wrestling / Columns
411’s Countdown To WrestleMania XXVII: The Paradigm Shift
Hello everyone and welcome to my segment on what is now know as the Road to WrestleMania. Over the years that we have been doing this it does get tougher to think of new slants on the same wrestling card. A few years back I looked at who took the most losses and was surprised when guys like Shawn Michaels showed up. While it was fun trolling back through the match history of WM looking for the biggest losers I found myself looking at matches and thinking just how much they influenced wrestling by changing the general feeling about a wrestler and how that roll-on effect changed the WWE/WWF there after in some way. So while this is a “Top WrestleMania Matches” column, its focus is slightly different.
To outline a few things, this is of course a personal choice list. Some of you may agree and others we’ll just have to agree to disagree but even in those cases you would have to say the moments I choose had long lasting effects on wrestling for a variety of reasons whether it be good or bad. I haven’t really tried to give them a rank so make what you will of the order because I thought of a bunch of moments off the top of my head, whittled it down to a small selection but kept their order the same believing how I remember them reflects their impact on me as a viewer.
Anyway, I hope you enjoy today’s feature….
This match is often sited as the best match in ‘Mania history and it’s not hard to see why. This match single handedly changed the entire outlook of a struggling promotion, the career of one of the most talented and respected wrestlers ever and fully realized the potential of another.
The Set Up
Since debuting in the WWF/E from a short stint in ECW, Steve Austin was a great worker with undoubted charisma who couldn’t find his place. Saddled with “The Ringmaster” gimmick and made Million Dollar Champion and given Ted DiBiase as a manager, Austin was on a slow train to nowhere. When Austin hit upon the idea to change the demeanour of his character into a no feeling, no friends, no caring brawler suddenly his career gained steam. Add into the mix an unexpected push thanks to The Clique’s public breaking of kayfabe and HHH’s resulting punishment and “that” promo at King of the Ring ’96 and suddenly “Stone Cold” Steve Austin had caught fire.
On the other side of the coin you had Bret Hart. Son of a wrestling legend, he worked his way up the ladder of credibility and after years of astonishing matches with many and varied wrestlers, he was made champion. After helping Vince McMahon overcome the demise of Hulkamania and bringing the WWF back to financial stability he suddenly found himself the Cliques backstage whipping boy and put in go nowhere feuds with Jerry Lawler and a French-Canadian pirate. By taking that bitterness from his place in the federation and applying it with his “good guy” image, Bret created a fascinating character that longed for integrity and honesty in a sport that was becoming increasingly dirty.
These two characters of the cheating brawler and the stand-up good guy were made to feud and that they did. While Bret Hart was on a sabbatical from the WWF, Steve Austin began actively calling him out. With his typical bluntness and don’t-give a-fuck attitude, Austin slowly started hearing more and more cheers form the crowd. With Bret at home and not on TV, Austin was free to give his side of things and with no response from The Hitman things became terribly one sided. When Bret Hart did return, it was to a wrestling landscape that was fast changing from classic good guys in white hats to shades of gray.
Cleverly Vince McMahon saw his chance. He put Bret over Austin at Survivor Series ’96 but not before both put on a wrestling clinic that not only served to remind everyone that Bret was still the best but also instantly gave Austin the main event credibility he needed. Vince, also noting the crowds increasing reactions to Austin, started steering Bret into a place where he was appalled at the declining morals of the crowd and wrestling in general. Come WrestleMania 13, the stage was set for the bitter veteran looking to return respectability to the sport he loved by beating the upstart rule-breaker who openly flaunted the rules and did what he pleased while somehow garnering the love of the crowd.
The Match
When people talk about WWF matches pre-Attitude era two words you never really see is “realistic” and “intense”. That’s not to say they have never been that way but wrestling up to that point in the fed was a whole different beast thanks to the kid friendly image portrayed by Hulk Hogan and The Ultimate Warrior. In the ensuing years the WWF main event scene never really had an identity of its own but with this match, Austin and Hart introduced a whole new style of match to the WWF and started the wave of what came to be known as “the main event style”.
