The Invasion Angle

[The Buzz 0]

I would have gone for it I think. Got the big guys like Sting, Flair, Hogan etc. Paired them with their dream match counterparts and went to town. Yeah some of it may have been a let down in the long run, but atleast if you did it that way you actually tried to make the most out of it while it was hot.

 

 

Sting vs Undertaker

Austin vs Hogan

Benoit vs Booker T

Flair vs anyone

 

and then let the mid card and other main eventers pair off as needed.

[Lil' Bitch 0]

They should have waited with the Invasion until when the contracts for the big names were expired. Could you imagine The Alliance being helmed by Flair with Goldberg and Steiner in the league? The nWo could have been brought in later when The Alliance were losing the battle with WWF. We could have gotten dream matches left and right.

 

I didn't have a problem with Stone Cold turning heel and being the leader, I thought that was cool. What was dumb was adding Angle to the Alliance and having the WWF guys holding WCW titles and WCW guys holding WWF titles, ugh.

[cabbageboy 0]

Well, therein lies the dilemma. The longer they waited the more chance they would run of people simply forgetting about WCW and not caring about a potential Invasion angle. It's a Catch 22 really: Either do the angle without the full roster of WCW talent, or wait until they are available (which in some cases was up to 2 years later) and run the risk of nobody caring anymore.

[Hunter's Torn Quad 0]

Before talking about how badly the Invasion was botched and what could have been done to make it bigger, let’s bring up some 2002 PPV numbers to put things in perspective:

 

May, Judgment Day (Austin vs. Undertaker) – 405,000 buys

June, King of the Ring (Austin vs. Benoit vs. Jericho) – 445,000 buys

July, Invasion (Alliance vs. WWE) – 775,000 buys (the most successful non-Wrestlemania WWE PPV)

August. Summerslam, (Austin vs. Angle and Rock vs. Booker) – 565,000

September, Unforgiven (Austin vs. Angle) – 350,000

October, No Mercy (Austin vs. Van Dam vs. Angle – 325,000

November, Survivor Series (Alliance vs. WWE, Losers must disband forever) – 450,000

 

The Invasion PPV, headlined by what was essentially a WWE vs. WWE ten-man tag drew an incredible number, the best non-WM number ever. Four months later, the storyline culminates with almost a 40% drop off in buys. For what should have been the biggest storyline of the modern era, there is no way you can call that anything other than a complete disaster.

 

Now, onto what appears to be the biggest bone of contention, the lack of ‘name’ stars on the WCW side. People argue that it wouldn’t have been cost-effective to bring in the bigger WCW stars, Goldberg, Flair, Nash, etc, because it would have cost too much money from having to buy out their Time Warner contracts, pay them enough to get them on board and so on. Well, take a look at that Invasion buy rate, an incredibly high 775,000, and take a moment to realize that what drew that number was a ten-man tag where, DDP and Booker aside, everyone was a current WWE wrestler.

 

Instead of Booker T, Rhyno, DDP and The Dudley’s representing ‘The Alliance’, think of this team representing WCW:

 

Goldberg, Kevin Nash, Ric Flair, Booker T and DDP.

 

With six weeks of strong television angles, there is no way that that team representing WCW taking on the aforementioned WWE team would have drawn less than 775,000 buys. With Goldberg, Booker T and DDP wrestling their first matches in WWE and Flair and Nash wrestling in WWE for the first time in eight and five years respectively, how many buys do you think they could have got for that? At least a million, easy, I think.

 

WWE’s cut of that 1 million buys PPV money would have been at least $25 million, and that might be generous.

 

Assuming WWE gained $25 million from such a PPV (and that's not taking into account merchandise, etc), let’s speculate on what salaries the aforementioned WCW team would have been paid, and also what it might have cost WWE to buy their Time Warner contracts:

 

For Goldberg, Nash and DDP, let’s assume it cost a total of $15 million to but out their contracts, and for Flair and Booker, let’s assume it costs a total of $6 million. That’s $21 million of the $25 taken care of, so already the Invasion Mk II has paid for what it took to buy out the contracts, and the storyline is only six weeks old.

 

As for salary, we’ll put Goldberg and Nash on $1.5M per year (a compromise on their WCW salary; not quite as high as that, but enough so they’re two of the highest paid wrestlers, which placates their ego and gets them accepting a salary less than their WCW one), Flair can get $1m per year and Page and Booker T can get $750,000 per year.

 

That’s a total of $5.5 million a year, and added to what it cost to buy out their Time Warner contracts gives us a total of $26.5 million dollars.

