Let's Talk About...The New Blood/Millionaires Club angle

[King Kamala 0]

We've been talking a lot about '99 and '00 WCW so I thought I'd continue that tradition. After all, it's a lot more interesting to talk about bad wrestling than it is with good wrestling. Now this is an angle that I thought had incredible potential. There are many ways you could do it and make it compelling television. Allow me to put on my fantasy booker hat. You could have The Millionaires Club as the sympathetic babyfaces, legends of the squared circle being pushed aside by a youth obsessed new regime. Or you could have the opposite with The New Blood playing the babyfaces and looking to knock off the egomaniacal stalwarts that have had a stranglehold on WCW's main events for years.Unfortunately, WCW decided to do it in the worst way possible. Both sides came off looking like assholes. And not the compelling "shades of grey" assholes that us in the IWC tend to love just plain "I want to change the channel to RAW" assholes. You were never really sure why The New Blood were exactly the heels and why The Millionaires Club were the babyfaces. And why the hell would you name a babyface stable "The Millionaires Club" in the first place? Hasn't professional wrestling taught us to hate the wealthy? This was just one incredibly frustrating storyline. While I doubt WCW could have shot back to #1 if this angle was successful, I'm not sure if WCW was past the point of no return in April 2000.

 

I'd even argue that the failure of this angle was the tipping point in WCW's demise. Russo and Bischoff joining forces to save WCW was hyped endlessly as something that could save WCW and perhaps regain them the top spot. Maybe I was a sucker but I kind of bought into the hype and when it quickly became clear that the big angle that was going to revive WCW turned out to be a big dud, I realized WCW was certainly never going back to #1 and it might be over for good.

 

There was a sliver of decent stuff. The first few shows might not have made for good television persay but it was certainly interesting television. And working with new opponents, brought out the best stuff in years from Hogan. DDP and Jarrett's matches were consistently good. Though it was kind of absurd that with a still loaded roster that those two were on top. Of course, this was all rightfully overshadowed by stuff like Tank Abbott ripping off Mark Madden's shirt, David Arquette winning the WCW World title, and the general unreigned absurdity of Russo's booking.

 

So let's talk about a time when world collided. When Russo joined forces with Bischoff and young clashed with old. Relive the crappiness (or greatness, Russo apologists are welcomed here) in this week's Let's Talk About...

[ChrisMWaters 0]

The weirdest thing about this for me was the third incarnation of Hogan.

 

First was the classic red and yellow

 

Then there was Hollywood Hogan.

 

And for the third...came FUNB Hogan.

[BruteSquad_BRODY 0]

Night one with Hogan snapping and looking for Eric to reinsure Hogan his spot was safe was good stuff to me... Hogan even did a pretty good blade job IIRC

[PILLS! PILLS! PILLS! 0]

And why the hell would you name a babyface stable "The Millionaires Club" in the first place? Hasn't professional wrestling taught us to hate the wealthy?

 

Jesus God Yeah.

[BruteSquad_BRODY 0]

http://www.ddtdigest.com/features/drnk2000.htm

[Jingus 0]

I will thoroughly agree on two points here: that first Nitro was some amazing tv, just great shit that got me legit excited in WCW again for the first time in a while. But the decision to make the New Blood into the heels was one major factor in the whole thing tanking. The whole point of this should have been to put over some young guys and elevate new stars, not to utterly bury the upcomers and just reinforce the old guys. Of course, this being Russo, they had absolutely no way to follow up and conclude the hot angle they'd started. Seriously, how did that angle end? Answer: much like the NWO, it never ended, just sort of faded away. And by the time the payperview they NAMED after the angle came around, New Blood Rising, the entire storyline was already dead and gone.

[Steviekick 0]

That's exactly how I felt about it. I have that Nitro on tape somewhere and it was very exciting. Unfortunately, they never capitalized on it.

 

The angle really got awful towards the end, when they were driving around in a school bus. However, it did give us that fun Funk/Candido match where they almost got killed by a horse.

[King Kamala 0]

One of the worst things to come out of that era; The Misfits In Action. None of the wrestlers were particulalry terrible except Van Hammer (Yeah I'm the guy who thought The Wall had potential so sue me!) and the idea of a middleground stable between The New Blood and Millionaires Club wasn't terrible but the execution was just awful. Easily one of my least favorite stables of all time.

