Fantasy Booking/Rebooking

[GuerrillaMonsoon]

Agree with most of what you said there but I'd keep the Luger and Perfect match. Whole storyline of Lugers debut was Heenan bringing him in as an upgrade on Perfect and to get revenge on him.

Razor beating Owen probably makes more sense given the beat down he put on him prior to the Rumble match. Or if you really have to have Beefcake on the card, could have been cool to have him destroy Beefcake here and build to a Hogan match.

In two minds whether you put the belts on the debuting Steiners straight away or you see money in the chase that sees them win at KOTR or Summerslam instead.

[SirSmUgly]

That's reasonable. I just thought the Luger/Perfect match was so disappointing and dull that I wanted to replace it with something else. Blow off Perfect/Luger on a pre-WM RAW with the not-yet-illegal loaded elbow, I guess is what I'd do.

You have a great point about Razor/Owen having that backstory, though, so I think your alternative booking there is sound, and I'd happily watch that modified card.

EDIT: And I'd have Beefcake second Hogan ostensibly to cancel out Fuji on the outside and then have Yoko destroy him after the bell while he checks on his downed buddy Hogan. Get that extra "monster heel" post-match booking in, I think. 

Edited April 25, 2021 by Smelly McUgly

[Matt D]

Like @GuerrillaMonsoonindicated, the secret to making Luger/Perfect work is far more heavily involving Heenan. Part of the deal with Heenan unveiling Luger at the Rumble was to get revenge on Perfect for betraying him and Flair. That element sort of falls off in the Mania build and it just becomes another match.

Edited April 25, 2021 by Matt D

[GuerrillaMonsoon]

Yeah its a bit odd that Flair and Luger never interacted in that brief period before Flair left. 

Agreed that the final product at Mania blew chunks.

[Shartnado]

12 minutes ago, GuerrillaMonsoon said:

Yeah its a bit odd that Flair and Luger never interacted in that brief period before Flair left. 

Agreed that the final product at Mania blew chunks.

The time they spent together in WWF was so brief, they barely had the time to say "Hi!" to each other, though! Oddly enough, they were both featured on the WWF Royal Rumble for SNES where you could have them interact all you wanted. Which I did, a lot.

Not to rain on the good booking parade of Razor vs Owen, I think Owen hurt his knee at Rumble and later against Bam Bam and was out of action around WMIX, which is why he wasn't on the card in the first place. Well, they might have left him out anyway, but that would have been dumb.

[GuerrillaMonsoon]

Yep think you're right. Cagematch has a two month break from March that year.

Was Luger injured in 1992 or just exclusively WBF?

Him in the Razor role helping Flair regain the title and tagging with him at Survivor Series makes a lot more sense, especially as you say Razor just burns out by mid 93 as a major heel. Even Flair helping introduce him at the Rumble, or Luger beating Perfect down after the Loser Leaves Town match would have helped.

[Shartnado]

Luger had the motorcycle accident which led to the loaded forearm gimmick. He missed WBF and wrestling basically the entire '92 after his short appearance in WM8 hyping his WBF debut.

Edited April 25, 2021 by Shartnado
Typo

[SirSmUgly]

7 hours ago, Shartnado said:

The time they spent together in WWF was so brief, they barely had the time to say "Hi!" to each other, though! Oddly enough, they were both featured on the WWF Royal Rumble for SNES where you could have them interact all you wanted. Which I did, a lot.

Not to rain on the good booking parade of Razor vs Owen, I think Owen hurt his knee at Rumble and later against Bam Bam and was out of action around WMIX, which is why he wasn't on the card in the first place. Well, they might have left him out anyway, but that would have been dumb.

Oh yeah, now I remember this - he took a wild elimination bump and clearly hyper-extended his knee. 

I figured that I'd be forgetting that someone was injured or had left in the time between RR and WM when I did that post, but I was too lazy to do the research to avoid it.  

[cwoy2j]

On 4/23/2021 at 9:45 PM, BEN! said:

Orndorff should've been Sting's first program.  Legit main event draw and would've meshed well with Sting.  Then you move him over to Luger for a body guy program.  The table was set when he walked out of Sting's celebration but he kept walking right out of the promotion instead.

