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Old 11-22-2017, 02:54 PM   #111
Mr. Nerfect
 
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Quote:
Originally Posted by The CyNick View Post
Only talking Canada. Trust me when I say, WCW wasn't even a factor in this market. So I don't see how Bret could have rationally thought his future pay hinged on being an icon in Canada when WCW had no footing in this country and had no plans to change that.

If his status as a Canadian hero (which nobody here ever saw him as) was so vital, you would think from day one of his signing Eric would have announced a multi week tour of the country. The fact that nothing even close to that happened showed a Canadian invasion by WCW was never part of the plans. As was mentioned above, is it possible Eric mocked up a bunch of posters showing WCW bringing Nitro to Winnipeg and Regina? Maybe. But I doubt it. More likely as Eric has intimated in many interviews, he wanted Bret to come in and be the workhorse for Thunder because most of his other top guys didn't want to work that show.

Is it possible Bret was acting on the idea that he needed to be protected in Canada or his next deal would drop to $100k downside? Maybe, but if he did, he's an idiot. Don't think that makes him right.
But you don't know they didn't have plans to get there. That's exactly the point. If Eric Bischoff had said "We're going to try and take Raw's slot in Canada" (since they were shown on the same channel there, actually), then it would be very important for Bret to protect his status in Canada. Hell, it might have even been important to Bret to protect his status there regardless of what Eric told him, because he was a Canadian hero at that point. It doesn't matter how the US saw him, I don't even see why you would bring that up.

Regardless of whether or not Eric had planned to go to Canada or not (he clearly didn't), the argument is that he should have, and that Bret was a key to getting there, because he was a draw there. He doesn't need to be the biggest draw of all-time to be that. Not wanting to lose in Canada is a fair decision to make, because that's how the business worked back then. We're still years away from Austin refusing to work with Billy Gunn because he had common sense. You're applying hindsight to a situation where none of the players had it.
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