For this match, Hart and Austin let it all hang out. In story line terms they hated each other and they really used that to hone the intensity of their actions. Or in other words, they beat the shit out of each other like only two hated rivals can. Both dishing it out and receiving it in equal measure this wasn’t the technical mat masterpiece that was presented to us a few months before, this was a fight. With the virtuous babyface getting more and more guttural with his offence and the heel winning over fans with I-wont-quit belligerence.
The ending is perhaps the most famous moment in WM history as Bret finally catches Austin in the Sharpshooter and as much as Austin tries he just can’t break the hold. Already bleeding from a cut, Austin suddenly starts gushing blood all over his face and onto the mat as his face contorts in waves of agony, unable to break the hold, loosing blood quickly and in an amazing amount of pain Austin passes out…but never quits. Bret Hart is the winner.
In the aftermath the final piece of the puzzle was put into place. Angry at the fans for cheering the villainous Austin, Bret Hart attacks his now defenceless opponent thus transforming him into the heel and Austin a babyface. Not only did they put new life into an old feud they also created one of the most defining moments on the history of wrestling.
The Paradigm Shift
There was three distinct moments in Steve Austin becoming the biggest wrestler in history. The first was the winning of the King of the Ring tournament, the last was winning the WWE championship at WM14 and the middle one was his face turn at WM13. I feel this moment came to not only define Austin and Hart, it changed the whole wrestling landscape for good.
Firstly, up until WM13, the thoughts of Bret Hart being a heel were never talked about. We knew he could do it as shown from the early part of his WWF career but now he was a hugely popular babyface and one of the few wrestlers Vince McMahon had that was a legitimate draw. Steve Austin was a classic heel, he did everything a heel should to be hated but the fans started loving him more and more. Whether is was be design or just good fortune the indignant Hart who stood for integrity and the authority defying Austin who only was out for himself was a blending of two polar opposites that worked beautifully.
When Bret Hart suddenly transformed into a heel and Steve Austin a face, it set off a chain reaction that blasted the WWF back into the spotlight and onto reclaiming its position as the only true wrestling game in town. While Austin was the man who benefited most from this moment it would not have been possible if you didn’t have someone like Bret who knew how to grab the attention of fans and suck them in emotionally and be the foil that Austin needed to get over.
No other match in ‘Mania history as influenced and changed the business as much as this one did. The foundation for the Attitude era was laid in this very match when we suddenly realized that you didn’t have to be virtuous to be a face and a villain to be a heel, it gave us those fabled “shades of gray” that meant we couldn’t easily pigeonhole a performer or character. This new era was the most exciting time in wrestling because as fans, we were getting smarter and storylines like this showed we could keep up with the subtle character changes and know what the WWF was trying to create
Back in 1987 two men went out in front of the largest indoor wrestling crowd ever and completely stole the limelight from the biggest money match ever in Hulk Hogan & Andre The Giant. One was a relative newcomer to the WWE who had mainly plied his trade in Memphis as the son of an outlaw promoter Angelo Poffo while the other was considered one of the greatest workers ever and was much respected by his peers for willingly making other much less talented wrestlers look credible.
The Set Up:
One day last in 1996 we had the rare occasion to have a televised Intercontinental Title match on Superstars of Wrestling. In this day and age title matches are on every other week, this however was a true treat. What was even better was this was a match between the most hated Randy Savage and the second biggest face in the promotion Ricky Steamboat. Little did we know that it was going to have one of the most shockingly realistic moments in wrestling history.
Towards the end of the match Steamboat was getting on top of Savage and look set to dethrone the long time champion, in desperation Savage laid Steamboat out and then came off the top rope with the timekeepers bell and crushed Steamboat’s larynx. The match was over in that instant as medics took the obviously distressed Steamboat away as it appeared that he could barely even take a breath.
This was a new way to shock audiences in the cartoon imaged WWF back in 1986. Mind you, full credit needs to be given to Ricky Steamboat who basically sold everything as if he was near death and we all believed it. After a few months of non-activity from Steamboat and Randy Savage running away from Bruno Summation who was looking to set Savage straight, Steamboat showed up on TV causing the audience to wet themselves and Randy Savage to shit himself.