 

Therefore, with one PPV, and that 1 million buys might be at the low end of what Invasion Mk II would have drawn, WWE have, in one night, raked in almost enough money to cover, not only what it cost to buy the contracts of Goldberg and company, but also their salaries for the first year.

 

As for what you do for the rest of the year, and this is just with WCW guys, you’ve got:

 

Goldberg/Nash/Flair/Booker/DDP vs. Rock, Austin, Hunter, Angle, Undertaker, Kane, Jericho, Benoit in numerous money drawing PPV matches and ratings drawing TV matches, with any one of the PPV’s easily making up the rest of the shortfall to pay the money it took to get the WCW guys on board and keep them there.

 

I know the big argument against this is that it would upset the locker room, but that’s too damn bad on this one. Going balls out with this angle, and that means bringing in Goldberg, Nash, etc, while it may upset the wrestlers, means months of monster PPV buys and bigger paydays for everyone. Instead of Summerslam drawing 565,000 for Austin vs. Angle and Booker T vs. The Rock, you could have drawn infinitely more with, theoretically, all ten of Invasion Mk II main eventers facing off in singles matches. That means a potential Summerslam card of Goldberg vs. Angle, Nash vs. Kane, Ric Flair vs. Chris Jericho, Booker T vs. Steve Austin and DDP vs. The Undertaker. Imagine what kind of PPV buy rate bonanza a loaded card like that could have drawn.

 

The Invasion angle was the biggest and most frustrating dropped ball in the history of wrestling.

[EVIL~! alkeiper 0]

I agree with some of that HTQ. When you reference the locker room though, you have to consider, great buyrates for whom? It's great when the company draws well, but for the wrestlers left behind in the roster crunch, it means squat. Honestly, the way things turned out obviously Goldberg, Kevin Nash, etc. weren't worth the money since WWE did bring them in, and they did not last.

 

As far as stacking the card, I don't have solid numbers on this but I've often wondered about the diminishing value of wrestling talent. By that I mean the first big star will draw the crowd, the second will draw a smaller additional crowd, and so on. By the time you bring in the 10th or 11th star, you're getting a fraction of additional interest, if that. Look at how WWE eventually played this. Instead we got Flair in 2002, Nash and Steiner in 2003, Goldberg in 2003-04, etc. They all kept business going as needed. Now if you run the Invasion, you push out talented low-carders in favor of main-event talent. You draw big that year, but you blow interest in big matches in the future, and you also fail to develop your next wave of stars. And that's going to bite you in the ass down the road.

[Hunter's Torn Quad 0]

I agree with some of that HTQ. When you reference the locker room though, you have to consider, great buyrates for whom? It's great when the company draws well, but for the wrestlers left behind in the roster crunch, it means squat.

 

Sometimes, good business for the company as a whole means bad luck for some people on the roster. If it means making millions of dollars, then few promoters would take into account having to let go of some lower level talents they weren't using anyway.

 

Honestly, the way things turned out obviously Goldberg, Kevin Nash, etc. weren't worth the money since WWE did bring them in, and they did not last.

 

Them not being worth the money had nothing to do with them and everything to do with how they were booked. Booked well, to his strengths, Goldberg was money in the bank. Though, you might have a point with Nash.

 

As far as stacking the card, I don't have solid numbers on this but I've often wondered about the diminishing value of wrestling talent. By that I mean the first big star will draw the crowd, the second will draw a smaller additional crowd, and so on. By the time you bring in the 10th or 11th star, you're getting a fraction of additional interest, if that. Look at how WWE eventually played this. Instead we got Flair in 2002, Nash and Steiner in 2003, Goldberg in 2003-04, etc. They all kept business going as needed. Now if you run the Invasion, you push out talented low-carders in favor of main-event talent. You draw big that year, but you blow interest in big matches in the future, and you also fail to develop your next wave of stars. And that's going to bite you in the ass down the road.

 

This is where smart booking comes in, which is a tall order to ask with WWE, but the point remains. As for blowing interest in big matches in the future, again, smart booking takes care of that. Have some big singles matches early, extend the run with tags or six-mans, leaving the ultimate night of singles bouts for Wrestlemania. In the mean time, build up the midcarders to where they're special, so when the first run of Invasion Mk II is over, the other guys are special enough to mean something so that when you plug them into the top, you've got fresh main events and business continues to do well.

 

The problems with the Invasion were not the people involved, but the booking. It's the same with any invasion angle that gets run all over the world. The right booking, booking for business over ego, means it always does well to some degree.