[Guest Smues]

Wasn't there a PPV (Slamboree?) where the Millionaires club was shown arriving in their bus at the beginning of the show, despite having cut promos from the arena on the pre-ppv show? In addition to how god awful the booking was under Russo, production values really seemed to tank hard.

[Dobbs 3K 0]

The whole thing just seemed to have no direction at all. If they had just made it cut and dry "The young guys are trying to get their shot, and the older stars are holding them down" and stuck to that, it could have been good. But, typical Russo, they threw in too much soap opera crap and, as mentioned, basically made everyone act heelish. Just a big mess in the end.

 

I remember one typical comment around that time, when they'd have someone like Kidman wrestle Hogan on Nitro and job "Just because a guy is jobbing higher up on the card, doesn't mean he's being elevated."

[Corey_Lazarus 0]

The angle had a ton of potential. Yes, even the MIA. What really hurt everything was a combination of politics, Russo not knowing how to deal with said politics, and just incompetent booking. An audience, especially a pro wrestling audience, can be trained to accept anything so long as it's well-presented. Kidman/Hogan had the possibility to do something never done before: Hogan, the ultimate icon in the industry, putting over a lowly cruiserweight (who, despite having very solid matches the two years prior, would ultimately prove why he was midcard at best, but that's besides the point). It could've worked, even with Kidman losing in incredible fashion during the blowoff. All Hogan needed to do was SELL for him, let Kidman even get a cheap pin/submission (hit him with a chair behind the ref's back, roll him up with feet on the ropes/handful of tights, etc.) on PPV after little-to-no interference and a few moments of back-and-forth action (no, Mike Awesome demolishing Hogan in a no-DQ match after Hogan threw Kidman around the ring for 10 minutes doesn't count), and suddenly you have somebody who now has the rub to be a star.

 

But alas...everything that could be said about the Kidman/Hogan aspect of the angle has already been said, so it's not worth getting further into. Honestly? I feel the best handled aspects of the angle were the MIA and what would become the Natural Born Thrillers. Hear me out.

 

The MIA started as younger, underpushed members of the roster, guys who worked hard to get where they were and were still shunted down the card in favor of more established names. But they wanted something different: they wanted to earn what they got, not just take it in a huge mess of a coup lead by two of the biggest on-air scumbags in WCW history. They weren't New Blood, but they most certainly weren't Millionaires Club. It worked...as a concept. But when Russo tried to turn MIA into DX Ultra Lite? It failed miserably. Chavo Guerrero Jr. was well-respected as a solid wrestler, a man who could own the Cruiserweight division. Lash LeRoux was an up-and-coming star that fans were taking to like few other WCW-originals. Hugh Morrus was a man fans knew of, but not as a serious character, but rather a pseudo-demented brawl who could hit a damn decent moonsault. The Wall was a green powerhouse, but he was willing to work to improve (and eventually did so in TNA as Malice before the heroin overdose that took his life), and could be the monster that WCW had lacked for over a year at that point when Paul Wight left for the WWF. And Van Hammer was...well, he was useless as anything other than the muscle in Raven's Flock back in '97/'98. But the point of the stable was, initially, a good one, as they rejected the New Blood's way, and were then at war with them. But a dumb stable name (seriously, even something like "the Third Party" or "Zero Brigade" would have been better than a dumb acronym), focusing more on humor than being serious (Russo's biggest fault), and bad feuds (save for the Team Canada feud, which I feel was handled about as well as it could have been) killed whatever semblance of a solid stable there could have been. Bringing in "Pappy," or whatever the old man was, was a bad move. Double ditto Tylene Buck, whose butterface and lack of a personality hampered the stable more than it helped it. I think the turning point, besides initially being affiliated with Booker's awful "GI Bro" persona (again, it doesn't matter if that's how he started his career, because there's a reason he dropped it), was the promo in which Hugh Morrus decided to drop the act and go under his "real name" of General Hugh G. Rection. What was wrong with staying as Hugh Morrus? What was wrong with simply saying you're refusing the moniker given to you by those from a lost wrestling era (again, an angle could be made where the MIA were against both the New Blood and the Millionaires Club) and saying you're name was Bill DeMott, and it was time to be serious (and not Sir Ius, the humorless knight)? Abso-fucking-lutely nothing. Russo wanted another Degeneration X, but he failed to realize what made DX so great: that it was workers with a damn decent sense of humor trying to make themselves laugh, and in the process give the fans somebody to love/hate. It also doesn't help that everybody in DX (save for Gunn) had three times the personality of EVERYBODY in MIA, but I digress. Mishandled angle/stable that was starting to get decent treatment later on during its existence, but it really just hampered about everybody's career that it touched.

