The Invasion Angle

[ryankeast 0]

It is a well known fact that the WWF dropped the ball big time with the failed WCW Invasion angle. Stars like Booker T, DDP, Kanyon, Lance Storm and Mike Awesome were made to look like jokes from the get go and the WWF fans were never in a position to take them as a serious threat to the WWF.

 

The inclusion of ECW superstars and random joinings of Test, Christian, Kurt Angle and Steve Austin didn't help matters either as Angle and Austin became a comedy double act.

 

All in all the booking was terrible during this time - I actually can't think of anyone in WCW/ECW faction that was made to look strong, as great wrestlers like Rhino and Tazz were made to look like clowns.

 

How would you have handled the purchase of WCW? Would you have kept the show completly seperate from the WWF and have dream cross brand matches once in a while, Would you still go the Invasion route? If so how would you have booked it and then blown it off.

 

Would huge superstars like Hogan, Hall, Nash, Sting, Flair, Luger, Savage, Sid (injury permiting), Runnels, Jarratt, Stiener and Goldberg have been included in the signings?

 

Discuss.

[EVIL~! alkeiper 0]

It's easy to look at it all in retrospect, but it's worth noting that no acquisition of a wrestling promotion has resulted in a successful invasion angle. WCW/UWF fizzled out as well, and I'm sure there are a couple other examples. The problem was that several top stars had prohibitive contracts, so including them in the purchase would've cost WWE more than they would have made from the angle. So of course the remaining talent was watered down. Also, you have a problem when it comes to face/heel alignments. Do you turn one promotion face and the other heel? You'd have to turn Vince face, and that would cause the promotion to lose steam once the angle was over.

 

In a dream world you could create some dream matchups. But in reality something like the invasion is very, very difficult to pull off.

[luke-o 0]

I agree that the whole angle would have been tricky to pull off, but tbh, Austin turning on the WWF was something i didnt see coming as a 15 year old mark. And to this day, i still put it down as one of the more suprising moments in wrestling history.

 

But if i was to have booked that time, i certainly wouldnt have had Kanyon/DDP look like Taker/Kane's bitches nor would i have put Perry Saturn over Raven. Infact, if i was booking the WWF during Raven's run, he certainly would have been more that just a hardcore champion.

[CanadianChris 0]

The reason there has never been a successful invasion angle is because no promoter has ever had the humility required to make another promotion look equal or superior to his own promotion. It also requires a top-notch booking staff to make the fans buy into it, because it's difficult to make the fans believe that a failed promotion could pull off a successful invasion, and the complete cooperation of the locker room, because they're the ones who are going to be made to look weak. It's incredibly difficult, and probably not worth the payoff.

 

The best route to go would have been to integrate the new guys into existing programs and try to make stars out of the ones that seem to have potential. Which is pretty much what happened after the InVasion.

[Guest LividLiquid]

The reason there has never been a successful invasion angle is because no promoter has ever had the humility required to make another promotion look equal or superior to his own promotion.

Not technically, but honestly, in my opinion, there HAS been a successful invasion angle and it was the nWo. 2 guys from the WWF came to WCW and were made to look so strong that they could hold back nearly the entire promotion themselves.

 

The plan was an eventual brand extension, so turning WCW and ECW heel was a stupid move anyway.

[razazteca 0]

Flair, Sting, Goldberg, Steiner being at the beginning would of helped some. With Flair being the "president" of WCW would of made it somewhat more believable I just find it hard to digest that the whole angle revolved around the McMahon Family. Stephanie as the on air "owner" of ECW was just disgusting.

[Hunter's Torn Quad 0]

The 'outsiders' angle, with apparently invading wrestlers from another promotion coming in to take on the home promotions wrestlers, has been done countless times in promotions all over the world, and with few exceptions, it ALWAYS WORKED. The reason it didn't work with WWE/WCW simply down to Vince's ego. That's it.

 

It had nothing to do with not having any top names. Of the other, successful, invasion angles, not all of them had any 'top names' but the storyline in question still got over huge, still drew in the fans and still made money, because of how it was booked, which is the key to any invasion storyline.

 

The 'Invasion' angle is not tricky to pull off. The booking required is pretty simple. The only problem, that has been mentioned, is it takes putting aside ego to do what's right for business. That is where the WWE/WCW Invasion failed. Vince would not put his ego in check.