[foleyfanforever88 0]

In about 2 years, if WWE were to buy out TNA and run a TNA invasion angle, could it be as huge as the WCW invasion was? Think about this kind of card:

 

Angle vs HBK

Edge vs Christian

John Cena vs Jeff Jarrett

Undertaker/Kane vs Sting/Abyss

LAX vs Hardys

AJ Styles vs CM Punk

Umaga vs Samoa Joe

Benoit vs Daniels

RVD vs Lynn

 

etc, etc.

[EVIL~! alkeiper 0]

If WWE were to buy out TNA, it would be because TNA failed and there would not be much interest there.

 

I've often wondered about what if Ted Turner of all people were to show up on WWE tv with a stable of former WCW stars.

[Hawk 34 0]

In about 2 years, if WWE were to buy out TNA and run a TNA invasion angle, could it be as huge as the WCW invasion was? Think about this kind of card:

 

Angle vs HBK

Edge vs Christian

John Cena vs Jeff Jarrett

Undertaker/Kane vs Sting/Abyss

LAX vs Hardys

AJ Styles vs CM Punk

Umaga vs Samoa Joe

Benoit vs Daniels

RVD vs Lynn

 

etc, etc.

 

You would see very little interest in anything with TNA. If it folded, WWE might made the effort to buy it cheap to bolster the collection and to mock it as often as possible. Aside from Joe, Styles and a couple other mid-card acts, I wouldn't see WWE interested in them. They might make another play for Sting in order to do a one-off nostalgia program but he never went for it before and I'm assuming at his age now, he's even less interested in the idea but maybe getting a HOF package deal in place might sweeten the offer.

[Dobbs 3K 0]

Argh...Turner had nothing to do with WCW really by the end. It was owned by Time Warner. He was still part of the company, but he wasn't the owner of WCW.

[Jericho2000Mark 0]

Wow, Angle vs Michaels, Edge vs Christian...never seen those matches before.

[foleyfanforever88 0]

Wow, Angle vs Michaels, Edge vs Christian...never seen those matches before.

 

Angle vs Michaels is an awesome match, I'd have no problem seeing another one, and Edge as WWE Champion vs Christian as NWA Champion would be a great story. Great promos too.

[Jericho2000Mark 0]

Wow, Angle vs Michaels, Edge vs Christian...never seen those matches before.

 

Angle vs Michaels is an awesome match, I'd have no problem seeing another one, and Edge as WWE Champion vs Christian as NWA Champion would be a great story. Great promos too.

 

The last Angle-Michaels match on Raw was pretty mediocre, and both matches have been done to death. Most of the big names in TNA have already been in WWE not too long ago, and most, like Christian, Rhino and Jarrett, were midcarders. The only actual dream matches with the potential to make money would involve Sting. TNA never had a fanbase like WCW did, so a lot of the older TNA fans wouldn't start watching WWE again, because TNA's current fanbase is pretty much all they ever had. This isn't like WCW where they used to have a big audience and their stars were almost household names at one point, this is a company that is smaller than ECW was (in terms of fanbase).

[foleyfanforever88 0]

Wow, Angle vs Michaels, Edge vs Christian...never seen those matches before.

 

Angle vs Michaels is an awesome match, I'd have no problem seeing another one, and Edge as WWE Champion vs Christian as NWA Champion would be a great story. Great promos too.

 

The last Angle-Michaels match on Raw was pretty mediocre, and both matches have been done to death.

 

Done to death? From what I can remember we've seen those two matches a combined 6 or less times.

[Dobbs 3K 0]

An Angle/Lashley feud would probably make more sense at this point, than doing Michaels/Angle again.

[Guest Hadley]

The problem with bringing in flair, nash, goldberg for the invasion in 2001 was that they run the risk of the fans actually cheering them, which would kill the angle and make it look like the wwf are the bad guys. Instead what they should have done is somehow make guys like storm, palumbo, kanyon, ddp, etc into threats. Heck, its easy, just have them cut some memorable promo or do a run in attacking a main event guy like taker, austin, or kane. If the wwf could make stars out of midcarders like austin and rock then its obvious they could have done something for them, that is if they actually wanted to make the effort.

[Boxer 0]

Didn't want to start a new thread so i'll just revive this one.

 

If WCW vs. ECW were allowed to happen under WWE's control what matches would you like to see?

 

I don't know why, but a RVD vs. DDP match would've been appealing to me. Just to hear DDP call RVD, Rob Van SCUM!

[HarleyQuinn 0]

Bumping this thread given the recent action in the "dropped ball" thread...

 

I think (aside from the big names) there were several harmful factors...

