The wrestling bug hit me when I was a
kid growing up in New Jersey. My dad was a huge sports fan.
Throughout the week, we'd watch the Mets and Yankees play baseball on
tv. Sunday afternoons were usually spent watching either the Giants
or the Jets. Sunday mornings were usually spent watching WWF
All-American Wrestling on the USA Network. It was a cool show that
introduced me to a lot of my wrestling favorites.
I caught the business bug just before
my freshman year in high school. I was selected from a group of kids
in Newark to attend Essex County College in the summer. The program
was called the Pre-College Consortium. I ran wild amongst the rest
of my other soon-to-be freshman peers. Even still, we learned a lot
about college courses and basic business techniques.
It's never strange for me put my two
loves together. When I think of the wrestling business, I think of
WWE. It has reshaped the entire business in its image. It has taken
no prisoners. After Vince McMahon bought Capitol Wrestling
Corporation from his father, his plan to implement change in his
vision began. The long-standing territorial system of professional
wrestling would soon be a thing of the past. Countless wrestling
organizations were obliterated to make way for what I refer to the
original version of pro wrestling's “new world order”. No
t-shirts or offshoots defined by a pair of colors. Just a series of
events that led to widespread change forever altering the course of
history.
One of the final pieces destroyed en
route to the machine becoming a global juggernaut was Extreme Championship Wrestling. In the video, My Name Is Paul Heyman, Mr.
Heyman mentions a concept that was presented to him before ECW's
demise. Among several options proposed in an effort to save the
financially-strapped fed, one concept would see Shane McMahon buy ECW
and broadcast it entirely in digital form. This - like every other
option – was denied by Heyman. Ultimately, ECW was shut down, WWE
paid all of its outstanding debts, and became owners of the ECW video
library.
Ten
years later, the WWE Network was made public to the world. Although
it didn't officially launch until 2014, it was yet another chapter of
change in the business birthed by WWE. Recently, I have given a lot
of thought to the digital programming concept presented to Heyman
before ECW ended. Had Heyman said yes to the concept, the
revolutionary organization could have become revolutionary once more.
This concept could have been the main show on the precursor to the
WWE Network, WWE On-Demand. However, I can't think about the WWE
version of ECW without thinking about the disastrous relaunch that
did the original concept no justice. In WWE's defense, it viewed ECW
as a product that played to a niche market. And while WWE's Attitude
Era was ECW with more financial resources, the audience that loved
ECW still loathed sports-entertainment. There was great divide
between the two sides that just could not be filled.
Then,
I began thinking some more. Could some of the territories from the
80's actually have been saved if there was a WWE Network 25 years
ago? My answer is yes. Now here's the big question: what
organization probably would benefit the most from a partnership with
the WWE.
World
Class? Nope. Fritz Von Erich would have lobbied for all of his
surviving sons to be World champion one after the other.
WCW?
Billionaire egos would clash on the regular.
My
answer would be the good old American Wrestling Association. Although
it has been reduced to a footnote in pro wrestling history, the AWA
housed some of the best wrestling this business has ever seen. The
Gagnes ran the place. But unlike the World Class and the Von Erichs,
the AWA was defined by so much more than one family name. Nick
Bockwinkle's multiple title reigns and one-of-a-kind presence. The
bar room brawling style of legendary tag team Crusher and The
Bruiser. The first Tag Team championship of The Road Warriors triple
crown. Red Bastein and Billy Robinson, Diamond Dallas Page, The
Guerreros, the Midnight Rockers, Curt Hennig, Scott Hall, and so many
other great wrestlers defined this organization.
Now I
know what you are thinking: “Velvet, are you crazy?!”. You've
got a right to think so. A long list of wrestlers who defined WWE in
the 80's came from the AWA. Hulk Hogan, Bobby Heenan, Ken Patera,
Jim Brunzell and so many others immediately come to mind. But in a
perfect world, this might actually work. I know that WWE owns the
rights to the video libraries of countless feds. I'm not so sure
they own the rights to the business names of some of these
organizations. But.. ...let's assume WWE did own enough of whatever
is necessary to relaunch the AWA. Let's just say it started off as a
show on the WWE network. An organization started in the 60's is
reborn as a fully-functioning modern-day entertainment brand of WWE.
Anything is possible.
So
what would it take for this to work: BUILDING
A FUTURE WITH RESPECT FOR THE PAST. This
was one of the many reasons WWE's version of ECW did not work. WWE
has a habit of recreating what has been proven to work in their image
with mixed results. It's why Sting waited so long to go there. WWE
does this to make things better and gradually develop them. Watching
The Zombie on ECW was like kicking Raven in the testicles – painful
on all levels. You can't build a new house with old wood. But if
the foundation is still good, leave it be. Just continue to build
upward.
The
WWE may have an ace up its sleeve it probably isn't using. The AWA
is one of the few feds whose reputation hasn't truly been tarnished
in the wake of WWE's game-changing concept. Then again, WWE has
concepts it is trying to establish not only as brands, but as
touring, money-making brands. Honestly, it would be kind of cool to
see if WWE could resurrect a brand with lessons learned from the ECW
debacle to a point a relevance and financial gain.
I'm
done rambling, but never done thinking. This brain of mine, I tell
ya.......
ABOUT
THE AUTHOR: Trained by former WWE head trainer Bill DeMott,
“Southside Seduction” Velvet Jones is the reigning four-time
Heavyweight champion of the Georgia Independent Wrestling Alliance -
one of the top drawing pro wrestling organizations in the state of
Georgia. A noted blogger and vlogger, Velvet works remotely from
Georgia for Masters of Ring Entertainment – a special-events
professional wrestling organization based in Wilmington, NC. To
learn more about his career and current pursuits, visit his website
at PLANETVELVET.NET
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