The stage was set for the big blow-off at WM3. Savage and Steamboat had been having clandestine meetings on the road about this match for months. While they knew that Hulk & Andre was the reason everyone was showing up, they planned on being the match everyone talked about. Over the course of the preceding weeks Steamboat and Savage planned every step of the match from bell-to-bell in order to make sure they were going to get the most out of their 10 minutes in the ring.
Add to this George “The Animal” Steele still harbouring ill-feelings towards Savage for his treatment of manager Elizabeth, Steamboat took him on as his corner man and the stage was set for an epic blow-off to a super hot feud.
The Match
This match is widely considered one of the best matches of all time and in fact, it held the best match ever crown until the Steamboat/Flair series of 1989 moved it back a notch. This was, to put it simply, a glorious match. With the emotional set-up leading in these two athletes went out and tore the house down. With the intense prior planning, they know exactly what was going on at all times and the pace of the match was breathtaking (even today’s cruisers would have a hard time keeping up). In the era of the original Hogan title reign, we were used to seeing slower paced, cartoony style fighting, these two showed you could get people excited about what was happening in the ring with actual wrestling.
The action was never ending and there is something like 15 near-pinfalls in a 10-odd minute match. They showed us some great hold/counter-hold sequences that while they weren’t new, we hadn’t seen them at this pace and type of execution.
The ending comes when after literally running themselves ragged, Randy tries to re-live the bell spot form their earlier match, George Steele trips him off the top rope and Steamboat small packages Savage for the three count and the title to one of the biggest pops you’ll every hear. Steele carries out Steamboat, barely able to stand and Savage, distraught leaves the ring with Elizabeth steadfastly by his side, loyal to the end.
The Paradigm Shift
As mentioned in the match breakdown, WWF fans weren’t used to seeing this kind of non-stop action. It really was ten minutes of full throttle wrestling that would put every other match to shame in that year and it was voted Match of the Year in the annual PWI awards. People talked about it in such glowing terms that in many ways it did what it set out to achieve…steal the show from Hulk and Andre.
But there’s more to why this match changed the landscape of wrestling.
For starters, it showed that matches with smaller wrestlers could and did sell tickets. You didn’t need goliaths to make people come and watch and in fact people would actually like their blow-off matches entertaining AND good. This was such a foreign concept in the Hogan era where he had his style of match and followed it to the end. It worked for a while but ultimately it started to get old and that’s when Vince turned to workers that could create interest in just the wrestling alone, the storylines was just the icing on top.
Secondly it was the match that made the IC title the “workers” title. While a few talented guys had held it in the past, Savage and Steamboat elevated it in the fans eyes. While it took a while to solidify the title in that regard (thanks to Curt Hennig, Bret Hart and Shawn Michaels) it truly was the title you gave to people that knew how to create a match. It was an instance of the wrestlers making the title and not the title making the wrestler.
Thirdly, it gave fans that taste of something different. I don’t think it’s any coincidence that Randy Savage was world champion a year later. Unlike Hogan, he could create storyline drama AND deliver great matches with just about anyone. It showed Vince that there would be life beyond Hulk Hogan if and when he retired and he wouldn’t need a clone of Hogan to continue. And in fact, in the years that followed we saw guys like Bret Hart and Shawn Michaels become the benchmark for what you needed to be champion.
Lastly, it was the second to last piece in the puzzle that created Randy Savage the babyface. While it took the rub form Hogan to cement it, thanks to this match it’s what got the fans feeling sympathy for him. This is one of the first instances of a character being so entertaining that even though he was a heel the fans desperately wanted to cheer for him and one year later, they got to cheer him as world champion. It proved there was a world beyond Hulk Hogan, something that few people realised at the time.
While ladder matches had been around the WWE landscape for nearly a decade at that point, 6 men went out and thrilled an unsuspecting crowd with a range of moves and bumps that had been only ever dreamed of before.
