I know that everything on the internet is true.... :biggrin:
But I saw this and wanted to know from some "old timers" if this is true.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivor_Series_(1987)
"The event was added after WrestleMania III, to market the success from Hulk Hogan and André the Giant's rivalry.
Vince McMahon threatened cable companies who aired the NWA's Starrcade (which was going head-to-head with Survivor Series on Thanksgiving night, 1987) instead of Survivor Series would not be allowed to broadcast WrestleMania IV. Most cable providers gave into McMahon's threat and only a handful aired Starrcade."
It's a thousand wonders the WWF didn't bankrupt NWA/WCW in the late 80's/early 90's if McMahon pulled stunts like this.
The talent was 10X greater in the WWF at the time... plus the events were better booked as well. Not too mention they were on the heels of the biggest rivalry match in history at WM III.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
And this is just one example that I stumbled upon... I'm sure there are several more cases similar to this one.
Pulp Fiction Wrote:I know that everything on the internet is true.... :biggrin:
But I saw this and wanted to know from some "old timers" if this is true.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivor_Series_(1987)
"The event was added after WrestleMania III, to market the success from Hulk Hogan and André the Giant's rivalry. Vince McMahon threatened cable companies who aired the NWA's Starrcade (which was going head-to-head with Survivor Series on Thanksgiving night, 1987) instead of Survivor Series would not be allowed to broadcast WrestleMania IV. Most cable providers gave into McMahon's threat and only a handful aired Starrcade."
It's a thousand wonders the WWF didn't bankrupt NWA/WCW in the late 80's/early 90's if McMahon pulled stunts like this.
The talent was 10X greater in the WWF at the time... plus the events were better booked as well. Not too mention they were on the heels of the biggest rivalry match in history at WM III.
I disagree with the talent being 10x better. The N.W.A. had a lot of wrestling talent back in the day.
I agree with Westy that the wresting was WAAAYYYY Better in the NWA, but, all the guys in the NWA wound up going to the WWF. If you think about it, every major star of the NWA went to the WWF at one time or another.
The story about Vince blackballing the Cable providers is true. But stunts went back and forth with each group. WWF showed the above mentioned Survivor Series against Starcade. .
But there were incidents where they both broadcast PPV quality events for free against the other organization. NWA was airing their PPV Bunkhouse brawl, when Vince put the very first Royal Rumble on free tv. That was followed by a hugh free Clash of the Champions that topped the WWF's buyrate for WWF's Wrestlemania 4. The NWA actually did much better in their early battles. But, through attrition of superstars, WWF won the early battles until Ted Turner bought the NWA, changed it to WCW and that turned into the Monday Night Wars that almost bankrupted Vince. Had it not been for non-wrestling guys running the corporate WCW, it might have been WWF who was bought out.
Westside Wrote:I disagree with the talent being 10x better. The N.W.A. had a lot of wrestling talent back in the day.
Let me re-phrase.... The talent in the WWF had 10X the drawing power than the N.W.A.
WWF
Hulk Hogan
Randy Savage
Andre the Giant
NWA
Ric Flair
Sting
Dusty Rhodes
Arn Anderson
The Road Warriors
These are (what I would call the biggest draws for each promotion at the time) a list of wrestlers from Survivor Series 1987 and Starrcade 1987... Yes, the actual talent on paper does look better than for the NWA. But, IMO, the WWF had the "Star" power.
What I recall distinctly from the 80's is that the WWF did events in 20,000 seat venues, while NWA did events in 10,000 seat arenas. The major difference, the NWA was selling every seat in the venue. The WWF was giving away at times 75% of their tickets for free, or selling them for $1 the week of the event.
So, back to the smarts of Vince, he made the WWF look like the bigger promotion, even though in many cases it was done with smoke and mirrors.
So you can say that WWF had a bigger drawing power, but it was the NWA that was drawing real dollars. Again, it took the WWF to rape, pillage and plunder the other promotions of talent that won the battle. After a while, the NWA, AWA, WCCW, and other regional promotions like St. Louis, and Tampa just could no longer draw because they kept losing their top talent.
Everyone wants to forget the AWA. The AWA probably had more talent combined in their promotion than all three. But Sammartino/Hogan and Race/Flair were considered to have the better champions. The AWA had every single superstar to wrestle in that era in their promotion. Great examples of where guys became superstars before they became national was Hulk and the Road Warriors. Both were setting attendance records for the AWA before Hulk was scooped up by Vince and the Road Warriors returned to the NWA!