Did WCW ruin the InVasion Angle?

[Guest Loss4Words]

The Attitude era had a new major CONCEPT but the storylines were pretty basic and traditional at the beginning. Rock was a smack talker, but as a heel, he was backing off from confrontation and trying to use excuses to get out of matches, which is what heels have always done. Austin was a different kind of babyface in that he did lots of swearing and drank lots of beer, but he was a traditional babyface in that he didn't go down without a fight and he stood up for what he believed was right.

 

Does the WWE need a newer and never-before-seen concept to create another boom? Undoubtedly. Do they need to come up with storylines that have never been done before? That's not really important.

 

Like I said, you dress it up differently, but once you get past all the catchphases and entrance music and movesets, the stories being told at the core don't change.

 

Which means let's say they're rebuilding, and RVD is the most over guy in the company. They shouldn't be "fancying up" their product right now simply because the fans are rejecting the old approach. They like RVD. They like him a lot. So you find some way to make your concept float around RVD. Who is he? What makes him tick? Who are his allies and who are his enemies? Then you figure out how far off that voice is from the voice of the fans and you try to intertwine them and push forward. In the meantime, you're doing very basic angles and storylines with everyone else on the show. When it becomes apparent that the fans like RVD's outlook, you start giving the entire show that outlook. And you've created a concept, all you have to do at that point is work within the concept in terms of character development and major pushes.

 

This is exactly what they did with Steve Austin in the Attitude Era.

 

Booking is more about knowing when to put the right guy over and understanding what the fanbase wants to see. It's not so much about beign creative.

[Guest Jobber of the Week]

But actually what really killed it was TNN. Vince wanted a 2 hour timeslot for a WCW program, but they didn't want to be known as "The Wrestling Channel" remember that?

Except they ARE known as the wrestling channel prettymuch, so there goes that idea.

 

I'd blame the XFL. If you want to know what killed Vince's perceived Midas Touch when it comes to marketing, there you go.

 

Who would want to give The XFL Guy even MORE airtime?

[Guest Mole]

no willingness to actually put wcw over (in lieu of pushing austin)

 

Think about it though. Considering if they hadn't have pushed Austin, they would've focused their energies on pushing the non-wrestling talents in Stephanie and Shane, or maybe seized the moment to bury guys like DDP, Kanyon and the Thrillers even worse. I'm content that we got the pushes that we did see. It could've been a LOT worse.

They didn't have to push non-wrestlers like Shane or Steph. Nor did they have to de-push DDP, Thrillers or Kanyon. What they could of done was PUSH those wrestlers, plus others, and made them look credible.

[Guest Banky]

It failed ONLY because there were no big name WCW wrestlers involved. If Steiner, Sting, Goldberg, and Flair came in - it would have been the greatest feud ever. Simple as that.

[Guest TheGame2705]

The invasion could have worked if it had big names and WWE guys jobbed and ECW never came back. ECW while cool, ruined it because Steph became in charge of it and it then became part of the alliance. NO ALLIANCE, it should have been called WCW. They could have had the big names as they signed Flair, Hall, Nash, Hogan, Steiner, DDP, Booker T, etc. either eventually or had them at the start. They also threw the wrong people in the mix. Albert? Palumbo and O'Haire?

[Guest Goodear]

The Game is right on, the problem with the InVasion in my view is that they tried to cast the entire WWE as faces (including X-Factor and Steve Regal) and all of WCW as heels. It would have been a lot better if they had shrunk 'WCW' to just a couple of guys (like 6 at most) and let them run wild. Younger guys like Palumbo and O'Haire should have been brought in seperately and allowed to get away from the whole Alliance thing and establish their own WWE identities. Instead they got turned into 'Alliance Thug who gets beaten up by Austin number 17' and weren't able to get over.

[Guest Ram]

I think that most WWF fans would have recognized Hogan, Goldberg, Sting, DDP, Luger...any of them are recognizable and it's a strong possibility that the WWF fans watched them in WCW's boom.

 

I doubt any would know what a Palumbo or an O'Haire is.

[Guest bob_barron]

Yea but Regal actually got over as a face. X-Pac didnt

[Guest Goodear]

Regal was kind of over as a backstage personality but his ring style just is not suited to facedom. His match with Raven at Invasion was s....l....o....w and dull since Regal's moveset is built around slowing down the hot and fast face. When you're depending on Regal to make the rally, he doesn't have the ability to do it since he's such the grinder.

 

I still call the guy Lord Steven ... Why is that? I must be senile.

[Guest bob_barron]

Oh I agree- that Raven match was terrible.

 

As a face I liked his beat the fuck out of people matches he had with X-Pac and Storm

[Guest jester]

The Game is right on, the problem with the InVasion in my view is that they tried to cast the entire WWE as faces (including X-Factor and Steve Regal) and all of WCW as heels.

That was my big problem with it too. Even Vince was kind of a quasi-face. Big mistake. Vince should have always been the heel.

 

What I would have done: first, assess the entire WCW/ECW roster and figure out who is best suited for heel and face, preparing to turn people if necessary. Then, when McMahon appears on the final Nitro, have him brag that he owns WCW now and he is going to make every last wrestler on roster suffer in relaliation for the headaches WCW has caused him over the years. The face WCW wrestlers just want to compete, and definatly tell tell him to do his worst. The heel WCW wrestlers suck up to McMahon and become lackeys.

 

On the WWF side, face wrestlers are a little weary but accepting. Meanwhile, heel wrestlers do everything they can to sabotage the newcomers. Not necessarily siding with Vince, but attacking wrestlers who might challenge their belts and/or spots.

 

Of course, this way Vince couldn't humiliate the entire WCW roster, he'd actually have to give them some credit, which he didn't want to do, even when they became his company.

[Guest El Satanico]

The only thing to blame for the Invasion failure is Vincent K. McMahon himself. He totally dropped the ball no other way around it.

 

The Invasion didn't NEED big names. It would've made it alot easier and would've been smart to get one or two big names to go with Booker T as leaders of the Invasion. However they still could've made the Invasion work without big names.

 

Vince needed tp allow these "unknown" WCW guys to at least look equal to WWF guys. If he did that, in time the fans would've accepted it just the same as if they were the big names.

 

Hopefully they fired whoever suggested putting Buff into the high profile first time WCW match on a WWF show. Booker T was a good choice for the match, but they should've got at least one big name guy for that match to go with Booker.