Fallen Creator/Professional Wrestling

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• Hulk Hogan was once the single most dominant personality in the whole of Professional Wrestling, and one of the most financially successful. His All-American Face role model status was permanently tarnished in The Nineties by a steroid scandal and his clumsy attempts at outright denial. His attempts to play Superman to the more traditional, heel-oriented WCW audience pegged him as a Creator's Pet until a well-timed Face Heel Turn. His post-WCW appearances have typically led to one strong nostalgia-based TV or PPV number, and disappointing returns afterwards (and his non-WWE appearances didn't even have that one strong number). His attempts at branching out into acting went nowhere. Then the personal issues came: his son Nick was involved in a high-profile street racing accident, with a passenger in a vegetative state, Hogan himself was caught on tape claiming it was all a God-given punishment to the passenger, which the TMZ crowd did not like one bit; and a nasty divorce followed, with both sides airing their dirty laundry in public. Hogan's recent attempts at a comeback with rival TNA haven't generated any significant interest, and an attempt at a revival of the Monday Night Wars almost cost them their TV slot. The divorce and the legal settlement from the car wreck have left him with a negative net worth, and the damage done to his back by years of bumping, heavy weightlifting, and steroid abuse have more or less finished him as an active wrestler. His recent attempts at staying relevant include TenMinuteRetirements, protein powder multi-level-marketing schemes, making an ass of himself on Twitter on a regular basis, and lending his name to a midget wrestling TV show.
• Ric Flair is like the "only less so" version of Hogan. His reputation as one of the best wrestlers in the business by and large kept the disintegration of his family out of the public eye (in particular, his then-wife accused him of abusing steroids, hitting her, and exposing himself to other women; the latter has been a backstage trademark of his for some years if other accounts are to be believed), as did his position as a dignified WWE elder statesman. After being given an incredible send-off in 2008 for a retirement match against Shawn Michaels, Flair ultimately had to sever his WWE contract in order to make enough money on outside projects to cover his back taxes (he's had IRS issues going back to the '70s) and his alimony. He was a partner-in-crime on Hogan's failed Australia tour, and ended up following him to TNA, with little or no impact on ratings, buyrates, or house show attendance. His return from retirement has acquired him a significant Hatedom in the wrestling fandom, since his retirement show was so emotional. This article shows how far he's fallen money-wise. The absolute low point was a money dispute with Highspots.com (over him putting up a NWA title belt as collateral for a loan without mentioning there was a lien on it for another outstanding debt) that threatened to land him in jail.
• In 1998, Vince Russo was one of the best bookers and storyline writers in the Wrestling Industry. After co-masterminding the Attitude Era with Vince McMahon and with input from several other writers, Russo was an important part of a creative team that snatched victory from the jaws of defeat in the Monday Night Wars. Unfortunately, when his contract expired in 1999, Russo jumped ship to World Championship Wrestling, where he almost single-handedly killed the entire company. According to The Death of WCW, during the time Russo worked for the WWF he would bounce ideas off of McMahon, who would decide whether or not to use them. In WCW, he was given free reign to do whatever he wanted, which didn't work out. With Russo's ridiculous storylines used in a company that was famous for being very traditional when it came to wrestling, the massive mismanagement of money by Eric Bischoff, and older stars like Hulk Hogan, Kevin Nash, and Scott Steiner outright refusing to put over new talent, Russo's arrival, which was supposed to herald WCW's return to form, instead set about pounding in the final nail in WCW's coffin. Being part of the writing/booking team at TNA until October 2011, it appears that Russo has yet to learn his lesson.
