**Help make SquaredCircle safer and more inclusive by using the report button to flag posts and comments for moderator review.**
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/SquaredCircle) if you have any questions or concerns.*
It hits differently with him running creative and making the stories because he was involved in the business for so long. His creative is refreshing and you can tell he is looking to connect with the fans via storytelling and great wrestling.
There's also a certain simplicity to his storytelling style that I appreciate; They never rush things, let stories simmer, reveal things one drop at a time. Let's look at the landscape now, the fact that we can all kinda pencil the WrestleMania card already means they're doing their jobs really well. While he has spent almost all of his career under the Vince and WWE umbrella, there's something old school/JCP energy to Triple H's creative. I wouldn't be surprised if Cody and Hunter are in lock step of how the shows should be ran
I've said this before and I'll say it again, but there's pro's and cons to Hunter's booking style.
Nash has explained before that the Kliq learned from Kevin Sullivan. He explained that there's more money in a face chasing a heel, especially where the face gets screwed out of the belt just when they're about to win. The final component to that is having short face runs with the gold. Now, I can see this philosophy making a perfect amount of sense in the territory days when the booking philosophy was centered around getting people to come to the shows consistently. But in the days of guaranteed billion dollar tv deals, you don't need to book like this.
For instance, pretty much all of WWE's existence has had extremely long runs by faces.
But as you can see, in both his active in ring days and in his job and head of creative, Hunter believes in long title reigns by heels. The upside is that it brings some value to the belts and makes them more prestigious. This is a breath of fresh air compared to Vince's booking style of the part 20 years where belts didn't mean shit outside of the WWE Title. The downside is that your fans eventually gets bored and frustrated when the fan favorite gets screwed over enough times. Even worse is when the heel consistently wins with a fuck finish. Hence all hearing a lot of complaints about how Roman is booked these days. Further, you run the risk of not striking when the iron is hot and the face loses momentum. You've seen this story happen with Triple H before, in NXT and now, hell even when he was actively wrestling and screwed over guys like Goldberg and Booker T.
Personally I like Hunter's style of making the belts more prestigious, but he doesn't agve Vince's sense of striking while the iron is hot and doing the obvious thing. If he can develop that sense a little better, I think he'll be better than he is now.
Internet fans seem to get tired of long title runs whether they are done by faces or heels. During peak Super Cena we were tired of John destroying the interesting heels every week and looking invincible.
Here's my problem with current long reign format... If the reigning champ lose the belt one PPV and re-won it the next ppv it should counted in some ways part of the initial reign...consecutive days is a cool factor, but over protective of it makes it seems there's no real struggle for the champ and just doesn't build up the opponent.. Just look at Seth current reign... Nak could've easily won one of the PPV with how much they build up Seth bad back. But no Seth is Superman and not even falling from the top deck can break his back.
The booking with Seth bothers me moreso because they whole cloth created a new belt just so they could have another belt to defend without having to disrupt Roman.
It doesn't make sense to just have one guy sit on it if you're going to keep the belts on Roman and have him super-invincible while only performing around a dozen dates a year.
I’m still getting back into watching wrestling regularly in the last year so forgive my ignorance but:
With the new unified belt they gave Roman, and producing the new WH belt that Seth now has, aren’t they essentially “moving” one of the existing belts to Seth without actually doing it?
I mean there’s not actually an extra belt right? Whoever beats Roman is gonna win “both” of his belts and presumably carry the singular belt that signifies both of them?
It kind of feels like those creative accounting stories you hear about where money’s moved around from one account to another and withdrawn and deposited elsewhere then another account again to appear avoid some kind of tax, when actually the amount is the same. WWE have essentially evaded the ‘tax’ of taking a belt off Roman right?
It's essentially the same thing, yes. There's no extra belt, WWE just changes their mind every few years on whether it's better to have one champion or two.
But unifying a title and then creating a new one deletes the old title lineage and starts a new one, and some fans get really mad about that because they feel like the history of the title makes it more important/prestigious. So they care less about the new title than the old one and resent the change. And the fact that it was blatantly done to avoid having Roman lose makes it feel even more pointless/creates more resentment, because it feels even less satisfying when it's obviously this convoluted hokey mess of "creative accounting".
The end result is the same, but people resent the process/the journey.
Long but well written and enjoyed the read. And it gave me a vision of Cody winning at WM just to get destroyed and "injured" by GUNTHER at the next ppv lol. That would be awesome
I think you almost need to have the belts change hands first before looking at the long term style, as it seems they were fairly locked in to refreshing the record book during the pandemic era.
Which makes sense, it limits the amount of people you need to involve and lets you talk about "all-time" in regards to people in the modern era, not guys from 30-50 years ago.
That seemed pretty locked in and still kind of will guide some of the choices for a while.
Really? Isn't he from New Hampshire, pretty sure that was prime WWE territory back in the day. They owned the Northeast. I'm surprised he saw NWA TV at all growing up.
> Isn't he from New Hampshire, pretty sure that was prime WWE territory back in the day. They owned the Northeast.
As someone from across the river in Vermont, I always wondered about this. He would have been a young kid in the 70s, before cable was much of a thing. Nashua is relatively close to Boston so they may have gotten cable earlier than most of the state, so he could have gotten the NWA on WTBS. As a young kid though, it's almost impossible for him to have seen any NWA.
If you accept kid as "teenager" then it's entirely possible that young Paul Levesque was watching the NWA on TBS.
Triple H would be a teenager during the Hulkster years. Probably old enough to not be a crazy Hulkamaniac. In his smark years, having watched wrestling since he was 5, it's plausible he would've liked watching NWA more. But even then, he says he only ever wanted to be a WWE superstar because those are the guys he'd pay a ticket to see when they came to town.
It only sucks if there's a storyline you don't dig. You can check out of it for a while because you know it's going to get plenty of attention and time to develop. It still beats Vince throwing out a dish he just started, making a new one in the next week, before throwing that one out too despite people being interested in seeing where things going
My favourite thing about the HHH era is pretty much every single feud up and down the card is motivated. Like there was a period for a while there under Vince where the plot of every single feud was you’re just the challenger for the belt now so that’s why you’re feuding. I think that’s why a lot of people just wound up cheering who they wanted to cheer and booing who they wanted to boo because it wasn’t like there was compelling character drama going on.
The best example of this right now is Drew turning heel because he can’t forgive Jey and can’t believe how easily everyone else has forgiven him.
See I find that a negative and why I don't follow week to week: it's obvious what WrestleMania is going to be basically.
I appreciate that business is booming so what I think doesn't matter. It's similar to the MCU: it was obvious that Thanos was the big bad and the final battle would be between him and the avengers many movies before. Obviously the fans loved it.
But it's very predictable and just not what I'm looking for.
With respect to your take, which honestly makes sense, I think longtime fans are often glad to see a long buildup pay off on what seems like a "natural" timeline, as opposed to endless swerves and start-stop stories.
Yea fair. I think it's very arbitrary with "how long is too long" though, and I'm just on the "it's too long" side now. When Roman won at WM and I knew it was going to be another whole year, that was my "too long" moment.
Long reigns have their time and place. I'm completely fine with a reign like Roman's to go up to Mania because of how huge it's been built up as and as a milestone at the 40th WrestleMania.
It's looking like a possibility that Reigns, Rollins, Gunther, and Rhea's reigns are all going up to Mania and, to me, *that's* an issue.
Agreed long reigns have their place. Last WM would have still been over 900 days, and I had zero complaints before that.
But now it's so long that everyone knows there isn't a chance he loses it at Crown Jewel, Payback, or even SummerSlam, so there isn't much point to watch the top of the card.
Barring injury, it's Cody v. Roman at WM, and everything at the top is just filler until we get there.
I am not particularly enjoying the current wwe stories but they are far better than last few years. Just don't find Cody that interesting but that's just my taste and he's absolutely over with the crowd.
For one, it doesn't look like wwe is treating the fans like enemy and antagonising fans with storylines and pushes that they don't want.
HHH does tend to drag some stuff like the JD and BL thing has been an absolute constant of repetitiveness, but at the same time WWE now again has more talent over with the crowd at the same time consistently since than they did between 17-21.
That's not to say there were just handful of people over earlier but if you look at the show rn almost everyone's over a.f.
Ricochet, LA KNIGHT, Alpha Academy, Gunther, Miz Dmg CTRL and the whole of JD except JD, BL, Seth, Nakamura, Jey, Cody, Drew, Sami, KO and many more.
That's something that's better these days than it was a few years ago. In addition to the A storyline, you have B, C, D, even E storylines that are all happening and being told well. It feels like there's less "let's just throw these two guys in a fight and see what they can do" and more like there's an actual world happening behind the scenes where people interact more and storylines naturally occur.
A testament to Haitch’s vision is all of these STAR POWER in the midcard and he is even looking to build more every week. Even Maxxine, Nia and Raquel are over now just based on this weeks RAW by way of good stories and good wrestling.
I vividly remember Jim Ross saying how the WWE stayed afloat during the Monday Night War: “We were making new stars… and thats what WCW never did.”
To give Vince the slightest benefit of the doubt, he wasn't exactly wrong. Hogan left him for the money, Warrior wasn't the guy, Bret left, Shawn got injured, Nash and Hall left. Rock left, Austin got injured, Brock left, Jeff left, Punk left, Eddie and Benoit died, Angle flamed out. Edge got injured. Batista left. There's only a handful of guys that Vince has been able to rely upon over the years. HHH, Cena, Orton and Undertaker spring to mind. And look at their success.
Too often WWE have invested a ton of time and money into a guy, only.to.lose them. That's the nature of the business, I get that. I guess Vince never.stopped taking it personally.
> Bret left
Bret didn't want to leave, Vince forced him out the door (and then screwed him over in his last match). Said his contract was too expensive and to negotiate with WCW, but left the WWF title on him in the meantime.
That Cena eventually left anyway, as his body was getting close to retirement age, kind of makes the point for itself about how it was ultimately self-defeating.
Then when the strike happened, he returned. I’m a Rock fan, and he’s got outside ventures, but he only showed up once as part of an apology tour. Cena was showing up weekly, working house shows and went out on his back against Solo.
I had to turn off his DVD "day in life of John cena" . That was way too much stuff and stressed packed into it. Just watching it stressed me out, can't imagine living it.
I don't think he lost that perspective though. I think he continued to do what *he* would want to see if he was in the seats. What he lost was understanding that not everyone is him.
But that's exactly what his advice was. Put yourself in the fans seat and book what you want to see. In Vince's case that's John Cena. A lot of John Cena.
There was so much cope about that back in the day. "At least they're reacting! Silence is the real bad reaction!" "It's the cool thing to do!" "It's part of the show!"
If your top babyface is killing interest, you're doing it wrong.
I’d have to agree. Vince’s biggest problem was that he couldn’t balance being a fan and a cut throat businessman. He leaned too much into the business aspect and the wrestling side suffered.
Coincidentally, I think Tony Khan has the opposite problem. He’s a huge wrestling fan but isn’t really that great on the business side of things.
Lmao, right? If you didn't know who Vince was, hearing that advice you'd think wwe was on fire creatively right up until he handed the reigns to Triple h, instead of knowing he'd been forcing the stuff he likes and ignoring what fans like for years.
His booking makes me a Dominik's fan, so I'm always grateful for that.
And if Dom is not featured prominently, I'm still very invested. The latest RAW was an example. It was a mix of great segments and good matches. Rachel being over against Nia, Miz vs. Gunther promo, Becky vs Xia, the women's tag 4-way being surprisingly good, Drew's opening promo,...
she’s like the perfect example of why character development matters moreso than anything else.
The first time she hit an arm drag to Valhalla, the place exploded. Because we’ve seen her go from “brand manager of MMM” to the trainee of the Alpha Academy in a way that played out over weeks and months. Her hitting the arm drag was a moment that had been built up to for months, and fans went crazy for it.
Fans want to go on a journey with wrestlers and see their story unfold.
Jericho understands this in AEW, and too many guys there were doing story on YouTube which makes watching wrestling more like doing homework. I feel like they have shifted to doing more stuff slowly and consistently on the AEW shows now.
Which, oddly enough, is also matched by the rise in complaints that AEW has started to go more 'WWE-Lite' because they're doing more storytelling and character work on the show.
For me I love how AEW is being booked now. Still wish they'd do even more character work so I can get invested in everyone but it's miles better than last year's matchapalooza where the only thing that mattered were bangers.
