Hello, one and all, and welcome to my website. This is where I will share my thoughts of stuff that interest me. One of these things is wrestling and I want to spend some time to explain why I feel the WWF is putting out a better wrestling show than rival promotion WCW.
Before we get into that, let’s dive into my history with wrestling, which is fairly brief. See, I only started really following this thing for about a couple years. WCW had picked up steam with its nWo angle and I’ve heard some buzz around that… but the first show that I’d end up watching was an episode of WWF RAW and that had Steve Austin feuding with Bret Hart and that was fun stuff. It didn’t take long for me to figure out when I could catch the shows, but it was still an on and off thing.
Just to clear things up, I live in Canada, wrestling programming airs at midnight and usually replays the next day at 3 or 4 p.m. So there’d be a RAW replay Tuesday afternoon and a Nitro replay Wednesday afternoon. No word on when or if there’s going to be the new Smackdown show around these parts. It’s going to suck missing half the story from here on out.
Anyway, Wrestlemania XIV was when I really started getting into wrestling and that’s when it got good. Austin had defeated Shawn Michaels for the WWF title and was feuding with Vince McMahon. The Undertaker was continuing his feud with Kane despite defeating his younger brother at Mania. DX was under new management and gave us the “cleaner” version. The Rock and the Nation were a thing. All these guys were kinda dicks and yet there was a cool factor with these guys. Something about their anti-establishment attitude (no pun intended) that appealed to me. Crazy shit was happening on the show, such as Austin riding monster trucks and zamboni machines, DX declaring “war” on WCW, there was the porn guy and the choppy-choppy-your-pee-pee thing… sure, there was some stupid stuff in there, but it wasn’t boring, some of it was pretty fun, but it was also very exciting and fun.
Meanwhile, over at WCW, they got the nWo hanging around in some form or fashion. Hulk Hogan, who once ruled the wrestling world in the 80s, is still the top face in the company despite being a dinosaur at this point who could barely move. Actually, there are a lot of old guys in WCW. Roddy, Macho, Flair, Nash, Hall… even DDP, who’s one of the few WCW guys I actually like, seems a bit old-ish or at least weathered. Meanwhile, there’s a bunch of younger guys in the mix, your Chris Benoits, Jerichos, Shane Douglas, and such who are ready to be given the chance to run with that proverbial football, but instead of running with those guys or putting the focus of your company around GOLDBERG, who happens to be the first legit superstar that WCW built from the ground-up, only to sabotage his career with bad booking decisions… just so that we can keep our focus on the old guys.
That’s the problem I have with WCW as a whole. You’ve got some great talent on there, there’s people I like on those shows, and you kinda wish some of them would eventually start scratching the World title picture, but what’s the point in caring about any of these guys if you’re just going to keep using the same old guys over and over again. Even GOLDBERG is starting to be a bit stale and he’s the one guy that I didn’t mind watching despite his simple output; he’s a dude who kills dudes. Not the greatest or most nuanced character, but the guy has a great look, his moves are intense, and while there have been other wrestlers that were booked as unbeatable, GOLDBERG is one of the few that I’ve seen who seems truly unstoppable.
So, yeah, let’s have Scott Hall hit him with a cattle prod so that his butt buddy Nash (who’s also booking the shows, by the way) can be the one to end the streak… and then we can have him drop the belt back to old man Hogan with a touch of a finger… and they do this on the same night that Mick Foley’s WWF Title win is airing. And when Nitro tried to spoiled the results, people switched the channel because they cared more about Mankind than they did the old fucks, especially when they knew that Hogan was getting yet ANOTHER title shot.
Now let’s be fair; WWF isn’t exactly GOOD television most of the time. Some of the plots don’t make sense. Undertaker and Kane go from rivals to buddies to rivals to buddies to who knows – it changes every fucking week. The whole Higher Power thing tormenting the McMahon family revealed to be… Vince McMahon? Really? This Dustin Runnels thing where he’s on a Jesus kick teasing that “he’s coming back” and that he turns out to be Goldust, which he abandoned, but now is back to it? What’s the point of a union? Why am I watching a shitty Leave It To Beaver parody in 1999?
There are other examples, but here’s the difference. WWF has characters and personalities that I actually care about because while the television isn’t good and the stories don’t often make sense, you’ve got enough investment in the characters to overlook these things and the wrestlers are talented enough to make this shit work to a certain point. WCW, on the other hand, doesn’t give you that much. Its stories kinda suck and nobody gives you any reason to care. Anything that happens to be fun or exciting usually happens by accident and usually doesn’t last long.
Look, this is just an opinion, okay? I’m not telling you that WCW outright sucks… although the ratings might tell you otherwise. There was a time when WCW was hot stuff and there was some good stuff on there. Right now, they need to move on from this nWo/Hulk Hogan/old guys shit and start prepping some of the younger folks for higher spots on the show. I’ll even take Bret Hart once he’s ready to make a proper run at the title. And if you’re a WCW fan who wants this company to succeed, then more power to you, man. Continue to enjoy that sinking ship whose breaches are self-inflicted.
WWF, right now, is where the good stuff is happening. Doesn’t happen all that often, but if the material sucks, usually the talent can elevate it. And that’s what makes it compelling and fun. I’m fed up with the Hogan brigade in WCW. Once you get rid of that, I’ll come back and watch. Until then…