 

And the NBT, with Kevin Nash as their coach? It was beautiful in its simplicity. 6 rookie upstarts who believed they had the talent and superstar looks to be at the top without much experience, and were willing to do anything to get what they wanted...just like Nash had earlier in his career. It made sense for Nash to coach them, as he was less of an in-ring character at the time (for whatever reasons) and more of a mouthpiece, so for Nash to "give the rub" to 6 undeveloped guys was both helpful and entertaining. And it was even more perfect when they double-crossed Nash, much as he had done most of his former alliances, and then Nash joined the Millionaires Club to get to them. It was perfect in how simple it could be executed, but then Nash pulled his stroke, and the NBT were split up into different groups (Stasiak/Jindrak vs. Palumbo/O'Haire, the more talented members of either team tagging against the other; Reno went on his own as a Hardcore champion, to decent success; and Sanders, who was all-around awesome on the stick, and I honestly forget what he was doing after NBT fell apart, but I think it had to do with Jeff Jarrett). Of course, I could have my timeline confused, considering how hectic 2000 was for WCW, but I think I've got it at least somewhat accurate. I just remember the NBT starting off as a solid, new stable, and then deteriorating into shit without much of a good reason.

[Jingus 0]

It made sense for Nash to coach them, as he was less of an in-ring character at the time (for whatever reasons) and more of a mouthpiece,

One part standard Big Lazyness and preferring to talk instead of wrestle (and hey, who doesn't agree that Nash's promos > Nash's matches?), and one part still recovering from a broken leg when the whole angle started so he was a bit late getting a piece of the storyline.

 

the NBT were split up into different groups (Stasiak/Jindrak vs. Palumbo/O'Haire, the more talented members of either team tagging against the other;

I never, ever understood why WCW did this. Jindrak and O'Haire were as natural and phenomenal a tag-team as two young steroid rookies were ever gonna be, period. Meanwhile, Stasiak and Palumbo... well, they had masted the "steroid" and "rookie" parts of that previous sentence. Stasiak's only positive contribution to the business was charging into inanimate objects, and Palumbo didn't get any good until he went to Japan and had some workrate kicked into him. Yet WCW inexplicably took this talented, relatively popular young team with seemingly endless potential, and insanely split them up into two tag teams which were just there and had no chemistry. Even worse, the WWE continued their mistake once Invasion began.

[cabbageboy 0]

I quite liked the O'Haire and Jindrak teaming and was puzzled as to why they broke them up and went with Palumbo/O'Haire instead.

 

Here is one aspect of the Millionaire's Club/New Blood angle that hasn't been considered. Fans are prone to cheering the bigger named stars and a bunch of rookie punks whining about being held down just isn't going to get over. Honestly it would be better to drop that entire aspect of the angle. Also, is anyone really going to cheer Vince Russo if he's leading a group? Russo is one of the most annoying onscreen characters ever, so I have no idea how he would make this group sympathetic.

 

Also, some of the so called New Blood weren't exactly new or anything. I mean Shane Douglas whining about Ric Flair holding him down in 1993? Who gives a shit? They kept referring to this past hatred between the two, but it was never really an onscreen feud or anything...mostly Douglas blathering on about Flair in ECW and Flair not giving a shit. Is a washed up 38 year old Douglas really the "New Blood?" Is Marcus Bagwell, who had been in WCW since about 1991, really "New Blood?" Is a nearly 40 year old Scott Steiner really "New Blood?"

 

Further, let's say the New Blood guys beat the Millionaire's Club. What does it do? Some guys just aren't perceived as being on the same level as other guys, and I don't think there's any scenario that would make fans buy into Billy Kidman beating Hulk Hogan. He could do it clean in the center and no one would give a flying fuck.