• Verne Gagne was a ten time World Champion and his American Wresting Association (AWA) promotion was at the very least, one of the "Big Three" promotions from the 1960s-first half of the 1980s (alongside the National Wrestling Alliance and World Wrestling Federation). The Minneapolis based AWA was one of the most successful and expansive single territories in the country. More to the point, the AWA at it's peak, featured a virtual "who's who" of wrestling. One of these notables was Hulk Hogan, who went to the AWA after ending his heel run in New York and becoming a successful superstar in New Japan Pro Wrestling. As Vince McMahon, Jr. was expanding the WWF and raiding the AWA's talent (including Hulk Hogan, who immediately became "The Chosen One"), Gagne stubbornly refused to change with the times (i.e. adapt to a more "sports-entertainment" type promotion). Gagne seemed to think that what worked in the '70s could still work in the '80s. By late 1987, the AWA was running on fumes (even though they landed a national cable TV deal with ESPN, they were still losing talent left and right to the WWF, including then World Champion, Curt Hennig) and had to align themselves with World Class out of Dallas and the CWA out of Memphis. This culminated with the AWA's first and only stab at pay-per-view called Super Clash III. Gagne burned his bridges with the other promotions when it was revealed that the wrestlers were literally, working for free. Jerry Lawler refused to defend the AWA World Title until he got the payout from Super Clash III. Instead, Lawler was "stripped" of the belt and the next champion was Gagne's real life son-in-law Larry Zbyszko. With the AWA sinking further and further in irrelevancy, they threw a Hail-Mary called the "Team Challenge Series", which backfired (and is generally regarded as one of the most embarrassing, poorly executed and desperate angles in wrestling history). Not too surprisingly, the AWA was forced to shut down by the end of 1990. It got even worse for Verne Gagne however. In 2009, Gagne, who by this time in his life, had been suffering from Alzheimer's disease, accidentally killed a 97 year old man in memory-loss section of a Bloomington, Minnesota health care facility. Meanwhile, Verne's granddaughter Gail (Greg's daughter) had a warrant issued for her arrest for criminal sexual conduct with a then 16 year-old St. Paul, MN high school student when she was a teacher there.
  • Here's a great blog chronicling the sad decline of the AWA.
• Chris Benoit overnight, went from being one of the most respected and revered wrestlers of the modern era to a non-person due to his involvement in Pater Familicide.
• Scott Hall: He gained mainstream success as Razor Ramon in the WWF, and in WCW, as one of The Outsiders (alongside Kevin Nash) as members of the New World Order. And then his personal issues reared its ugly head (his struggles with alcoholism being the most prominent). These still affect him to this day.
  • Before Scott Hall, there was Jake "The Snake" Roberts, who became more known for his struggles with drugs and alcoholism (climaxing in Jake's appearance in the 1999 documentary Beyond the Mat) then his wrestling accomplishments.
• The Ultimate Warrior: The fact that WWE went as far as to produce a DVD (called The Self-Destruction of The Ultimate Warrior) that totally buried one of their biggest stars of the late '80s-early '90s is enough evidence.
  • Most of the things the DVD makes fun of are actually the things that made the Warrior stand out and become a star in the first place. Warrior's Fallen Creator status more than likely comes from his repeated entrances and exits over the years, his general batshit-craziness, and his homophobic comments in recent years.
• Vince McMahon and the WWE in general would be a highly contentious example. Attempts to branch out into other forms of entertainment have continuously failed over the years, to where announcements of a new "media venture" of any kind are enough to make the stockholders start banging their heads against the wall. Despite strong international growth, there's a feeling among wrestling reporters and even in the company itself that the product isn't connecting with the American viewerbase (outside of children, explaining much about the hated "TV-PG" push), with domestic PPV buys at their lowest since the early '90s. Of the scores of performer deaths between the product's first expansion in 1984 and today, many of them have been shown to be related to the use of performance enhancing drugs; WWE's "Wellness Policy" has no credibility with the public and doesn't explain why that many people in a fake sport feel driven to use the drugs in the first place (or why the company's 66-year-old CEO, who is a featured performer and isn't tested, has a physique putting most 30-year-olds to shame). The only reason the company managed to avoid the Congressional bitch-slapping that MLB got is that even elected officials don't take wrestling seriously.