 

#1: The first "WCW" match between Booker T and Buff Bagwell. They not only changed the entire set, etc. to give off a WCW feel but ended the match by literally throwing both Booker and Bagwell out of the arena. This match was promoted as a WCW match and featured the then WCW Champion. You really can't bury a company more than by saying that their product is so inferior, their talents should be thrown out of the arena (even the Champion).

 

#2: A lot of the talent that was brought in were not only marginal lower card guys but guys that simply wouldn't have made a dent otherwise. They signed several cruiserweights (Billy Kidman, Shane "Gregory" Helms, Chavo Guerrero Jr) despite a very poorly featured lightweight division in general. They signed decent talents and barely gave them any time to be featured as nothing more than fodder (Lance Storm, Kanyon, Mike Awesome, Sean O'Haire, Chuck Palumbo).

 

They could've brought in different mid level talent to bolster some depth (esp. tag teams: David Flair/Crowbar maybe with Daffney to compete in the newly reborn Women's Division, Bam Bam Bigelow was a familiar name to WWF fans at the time, Ernest Miller could've gotten over with his James Brown dancing gimmick, Konnan could've been a draw to the diversity of fans the WWF had at the time ala Eddie Guerrero later on)

 

#3: The big guys that they did sign (Booker T, DDP) were immediately fed to guys like Undertaker/Steve Austin/Kurt Angle and were basically massacred on arrival. No way was The Alliance going to be taken seriously by anybody when Undertaker/Kane just demolished the WCW Tag Champions and Steve Austin/Kurt Angle were routinely getting an edge over the WCW Champion. Not to mention, Undertaker would go on to annihilate DDP. I'm not really sure that the same scenario would've changed if the WWF had brought in guys like Ric Flair, Hogan, Goldberg, and Sting. They might've had them dominate for a bit but eventually they were gonna get run over once their usefulness was done.

 

#4: The WWF never built up a reason to build the names outside of "They're WCW/ECW" and never gave any sort of background for the fans to give a damn... They were largely just a brand coming in without any individual identity outside of maybe Booker T and DDP.

 

#5: WCW/ECW's Alliance got buried immediately. The Smackdown after the formation: Mike Awesome loses the Hardcore Title to Jeff Hardy. On the following Raw: Kurt Angle easily dispatches Raven (who really could've been a useful guy promo wise to help build things up) and fends off an ambush with a steel chair by himself. Smackdown: Chris Jericho loses to DDP by DQ but still puts him into the Walls after the match. All the "big" main events went to no contests.

 

A lot of the focus was on NWO style beat downs by The Alliance but they never had that domination like the NWO had in WCW. The NWO there had the WCW Title, the Tag Titles, and were legit beating down any and everyone that they wanted to. Here, The Alliance didn't hold any major titles and were largely seen as inferior because they were never given a clean finish win over guys like Steve Austin, Kurt Angle, or The Undertaker.

 

#6: They kept the WCW Titles around despite the lack of a WCW show. This decimated them because it gave The Alliance no incentive outside of just to be around. It's not like Booker T or DDP "invaded" with the goal being to win the WWF Title and change it to the WCW Title. Sean O'Haire/Chuck Palumbo didn't come in to prove WCW superiority and claim the WWF Tag Team Titles. It was all about Shane/Stephanie/Paul Heyman getting revenge on Vince McMahon and outside of Heyman, they didn't have ANY ties to WCW or ECW to make them mean anything.

 

It didn't help when the WWF guys started winning the WCW Titles (The Rock, Angle as WCW Champion, X-Pac as WCW Cruiserweight Champ, Undertaker/Kane as WCW Tag Champs) when the inverse should've been happening almost immediately.

 

#7: The invading talent were immediately given "roles" in the company. The signed cruisers never fought the big name WWF guys (or even the mid-level guys). Torrie Wilson/Stacy Kiebler couldn't wrestle to save their lives so they didn't impact the Women's Division at all. There was no sense of anarchy at all... you had RVD becoming the Hardcore Champion when he really should've been in the IC Title/WWF Title mix at the very least but he came from ECW, so there he was stuck. You suddenly had Undertaker/Kane "down" at the Tag Title level partly because they kept the WCW Tag Titles and as a result, the feud fizzled when it should've been that Palumbo/O'Haire were coming in and challenging the "elite" pairing of Undertaker/Kane without any titles.

[cabbageboy 0]

I was with most of that until the RVD bit. RVD being in the hardcore division was by design, since it showcased all of his wild stuff and got him over. Post Invasion he slipped into the IC division easily enough in time for WM.