BACKSTAGE UPDATE ON MAIN WWE ROSTER BEING FRUSTRATED AFTER NXT TAKEOVER: R EVOLUTION

[Jacob Fox]

Let me preface this by saying this is just my perception and I am not claiming it to be factual. I've been watching wrestling for 30 years and it's hard to do that without forming some definite strong opinions about the people involved with it. So this is just how I see Vince McMahon and Triple H and I am not trying to establish facts about two men I have not nor will likely ever know.

I honestly think Triple H puts on a better product because he wants to make a wrestling product. He does not harbor the delusions of "sports entertainment" being a different product from wrestling like Vince McMahon does. Vince is a business man. Triple H is a wrestling fan.

I honestly have never thought that Vince McMahon has had the best mind for wrestling. For some odd reason, I actually like the guy. Still, his product seems to suffer from a lack of genuine commitment to professional wrestling.

I'll explain what I mean before anyone jumps all over me about it. Vince McMahon has always tried to take his product into a different direction than simply being professional wrestling. From the very beginning he has tried to not only change what wrestling is, but move past it into other forms of entertainment. He usually ends up failing at this (XFL and most WWE movies). The very fact that Vince McMahon claims his product is not professional wrestling, yet the name of the company is "World Wrestling Entertainment" and the main product is wrestling has always seemed silly to me. He was the first guy to majorly break kayfabe when in 1989 he admitted wrestling was staged in order to save on taxes (http://slam.canoe.ca/Slam/Wrestling/Bios/mcmahon-vince.html). He distances himself from the product with his idiotic nickname of "sports entertainment." He tends to claim he is in the "entertainment" industry and not the wrestling industry. I am not sure why he seems to think the term 'entertainment' is mutually exclusive of sports without determined outcomes, but whatever.

I think Vince is successful because of those he surrounds himself with. Although he takes all the credit as the planner of the Attitude Era, there are few who don't work for him that are ready to credit him with all of the creativity. Since he has the final say on everything, he acts more as a filter for the ideas of others.

Vince comes across to me as someone who wanted to be involved with wrestling because it was a step at getting his foothold in the entertainment industry and he wanted to move past it. It's actually a very common theme in earlier WWF characters. There was always a guy who was not just a wrestler, but was in another job as well ie. a garbage man, a race car driver, a dentist, an IRS agent. Then there are characters like Double J Jeff Jarrett who wanted to use the WWF as a stepping stone to a country music career. I have always gotten the impression that Vince McMahon could never be happy to just promote professional wrestling.

Triple H doesn't seem to share that perception with McMahon. I believe that may be why NXT is a better product than the WWE's main shows, even though NXT has inferior resources. It's run by someone who actually wants to be running a wrestling company and is not trying to make it into something it is not.

Triple H's contributions benefit professional wrestling. NXT is a consistent show with a focus on quality match. Look no further than the Charlotte and Sasha Banks match at R Revolution: a women's match that went on for more than three minutes and was a good solid match. Look what Triple H did in helping to bring Bruno Sammartino back into wrestling... that was one of the biggest shockers of my life. For decades, all Sammartino did was trash wrestling. He had every right to, it became a completely different product than the one he enjoyed. I honestly doubt WWE was going to benefit in any way of putting Sammartino in the hall of fame... very few people who watch today really care much about him, yet Triple H supposedly worked hard for a long time on both Vince and Sammartino to make it happen. (http://www.wrestlinginc.com/wi/news/2013/0208/560227/triple-h-bruno-sammartino/). The real benefit to this was that a man who absolutely belonged in their hall of fame got his rightful place in it. As I said, there couldn't have been any real financial gain on WWE's part for making that effort.

I am not saying that Triple H is some brilliant wrestling mind and he puts professional wrestling's best interests before his own. But I think he is able to work to put on a better product simply because he likes wrestling and wants wrestling to be wrestling. Vince has always tried to change it and I think that is the reason why his product is not as solid as Triple H's is.

Again, this is just my perception and I know someone will disagree with me. But this is just the way I see it.

 

[Wacokid27]

There are a lot of fair points in the above post and, while I may disagree with some nits, I can certainly respect the viewpoints expressed.

@Jacob Fox - Do you think the differences in approach between McMahon and Levesque/HHH are due to their different entrees into the business. I mean, Vinnie was a promoter/announcer who went into the ring because it was what he felt was demanded by the storyline while HHH entered the business because he wanted to wrestle and parlayed that into a backstage career, or at least that's the common perception (not saying it's wrong, just that it's what most outside observers probably think).

I'll hang up and listen.

wk

 

[TMBS]

posts in this thread are tl;dr.

But I just wanna throw out the Triple H and Vince are from different times in wrestling. WWE is catering for a young audience with an out dated system.

 

[Aids Johnson]

The only thing about this that throws me is people cracking up over Cena's "rallying the troops". You serious, Clark?

John Cena, whatever anybody anywhere wants to think about him, has gotten to where he's at through a unique combination of skill, hard work, and luck. That's the same formula that creates success in just about any endeavor. I have never heard that he's the locker room leader that Undertaker used to be or that Sting was in WCW, but that doesn't mean that the "boys in the back" don't respect what he's accomplished or that they don't covet that top spot.

If they respect him, that's great. If the want his spot, it's there for the taking. The last guy who actually stepped up to fill Cena's spot was Daniel Bryan. All it got him was a Wrestlemania moment of closing the show with the WWE Championship in his hand. If the "boys" are bitching, they either need to shut the fuck up or actually step the fuck up. Flair and Sting didn't sell out arenas and tear down the house by being all buddy-buddy in the back; they did it by wanting to prove they were the best. Same goes for Austin and Rocky and for Cena and Orton and for Undertaker and Kane.

