Originally Posted by Noid
I used to believe some of the McMyths, but I now find myself in the same camp as educated folk like Destor, #1-wwf-fan and BigCrippyZ. Vince has smashed people over the head with the assertion that he somehow saved wrestling, took it out of smoky halls and legitimized it. All you need to do is account for inflation and you can see how he has scorched the earth.
Creatively, wrestling is fucked. If you prove yourself to be a good wrestler with anything resembling an ounce of creativity, the WWE will eventually snap you up. It has been presented as the "dream" to work there, and the kids getting into the business today eat it up. They'll be sent out there with some caricature of their gimmick, do scripted interviews that don't build any heat, and then they'll have the same match every week. Look at the wonderful talent signed to the WWE to train in Orlando -- and look at how everyone comes out with the same style, the WWE style (now influenced more by independent hybrid style), the "right way" to wrestle. This is despite guys getting injured a lot more frequently -- and they are breaking their bodies for almost no one.
The WWE product is gentrified. It's where pro-wrestling as art goes to die, and the artist goes to be force-fed until they become fat, lazy cats that don't mind lying in the sun for as long as Vince will pay them. And being there, traveling the world, seeing kids smile (because they've been conditioned to the cold), and having a reaffirming locker-room tells them all that they are doing the right thing, and that this is the "evolution" of wrestling.
With the death of WCW, hope for wrestling died out. There was no one to make Vince McMahon sweat and go at someone else's pace. He had no reason to be good anymore. It might seem counterproductive to try and purposely be bad, but Vince has had no reason to churn out quality when he is the only legitimate product there is.
The thing is, if a millionaire sank money into a wrestling promotion, it wouldn't be that unreasonable to imagine it competing effectively with Vince, provided the right minds were involved. All Vince has is the money. His television ratings are not unbeatable. He has no real stars. He's actually conditioned a lot of his wrestlers to be bad at their jobs (get over and draw money). Vince made the assertion that PPV is a dead industry -- a legitimately wrestling promotion could blow that right open. You watch how quickly Shawn Michaels came back and made a star if a billionaire went toe-to-toe with Vince. You watch how quickly Vince gets around film companies not wanting The Rock to wrestle if there is another wrestling show getting a higher rating share than him every week. You also watch how quickly talent jump if a viable alternative pops up too. You'd be seeing Nick Nemeth, Claudio Castagnoli and Bryan Danielson identifying with a different initialism very fast if there is something secure there.
And for proof, look at NXT. It's generally regarded as being better than RAW or SmackDown every week. It's wrestling done as wrestling was done prior to Vince taking over. Matches booked with talent you want to look strong going over strong so that your fans accept them as a big deal and are willing to pay to see them compete. Now, it is kept around on the good graces of Vince's money, and it can spend the dough to get the top independent talent in the world to work for it, but that talent generally gets very over, very quickly. In fact, the most over acts on the WWE roster haven't been around for that long either (James Ellsworth, Chris Jericho's pen).
It is still my jizzy-cock fantasy for The Rock to decide to compete with Vince. The Rock is the one dude that could make wrestling cool and sway instant smark opinion away from the Vince McMahon is God myth. He is charismatic enough to carry a show by doing a shit in the ring, and I have no doubt he could piece together a decent enough roster with relatively short notice who would be just dying to be seen as part of The Rock's crew.
Why would Rock fight Vince? Because if he can make the promotion profitable, it's an extra source of income for him and something for his production company to attach itself to. But it would also be good for the wrestling business. It would give guys like Nick Nemeth and Claudio Castagnoli places to work and be the stars that Rock got the chance to be. It's unlikely that either will be as great as The Rock -- especially in a crossover sense -- but they could be mainstream wrestling figures as long as it's in a place where that isn't against the Vince McMahon narrative.
I don't think it will happen, but if it did, wrestling would be in the spotlight again. Vince has taken it out of the spotlight.
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