The Top Five Stupidest Things.....

[Guest Redhawk]

1) I actually think one of their biggest mistakes has been making it so obvious that wrestling is fake -- or as they call it, "exposing the business."

 

Now, I know almost everyone here knows it's fake. But when did you become a die-hard WWF fan? Probably when you were little, when you thought it was real. They're killing off part of their future fan base with all the "wink-wink-nudge-nudge" crap.

 

And then right after they flaunt the fact that "Hey, this isn't real," the announcers call the very next match as if it IS real: "Jericho is a choker." WTF? You tell us time and time again that wrestling is fake, so what is Jericho choking on? Isn't that the bookers' fault that he never wins?

 

And as much as I liked Tough Enough at first, it has also hurt business. If everyone can do a moonsault and Al Snow's sitting there like, "Just do a moonsault, it doesn't hurt or anything," why would I then be affected at all when Kurt Angle hits one?

 

There's nothing wrong with acting like everything is real. I watch The Practice every week and react a lot more strongly than I do to WWE. And they all know it's fake, but Dylan McDermott doesn't have to keep looking at the screen and "shooting" with me. I can suspend disbelief just fine.

 

Basically, what they've done is desensitize the average fan to the point where they can never go back to "old-school" style, which cut down on injuries and made a LOT more people buy into storylines and angles.

 

2) Another huge mistake, in my opinion, was creating Smackdown in the first place. Going from 2 hours of TV a week to 4, along with a monthly PPV, overexposed everyone and everything.

 

The roster split helped a little with this, but the fact that the roster split doesn't make sense hurts as well.

[Guest Kanenite#357]

I really have to dispute a few of the suggestions since theydo not really rank among the stupidest things that Vince McMahon has ever done IMHO. The Katie Vick storyline, while atrocious, was fairly short and had no real lasting effects. It was pretty much expunged from official WWF canon back in December. Austin' s heel turn may not have been handled as well as some would like but it provided a great swerve ending to Wrestlemania X-7 and revitalized Austin's formerly stale character. Having a babyface HHH around that time would have interefered with the pushes of Beniot and Jericho and could only have led to a stale main event at Backlash that year. None of these things really cost the company that much money.

 

I still cannot believe that no one has really pounced on one of the most glaring errors in the Roster split so far, the unequal distribution of talent among the two brands. Vince's Smackdown roster got all the great wrestlers, up-and-coming talent, and many of the biggest draws. Ric Flair's Raw got a collection of stale acts and broken down has-beens who had not drawn money in ages. Raw was doomed from the start. Vince put himself over and everyone suffered.

[LooseCannon25 0]

To be honest I personally think that The Roster split was done the way it was to make them entirely different types of shows. One show (RAW) would be the sports entertainment big stars show, and the other (SMACKDOWN) would be the good wrestling action, great workers, less talk more action show.

[Guest RepoMan]

1.XFL

2. Making WCW/ECW into a bunch of jobbers owned by McMahons

3. HHH-Steph run get too much influence back stage

4. Signing Mark Henry

5. Undertaker vs. Undertaker

[Guest RavishingRickRudo]

. The Katie Vick storyline, while atrocious, was fairly short and had no real lasting effects. It was pretty much expunged from official WWF canon back in December.

 

How can you measure the effects such a stupid storyline has on the fans? If you chop away at a tree, even if the biggest cut didn't send it down, when the tree does come down, that biggest cut will matter. Fans will only take so much insulting storylines... I know I have. To think that such an angle was expendible, well, that's McMahon thinking and that sort of thinking is very damaging. The Katie Vick angle represented something more than just insulting the fans' intelligence, it showed were Vince McMahons head was - he still thought (and thinks) that stunts like that will get ratings - even after the Billy/Chuck angle and HLA angles didn't *do* anything. It showed Vince's inability to think outside his concrete box and has become perfect evidence to show that he *doesn't* care about his fans.

 

Austin' s heel turn may not have been handled as well as some would like but it provided a great swerve ending to Wrestlemania X-7 and revitalized Austin's formerly stale character.

 

A swerve ending that NOBODY WANTED. I mean, jesus christ that was just stupid. To turn Austin in his home state of Texas, and then have the following RAW in Texas, and then have him team up against the guy he was having a blood feud with just a month earlier, and then have him beat up the Rock who is one of the least sympathetic wrestlers on the roster - just STUPID. The consequences of that action are still felt today.

Do I think Austin should have turned heel? Yes. Do I think it should have been at WM? NO.

 

Having a babyface HHH around that time would have interefered with the pushes of Beniot and Jericho and could only have led to a stale main event at Backlash that year. None of these things really cost the company that much money.

 

HHH was on the verge of being a babyface and Jericho/Benoit were only elevated by necessity and then were back to square-1 a year later. What they 'should have' done, which was obvious at the time so this is not just in retrospect, was have Austin stay face and go against a heel HHH and slowly turn both to where you would have an Austin/Hart WM 13 situation where you could do a double turn in a match and then continue the feud on through the summer months. The WWE's inability to think about something so simple and instead went for the completely insulting (Austin teaming up with HHH because "A guy who would kill me is someone I want on my team").

 

I still cannot believe that no one has really pounced on one of the most glaring errors in the Roster split so far, the unequal distribution of talent among the two brands. Vince's Smackdown roster got all the great wrestlers, up-and-coming talent, and many of the biggest draws. Ric Flair's Raw got a collection of stale acts and broken down has-beens who had not drawn money in ages. Raw was doomed from the start. Vince put himself over and everyone suffered.

 

I'd say that Vince being completely gutless about the split is something that has hurt the company. Smackdown is the 'wrestling show' so how about you have all the wrestlers there, no hosses and no women. Raw is the 'entertainment show', where the hosses, women, and talentless hacks wrestle. But Vince didn't want to go all the way with that concept, he had to Yin Yang-it and so all we got was a half-assed version of each shows concept.