 

If you want to look at a successful, albeit small scale 'Invasion' angle, take a look at the ROH vs. CZW storyline. That one, believe it or not, made money. It drew. It had legs and it ran for a fairly long time, because Gabe Sapolsky put his ego in check and actually had the CZW wrestlers look strong, very strong in some cases, against the ROH wrestlers, before giving ROH the big, climactic win, in CZW's biggest gimmick match to boot.

 

The 'Invasion' angle can work.

[EVIL~! alkeiper 0]

A couple of promotions working together is different than one promotion absorbing the other. CZW/ROH is different because in the end, you still have two separate promotions. The problem with an angle the scale of WWF/WCW is that at the end of it, you have one promotion. You can't continue to run two separate promotions with the same number of wrestlers because it is simply not cost-effective. At the end of it, you have roughly the same jobs for wrestlers, the same openings for main-eventers, etc. The problem is that someone is going to be left out of it all. Is the winning promotion, WWF in this case, going to step aside and work in full cooperation knowing that some of them will lose jobs/status as a result? Of course not.

 

The thing that makes it different was that it wasn't simply an invasion angle, it was a full scale acquisition.

[cabbageboy 0]

I can think of one guy in the WCW/ECW Alliance that was booked fairly strong and got over: RVD. People seem to forget that he got wins of some sort over Austin, Angle, Rock, Jericho, etc. during the Invasion. Of course he was seriously depushed right around the time the angle was killed off, but I think there were reasons for it other than the Invasion itself. RVD was really one of the few bright spots of the whole angle.

 

This angle was always doomed to failure and here's why. The WWF had won. Period, end of story. Everyone knew they had bought WCW so there was no real suspense for an Invasion because the outcome of such an angle was predetermined. This wasn't 1998 where both promotions were strong and a crossover would have done massive business. WCW by 2001 was utter crap and was doing .10 buyrates. Even the main stars in WCW weren't drawing any sort of money, having been killed off by years of bad booking or dubious workrates.

 

So what would I have done? I don't know. I might have just forgotten the Invasion and just put the better workers on the actual WWF roster. The hasbeens, the guys who were cashing the paycheck, bye bye (which happened anyway). The PPVs in 2001 were very good for the most part, it was mainly the Invasion crap with the Alliance that drags them down. Take away that angle and the action was quite good, aside from silly crap like UT/Kane vs. Kronik.

[Dobbs 3K 0]

I think it might have been better if instead of trying to resurrect WCW and ECW, they had created some kind of new entity for the Alliance guys to fight under (anyway, a name not as lame as "The Alliance"). The basic premise of Shane and Stephanie trying to beat Vince made sense...having some kind of new nWo type group for them to head would've taken away the lameness of having Kurt Angle and Steve Austin join WCW, which was seen by WWF fans as being uncool by that point.

 

They really needed to present the Alliance guys as being able to beat the WWF, and they never did that. Plus, a lot of the guys came off as being really generic. I think Lance Storm, Justin Credible, and Perry Saturn were all using the superkick as a finisher at the same time, for example. Most of them didn't really get a chance to cut promos, either. So basically you just had a bunch of guys from two dead promotions no one really cared about anymore trying to take on the WWF Superstars, and it just wasn't believable.

[razazteca 0]

Having APA Bradshaw as the defender of WWF was lame the man was a career midcard comedy act back then how he went from playing poker with Farooq and demanding people to knock on his fake "office door" and starting fights at the Friendly Tap to becoming an overnight main eventer was not believable. Just because he had a beer with Austin on Raw one night did not make him a main eventer. The problem was that there were no true standout leaders in the whole damn angle it took Austin becoming a trader to solve half the problem but who the hell was going to defend WWF some midcard nobody? Yeah people really took up to that! And Undertaker/Kane did a great job of not wanting to do anything helpful at all after shitting on the whole DDP and Kronik feuds.

[reign 0]

Too much ego on WWE made this impossible to pull off...if Bischoff would've beaten Vince in 1997(and some how got the rights to WWF) I could have totally seen him absorbing the wrestlers and at some point make WCW lose to the WWF resulting in WCW not being an entity for at least a few months. Bischoff understood that at the end of the day he ran both the WCW and the NWO so whatever was best for business decided the ruling faction.