Orndorff would've been an acceptable replacement for Hansen. I'll allow it but only if we can build a time machine and he can have this theme music

 

 

Edited April 25, 2021 by cwoy2j

[GuerrillaMonsoon]

Razor should have been Shawn's first challenger.

Outrageous money left on the table not having a tiebreaker ladder match.

Yes he was on his way out the company, but they used Nash fairly well at the time and should have done similar with Hall. I wonder if the NWO has as much impact if Hall invades WCW having just suffered a high profile loss to Shawn, rather than being somewhat off TV for most of 96.

[GuerrillaMonsoon]

Luger and Yokozuna's post Mania 10 programs both get screwed over as Hennig bails and Tenta goes to WCW.

Not sure why they didn't give Lex his heat back by winning a nothing match at Summerslam, given Yokozuna didn't have a match and spent the summer in a nothing program with Typhoon instead.

[Shartnado]

4 hours ago, GuerrillaMonsoon said:

Luger and Yokozuna's post Mania 10 programs both get screwed over as Hennig bails and Tenta goes to WCW.

Not sure why they didn't give Lex his heat back by winning a nothing match at Summerslam, given Yokozuna didn't have a match and spent the summer in a nothing program with Typhoon instead.

Not only that. They never gave Luger the win back, as Yoko pinned Luger in a match for the tag titles at In Your House 2 and if I'm not mistaken qualified over him into the King of the Ring '95 tournament. But yeah, that could have been done many times over during the spring and summer of '94.

[GuerrillaMonsoon]

Correct weight on both of them.

Instead of Undertaker vs Undertaker just have Yokozuna vs Luger. Cornette and Fuji try to pull similar trick of multiple guys coming out to run interference, stopped by a returning Undertaker. Luger gets the pin, sets up your return casket match at Survivor Series.

[SirSmUgly]

I think running Michaels/Diesel was perfect considering their four-year storyline as friends and enemies and friends and finally enemies again. Michaels brought Diesel in and then sent him packing. That's a really good long-term narrative there. 

But running Razor/Michaels Ladder III would have been great, too. No wrong answer there.

Luger was booked incredibly poorly. The abrupt face turn into Hogan-lite that put Luger in a forced patriotic babyface role when he was so much better at arrogant heeling or just being a pure fired-up babyface...

...followed by consistently booking him to choke in big matches in dumb ways (count-out win in a title match, mixing it up with the ref and getting DQ'ed in a title match)...

...before just dumping him into a nothing midcard tag team with Bulldog and forgetting about him to the extent that he basically slipped away and made a huge WCW return in a big spot for them. 

If they would have just accepted that Bret and then tbh Razor were the two biggest faces in the company and turned Luger basically immediately after WM X, they could have salvaged something with him, but misusing Luger in that way is a total failure of imagination. They are so thin on the heel side once they turn Diesel in late 1994 - it's basically Michaels, Mr. Backlund, and a rapidly-deteriorating Yokozuna - that it's wild that they ended up sticking him in a long meandering feud with Tatanka in order to...turn Tatanka instead. 

People don't get on McMahon/Jerry Jarrett (???) for that 1993 - 1995 booking enough. It's down there with post-Starrcade 1997 WCW booking. It's just about as bad, but in a totally different way - misusing their most over stars and having long, pointless feuds instead of late-stage WCW's hotshotting and work-shoot bullshit. 

It's wild that Bret Hart was a five-time WWF Champion and almost all of his five losses were awfully-booked garbage instead of something amazing where a big long-term heel was solidly put over. 

 

EDIT: You can probably argue that the fifth loss was decently booked to get the belt off Bret and onto Sid so that Bret would get Austin and Sid would get the Undertaker, and I can live with that assessment, especially since it was an abrupt switch after Shawn ducked him with that fake knee injury. I can be convinced of that. The fourth loss was to put another face over, which, okay, fine, that's acceptable enough. The first three, though, were not great losses - having Bret struggle in a 20-minute match with Backlund before Diesel beats Backlund in ten seconds or w/e is some bullshit. 