• During the 1980s, "Cowboy" Bill Watts headed up Mid-South Wrestling (later the Universal Wrestling Federation or UWF). Watts' promotion (which regularly sold out the New Orleans Superdome and was renowed for its well booked and entertaining storylines) gave wrestlers such as the Junkyard Dog, "Hacksaw" Jim Duggan, and Ted Dibiase their first taste of national exposure. Unfortunately, things went sour for Mid-South when the once lucrative oil market collasped. After selling out to Jim Crockett Promotions (the forerunner to World Championship Wrestling) around 1987, Watts took a lengthy hiatus from the industry. Watts would reemerge in 1992 to take over as the Executive Vice President of WCW. However, it became quite apparent how out of touch Watts became. He banned off the top rope moves (which in essence, killed the cruiserweight division), cut the wrestlers' pay, banned catering and wives and families backstage at live events, removed the protective padding at ringside (thus, making for a more hazardous working enviroment), and forced the wrestlers to stay at the events from start to finish regardless. Despite rumors and allegations throughout the years of him being racist, Watts booked African American Ron Simmons to become World Heavyweight Champion. Unfortunately, Simmons didn't exactly set the world on fire during his championship run (mostly due to Simmons lacking in the charisma department and being booked in matches against life-long midcarders like the Barbarian). Worst of all, Watts in his position of power (just like Verne Gagne did with his son Greg), had his son Eric be pushed to the moon despite being incredibly green (or unprepared/not fully trained) and bland. Ratings and attendance fell into the toilet. The final straw for Watts was an interview he did for the Pro Wrestling Torch (ironically, before he was even hired), in which he went off on a libertarian rant, defending the actions of Lester Maddox (a Southern restaurant owner who closed his establishment rather than sell food to blacks), defended slavery as the best thing that ever happened to the black race (in the sense of them being transported to North America, where their descendants could live better than in Africa), and made liberal use of the word "fag". This obviously, didn't sit too well with the folks over at Turner Broadcasting (among them, baseball legend Hank Aaron) and Watts quit before he could be fired.
• By the later half of the 1980s, Jim Crockett Promotions (the Charlotte, North Carolina based faction of the National Wrestling Alliance or NWA) was undoubtably at the very least, the number two biggest wresting promotion in America behind the WWF. In 1985, JCP landed the coveted Saturday evening spot on TBS (ironically, replacing the WWF). Unlike the more cartoonish, kid-friendly WWF product under Vince McMahon, Jim Crockett Promotions was the more "PG-13" product that was more grounded in athleticism rather than one-sided squash matches from the former. Attempting to keep up with Vince McMahon, Jim Crockett made several key mistakes. Crockett burned out his main booker, Dusty Rhodes, who kept the same talent on top for far too long, protecting them with non-decisive "Dusty Finishes" (in which the babyface is initially thought to have won the match only to have it reversed at the last minute), he flew himself and his superstars across the country in private jets, he booked Starrcade '87 (JCP's version of Wrestlemania) and the 1988 Bunkhouse Stampede in areas which had no real history with his product (Chicago and Long Island, New York respectively, where they inevitably bombed at the gate), and he had the company make an expensive move to Dallas, Texas (feeling that the company would have been better represented in a Top Ten media market). The 1987 purchase of the Bill Watts-led UWF led to a very large cash outflow, as the UWF's television outlets were essentially paid programming. His attempts to expand his business into pay-per-view were troubled by the stale television product and counter-programming from the WWF (the first Survivor Series and the first Royal Rumble aired directly against Crockett shows; Crockett struck back with the first ever Clash of the Champions airing on TBS against Wrestlemania IV, but the cable companies put a stop to it happening even further). By the start of 1988, the traditional Carolinas markets were weak, markets outside the Carolinas were effectively dead, and Crockett was taking out one and two million dollar loans every week in order to meet his expenses. Later in the year however, TBS founder, Ted Turner (who always had a fondness in his heart for wrestling, because it was really the first big TV show on his network dating back to the early '70s) purchased what would become World Championship Wrestling (which was the name of the Saturday night TBS program) for about $9 million. Crockett and Rhodes were very harshly judged by wrestlers and wrestling fans alike for a long time, although the more business-savvy ones are willing to point out that a small regional wrestling company wasn't going to survive the business changes in the early '90s either way.
• Matt Hardy has been on a downward spiral since his release from the WWE in 2010. Originally, fans were sympathetic towards Matt, what with him formerly being released from the company after the blowout over his girlfriend Lita having an affair with Edge, and his younger brother Jeff (who himself is a Base Breaker with the IWC) consistently getting better pushes with the company. This changed however over the years. While both he and his brothers have had real life problems with drugs, Matt has done nothing to repair his reputation by becoming an Internet Tough Guy. His brief stint in TNA saw him suspended, and then fired for various DUIs. And then he faked a suicide note all so he could get more attention and boost his followers on Twitter. Unfortunately for Matt, this very stunt may have effectively blacklisted him from both TNA and WWE.
  • Somehow it got even worse. After posting his fake suicide note Matt posted a video on his YouTube channel saying that he wanted to get help through a WWE sponsored rehab and after his stint in rehab he had plans to open up a wrestling school in a genuinely heartfelt announcement. Then he gets arrested again and kicked out of rehab. And the arrest came only two months after he made that announcement.

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