Is Vince the master of "Ruthless Aggression"?

[Guest Downhome]

The following was posted by Bob Ryder on 1wrestling and his his timeline of Vince's history of TRUE, "Ruthless Aggression"...

 

"June 6, 1982 : Vince McMahon Jr. purchases the World Wrestling Federation from its then owners, Vince McMahon Sr., Bob Marella (Gorilla Monsoon), Arnold Skaaland, and Phil Zacko. He incorporates his new company under the name Titan Sports.

 

September 1983: WWF takes over Southwest Championship Wrestling’s time slot on the USA Network with their own show called “All American Wrestling”. Initial broadcasts include footage from other promotions; however, the stars featured in these clips later become guys who McMahon takes from their home territories for the WWF.

 

September 29, 1983 : McMahon runs a show in San Jose , CA , a long time AWA stronghold. This is the first instance of McMahon “invading” another promoter’s territory.

 

November 1983: McMahon convinces Hulk Hogan to quit the AWA for the WWF. Hogan leaves without any notice. He also gets announcer Gene Okerlund and manager Bobby Heenan to quit as well. This pattern of leaving without notice continues when McMahon raids Jesse Ventura from the AWA and Junkyard Dog from Bill Watts’ Mid-South promotion. The talent raids left promotions across the country decimated.

 

1984: As part of McMahon’s attempted “national expansion” of the WWF, he begins purchasing the television time of other promotions. This includes St. Louis ’ “Wrestling at the Chase” show on KPLR, the AWA’s TV in San Francisco , as well as several other regional programs.

 

July 14, 1984 : McMahon buys controlling interest in Georgia Championship Wrestling from Jack & Jerry Brisco and Jim Barnett. He immediately folds the company. Some of the GCW wrestlers are hired by WWF but are used as enhancement talent or are not pushed (example Mr. Wrestling II, The Spoiler, Les Thornton). With the purchase of GCW comes control of their two-hour television show on WTBS. WWF became the only promotion to have a time slot on cable TV with this move. McMahon initially promised WTBS owner Ted Turner that he would continue taping the show at WTBS’ Techwood Drive studios in Atlanta , but he almost immediately reneges on that promise and begins sending in tapes from his syndicated tapings.

 

July 28, 1984 : After being inundated with phone calls complaining about McMahon’s TV shows, Ted Turner gives Ole Anderson a Saturday morning time slot for a new company, Championship Wrestling from Georgia , and later gives Bill Watts a Sunday time slot for Mid-South.

 

July 1984: Jack Tunney, son of longtime Toronto promoter Frank Tunney, and who took over his office after Frank’s death, agrees to sell the Toronto office to the WWF. They had been affiliated with the NWA previously.

 

Summer 1984: McMahon meets with Stampede Wrestling ( Albert a ) promoter Stu Hart and informs him he will be invading his territory. Hart, seeing he has no chance against McMahon, agrees to sell McMahon his TV time slots and fold Stampede, on the condition that McMahon give jobs to and to “take care of” Bret Hart, Jim Neidhart, Dynamite Kid, and Davey Boy Smith. All four are given jobs but are treated as jobbers/enhancement talent.

 

April 1985: Jim Crockett agrees to buy McMahon’s WTBS time slot from him for $1 million.

 

1985-86: Crockett begins to expand his Mid-Atlantic territory nationwide, using his new WTBS time slot for exposure. McMahon in response begins signing exclusivity deals with arenas to keep Crockett from running them.

 

May 1987: McMahon signs Rick Rude, at the time one-half of the Crockett's NWA tag team champions.

 

November 26, 1987 : McMahon creates the Survivor Series, a Thanksgiving night pay-per-view, to run head-up against Crockett’s first pay-per-view attempt, Starrcade. McMahon told cable companies they would have to choose between his or Crockett’s show and could not air both. Based on McMahon’s track record, and with Crockett being an unknown, the vast majority choose McMahon. Only four cable systems carry Crockett’s PPV, an event that Crockett was hoping would erase some of the red ink in his company in 1987. Instead, it further drove him into debt.

 

January 24, 1988: Crockett attempts a second pay-per-view, the Bunkhouse Stampede. McMahon counters with a free show on USA, the Royal Rumble, which sets a then-ratings record with an 8.2 rating. Crockett’s PPV flops, in part due to the competition on free TV, and he is further driven into debt. The move further alienates McMahon from the cable industry, which was unhappy with his November stunt.

 

1988: McMahon attempts to get the cable companies to agree not to run any wrestling PPV’s a certain number of days before and after one of his events. They balk. After NWA/WCW runs pay-per-views head-up with McMahon’s Wrestlemania events in 1988 and 1989, the cable industry steps in and ends that practice. But the damage to Crockett’s company was already done.

 

September 1988: McMahon signs Tully Blanchard and Arn Anderson, the NWA tag team champions at the time. A hastily arranged title change match is done on September 10, 1988, in Philadelphia to get the belts off them, then Blanchard and Anderson immediately left Crockett for the WWF.

 

November 1988: A bankrupt Jim Crockett sells his promotion to Ted Turner. Turner was interested in keeping the promotion around because of its highly rated programming. This is the birth of WCW.

 

February 20, 1989: The WWF runs a free TV special opposite WCW’s Chi-Town Rumble ’89 pay-per-view.

 

November 2001: XWF tapes five television shows at Universal Studios in Orlando, FL. Their plan is to attempt to use the shows to land a slot on a national cable network. Among the talent used at the tapings are Jerry Lawler and Curt Hennig. The promotion plans to make Hennig its first world champion.

 

October 2001: WWA runs first international tour. Jerry Lawler appears on the tour as an announcer. WWA announces a second tour to run in the UK in November. Lawler is advertised as appearing on the UK Tour.

 

November 2001: WWF signs Jerry Lawler a few days prior to the beginning of the WWA UK Tour.

 

Threatening letters are sent to WWA promoter Andrew McManus regarding the use of the words “World” and “Wrestling” in connection with the WWA name. WWF claims worldwide rights to the use of those names in connection with wrestling promotions.

 

January 2002: WWA holds their first domestic PPV event in Las Vegas . Scott Steiner tells people backstage that Vince McMahon personally called him the Friday prior to the event asking him not to appear on the show.

 

WWF signs Curt Hennig

 

June 19: NWATNA holds first pay-per-view event.

 

June 24: Vince McMahon devotes the open of RAW to making a speech bragging about putting all of his competition out of business. Brags of his “Ruthless Aggression”.

 

To be continued???"

 

...that sure is interesting if you ask me, lol, just thought you'd like to check it out. Once again, I spare you from POP UP HELL, bwahahahaha!

 

Sincerely,

...Downhome...