In a perfect world, Turner buys JCP and helps the company big time with marketing and production. BUT from there Crockett still runs the company and keeps a lot of its edginess. JCP SHOULD HAVE BEEN the first company to combine gritty adult oriented wrestling with great production and marketing values on a large national stage. Many say the Attitude Era did that down the road. And in some ways it did. But JCP was literally no BS or haha stuff. While the Attitude Era at times could be too hokey. The Nitro Era was great at times. And by that point the production and marketing was better. BUT it wasn't blood, guts, and risque promos like JCP. Flair would still sneak some of those types of promos in though at times. So even if Turner allowed JCP to run the show, they likely would have made them tone down their style some. BUT it still would have been better than the BS Herd and company was doing. My friends who didn't like wrestling in general LOVED JCP! They weren't aware of JCP though BECAUSE Vince had so much exposure. They loved it because it was presented more like a sport. And promo wise, the guys were talking about women, drinking, kicking ass, etc. And Corny was like a great standup comic with his interviews. So JCP always seemed COOLER to a lot of casual fans. I really think Vince's TRUE THREAT would have been a revamped JCP with Turner backing it long term. Because Vince was still pretty new to the national scene himself. Plus wrestling people would have been running the show. Flair and the Horsemen, Dusty, Magnum, LOD, RnR, Corny and the Midnights, etc. was an awesome all time great roster. So they had the firepower FOR SURE to compete!
Well said! In terms of the Nitro promos, I meant they weren't as risque and no filter like JCP's or the Attitude Era. Even during the early days of Nitro, they were still doing hokey type of stuff with the Dungeon of Doom. And trying to be WWE lite with Hogan running through his cartoonish adversaries. BUT as time went on, Bischoff did get away from that stuff. So the Nitro days did get away from being WWE lite. And became more reality based. But JCP was more raw, uncut, and violent!
Jim Crockett Promotions = JCP; I thought that this acronym was for JCW (Juggalo Championship Wrestling aka Juggalo Championshit Wrestling). a totally different company built by two Caucasian guys (Violent J, Shaggy 2 Dope) that wanted to be rappers (like Vanilla Ice).
Jim Cornette is so right. It's the "widget" mentality. Sadly, it is a formula for mediocrity (at best) as proven by modern day WWE. It took root in Hollywood in the 1960s when conglomerates started buying movie studios.
It pissed me off to no end that WWF marks talk like Vince's victory on the national scene was inevitable. To do so is to be ignorant of or in denial of how badly the Jim Herd WCW was mismanaged. A promotion built on good workers instead of steroid cartoon characters at minimum would have held the South from Texas to Georgia north to the Ohio River. At best it could have edged out Vince on the National scene, depending on who marketed to their target audience best.
Piper A R i actually think that at that time people were interested in that style much more than people seem to think in retrospect. People were hungry for it, look how good smokey mountain did with like 1/100th of the talent
When WWF went full-on cartoon characters in the early 90's I quit watching them and continued to watch WCW for another two or three years. Unfortunately, I quit watching a year or two before the NWO came on the scene. I missed the beginning of all of that.
As long as wcw was under ted Turner, it was inevitable. Other than Ted, he was the only one who wanted wrestling. Once he lost power behind the scenes. It was over. It was only a matter of time once Ted bought the company.
@Charming Billy Turner bought JCP in November 1988. Jim Herd arrived January 3 1989. That's at most two months WCW was Herd free. Jim Crockett finances might have been in the crapper before selling to Turner, but talent and in ring product absolutely was not. The problems were on the spending money side, trying to buy up territories and talent without a sound plan, and Dusty thinking they should get a second and third private jet.
Maybe if the wrestling people didn't act crazy, people outside the business wouldn't have thought they were. That's a major part of why Vince beat everyone else IMHO, because he could go to people outside the wrestling bubble and come off well, when few other people in wresting could. He transcended the stereotypes.