 

The entire middle of 2000 for WCW was like this. The music could be good but it was played way out of tune. Booker T. went from being in a feud with friggin Ahmed Johnson over his T (Sullivan era booking) and then became GI Bro soon after, and then a month later won the world title. HUH??????? I can appreciate the attempt to elevate talent, so Russo gets praise for that, but you have to lay the foundation for such a push. I think fans deep down would have bought Booker at that level had he been pushed in a way that made it believable. But you can't job out to a washed up Ahmed and then do a ridiculous comedy gimmick like GI Bro, and then win a world title. Booker needed a credible push and wins vs. top opponents and then it would have gotten over better.

 

The sad aspect here is that once this whole angle died down WCW finally went with a strong push for someone (Steiner) and it worked pretty well. Once the whole idiotic Nash/Steiner/Goldberg angle over guys doing shoots in the ring died down it became Steiner vs. Goldberg in a battle of guys who just hated each other. Note how much better the latter scenario worked. Steiner got a hard hitting win over Goldberg, then he went after Booker for a couple months, was put over strong there, and then beat down guys like Sid, Nash, and DDP. WCW needed a strong champion, it didn't matter if he was heel or face, they just needed someone to hold the belt with some credibility.

 

Praising Steiner isn't the most popular thing to do, but his late WCW work is terrific stuff. Obviously it didn't draw, but by late 2000 nothing could have. He cut vicious and deranged promos that were half scary and half hilarious, he beat the shit out of opponents left and right, and I think Steiner is easily WCW's best champion post Goldberg.

[Vampiro69 0]

I still get a laugh at seeing Brian Knobbs being a member of the New Blood.

 

Mark Madden had the great line about the F.U.N.B on Hogan's shirt. What does that stand for, First Utica National Bank?

[Jingus 0]

Mark Madden had the great line

No he didn't. Ever.

 

Fans are prone to cheering the bigger named stars and a bunch of rookie punks whining about being held down just isn't going to get over. Honestly it would be better to drop that entire aspect of the angle.

 

Further, let's say the New Blood guys beat the Millionaire's Club. What does it do? Some guys just aren't perceived as being on the same level as other guys, and I don't think there's any scenario that would make fans buy into Billy Kidman beating Hulk Hogan. He could do it clean in the center and no one would give a flying fuck.

The annoying part is that it could've worked, in theory, with some tweaks. Like, Hogan had been a heel for most of his WCW run, and I doubt that the people would've rebelled too hard if he'd gone back to the dark side. Same thing with Flair. Hell, those two are all you'd really need; make them cut a bunch of condescending promos about how they're better than this sport and only in it for their giant contracts and just be dicks in general.

 

You're also right about the weird makeup of the "New Blood". The fuck was Bagwell doing in there?! Or Steiner, or Douglas, or Knobbs, or half the guys who'd been around forever. Guys like Kidman, Awesome, and Kanyon made sense, and got perfectly over when given the chance. I think Awesome was the one guy they fucked over worse, since they took a guaranteed world-beater and quickly and brutally sabotaged his entire career. He certainly had a World Champion sized body, and as long as his opponent knew how to adjust his style he had good matches.

[Jebus 0]

I thought O'Haire & Palumbo were the two best guys the NBT had. Apparantly, WCW felt the same way.

Loved them as tag champs during 2001 WCW. No knock on Jindrak but I feel O'Haire had more chemistry with Palumbo...better matches as a team anyway.

 

Where else was Bagwell gonna go? He wasn't one of the same old, same old WCW main eventers that comprised the Millionaire's Club. Still in his early 30's. Just cause he'd been around since he was basically a kid doesn't mean he wasn't one of the ones under the "glass ceiling". Hell, just months before, he was leading Benoit, Malenko and Saturn against the old guys until Douglas came in.

 

 

[PILLS! PILLS! PILLS! 0]

Mark Madden had the great line

No he didn't. Ever.

 

Yes he did, but that was the only one. If, for any other reason, because I remember it to this day. Although I thought that he said First Union National Bank... So I didn't remember it very well. Don't do drugs, kids.

[Jingus 0]

I thought O'Haire & Palumbo were the two best guys the NBT had. Apparantly, WCW felt the same way.

Loved them as tag champs during 2001 WCW. No knock on Jindrak but I feel O'Haire had more chemistry with Palumbo...better matches as a team anyway.

Really? I hated Palumbo for the longest time. Felt like he was just another generic steroid kid with no charisma or talent. Jindrak seemed like he had much more upside to me.

 

Where else was Bagwell gonna go? He wasn't one of the same old, same old WCW main eventers that comprised the Millionaire's Club. Still in his early 30's. Just cause he'd been around since he was basically a kid doesn't mean he wasn't one of the ones under the "glass ceiling". Hell, just months before, he was leading Benoit, Malenko and Saturn against the old guys until Douglas came in.

Bagwell had been with the company fulltime since 1990. What major promotion has ever taken a guy who's been around for a decade and then made him a top star? It would be the same as sticking Val Venis or Funaki in an "angry young upstarts" division today. Maybe even worse, since he was a 4-time tag champ and even was an earlier member of the NWO back before every other guy in the company was let in. That is not a rookie, that is not New Blood, period. Compare him to Kidman, who'd only spent four years in the company, and half of that was as a jobber nobody.

 

Leading the Revolution: so? Did anyone look at Benoit and Malenko, with their lined faces and receding hairlines, and think "man there's some young fresh-faced kids"? They were, what, maybe ten years younger than the "old geezers" they were feuding with? WCW waited long years to do anything whatsoever with any of these guys, and by then it was too late. They'd already established a system where absolutely nobody was going to get on top except for the guys who were already on top.

 

In fact, here's a great example: prior to Russo, there were only two guys in the Nitro era who were allowed to break through the glass ceiling and play with the big boys: Goldberg and DDP. Goldberg was a young guy, a fresh talent who hadn't been there for long, and he got monstrously over. Page meanwhile was a dude who slowly fought his way up the card, had several high-profile feuds with the top guys, and then when he finally got the belt, the reaction was: "WTF, that guy is world champion?"

[Jebus 0]

I see your point but I just think Millionaire's Club vs. New Blood was more than young vs. old or new vs. old. It was tired old main eventers vs. hungry guys ready to break through the glass ceiling. I think Bagwell fit the latter. Booker T is another good example of someone who definitely wasn't new but still fit in with the rebel group.

 

The odd guys out to me were dudes like Hennig, Bigelow or the Steiners. Proven commodities that still didn't fit in with the Millionaires.

 

It was weird though. Basically, if you weren't main event, you were New Blood. But there were plenty of shades of grey you could argue about: Steiner, Douglas, Bagwell, Booker, even Jarrett.

[cabbageboy 0]

This reminds me of the whole New Generation thing. In 1994 the leader of it was that young up and comer Bret Hart, who had only been in the WWF for a decade. Hell Shawn had been there for about 6 years as well, though I guess only 2 of which were as a singles wrestler. I guess Diesel was fairly fresh but Nash was in his mid 30s then, haha.

 

Personally I don't believe in angles like the New Blood/Millionaire's Club. There's a certain amount of business exposing in the entire "You held me down!" aspect of it. Or talking about hitting the glass ceiling. It would have also helped if WCW had started the feud with the Millionaire guys having all the belts, with the idea that the New Blood was trying to win.

 

Also, what is the end game? As in how does the New Blood achieve victory? By retiring all of the rich guys? I guess they tried this with the Hogan and Flair retirement matches but then we all knew the old dudes were winning. Much like with the WCW vs. NWO feud, what exactly constitutes winning at the end of the day? Say what you want about the botched Invasion angle in 2001, but at least there was a clear beginning, middle, and end with the Alliance trying to take over the WWF and ultimately failing and having to disband.

[Jebus 0]

I was gonna mention veteran Bret Hart being the face of the New Generation. He wasn't young but it was still fairly NEW.

 

It was so bad in WCW 2000 that any of 50+ wrestlers that weren't "Millionaire's Club" would've been considered something new.

[PILLS! PILLS! PILLS! 0]

Personally I don't believe in angles like the New Blood/Millionaire's Club. There's a certain amount of business exposing in the entire "You held me down!" aspect of it. Or talking about hitting the glass ceiling. It would have also helped if WCW had started the feud with the Millionaire guys having all the belts, with the idea that the New Blood was trying to win.

 

By design, old vs. new or passing of the torch angles work, and they work well (Hogan vs. Warrior, Orton vs. Foley). You can't fault the concept of this particular angle. The tone was shitty. Why? Look no further than who was booking it. Russo would have liked nothing more than to shout from the mountaintops that wrestling is fixed. He really thought that catering to the internet marks was going to help do them business. He was proven to be very wrong about this.

[cabbageboy 0]

How did either Warrior/Hogan or Orton/Foley really work though? Warrior didn't really draw shit as champion and quite honestly his win over Hogan signalled the end of the WWF's golden era. Orton basically beat a washed up, retired Foley who had nowhere near the rub to give that he did when he put over HHH. Even after that perceived big win, WWE ended up burying Orton with the HHH feud later in 2004, so it's not like either of those examples led to the young guy drawing serious money.

[King Kamala 0]

Warrior beating Hogan and thus getting the figurative torch passed to him didn't end the WWF's "golden era". What ended it was the half assed booking of the Warrior's World title reign and the fact that the WWF themselves didn't seem ready to move on from Hogan. Heck, the biggest post WrestleMania angle that year involved Hogan! Warrior's first PPV World title defense was completely overshadowed by Hogan getting revenge on Earthquake for sitting on him. But Warrior actually winning the title and for about a day and a half, getting the figurative torch passed to him by Hogan was very well done. The WWF did a good job with the buildup to giving the Warrior the ball but didn't know what to do with him after he had it.

 

And I hate defending The Warrior as much as most of you probably hate me reading it. But The Warrior has been responsible for most of the shit that's got him rightfully derided by the IWC but he's not completely at fault for his Diesel bad WWF World title run.

[PILLS! PILLS! PILLS! 0]

How did either Warrior/Hogan or Orton/Foley really work though? Warrior didn't really draw shit as champion and quite honestly his win over Hogan signalled the end of the WWF's golden era. Orton basically beat a washed up, retired Foley who had nowhere near the rub to give that he did when he put over HHH. Even after that perceived big win, WWE ended up burying Orton with the HHH feud later in 2004, so it's not like either of those examples led to the young guy drawing serious money.

 

I was merely speaking in terms of elevating new stars. No single performer is going to walk out of a program as the new Hulk Hogan, no matter how hard they are put over. Speaking of which, saying that the Ultimate Warrior is a failure because he didn't draw as well as his predecesor is not only unfair, but it is also a lazy, tired argument. Doesn't that mean that pretty much every other World Champion is a failure as well?

 

And the Foley-Orton feud was a big step in elevating Orton. I guess that we could discuss the burials that he underwent at the hands of HHH and The Undertaker, but that really doesn't have a thing to do with the aforementioned Foley program, which was easily the best thing that happened on the RAW brand in '04 (which isn't saying much).

[cabbageboy 0]

I probably would have liked Warrior as champion but what does it say that I had stopped watching wrestling by Jan. 1990? It simply seemed like there was nothing else they could do with Hogan as champ, so it was probably a good thing he lost to Warrior.

 

I'm trying to think of great examples of using an older star to truly elevate someone. I would say HHH vs. Cactus but HHH had already been a 3 time champ by that point, that was just the final push over the cliff. I could also say Hogan vs. Goldberg but it didn't turn out to be the massive changing of the guard we thought.

[King Kamala 0]

Brock Lesnar going over The Rock stand out to me as good of an example as any of using an established superstar to elevate someone.

[Jingus 0]

Come to think of it, Cena has never really had that This Is The Man type moment, has he? His finally taking the title off Bradshaw, despite being a clean win in the semi-main of Wrestlemania, still seemed anticlimactic. When he beat HHH and HBK at the following Manias, it was just sort of "Cena wins again... meh". Even handing guys like Umaga and Khali their first pinfall losses somehow didn't feel like anything special. What would it take to really, finally put this guy over? Hogan, Rock, Austin, and Undertaker are the only big names left which he hasn't beaten.

[cabbageboy 0]

Well, let's check out that list. Rock isn't coming back to put over Cena. Austin is too injured to wrestle beyond a silly comedy match (if at all). Hogan is toxic right now and is like 53 years old, so I don't know what rub he has left (and he wouldn't job anyway). So that leaves UT, and the only real massive win Cena could get there is ending the WM streak, but that would cause a massive fan backlash against Cena more than it would help.

 

Kamala, if you are trying to sell me on a young guy over established star win, Lesnar over Rock is NOT good salesmanship. I've spent the past 6 years ranting on this forum on how I thought Lesnar over RVD in the KOTR finals is the worst piece of booking WWE has done in the post Invasion era.