The Set Up
The tag team scene in the WWF in mid-1999 was pretty dire. Vince had recently reformed the popular New Age Outlaws because he really didn’t have many other options to carry the division. Thanks to Vince Russo booking, we had a series of champions that were mismatched and dragging down the scene because they were mainly main eventers (Rock & Mankind, Mankind & Al Snow, Jeff Jarrett & Owen Hart, Big Bossman &Ken Shamrock, X-Pac & Kane, The Big Show & The Undertaker) that screamed “placeholder” and “no better idea”.
Finally after Russo left to destroy the remains of WCW, focus was put back on creating teams. Firstly came the feud between Edge & Christian and The Hardy Boys. Their clashes culminated in one of the greatest matches ever at No Mercy ’99 as they redefined the ladder match and just what a spotfest really was. While the Hardy’s won the match, all four men walked out having made names for themselves.
A few months later The Dudley Boys jumped from the dying ECW and suddenly the WWF had three great teams in the mix. The Dudley’s took a while to settle into the WWF groove but after a change of image and attitude they went out at Royal Rumble 2000 (again with the Hardy’s as opponents) and had a tables match that was unlike anything most of us had ever seen…even after the ladder match.
Cue the No Way Out 2000 PPV and the Dudley’s win the tag titles from the Outlaws and Vince suddenly had a problem, how do you combine three VERY over teams in a match where expectations were going to be high? The answer is you make a three-way tag team ladder match and proceed to completely blow every other gimmick match out of the water.
The Match
With the bar already set so high by the matches at No Mercy and the Royal Rumble, everyone was intrigued what all three teams together would bring. Up until that point WM2000 was a bit of a bore and truth be told, even the fans took a while to get into this match but by the end they had witnessed history.
By having six men in the ring it created the unique opportunity to be able to continually build and pull off new and inventive spots with literally no breaks in between the action. While 2-4 guys did the business in the ring, two could lay on the outside and regain their wind after some seriously outrageous highspots. They also combined all the best aspects of the ladder match and the tables matches previously done and created the first, albeit unofficial, TLC match using both items (and chairs!) to create some of the most innovative action ever seen.
Each man took the chance to shine with all of them taking ungodly big bumps and doing some seriously high impact moves from the top of the ladder onto their opponents. By the end the crowd knew they were watching something special and even though they were technically heels, Edge & Christian won to a huge pop and secured their first of what was to be seven tag team titles.
The Paradigm Shift
Not many wrestlers have the chance to create something so enduring that they have to live up to its legacy. Can you imagine how Ric Flair feels, even as broken down as he is today, about having to wrestle? The expectation to always be good and to live up to the body of work you create is ungodly. Much the same can be said for the greatness of this match and the legacy it created.
Come SummeSlam2000, all three teams were over with the crowd. They had revitalized the stale tag team scene and made it the highlight of almost every PPV. You could throw any combination of the three out there and you were guaranteed a good match with a hot crowd and for a while they lived up to the legacy they created. They had the first official TLC match at SS and then TLC2 at WM17. A few more TLCs had appeared on Smackdown! and RAW
but those matches included an expanded rooster of people and never quite lived up to the hype.
Unlike most of the other matches I talk about here, I believe the ultimate result of this match was a negative for the business. While it certainly cemented the careers of all the men involved it also set the bar so unreachably high that unless you nearly killed someone you couldn’t live up to the legacy this match created. As the next couple of years rolled on the table match was driven into the ground by the Dudley’s to the point they became a parody of themselves. Ladder matches were almost a monthly occurrence and after a while it become hard to top the non-stop action of the original series these teams had. They became standard, not special.
Ultimately, with the main eventers trying to top the show stealing ways these teams had, more and more people suddenly started to come down with neck injuries with Edge himself having had major neck surgery largely thanks to the constant grind of the gimmick matches. They had changed the whole style of wrestling into something that was impossible to maintain and crowds had become almost numb to spots they would have normally reacted too with rapture. So towards the 2002 the WWE actively changed how the wrestlers worked and really cut back on the dangerous highspots.