If they want what Cena's got, don't take it to Twitter (or, Holy Jesus, the dirthsheet assholes). Take it to work.

Having said all of that, McMahon is a genius, but even geniuses start to lose touch. Is it time for someone new to take over the creative direction of the show? All I say is point to the segments that had personal involvement from HHH over the last couple of years (the Bryan-Authority angle pre-injury....after that, they were trying to make chicken salad with chicken shit; the Shield angle; there have been others, but it's late and I'm getting older). Those segments have typically been an order of magnitude better and fresher creatively than the rest of the show. Let HHH "have the book" for a few months. Let him set up some storylines and start developing them. I bet that it will improve the product.

wk

Does Phil Brooks know you've replaced him? Did he take it well?

 

[Swift]

inb4 all fired

 

[Aids Johnson]

+

Nxt playing the role of n.w.o. In the "reality" era where social media starts feuds. Book it, I'll zzzzzz

They would need a Cena turn to get it to happen.

NXT going starving sons vs glutton king. They have everything to prove and can get to the top. I think it could be awesome.

 

[Danielson]

+

They would need a Cena turn to get it to happen.

NXT going starving sons vs glutton king. They have everything to prove and can get to the top. I think it could be awesome.

Disagree

 

[Aids Johnson]

Disagree

I don't agree with your opinion.

 

[Danielson]

I don't agree with your opinion.

I disagree with your disagreement

 

[Aids Johnson]

I disagree with your disagreement

You would you sly son of a bitch.

 

[Danielson]

You would you sly son of a bitch.

:bitw:

 

[Aids Johnson]

:bitw:

:lady: Can't wait for him to return at Summerslam 2015.

 

[Red Rain]

I believe Vince's perception isn't unlike anybody else's, particularly his generational viewpoint.
Vince believes our views and HHH's (he may be softening with HHH) are trendy.
Vince is a marketing genius born into the circus of the wrestling industry.
These small technical wrestlers with emphasis on match quality are all trends that will fail in the longterm.

McMahon's perspective (to him) will not fail, which is why he doesn't believe it people say he is passed it.
The only time Vince 'failed' business wise was the short period after Hogan left, yet that was the very period employing the likes of HBK and Bret Hart,

 

[Jacob Fox]

There are a lot of fair points in the above post and, while I may disagree with some nits, I can certainly respect the viewpoints expressed.

@Jacob Fox - Do you think the differences in approach between McMahon and Levesque/HHH are due to their different entrees into the business. I mean, Vinnie was a promoter/announcer who went into the ring because it was what he felt was demanded by the storyline while HHH entered the business because he wanted to wrestle and parlayed that into a backstage career, or at least that's the common perception (not saying it's wrong, just that it's what most outside observers probably think).

I'll hang up and listen.

wk

I honestly have to say that I had to think very hard on this before I came up with an answer. There are so many variables involved that almost everything I tried to write was contradicted by another idea that surfaced. I wrote about five things and deleted them and tried again. So please forgive me if this is a less than perfect answer.

I don't think I ever really considered what you proposed, therefore I had to think about it a bit. I can't imagine that HHH had any inclination that he would have the influence on wrestling that he currently has, back in his early days. He was hardly a popular wrestler for the early part of his career and he was definitely not a larger than life character. His ring work, as I remember it, was pretty good and I think he has retained an appreciation for it. He was working for WCW around the time Hogan first came around, and he likely experienced the shift from wrestling to a "sports entertainment" focus that was occurring at the time. All the good workers like Austin, Pillman, Regal and Vader being pushed aside so poor ring workers like Hogan, Ed Leslie and Jim Duggan took their spotlight. Being that HHH was involved in this and was one of the talented guys who worked hard and sort of ignored probably has been an influence on him now as an executive.

I recall that early on Vince wanted to be a wrestler but his father forbade it. Since he was a promoter who likely would have never gotten into the ring if his business was not in the dire straits that it was in during the the Monday Night Wars, it makes sense that he would look at the business first. My problem is that every time I write that down, it seems obvious that nowadays the fans are adamant that they want good matches over good story telling. Yet, for some reason, he seems to continuously resist that, almost like a father telling his children that he knows what is best simply because he is the father.

I think maybe their entrances into the business could play on the psychology of their business models. McMahon seems to have a top down approach, where the the WWE is the main entity and the players are interchangeable. I think Triple H may have a bottom up approach where the WWE is a sum of its parts and those parts have to be solid in order for the WWE to be whole.

Honestly, though, there has to be such a huge interplay of variables involved here that this can only be a part of it. Probably if either Triple H or McMahon were reading my post they would be thinking "This guy doesn't know anything about us." I can't say that either guy's approach is wrong. But there is likely influence due to the variable you proposed.

Sorry if this answer seems kind of jumbled. I'll probably spend some time thinking on it more and might add something later. It definitely has got me thinking though.

 

[CFCrusader]

You know what pisses me off? Vince's comments about the Brass Ring. The guy buries half of the people trying to step up (Ryder, Sandow, tried to do it with Bryan) and then tells them to step up after everyone's down unless they're Cena, Orton or Lesnar. Meanwhile in NXT, people seem to be happy and they're outdoing the WWE main roster. First off, Vince needs to either wise up or fuck off. Secondly, Cena trying to rally the troops is bullshit seeing as how he's the only one consistantly put "over" by Vince while everyone else is pretty much fucked up the ass. Lastly, stop the shitty storylines.