. Had Vince not did what he did, do we not think that someone else would have? Ted Turner had WCW on a national market before WWF did. WCCW started marketing their program to foreign countries before WWF. Had it not been Vince, I'm confident that it would have been someone else. I just think he was the "first"

Thoughts????

I guess ruined isn't the right word for what Vince did. Vince changed wrestling as we knew it from our younger days. Vince gave us what we asked for wrestling 2 or 3 times a week and it was always a good show.

^ Yeah, I get that. We are used to a development process that constantly pressed the industry to get better. Now, there is no competiton and 90% of wrestling fans ONLY know what Vince has taught them to like.

What was better than Saturday evening at 6:05 pm on TBS Georgia Championship Wrestling with Gordan Solie calling the action?

^ Ummm - Nothing!!!

American Dream Wrote:What was better than Saturday evening at 6:05 pm on TBS Georgia Championship Wrestling with Gordan Solie calling the action?

:Thumbs: