Fallen Creator/Professional Wrestling: Difference between revisions

* [[Ultimate Warrior|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.

* 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.