 

The worst thing about the Invasion is that so many of us had faith in Vince to pull off the most amazing story in the history of wrestling. He had a year of great stories in the bag just waiting to be pulled out..but he just had to repeatedly power bomb WCW into the ground..Flair, Goldberg and the NWO showing up soon after made it even worse..

 

The Death Of WCW book goes into it in great detail and I hope that Vince knows that his handling of WCW had a worse impact than the XFL failing was on his business..

[King Cucaracha 0]

Having APA Bradshaw as the defender of WWF was lame the man was a career midcard comedy act back then how he went from playing poker with Farooq and demanding people to knock on his fake "office door" and starting fights at the Friendly Tap to becoming an overnight main eventer was not believable. Just because he had a beer with Austin on Raw one night did not make him a main eventer.

 

Bradshaw didn't become a 'main eventer' until 2002, against the nWo. 2001 and the Invasion, it made sense for The APA to be in the role they were in, because they were the face team built as the most credible ass-kickers outside of the Brothers Of Destruction, who were needed higher up the card. They were never really pushed to main event status during the Invasion.

[Dobbs 3K 0]

Having APA Bradshaw as the defender of WWF was lame the man was a career midcard comedy act back then how he went from playing poker with Farooq and demanding people to knock on his fake "office door" and starting fights at the Friendly Tap to becoming an overnight main eventer was not believable. Just because he had a beer with Austin on Raw one night did not make him a main eventer.

 

Bradshaw didn't become a 'main eventer' until 2002, against the nWo. 2001 and the Invasion, it made sense for The APA to be in the role they were in, because they were the face team built as the most credible ass-kickers outside of the Brothers Of Destruction, who were needed higher up the card. They were never really pushed to main event status during the Invasion.

 

Yeah, I was thinking the same thing, but couldn't remember the exact time table.

 

Rock and Jericho were basically the two big WWF faces during the Invasion, right?

[razazteca 0]

Wasn't the Rock out already making movies?

[cabbageboy 0]

It seemed like The Rock was gone for a few months during the angle though, but he did show up in time for SummerSlam 2001 to beat down a heatless Booker T.

 

In regards to making them into some other entity instead of WCW/ECW...it wouldn't have worked. Everyone was expecting some sort of Invasion angle with WCW. I think the biggest issue is that WWF fans simply wouldn't have bought into the idea of WCW guys beating down the WWF guys.

[claydude14 0]

You know, overlooking what it could have been; I enjoyed the InVasion storyline and the era is one of my all time favorites in wrestling. I liked the InVasion, there I said it.

[King Cucaracha 0]

It seemed like The Rock was gone for a few months during the angle though, but he did show up in time for SummerSlam 2001 to beat down a heatless Booker T.

 

Yeah, they did the angle where Shane and Vince both tried to sign him when he returned and he Rock Bottomed both before choosing WWF.

 

In hindsight, 2001 wasn't that bad of a year. It wasn't all it could have been, sure, but I don't think it was the disaster that people like to claim it was. They pushed Jericho to the main event, pushed Edge, pushed Christian, legitimised Angle as an actual main-eventer (which his 2000 run never did), pushed Test, re-energised The Dudleys, got RVD and Booker into prominent positions on the card. That's a better record than any time recently.

 

The real problem with the Invasion angle was that the 'rosters' were lopsided. The WWF had the credible main eventers but the WWF midcard was full of comedy acts. I remember watching Survivor Series and being amused that here was Team WWF, represented by the likes of Funaki, Crash Holly, Saturn etc.

[ryankeast 0]

Good stuff bought up by all.

 

Would you have just absorbed the WCW roster into the current roster then? Obvioulsy 30+ EXTRA wrestlers to add to an already oversized roster would have maybe been asking too much....would a B league maybe have been the answer - pretty much what they have now with ECW (you could call that the C show) Maybe a roster split from the get go. Maybe Raw for WWE with Heat and Samckdown and Velocity for WCW (Maybe rename them Nitro and Thunder)

 

I was to a certain extent let down by the whole Invasion angle, for the simple fact that nearly all the players for the Alliance were percieved and booked as jokes. I would like to point cabbageboy's well made point, that RVD was the only standout at this point in time. Others like Booker, Helms and even Chavo (to a lesser extent) all broke out after the demise of WCW, but during the run no one could be considered a serious threat to the WWF. However I don't want to just bash it as I'm not sure what could have been done better? Hence why I'm really wondering if you were in Vince's position what would you have done with the extra superstars you had just signed up?