Vince at times was really wise to leave the old territory dogma of many things behind to grow. Vince operated like a normal business rather than the curtained operation wrestling always had been to protect kayfabe and as a result was able to land deals and grow. But he also was able to do so because he chose to do so when nobody else did so because of the attitude that had always existed of only operating your territory and not encroaching outside of it. By the time anybody else went to do the same he had too big of a lead to be caught. But the real reason he beat everyone like he did more than anything was his willingness to take big risks, venture outside of the norm, reinvest what he earned back into the company, expanding his view to all revenue possibility, and being adaptable to change which territories never were. More so than being able to deal with those outside of wrestling was his risk taking, pivoting outside of norms and reinvesting. For example, to expand his footprint nationally he paid to be on television in Los Angeles. That was obviously a risk and well outside the norm of what promoters did. And when the bets would pay off he constantly put the money back in and played the long game like nobody ever had. Think of things like pumping money into a state of the art production studio to produce the best visual value shows to expose his brand to a customer base. So many promoters didn’t put the profits back in to build and lived off the years of success which left them no ability to weather the storm that came. Think of an AWA who had basically no cash reserve to speak of so once the ticket revenue started falling it doomed them. Vince’s reinvestment allowed for him to supercharge and once it paid off it really paid off like nobody could’ve envisioned. He just operated at a level that none of the territories would’ve fathomed and took risks they couldn’t believe. When he began the expansion he wasn’t taken seriously because they all just thought he’d flame out with all the risk he took but when the risks paid off it put him in a position they could’ve never competed with in a million years. Just think of all the revenue streams he had compared to a territory who solely monetized tickets. If the WWF had poor ticket sales they also had merchandise, PPV, home video etc etc that brought money in too.
“I’m just a maintenance booker, I’m just here to keep things going until a booker is hired.” *kills the top money drawing program and pisses off everyone.*
I wonder if Jim knows just how big of a quire he's preaching to. I've worked in MANY small arenas bought out by corporations, Big companies, Takeovers by Business "suits", and seen a lot of shit. His take on Business Execs and their attitudes in a new arena are SPOT ON. In the 3 main examples I've experienced, only ONE went on to be a success!! Ive also seen businessmen with a perfectly profitable company go and hire an "Ops Manager" to make things "efficient" (or in reality to PISS OFF the veteran workers) only for them to bring a company an inch away from ruin. Let these stories be a lesson to any entrepreneur to follow what you know, keep overhead manageable, and understand the value of what you sell or produce, and of the people working for you.
Ah, what might have been. But there were 3 turning points in the 90’s from which the idea of “professional wrestling presented as competitive athletics” could not be salvaged. 1) ECW. These guys had no idea why you should “protect the finish”. Instead, they took every finishing move from the last 20 years and made it just another high spot. 2) UFC. If fans wanted legit combat sport, here it was. First match, a guy gets a tooth kicked out of his head. No angles, just legit combat. 3) The Montreal Screwjob. Vince and Brett Hart exposed the business, which had been THE cardinal sin for over 50 years.
Nobody but smarks knew anything about the curtain call, the internet was not that big so only a small group of dirty sheet readers had any idea it happened. That it exposed the business in 96 is laughable. Only children thought it was real by then. Vince made national news in 1989 by admitting it was fake to get state athletic commission off his back.
Well, it doesn't help the wrestling guys' case when Ole and Dusty been pushing their chums and themselves..or Bill Watts pushing his untalented kid, Erik, removed the mats, banning top rope moves and such...though Bill Watts getting removed because of what he said years ago..and was brought up by Mark Madden when Madden was working at the PW Torch is just bullcrap.
From Turner's standpoint, when you look at the declining business in '87-'88 on top of the overspending that forced the sale, they had every reason to not let Crockett remain in charge. Might be unfair but it's also not a chance many would take.
I'm no wrestling expert a fan yes expert but i play the raw smackdown game & some of the ideas i get come spontaneously. One thing I've learned is try to have mid carders main event i jtg vs rey mysterio as a main event paired up elijah burke & shelton benjamin as a team.
I think one of the biggest reasons corporations are bad for wrestling companies is because a corporation that acquires anybody focuses more than anything on cutting the costs. But wrestling has always been s high overhead business to make money which is the opposite of what any corporate takeover wants to happen. The cost to have solid talent and tour the brand is immense and takes a commitment and investment to a high level to succeed and corporations never want to make that commitment. Think of just corny and the team themselves. Their deals together cost $400K a year. And that’s one team. The capitsl thag needs to be put in to have a chance to succeed requires commitment that you just don’t see from a corporation that makes an acquisition.
Crockett has always taken responsibility, never blames Dusty. About him not being a credible businessman, why was Herd so awful then? Crockett backed by Turner the whole point.
