I will concede that promise was a strong word to use,
No it was completely the WRONG word to use as nothing so much as approaching "promises" were made.
...but the fact is that Vince knows there are a significant number of fans out there who love Edge, and who love Christian, and that these fans would expect a feud between the two should Christian be brought back.
Tough shit to anyone "expecting" rather than simply hoping.
To bring him back and play on these expectations to earn him extra popularity (admittedly this hasn't happened yet, but it probably will if he wins MITB) is as good as a promise in my book.
Well you've said yourself, WWE have NOT done this.
Like I said, he hasn't promised anyhting, but playing on the expectations of this feud is as good as.
When has WWE done anything on screen which plays "on the expectations of this feud"?????
I'll save you the effort of answering.....
THEY HAVEN'T.
First off, it's every booker's obligation to produce quality. If they fail to do so then they have failed to do their duty to the paying fans and should be held accountable for it.
There's an old latin saying that resonates throughout consumer law and it translates as "let the buyer beware".
Point is the booker is 'obliged' to
strive to produce quality, nothing more (and even then his only 'concrete' obligation lies with his/her boss).
Yeah, fans have every right to complain afterwards, but not simply cos they didn't get what they, for no justifiable reason, convinced THEMSELVES that they were gonna get.
Example: No-one has the right to condemn the value or 'quality' of the RRumble09 PPV based on their dissapointment that Christian wasn't revealed to be Jeff's attacker.
So yes, he did make a promise that he would make the Invasion angle work,
NO, he/they
DIDN'T.
and yes, he did break it.
You can't break a promise that was never made.
I'm not saying that I expect every angle to be successful, but when you're handed the single biggest angle the wrestling business has ever seen then I think it's safe to say that an entertaining return is in order.
Thank fuck.... Finally another sentence that isn't massively off the mark.
I agree.... No guarantees though (well at least there isn't when I hit 'order' on my remote on PPV night.).
As for the WCW guys choosing to ride out their contracts: nonsense. The WWE chose not to pick them up.
Well short of contract excerpts, I cannot fully back up my claim, but the ONLY documented version of this issue I have ever read/heard is as I stated previously... Example: Nash & Hall in their 2007 'Outsiders' RF shoot that they both said they CHOSE to sit on their ass and get paid for 'x' amount of months until their contracts ran out... Why would they lie? (Don't tell me... To protect the guy - VKM - that tried to kill their post-WCW career by keeping them off TV? YEAH, RIGHT!?!?!)
Ric Flair turned up on RAW the day after the Invasion angle went to shit, and the nWo not much later.
You make it sound like the angle fell apart, was never concluded and was written on the fly... They ended the angle coherently & conclusively at Survivor Series 2001. It's pure conjecture on both our parts, but if Flair or NWO were an 'emergency measure' (as you suggest) then why wait until the angle is
over to bring them back to TV?
Vince had the option to bring in these stars for the angle, but didn't.
Please throw me a bone...
ANYTHING to help subtantiate that claim.
The reason he didn't was because it would have caused problems back stage if he had instantly brought in all the biggest stars from what had previously been the competition and pushed them over his own wrestlers, wrestlers who had been loyally working for him rather than for them. The problem here is that instead of choosing to explain to his own employees how much fucking money they'd make if they all learned to get along, he chose to side with the home team and in doing so watered down what was potentially the biggest money maker the WWE had ever got their hands on, to the point where it was little more than a WWE vs WCW squash match. When I said that he had the ability to make this angle work, I meant that he had the resources at his finger tips and chose not to run with them. He had a roster of talented workers who were all willing to come and work for him (Sting, Konnan and a few others aside) that he did not use because of backstage politics, and in the end the angle suffered greatly because of it.
As already stated above... That's pure conjecture with no proof available. I've never heard/read anything to back that claim up whereas there IS plenty out there to back up my opposing claim.
I don't think Vince deliberately made the Invasion angle shit, I just think he chose to ignore the money he could have made on it
LOL... Yeah, cos Vince hates money, yeah?
and the entertainment he could have delivered to the fans in favour of soothing his own ego.
Numerous times you've refered to Vince's ego, yet your theory above claims Vince was effectively being loyal to 'his boys'...
You're chasing this REALLY hard aren't you? :roll:
He brought in the wrestlers that the fans wanted to see and he - eventually - gave them some of those dream matches, but not before booking an invasion angle that showed everyone who was boss.
Look, whether you have the more accurate view on things than I (or not):
1. WWE was always gonna win-out at the end of the invasion regardless of who was or wasn't on team WCW/ECW.
2. Bearing that in mind the above and the fact that all the WWE guys dropped their titles to the supposedly sub-par WCW guys that WERE part of the angle, this protective strategy you refer to is fucked from the start.... If you're going for a Rocky-type story (i.e Hero loses, Hero come back and wins) then why not ultimately triumph over the best you have at your disposal when it'll make the WWE guys look even better? Furthermore, may I remind you that the WWE won out thanks, largley to a 'mole' (i.e. Kurt)... Hardly the most convincing win on the part of Team WWE is it?
Instead of bringing in Bischoff and having the WCW stand on it's own as a legitimate threat
As much as that would have been the ideal... i.e. Depicting a fully functional WCW... There is one fundamental issue which ALWAYS get's overlooked.... How do you explain the absense of Nitro etc. Vince wasn't about to get that Turner air-time and I doubt VERY much he was in the position to quickly strike a new deal and get more TV on the air.
he put his son in charge,
Yes. In an attempt to weave a storyline out of a creative situation which had fundamental flaws at it's root.
and made Steve Austin their top player. Instead of establishing ECW as a band of outsiders who sided with no one he threw his daughter into the mix and made them join forces with the company they hated more than any other. What killed this angle more than anything else was petulance and a flagrant inability to see the wood for the trees.
....I'm not saying that it was perfect, or even a particularly good angle, but then again these comments are very much far removed from the statements of yours to which I originally responded.
Bottom Line: WWE didn't "promise" me a kick-ass, best storyline ever, invasion and they sure as fuck haven't "promised" me a Edge & Christian fued. (If you'd written anything approaching your last post post in your original instead of spewing some mildly hysterical crap about "broken promises" then I doubt we'd even be having this discussion.)