While history will judge them better than the matches the created, these three teams and this match here was a large reason why people tuned in during the most popular boom in wrestling history. You never knew what was going to happen and the aura they created around themselves was impressive. In the end, they couldn’t top the expectations people had and the uniqueness of what they created was lost in over saturation making it hard even today to have a great gimmick blow-off match that doesn’t borrow heavily form this classic. Though, to be fair…they’re still fucking great to watch!
Wrestling has often been described as a “soap opera for men”. While that term is debatable it is true that some of the more grandiose storylines have that “daytime TV” leaning. However, when done right the elements of soap opera and wrestling make a very nice fit indeed. You see, storylines make us interested in seeing a certain match, great storylines will make us want to pay serious money to see a match and in this case, where the very best of soap opera and wrestling meet you create something that can go past expected boundaries and give us something wholly unexpected and rewarding.
The Set Up
Upon entering the WWE in 1985 Randy Savage was immediately one of the most entertaining wrestlers in the world. In the age of overly gimmicked wrestlers and silly cartoon storylines, Randy somehow managed to get over pretty much being himself. From the outrageous “pomp & circumstance” entrance music complete with glittering robes, to always entertaining matches and his treatment of the ever present Elizabeth, Randy was either the most loved or hated man in the fed depending on which side of the face/heel divide he was working.
Having run the roller coaster up to the very top of the mountain and winning the WWE title the ensuing years weren’t the kindest to Savage and the period of time leading up to this match was, storyline-wise, Randy’s lowest point. He had lost his title, the fan support, the woman he loved and took up with a crazy lady (Sheri) who was more than a little scary and was owned in a feud with the “common man” Dusty Rhodes. After being rejected by Warrior for a title match, Savage cost Warrior his title at the Royal Rumble with a well time sceptre shot and thus, making himself a very dangerous enemy.
The Warrior himself had also travelled a singularly hard road into the match. Having burst onto the scene barely three years before he quickly rose to the top of the heap and became one of the few men to cleanly pin Hulk Hogan and not incidentally became the WWF champ. Having a title run marred politics and lacklustre feuds, he lost his title only to see it hot shotted onto Hogan on the very night of this match.
Both men needed to prove a lot of things both in real terms and kayfabe. Both men were tapped to be Hulk Hogan successors and managed to make good on that premise with varying degrees of luck. Savage needed to make people realize he wasn’t a spent force and Warrior needed to prove that if he was given a real chance he could have been the leader the WWF needed to break away from Hogan once and for all.
The Match
Epic doesn’t even begin to describe what this match was. Right from the start we knew things were different when The Ultimate Warrior walked to the ring, we didn’t know it then but he was saving his energy for a huge, physical battle with Savage. Both men showed a focus and intensity that was off the chart…even for them.
This match is pretty much a contest of the Ultimate Warriors strength versus the speed and smarts of Randy Savage. Every time Warrior started to dominate, Savage would find a way to work back into the match but eventually Savage ran out of ways to avoid Warrior and Warrior to his credit, changed his game plan to suit the situations and avoided getting drawn into mind games and patiently waiting for Savage to make a fatal mistake. When that mistake came Warrior finally took control and ended up winning the match after a series of running shoulder blocks and pinning Savage with one foot on his spent body.
Afterwards Sheri, having had enough of the now bottomed out Savage started to berate and demean Randy and suddenly out from the crowd runs Elizabeth to fight Sheri off and unite with the man she always loved and creating one of the truly magical WM moments that was equal parts great lead in, great match, great story telling and perfect blow-off. Both men gave their all in the ring and this was without doubt the greatest match Warrior ever had and very nearly the best for Savage as well.
The Paradigm Shift
There is a certain artistry that goes into wrestling that will never truly be recognized. To create a compelling storyline and feud that contained so many threads of fiction and reality that built to an epic encounter that was not only a great match but manages to close up all those threads in such a way that satisfies the crowd and makes both wrestlers involved bigger stars than before the match began. On very rare occasions has this been achieved and in this instance you may have the very best example of it.
