LogFAQs > #950518241

Zeus posted...

And sure, AEW -- as well as the WWE -- is going to come up on his podcast week to week because it's not like much other wrestling is running

This isn't really a valid argument, considering he didn't really talk about much wrestling other than those two even before the pandemic. He mostly talks about the two most significant mainstream companies, and only really talks about other companies in the context of his own direct personal relationship with them in the past (TNA, MLW, NWA,RoH, etc). And the rest of the time he's talking about anecdotes from 30+ years ago during the territory days (which is where he's the most interesting/enlightening, IMO).

It's the same reason why most wrestling YouTubers don't bother making review videos to cover Impact shows, but will cover WWE and AEW. Because that's where the interest is. He talks about AEW because it's popular enough to justify it. Not because he's got nothing else to talk about and is begrudgingly giving attention to something he otherwise wouldn't be giving the time of day.



Zeus posted...

While I can't remember him claiming that (nor was the idea new), it wouldn't have been his fault either way.

It doesn't really matter if it's objectively his fault, he's said he himself at least partly considers it his fault.

As to when he said it, it came up around the time the Dark Side of the Ring about the Montreal Screwjob came out, and he openly admitted that he was the one who suggested the idea (in spite of the fact that he'd pretty strongly alluded to that fact beforehand anyway, and as others have pointed out it's not as if Vince himself was unfamiliar with the concept - see also Wendi Richter/Moolah/"The Spider"). And he mentioned how no one expected Bret would go to the papers (in his own words, Cornette points out that Bret came from a wrestling family, his father had been a promoter, and Bret himself pretty clearly took wrestling more seriously than almost anyone else).

But the end result was still a chain reaction that helped accelerate (or outright caused) the death of kayfabe, so for someone who holds kayfabe so precious, it could easily feel like a burden. Like, maybe some nights, he wakes up in a cold sweat and just goes "Oh God, this is all my fault!".



Zeus posted...

More importantly, that did less to expose the business than Duggan & Sheik getting caught smoking pot together or the Curtain Call, both of which happened earlier.

As much as people talk those up, I'm not sure either is as significant as people act like they were (as least not in the long run/bigger picture), and they definitely didn't have the same impact on the industry as a whole as Montreal did. Or this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PjBeCwz2fXg

The Curtain Call was almost unheard of outside of the smart fans (who already knew kayfabe was bullshit) and the fans in the arena that night (who didn't necessarily understand what they were seeing anyway). It didn't really resonate and shatter kayfabe across the board. It sent a few ripples, Trips got punished, everything got hushed up, the dirt sheets talked about it, the few nascent Internet wrestling boards probably talked about it a bit, and the majority of the mainstream audience never knew it happened. It didn't really do much to smarten anyone up who wasn't already "smart".

As for Duggan and Sheik, I'm not sure that story ever really made it out the tri-state area (I've always had the impression the only reason I heard about it at the time was because it happened in NJ), and most of the people who would have been discussing it outside of the local area were already "smarts". It certainly had very little impact on the product or the fandom - I'd argue shit like "Duke The Dumpster", "The Goon", and "Abe Knuckleball Schwartz" did more to damage credibility around that period than the New Jersey State Troopers ever did.

We tend to see them as more significant NOW because more "clued-in" fans today know about them than did at the time they actually happened. But that's hindsight bias.

Though this leads me to another minor tangent - it might be worth an aside that I've never entirely bought into the philosophy that kayfabe is the END-ALL BE-ALL of wrestling anyway, because I honestly can't remember a time when I ever thought wrestling was real in the first place. PART of that might be because I grew up in the Northeast instead of Memphis/Mid-South/etc, where Vince was putting on ridiculous shows (and Hulk Hogan had his own cartoon!), part of it might be because I was always pretty smart/cynical in general even from a young age (and had a skeptical father who tended to encourage that style of thinking), maybe it was because having Mister T and Cyndi Lauper show up (while Captain Lou was hanging out with The Goonies) made it hard for me to assume any of this shit was real, or maybe for some other reason - but I feel like as early as the mid-80s I was blatantly aware that it was all acting and predetermined storylines. I was certainly aware of it by the time the Undertaker was murdered, rose to the Heavens, then reincarnated as two different people and he had to fight himself to reclaim his identity. All while Leslie Nielsen investigated in-character as Frank Drebin.

And yet I still watched wrestling. I still liked wrestling. I still liked Austin, in spite of knowing he didn't get run over by a car for real. I watched ECW, and WCW, and WWF/WWE for years. And it wasn't really until the writing turned to shit that I stopped caring.

And these days I find the behind-the-scenes shenanigans far more interesting than anything actually happening in any of the rings.

But even when I DO watch wrestling, it's always the storylines that interest me far more than the actual athleticism. In spite of the fact that I know they're fictional.



Zeus posted...

Instead now it's the style that most people take one look at, laugh, and change the channel.

Except the ratings have been creeping slightly higher every week, so at least some people aren't changing the channel.

As opposed to the WWE, where every week there's a few more people who seem to go "Ehh, fuck this shit."

Though it's also kind of interesting to remember that attempts to revive the old-school style of wrestling, the style that Cornette loves, the style that people claim would somehow revitalize the entire industry if it ever came back, never really seems to go anywhere even when people DO try to recreate it. NWA Powerrr might have come closest, but that hit its own roadblocks, and never managed to get a TV deal (though to be fair, the pandemic didn't help).

There was a time when Westerns were the most popular genre ever - and then suddenly there was a time when they weren't. Pirate films went from being really popular, to utter cinema death, to popular, and then back again. The popularity of superheroes seems to go in cycles as well, at least in comics themselves. Like it or not, pop culture tastes are always changing. Maybe wrestling (which itself used to peak and dip in cycles!) is simply an idea whose time has passed, and no style of wrestling will ever be as popular again.

Or maybe it was just hotshot-booked into oblivion in the late 90s/early 00s and the scorched earth still hasn't quite recovered.
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