[Mystery Eskimo 0]

WWE was too impatient.

 

Just to play fantasy booking, I would have used the initial batch of wrestlers as regular midcard guys and established them (both with the fans and the WWE wrestlers), then when Flair became available, bring him in as the mouthpiece and uniting force for a WCW rebellion, chastising the likes of Booker for tamely joining WWE instead of fighting for his heritage that was cruelly taken by Vince McMahon. There you have a motivated group with a reason to rally behind a legendary figurehead, not a bunch of wrestlers sticking to Shane McMahon for no real reason other than "he bought WCW", which even the markiest mark couldnt have got into. Once Goldberg/Sting(maybe even Nash) became available, you could have an air of "who will Flair recruit next".

 

Of course, this would probably default the WCW group to babyfaces, which in fairness which have been extremely brave booking.

 

Plus if they'd waited till Benoit was back from his surgery...well, that would have been cool.

[Sass 0]

Eric Bischoff, Goldberg, Booker T, DDP, Buff Bagwell, Kronic, Konnan, Kanyon, the Natural Born Thrillers (+ Mike Sanders), and maybe half a dozen cruiser weights (with heel kingpin Rey Mysterio Jr.) would have been enough. Along with Paul Heyman and the ECW guys the WWF actually used in 2001, I think this would have been all the muscle the Invasion would have needed to look as though it had some balls behind it.

 

Guys like Hugh Morrus/Bill DeMont should have never been hired and allowed to join the group. He was just...never able to project himself well enough as a "HEY WATCH ME!" guy and was a weak link in the WCW side IMO.

 

Bringing in Hogan, Flair, Nash, Hall, Steiner, etc. would have been redundant IMO. I mean, they wrestled in the WWF before (albeit, years before 2001) and, let me get to this point...while some of the guys I mentioned above wrestled in the WWF as well, Kronic and Konnan had been repackaged immensely different from their salad days in the WWF. Sure, Vince would have drawn money with Hogan & Friends. That's a given. The only problem is that Hulk Fuckin Hogan and Dick Flair are back in the WWF, which will come back to bite them in the ass when all these guys contracts are written up (kiss of death from a business standpoint in the long run). These two old fuckers were shat on for years by the WWF for being too old and now the WWF fans are supposed to percieve them as threats to the younger WWF guys?

 

I don't think so.

 

Plus, everyone who was reading the Observer in 2001 heard ad nauseum how the nWo hiring in late '01 "killed backstage morale" and I'm sure hiring Flair and Steiner also left a bad taste in a lot of other wrestlers mouths, which was/is an unnecessary hiring. The WWF could have maximized their profits by hiring the cheaper guys I mentioned above as opposed to dealing with Hogan, Nash, Hall, etc. and their deals later on down the road.

 

Turn the Big Show, Test, Albert, Regal, and Val Venis against the WWF guys and everything would have been awesome.

 

Shane and Stephanie should have joined forces with their dad against Bischoff and Heyman. Linda should have been the only McMahon to turn heel on the WWF after all the years Vince cheated on her. I think the WWF soap writers could have gotten a lot of mileage out of the Vince/Linda shattered marriage angle. Bischoff and Heyman tag teaming with Linda would have been the icing on the cake.

[bob_barron 0]

They definetelty should've brought in Ric Flair. The guy, along with Sting, WAS WCW. And they even could've used his final Nitro promo as a launching point for his anger. Sass' points about Hogan and Flair don't really work given that they did instantly get over upon arriving in the WWF.

 

But Hogan shouldn't have been involved in the Invasion.

 

Instead of OMG LANCE STORM SUPERKICKED SATURN the InVasion should've begun with the WCW guys beating the shit out of a bunch of WWF midcarders, holding the program hostage, explaining their side of the story.

 

I mean, who cares that Hugh Morrus moonsaulted someone? It's Hugh Morrus!

[KingPK 0]

With Flair, they probably would have been able to run WCW shows in the usual places (Carolinas, Georgia) and start/rechristen a viable WCW brand. Instead, they did it in friggin' Oregon(?).