Vince has so often tried to book matches since then that have the same emotional impact but truth be told I don’t think he’s come close. But what this match did was really hammer home just how much a good storyline is integral to a good match. When we had Hogan/Andre at WM3 it was a simple set-up based on respect. The little plot threads in that feud were minimal because it was easy to sell those two as a match in 1987. However, as the audience grew more sophisticated so did the need to have storylines move on from the basic respect/I hate you origins.
This match introduced words like “love”, “redemption”, “soul”, “dignity” and “genuine” to the general wrestling landscape. It took the grandiose aspects of soap opera and made it palatable for wrestling audiences and appealing for the less inclined females watching. In essence it took the personal journeys that each man went through and made them universally understandable and infinitely interesting for the people watching. This was wrestling as art and set the standard for what people want from wrestling…a standard that sorely needs to be recognized in today’s wrestling climate.
Too much of a good thing is never going to end well. Sometimes, when we’ve already had more than enough and we get feed even more we actively revolt. Hulk Hogan learned that no one is expendable and wrestling will survive and thrive without his presence.
The Set Up:
The funny thing about this match is that the set up belongs in the hands of another wrestler. Bret Hart had been a credible although unexpected world champion in 1992. His crowning as champion had ruffled some feathers backstage and with a man like Hulk Hogan around you could hear the knives being sharpened from Calgary. Bret had a strong first run as champion and worked hard to keep it known as a workers title after Randy Savage and Ric Flair had done so much to resurrect that tag after having men like Hogan, Warrior and Slaughter being more storyline based champions than great wrestlers.
Leading into WM9 Bret was seen as a strong fighting champion and was heading to the biggest card of the year in good shape. The tradition of Royal Rumble winners receiving a title shot at WM was started that year and the first person to take advantage of this was humungous newcomer Yokozuna and thus we had the first main even of WM history without Hulk Hogan’s finger prints on it. Little did we know…
After performing a miracle and carrying Yoko to a watchable main event match, we had an unexpected surprise in the fact the Yokozuna won the match with some outside cheating. Surprised because no heel had ever won the main event at ‘Mania and while a good gimmick, no one though Yoko had much chance of unseating Bret who had done enough to be given an extended run as champion.
At the conclusion to the match, Hulk Hogan appears to check on Bret and the silly Yokozuna challenges Hogan RIGHT THERE to a title match….
The Match
In about 45 seconds and one huge ego stroke Hogan pins Yoko with the usual…
The Paradigm Shift
Oh Boy…
Already suffering from ever-increasing anaemic pops from a rapidly disbelieving fan base this latest Hogan win pretty much shot down the legacy of Hulk Hogan. Fans were sick of the red & yellow attack and his overcoming the odds crap. What had worked when we were 12 was passé when we were 20. As we grow older we can tell that shit just ain’t right and this shit stank to high heaven.
Firstly the time leading in…Hogan was a non-presence in the main event scene for nearly a year. With Flair, Savage and then Hart as champion the WWE had grown interesting for the first time in ages. Fighting champs that put on great matches and not needing cartoony gimmicks to win or lose matches, it was a breath of fresh air. With Bret Hart as champion it was doubly so because while he was a huge fan favorite for years we never dared dream he’d make it to the top but when he did he grabbed the chance with both hands and really made something of it.
Hogan would be having none of this. We all know in this day and age just how big this mans ego is but back then he still was for better or worse, The Hulkster. There was probably a fair bit of fear in Hogan back in that period because he knew by that time the WWF didn’t need him and if he wasn’t champion, he was part of the wallpaper on the under card. C’mon, do you seriously think he wanted to be in a tag team with Brutus Beefcake? He needed to be on top and for his egos sake, he just couldn’t not be.
Somehow convincing Vince to hotshot the title straight onto him from Yokozuna was even worse. Bret worked fucking HARD to get a decent match out of the barely mobile Yoko. To have Hulk go out after Bret and beat Yoko in less than a minute was a spit in the face to Bret, Yokozuna and every wrestling fan. Somehow Vince had been lead to believe that he couldn’t survive without Hogan as champ and pissed on the work two men had done in their match.