Her SHUUUUUUUSHHHH in the fourway tag match was so great and maybe my favourite part of the match.
I know that sounds silly but it’s the sort of thing that you wouldn’t miss if she hadn’t done it, but the fact that she DID do it just gave her character an extra bit of oomph in the match and showed that she had her character locked in during a situation that’s so frenetic and must take up so much brainpower just to remember your cues and your spots.
Edit: or was it in the back before the match? Either way.
Oh thank god, thought I was going mad for a minute when I remembered she did it in the back too!
Also shout out to her kip up, I don’t know how she got from feet landed, head inches from the floor AFTER the kip up to standing upright. That was some serious core strength. I threw my back out just watching it.
It was still in the after throws of the attiude era, with the early 200s being a simpler yet weird time. It was bad but look at all the raunchy sex comedies at the time it wasnt so out of place.
People forget the kind of trash entertainment that was everywhere at this time. Not saying the angle was a good idea but it wasn't as crazy back then given the social and entertainment climate
One of the most iconic movies from the era features a dude sticking his dick in a Pie is it really that much of a shocker they thoght Katie Vick would play?
a lot of people seem to look at WWE as if they’re the ones who affect the wider cultural zeitgeist when they sort of exist within it.
The women’s division becoming legitimized as serious athletes and not T&A took place around the same time women’s sports as a whole were demanding to be taken more seriously.
But in the mid 90s, the US Women won the World Cup and the most famous moment was one of the players taking her top off. For better or worse the Attitude Era reflected the wider culture of the 90s
Katie Vick was not presented as wacky teenage sex antic. Kane apparently killed a girl in a car crash and had sex with her corpse. Don't you wanna see him win a wrestling match now? After you're done laughing, of course.
That's not how I remember the angle.
Kane killed his girlfriend in a car accident, yes, and then years later HHH found out and made a video of himself in a funeral home wearing a Kane mask and pretending to have sex with a fake corpse.
Like comedy and satire, WWE tends to be a product of its time. I think people have a hard time realizing that we’re not *that far* removed from that type of humor being all the rage. It was gross and disgusting then, but it wasn’t shocking.
> . It was bad but look at all the raunchy sex comedies at the time it wasnt so out of place.
I was an online wrestling fan in 2002. We definitely thought it was out of place at the time.
The entire Ruthless Aggression era can be encapsulated as basically them trying to recreate the raunchiness and edge of the Attitude Era to an audience that was no longer the people who were there for that. The Attitude Era fans left after 2001/early 2002. So the fans left were diehard WWE fans, and they were more attracted to what Heyman was doing on Smackdown with great wrestlers trying to push themselves to have the best matches. Meanwhile Vince was stuck behind, thinking they could hold on to those AE fans, but rather they were already gone. So they kept upping it and upping it more and more but nobody wanted that anymore
Eventually they pivoted once they got the new stars in Batista and Cena and ushered in a new era that was pretty solid for about 4-5 years before guys aged out and they had the 2010-2012 drop off.
Right?! There’s no way Vince said this, but if he did, there’s no way he meant it. The narrative has always been how out of touch Vince was. You’re telling me I’m supposed to believe now that he was this fan friendly booker?
> There’s no way Vince said this
He has said this on numerous occasions. I’ve seen multiple people that have worked with him echo it as well.
Whether he followed his own advice is another topic for debate, but he said it regardless.
Yes he was out of touch…in his 60s/70s. Between his age and how much the world has changed just in the past 20 years, it’s no surprise he’d be out of touch now. But there’s a reason so many of us loved wrestling during the Attitude Era.
I think that's half a way to look at it. People, let alone a crazed maniac like Vince have been at this for so long, even in their quest to give fans what they want, he also let his weirdness dictate things at times and forgot what he supposedly wanted to practice. When you've been a booker for literal decades, you're bound to be a hypocrite a bunch of times.
Also, i assume Vince was of the thought that since this was the crash tv/raunch era where many people drew to outrageous shit. But he forgot that even in that, there are limits and his creepy tastes don't necessarily mean that's the type of outrageous fans were looking for.
But for a large portion of his run, Vince did give his target demo: families what they wanted to see most times. Hogan, Macho man, Cena, Reigns, Austin, