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God, I have such a love/hate issue with the Invasion angle.
I loved the potential of it. I love the individual moments, which were too few, that captured the image we all had in our minds for years about what it could be. ECW appearing and Heyman leading the charge. Booker showing up to attack the WWF champion. O'Haire and Palumbo getting murdered in MSG. Blassie's speech with Austin hearing it and turning babyface by killing everyone.
But they were all surrounded with at least five things that would make you think, "They sure are blowing this angle". DDP as the stalker and getting owned. Stephanie as ECW owner and McMahons taking the forefront. Bagwell and Booker thrown out live on Raw which, match aside, was one of the absolute worst ideas on paper that you could imagine, and really exposed just how little they really knew about how their audience viewed things. Austin double-downing as a heel. The WCW guys being slaughtered regularly. The brand identity dropped and replaced by the ultimate in WWE homogenised terminology, "The Alliance". You have WWF Vs. WCW Vs. ECW as your storyline, and you're going to call them the Alliance instead.
The truth is, it was a disaster, and it came to such an underwhelming end with so many dropped balls that it's pretty pathetic for a company of that size. The fact that the best thing about the entire situation was the surprise rise to prominence of Rob Van Dam, which they also totally squandered, speaks volumes.
That said, I've always held the belief that this thing was doomed to fail. People had visions and expectations that the WWF wasn't going to match, and the WWF was trying to think "brand" in the early stages instead of "angle", which led to them doing things that made no sense if it was actually going to be just an angle, which is what it ended up being. A five month shitshow, rather than the biggest angle in history.
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