Then, to just lay the boot in that little bit harder…Hulk takes off the next few months to film a movie thus leaving Vince no champion to promote at house shows. If he had just left the title on Yoko he would have at least had the Hart/Yoko rematch to sell, instead he had Yoko who had been beaten in 45 seconds and Hart who couldn’t beat Yoko as his big main event. Not great by any means.
Finally at the first available PPV (the debuting King of the Ring) Yoko got his pin and title back (after typical bullshit Hogan histrionics involving a flame throwing camera and an Asian photographer) and spent most of the next year having a strong title reign before Vince righted the ship again at WMX and gave Bret back the title in what would be the closet thing ever to Vince giving a public apology to anyone.
So how did this change wrestling…firstly we had the death of Hulkamania in the WWF and the fostering in of the new wave of worker. Secondly Hogan the person took an incredible beating over this. His reputation suddenly became very well known and because he didn’t have the power he once had people were finally speaking up about it. Bret was crowned the “guy” in the WWF and held that title (regardless of what some people think) until Steve Austin emerged.
You could almost call this match the step too far and in doing so Vince finally did what was right by the business and not what was right by Hulk Hogan. A very significant day in wrestling history.
People like to be surprised and taken into unexpected directions. Those same people however, do like these unforeseen twists to make at least some sort of sense. We as wrestling fans take some comfort in being able to miss the odd show or two but be able to catch-up easily enough. For a two-year period, the booking of the WWE at the hands of Vince Russo grew increasingly erratic and strange. Where he had been able to create a latticework of stories that combined for a huge payoff at Survivor Series ’98 that same booking aesthetic completely ruined the biggest show of the year.
The Set-Up
If you haven’t, go over to The Dunn List section of the wrestling zone and read JD Dunn’s series of PPV reviews over this period of the WWF and you will notice him talking about the Russo-era of the WWF and how the man booked and worked the creative side of storylines. After setting up and pulling off the Survivor Series 98 PPV, which was a great climax of storylines but not wrestling, Russo set his sites on WM15 and what he could do there.
For the few of you that don’t know, Vince Russo has several tricks that he likes to use as a booker that have been well identified but for completion sakes I will talk quickly about them.
– First he has a complete infatuation with The Swerve. He just can’t let a storyline end at its natural conclusion he has to pull some bullshit bait and switch just to feel like the fans were fooled. It turns out (and still to this day) the only one fooled is Russo who thinks that he can still fool us in this way.
– Secondly he gets a hard-on for the “wrestling is a work but what you are watching now is real” train of thought. This works if done selectively and realistically but Russo like to create “real” situations that were wholly unbelievable.
– Third, another device he likes is the tag teams that hate each other trick. Again, great when selectively done but useless when beaten into the ground. Which is the essence of what is wrong with Russo as a booker, he is all frosting and no cake. With nothing of substance to feed off all we had was the flash and the flash got old quick.
Leading up to WM we had a few storylines going…
DX was showing signs of fracturing. Chyna had left to join The Corporation, X-Pac was dealing with that fall-out in a feud with Shane McMahon who claimed Pac’s European title with Chyna’s help. HHH was fighting reluctant Corporation member Kane. The New Age Outlaws were focusing on singles with Billy Gunn going hard for the IC title and Road Dogg chasing the Hardcore Title.
The tag team titles were held by Owen Hart and Jeff Jarrett and while not a “guys that hate each other team” we had gotten used to seeing, there was never any real reason for these two to team. They just sort of showed up together and became champs. Leading in ‘Mania they had no opponents.
The Undertaker had finally gone the full Satanic route and was stalking The Corporation. For some reason The Big Bossman was the main focal point of his rage in these attacks.
And as always, Steve Austin and The Rock were carrying the entire promotion on their shoulders with the huge heel Rock suddenly getting more and more over with the fans.
The Show
So with all that build-up in those storylines here’s some of the “highlights” from the night…
So for four months leading up to this Billy Gunn had been chasing the IC title and then suddenly a scant couple of weeks before the big card, Russo decides that he will make Gunn the Hardcore champ. All good and well for Gunn but suddenly he was thrust into a match were he had no issue with anyone. I mean Hardcore Holly and Al Snow had a well documented history of hardcore matches and Road Dogg was right in that mix and would have been the logical guy to thrust the title on but no, just to swerve the fans Russo puts the title on someone who not only doesn’t fit in the storyline but isn’t really considered a hardcore wrestler. The match was a letdown to say the least. What should have been balls to the wall Holly/Snow match to settle the score with lots of blood and fun, we got nothing like that. Pity.