Herd knew nothing about wrestling. Everything that was halfway productive Herd literally ruined it. The Midnight Express joining Ric Flair and Arm Anderson was cut off by Herd. When Ric Flair became the booker, WCW was gaining ground but Herd kept meddling with every move that Flair made. Then the Ding Doings and not bringing Tully Blanchard back and reducing Arn's pay from their original agreement was another story that shows Herd's incompetence. I can go on and on about that guy lol
@@colonelrobertsjr.7882 And what about burying Brian Pillman's chance of being a top star. There was an angle Jim wanted to do with the Midnight Express with Pillman and his throat because Pillman was born with throat cancer and the whole nine yards, but then they went to the booking meeting and Jim Barnett's response to the angle was "we're not going to do that, I think it'll make Brian look weak". So boom there goes Brian Pillman's chance of being a top guy.
This is why the people who love a product are usually awful at managing/producing it in a purely business sense. Turner did not buy JCP, they bought WCW the TV show. That was their priority because as the last THIRTY YEARS has born out, TV is where the money is. Corny, Watts, etc all wanted TV to stay an infomercial, where you could ignore advertisers, and just put stuff on that would sell tickets. By Corny's philosophy with modern technology, the perfect business structure is the old TNA weekly PPV model. Instead of the weekly Mid South Arena show, you have access to an unlimited global market who can buy "tickets" every week...but then Corny says that won't work because people know wrestling is fake today...like my grandparents actually thought Gorgeous George was legit...
Me Goofy: Palliser's got a point. It was a different edginess. Now Hogan and co. might have gotten a shot under Crockett but I doubt they would've had the leeway they did under Bischoff. Which begs a new question: Would Crockett remaining in the game have affected the rise of Eric Bischoff? Would he have been an asset to Crockett or would he have been a liability?
Cretinous Jester eventually Eric Bischoff eventually would have been able to obtain top-level executive positions but it would have been under some type of control with Jim Crockett would have been able to maintain Eric's creative juices and creative control Etc. And correlation to Eric Bischoff giving away Monday Night Raw results that would have been a no no.
Ecirta Pacino: I see your point. Eric would've probably still risen but in a role more akin to Vince Russo's with Crockett as his "filter". It's the ultimate "What If?" It would've changed the whole game.
Crockett sold because he lost millions, likewise WCW lost millions for years. For Crockett to have stayed around seven more years till the NWO became a possibility something would of had to of changed. If Crockett could of got hot again somehow and stayed in power there would of been no Bischoff because Eric basically had the job forfeited to him because everyone else failed miserably. If Bischoff did somehow get to power and was successful, Crockett would of just been a yes man like he was for Dusty Rhodes.
Bischoff seems to know a lot about television so I wonder a company would look like if he controlled all the TV stuff and someone else came up with the actual wrestling content, the equivalent is how professional sports teams have a head of business operations and a head of baseball/football/basketball operations. My guess is that the gms of sports teams, the ones who hire players and coaches, are probably not responsible for producing the telecasts of the ballgames, and this is what bischoff basically was, responsible for the roster and the telecasts.
In fairness, sports entertainment done right (Attitude Era) has beaten rasslin' business-wise. The NWA territories all went out of business. I much prefer AEW or better yet, Cornette's style of wrestling with a big budget, but the reality is, the stuff that sells isn't that. It's the cartoon silliness and over the top antics. It's Jerry Springer stuff.
I'm not normally a defender of network executives,but what Cornette fails to comprehend is the disdain the higher ups at the Turner office had for wrestling was the same the majority of the public had. The mainstream public HATES wrestling BECAUSE IT IS FAKE. The only reason wrestling was on the Turner networks was because Ted Turner had a soft spot for it, meanwhile, everyone else at CNN Tower was embarrassed to be sharing the same building as steroid-pumped freaks like Rick Rude, and the ratings wrestling drew meant nothing because Turner's top ad executives still didn't want their ads on the broadcast. At the time, Turner also owned and carried the Atlanta Braves, who had become one of the best teams in all of baseball, and you know there had to be people in Turner Sports disgusted with the fact that after all the years they spent building up the Braves, they had to share a network with a product that they felt demeaned actual athletic competition by being so blatantly fake while claiming to be as real as baseball. They thought the wrestling people were more than "crazy," Corny... they thought you were all CRIMINALS.