[Cheech Tremendous 0]

The WWF paid about $2.5 million for the WCW name and tape library. Some of the wrestlers who have been mentioned (Goldberg, Flair, Steiner, etc.) had contracts that paid them more than that. McMahon and co. probably figured that the Invasion angle was going to make enough money anyways that bringing in the others would only cut into their profit (and going by buyrates for the Invasion, they were probably right).

 

I do think that the angle was blown, but I find it hard to fault the company for the way things went down. They purchased WCW with the idea of running it as a separate brand. It was only after they couldn't secure television that they decided to run the angle and make some money off the WCW name. They didn't have the big name players under contract and they didn't have sufficient time to develop and introduce the 25 new characters they now had under contract.

 

The WCW purchase was major news when it happened. You can't simply put them on ice for a year while you flesh out the booking, secure tv and get the big names under contract. All of the heat would have flamed out by then. Now the booking was very poor during the Invasion angle, but it wasn't like they were set up to succeed.

[Sass 0]

Earlier, I did point out how Hogan and Flair would have drew money for the Invasion angle had they originally been a part of it.

 

I never said fans wouldn't pay to see Hogan or Nash.

 

However, my point of contention with hiring Flair, Hogan, Steiner, etc. would have been the eventual headaches they cause down the road after things don't go their way (like say, getting jobbed out to Chris Benoit or Chris Jericho or something else trivial).

 

I'm on the fence about hiring Sting. I think it would have been cool to have brought him in once the WWF ended up taking the lead in their fight against WCW/ECW. Sting's arrival could have helped carry on the angle for a while longer with a Brock Lesnar vs. Sting or Goldberg showdown at Wrestlemania 18 or later than that.

 

This whole angle had at least 2+ years worth of stuff to work with and instead the Invasion ended in less than 6 months. That. is. horrific.

[bob_barron 0]

Has Flair really been a big headcase aside from the shit that went down early last year? The road rage incident went away fast and they used it for some heat on Edge. The divorce was also settled. I know he's had some backstage altercations, but it seems like he's been a good guy since he came back.

 

While bringing in Hall and Nash was stupid, Hogan turned out to be a good guy in his first run. They should've never brought him back after the megajob to Lesnar. That would've been the perfect end for Hogan's career. Since then, it's just been issue after issue.

 

Agreed that they shouldn't have brought in Nash, Hall or Steiner. I don't have a problem with using Piper for cameos every once in a while.

 

You're right that the Invasion was horrific- RAW is ECW was done in one night! That could've been two months worth of shows right there!

[Sass 0]

Hogan and Flair being brought in with Sting as the "reserves" could have worked...maybe. I just don't like headaches and all 3 of these guys bring way too much baggage.

[Wrestlefreak 0]

I can think of one guy in the WCW/ECW Alliance that was booked fairly strong and got over: RVD. People seem to forget that he got wins of some sort over Austin, Angle, Rock, Jericho, etc. during the Invasion. Of course he was seriously depushed right around the time the angle was killed off, but I think there were reasons for it other than the Invasion itself. RVD was really one of the few bright spots of the whole angle.

 

Agreed. IMO, RVD was the unquestionably the most over guy in the Alliance. Even Austin wasn't as popular(at the time).

[cabbageboy 0]

Hell, one of my favorite Smackdowns happened during this time period. Remember where Austin was pissed off at Angle or something and he said he would beat the crap out of the next guy that walked in. Then Van Dam walked in and was like "Hey guys." And then RVD proceeded to beat Austin in the actual match (I know Angle's music played, but it was mostly clean).

 

Truth be told, the ideal time for this storyline would have been 1998. One massive PPV headlined by Austin vs. Goldberg, possibly with Austin being the one to end the streak. That show would of course be a booking nightmare however.

 

Aside from Hogan and Flair, would any of these WCW guys have been worth a damn? Nash and Steiner both were crap in WWE, though Nash did have one decent outing against HHH at Bad Blood 2003. Goldberg was never really accepted by WWE fans.

[Angle-plex 0]

It was executed badly the whole time, but when they completely stopped calling WCW/ECW by name and started calling them "The Alliance", I would say that was the final nail in the coffin. They stopped being a company and became just a stable in WWF at that point. Van Dam was the only "must see" thing every week for me, although I appreciate Austin's heel character in retrospect.