So in light of Gunn getting the hardcore title, Vince did the double-swerve and puts the IC title on Road Dogg who again had no reason to be fighting the other three men in his match. But hey when you have a storyline that involves Ken Shamrocks sister being the fuck towel of Val Venis, Goldust and BILLY GUNN of course you need to suddenly swap out one of them because you can’t have the fans getting too involved in something and expected a proper blow-off.
The tag team title match was just retarded. So while we had champions that no one had reason to like or hate they were forced to wrestle the ad hoc team of D’Lo Brown and Test who were the last two people standing in a battle royal on Heat, thus earning them a title shot. So why are we supposed to care? We technically had four heels going at it and the crowd response…dead.
Do I need to mention Butterbean…I ddin’t think so.
Chyna for her part had finally seen the light and during the crappy HHH/Kane match she turned her back on Shane and the Corporation and came back home to DX. The crowd, after having been shit on all night through bad booking finally had something to cheer about and were getting rapid for the X-Pac/Shane McMahon match.
The match itself was pretty much the best of the night. The crowd had finally had a lift and with a coherent storyline actually leading into this they were running hot. With Chyna turning her back on The Corp, Kane out of action thanks to HHH, the stage was set for X-Pac to win a big blow-off match and really get the crowd pumped for the main event. SUCKERS WE ALL ARE….
After becoming face again Chyna AND HHH both turn on X-Pac to cost him the match. To say this gutted the crowd would be an understatement. While I understand the need to build up another heel with The Rock verging on become a face and HHH wanting the chance to do it, I will never understand the booking as to way it played out.
Firstly there was no reason to do the double turn of Chyna. Have her cost Kane his match with interference that looked like it was meant for Hunter but trapped Kane instead. This builds intrigue…what a concept. The crowd is happy because it looks like everyones chickens are coming home to roost. Have X-Pac beat Shane to pop the crowd and THEN have HHH turn on him. This creates two things, one it give X-Pac back the title and he can go on and keep defending it and two it makes HHH look like even more of a shit. You reach the same goal of make HHH a seriously evil man but you also do it in a way that you aren’t callously manipulating the fans.
Undertaker beat Bossman in a Hell in a Cell match, which is routinely called one of the worst matches of all time. However, the biggest stink came after the match when we see the members of The Brood repel from the ceiling and proceed to HANG Bossman from the top of the cell. What happened to Bossman after that…nothing. He showed up the next night on RAW like nothing had happened.
The main event while entertaining was a mess of run-ins, ref bumps and bullshit. The only good thing was Austin wining his title back and sending the crowd home happy despite being shit on for most of the night.
The Paradigm Shift
While it took a couple more months and some more crappy angles to complete it, Crash TV and Russo died at this PPV. The fans were fed up with incomplete storylines, poorly booked matches, nonsensical twists and absurd characters. WCW never learnt from the debacle that was Starcade ’97 that you have the faces go over at your big blow-off PPV every year and Russo never understood that you only ever need to keep it simple when it comes to wrestling. We don’t need to be swerved and we certainly don’t want it when we can see it coming…because it’s not a swerve then.
We want to be entertained and surprised but at the end we always want to be happy with the outcome. Vince Russo has never and will ever get that point. This PPV is the perfect picture of everything that was wrong with Russo as a booker and maybe we should be thankful because thanks to this eyesore of an event, Vince was on borrowed time in the WWF and the new golden age of wrestling was almost upon us.
So what was the shift…public opinion matters. After all the hype surrounding the advent of Crash TV and the Attitude era, Vince McMahon was quick to realize that fans were burning out on this diet very quickly. He moved onto a more logical approach to his storylines not soon after and while it never went back to the days of straight good versus evil we did have some normalcy came back to our wrestling.
Peace.