Edited May 1, 2021 by Smelly McUgly

[tbarrie]

1 hour ago, Smelly McUgly said:

It's wild that Bret Hart was a five-time WWF Champion and almost all of his five losses were awfully-booked garbage instead of something amazing where a big long-term heel was solidly put over. 

EDIT: You can probably argue that the fifth loss was decently booked to get the belt off Bret and onto Sid so that Bret would get Austin and Sid would get the Undertaker, and I can live with that assessment, especially since it was an abrupt switch after Shawn ducked him with that fake knee injury. I can be convinced of that. The fourth loss was to put another face over, which, okay, fine, that's acceptable enough. The first three, though, were not great losses - having Bret struggle in a 20-minute match with Backlund before Diesel beats Backlund in ten seconds or w/e is some bullshit. 

Your numbers are off. Bret's fifth title loss was the Montreal Screwjob. Bret to Sid was the fourth loss; the Iron Man match was the third.

[SirSmUgly]

8 minutes ago, tbarrie said:

Your numbers are off. Bret's fifth title loss was the Montreal Screwjob. Bret to Sid was the fourth loss; the Iron Man match was the third.

Yep, my bad. Only losses three and four are defensible in the way they were done. 

[BloodyChamp]

This is copied from the Hot Takes thread about Superbrawl 91. The tag team match should have been the Superbrawl main event. That match was an impossible dream match at the time. The adults wanted to see it and the children just wanted to comprehend it. Neither had seen anything like it except for the rare fans who watched both WCW and WWF and had saw Hogan/Warrior a year ago. Hogan/Warrior went on to overshadow it because it was turned to shit in the last minute of the match like every big match WCW ever promoted but it was that big and has remained that much of a favorite by the smarks and the people who grew up and rewatched all this stuff.

Then when it was over there were so many easy ways to wrap it up and keep right on with the whole Sting/Luger/Steiners friendship story arch. You had the Hardliners messing with the Steiners which was how they originally reestablished the friendship if you remember. Flair could have been a part of it somehow, and it would have been better than that dumb stuff with Fujinami at the time. The NJPW connection could have still been utilized though. Sting was feuding with Muta over there and we all remember what the Steiners were doing over there at the time. So many possibilities.

So that was the hot take. Down to the warm details I would have liked to have seen this. Scott pins Luger during the main event and the show goes off the air as Luger gets up furious, but not violent towards the Steiners. Sting and Ric are down exhausted and Scott is exhausted but still celebrating typical exhausted baby face style. Then as soon as the first TV show hits they announce that the match has been signed for Clash XV. Promote the heck out of it nonstop with Luger and Scott flexing their heel tendencies towards 1 another but never busting lose with them as Sting and Ric hang around but don’t interfere, occasionally commenting on backing their partner, gloves are off in the ring etc type talk. Then 2 weeks before Clash XV Sting and Ric can’t be polite anymore and start fighting on TV, which leads to Scott and Luger to break them up, while the announcers go omg they’ve been trying to keep Luger and Scott from killing each other now Luger and Scott are trying to keep them from killing each other etc etc etc and Luger and Scott manage to break them up and get them to the back.

Next week they say Sting/Ric is signed. Have whoever they want Sting to feud with next attack both of them 10 minutes in. Go ahead and make it Nikita like at Superbrawl, after Luger had beat him clean in a WCWSN main event or Omni show, ending that feud. Nikita’s justification next week on TV could be about the same as it was at Superbrawl, that he was just trying to ruin the party because he was mad lol! But anyway Luger and Scott make the save. Sting and Ric chase Nikita to the back which leaves Scott and Luger in the ring. The bell just rings and they start whaling on each other, and the match is on after this commercialbreak lol!

This could have flew at GAB 91 also IMO. That’schanging alot of history I realize but it’s just a dream lol!

[BloodyChamp]

On 4/3/2021 at 12:08 AM, The Natural said:

Sting beating Hollywood Hogan clean as a sheet at WCW Starrcade 1997 for the WCW World Heavyweight Championship. One of the best builds to a wrestling match ever and the worst payoff by far. The beginning of the end for WCW. Fuck Hogan and Eric Bischoff for that and the BS excuse for doing so blaming Sting not getting a tan.

Sting should never have joined the n.W.o either in 1998. Wolfpac Sting is the worst iteration of the Stinger.

I’m all over this thread later. I’m only responding to this because it was Starrcade 97 at the first reply so I just had to. But yeah...seriously this. I could have even lived with the Montreal stuff had Sting already had Hogan beat after a ref knockout by the NWO. Then when Patrick woke up he did a real fast count, real meaning it actually happened as much I mean real fast like the speed lol! To save face for Patrick they could have made it look like he thought Sting had Hogan pinned like he had just before he was knocked out. Then Bret Hart comes in and they do it like they tried to do it to start with from that point on.

And here’s another wrinkle. This all happened like it was supposed to after Hogan tried to weasel out of it and THE BOYS threatened to beat his ass if he didn’t do business. When Eric takes his side they say they’re all walking out if it doesn’t happen. Theoretically Nash then wouldn’t have weaseled out of his job, or Raven, and Dean would have gave a shit for atleast the length of his match before going to his wife and child. 

[Infinit]

17 minutes ago, BloodyChamp said:

 

This is copied from the Hot Takes thread about Superbrawl 91. The tag team match should have been the Superbrawl main event. That match was an impossible dream match at the time. The adults wanted to see it and the children just wanted to comprehend it. Neither had seen anything like it except for the rare fans who watched both WCW and WWF and had saw Hogan/Warrior a year ago. Hogan/Warrior went on to overshadow it because it was turned to shit in the last minute of the match like every big match WCW ever promoted but it was that big and has remained that much of a favorite by the smarks and the people who grew up and rewatched all this stuff.

Then when it was over there were so many easy ways to wrap it up and keep right on with the whole Sting/Luger/Steiners friendship story arch. You had the Hardliners messing with the Steiners which was how they originally reestablished the friendship if you remember. Flair could have been a part of it somehow, and it would have been better than that dumb stuff with Fujinami at the time. The NJPW connection could have still been utilized though. Sting was feuding with Muta over there and we all remember what the Steiners were doing over there at the time. So many possibilities.

So that was the hot take. Down to the warm details I would have liked to have seen this. Scott pins Luger during the main event and the show goes off the air as Luger gets up furious, but not violent towards the Steiners. Sting and Ric are down exhausted and Scott is exhausted but still celebrating typical exhausted baby face style. Then as soon as the first TV show hits they announce that the match has been signed for Clash XV. Promote the heck out of it nonstop with Luger and Scott flexing their heel tendencies towards 1 another but never busting lose with them as Sting and Ric hang around but don’t interfere, occasionally commenting on backing their partner, gloves are off in the ring etc type talk. Then 2 weeks before Clash XV Sting and Ric can’t be polite anymore and start fighting on TV, which leads to Scott and Luger to break them up, while the announcers go omg they’ve been trying to keep Luger and Scott from killing each other now Luger and Scott are trying to keep them from killing each other etc etc etc and Luger and Scott manage to break them up and get them to the back.

Next week they say Sting/Ric is signed. Have whoever they want Sting to feud with next attack both of them 10 minutes in. Go ahead and make it Nikita like at Superbrawl, after Luger had beat him clean in a WCWSN main event or Omni show, ending that feud. Nikita’s justification next week on TV could be about the same as it was at Superbrawl, that he was just trying to ruin the party because he was mad lol! But anyway Luger and Scott make the save. Sting and Ric chase Nikita to the back which leaves Scott and Luger in the ring. The bell just rings and they start whaling on each other, and the match is on after this commercialbreak lol!

This could have flew at GAB 91 also IMO. That’schanging alot of history I realize but it’s just a dream lol!

I know you meant RICK Steiner but as I read RIC I was picturing Flair lol

[BobbyWhioux]

4 hours ago, Smelly McUgly said:

EDIT: You can probably argue that the fifth loss was decently booked to get the belt off Bret and onto Sid so that Bret would get Austin and Sid would get the Undertaker, and I can live with that assessment, especially since it was an abrupt switch after Shawn ducked him with that fake knee injury. I can be convinced of that. The fourth loss was to put another face over, which, okay, fine, that's acceptable enough. The first three, though, were not great losses - having Bret struggle in a 20-minute match with Backlund before Diesel beats Backlund in ten seconds or w/e is some bullshit. 

Bret losing to Backlund is fine:  Bret never taps and is protected as having lost in fluke/unrepeatable circumstances due to the stipulation, the Crossface Chickenwing is still protected as a Death Move, and Owen has his ascendant moment of having finally masterminded the downfall of his champion brother (great opportunity to rekindle that feud and get some more classic matches).

the bullshit is Nash beating Backlund A] instantly, B] three days later, and C] in a non-televised match.  The last of those three ensuring that even Nash wasn't really helped by this.  His ascendant moment happened where most of the audience never got to see it, and no opportunity to anticipate and savor the moment even if they had.  To say nothing of how much wind it took out of Bret's sails and cooled off Backlund just when he was at his hottest.

[BloodyChamp]

2 hours ago, Infinit said:

I know you meant RICK Steiner but as I read RIC I was picturing Flair lol

Well WHOOOO and AHOO AHOO AHOO!!!!!!

[Death From Above]

Sting/Hogan is super obvious and really started the boulder going irreversibly the wrong way (there were lots of problems before this, but WCW was still owning the ratings and the product was fixable), but even beyond that, how in the actual fuck were the nWo around for what felt like 5000 years as the heels and never put over WCW in a meaningful War Games? WCW's whole roster aside from Goldberg, Sting, and DDP looked like absolute geeks for the entire run. At some point (probably fall of 1998)  there really, really should have been a nWo vs WCW war games where they killed the nWo version one. And it's not like you couldn't have still done your Wolfpac split and gone right on selling tshirts after that. Even accounting for Hall's substance problems you could still run Hogan/Nash/Savage/It Honestly Doesn't Matter Which Guy vs. Flair/Sting/Goldberg/DDP and this was absolutely free. Fuck, you could even have had Savage turn on Hogan for the 100th time if you need an easy out to keep the right people "looking good". There's so many easy ways to give the fans *anything* satisfying that it's bonkers they missed on literally all of it.

They put the heels over forever then wondered why the fans decided WCW sucked. WCW was actually good for a long time at starting angles, they just couldn't finish them. Even meaningless stuff in the big picture like the weird Horseman Mongo/Jarrett/Debra in-fighting would go nowhere and drag on for 6 fucking months. They never really finished nearly anything they started. Plus WCW was very weird about treating their own PPVs like they didn't really matter. They're the most frustrating company of all-time if you actually expect to see a storyline pay off, ever.

[BloodyChamp]

20 minutes ago, Death From Above said:

Sting/Hogan is super obvious and really started the boulder going irreversibly the wrong way, but even beyond that, how in the actual fuck were the nWo around for what felt like 5000 years as the heels and never put over WCW in a meaningful War Games? WCW's whole roster aside from Goldberg, Sting, and DDP looked like absolute geeks for the entire run. At some point (probably fall of 1998)  there really, really should have been a nWo vs WCW war games where they killed the nWo version one. And it's not like you couldn't have still done your Wolfpac split and gone right on selling tshirts after that. Even accounting for Hall's substance problems you could still run Hogan/Nash/Savage/It Honestly Doesn't Matter Which Guy vs. Flair/Sting/Goldberg/DDP and this was absolutely free. Fuck, you could even have had Savage turn on Hogan for the 100th time if you need an easy out to keep the right people "looking good".

They put the heels over forever then wondered why the fans decided WCW sucked. WCW was actually good for a long time at starting angles, they just couldn't finish them. Even meaningless stuff in the big picture like the weird Horseman Mongo/Jarrett/Debra in-fighting would go nowhere and drag on for 6 fucking months. They never really finished nearly anything they started. Plus WCW was very weird about treating their own PPVs like they didn't really matter. They're the most frustrating company of all-time if you actually expect to see a storyline pay off, ever.

So many people argue about what actually killed WCW. Many people don’t say Starrcade. They say it started then turn, they say but they still made money in 98, then the discussion spins into the merger which is something else. We’re talking about what killed WCW the functional wrestling and entertainment outlet that we knew.

I say it was Starrcade and here’s 1 major reason that people overlook. Starrcade is where the lifelong fans did 1 of these 2 things. They either said that’s it I’m out or the did what I did. More on that in a minute. The people who said they were out were just tired of seeing Sting’s buildup never payoff. There were reasons for it before like his injury, Flair bolting then Luger bolting, and more. At Starrcade 97 they finally had it built and ready to happen like they’d always wanted and it was going to work. It was just impossible to mess up. So that combined with those fans growing up and such they were just done. They turned it off that time like they had before in spurts, but this time it was for good. Now I wasn’t quite grown yet but I knew it was fake and I was slowly learning about how it all worked. When Starrcade 97 happened I finally asked my teacher who had been my source for inside stuff just what the f^%# happened. He’d been sparing me the ickiest details for my sake until then when he finally told me. That’s when I was done. I did watch Nitro regularly for a while yet so they got my ratings but no more of my money and I wasn’t watching with the same intensity, and I wasn’t watching any of the other 40 shows they had. 

Also I agree WCW had the best ideas and were the best at initially executing them. Alot of times they actually wussed out more than they messed it up. Some of the stuff that didn’t get past the drawing board was epic IMO, like the NWO vs Horsemen Millenium/End of the World match. What a Wargames that would have been. Then some of the edgier stuff they did do was whooshed by so fast because they wussed out like the Ric Flair heart attack.

Edited May 2, 2021 by BloodyChamp

[GuerrillaMonsoon]

2 hours ago, BobbyWhioux said:

Bret losing to Backlund is fine:  Bret never taps and is protected as having lost in fluke/unrepeatable circumstances due to the stipulation, the Crossface Chickenwing is still protected as a Death Move, and Owen has his ascendant moment of having finally masterminded the downfall of his champion brother (great opportunity to rekindle that feud and get some more classic matches).

the bullshit is Nash beating Backlund A] instantly, B] three days later, and C] in a non-televised match.  The last of those three ensuring that even Nash wasn't really helped by this.  His ascendant moment happened where most of the audience never got to see it, and no opportunity to anticipate and savor the moment even if they had.  To say nothing of how much wind it took out of Bret's sails and cooled off Backlund just when he was at his hottest.

Agreed. Backlund/Bret rematch at the Rumble signed. No sign of Bret leading up to the PPV. Uncertainty whether he can compete. Confirmed no good by doctors on the go home show. Mystery contender leading up to the show. Nash wins it from there despite the same fuckery interference attempts.

As Nash has said. Title reign doomed having his first defence against Bret where its hardly 50/50 crowd and a fuck finish 

[BloodyChamp]

Another 1 I’ve posted before would have been epic no matter what anybody says, without getting into some long term ripple effects. If this happened the NWO possibly never happens.

The Giant marches in after falling off of the building at Halloween Havoc 95, takes everything Hogan’s got for 5 minutes out of his bag of punches and face rakes, Giant no sells it, Hogan grabs and chair and smashes him with it which the referee just stands and watches in disbelief because it’s not hurting the Giant. The Giant grabs Hogan choke slams him and pins him. No matter how stupid the angle before was, people would have all but bought it had that happened. The few who wouldn’t have bought it would have marked out even harder because Hogan got pinned in spite of the fact that they didn’t buy it. 

From then on it’s such a “fantasy” that it’s just silly to try and book because then you have the best heel champion ever, who if booked properly will produce the best face champion ever down the road. Imagine Eddie Guerrero beating the undefeated Giant at Starrcade 96 then getting attacked by Chris Benoit right after the match. 

EDIT: while you anxiety laugh at this in disbelief, remember that the overbooked schmoz that followed was a worse display than The Giant falling off the building. It gets repeated in all of the alltime worst moments lists but never connected with this show for some reason. It’s usually referred to by the live debut of somebody whose name starts with a Y lol!

Edited May 2, 2021 by BloodyChamp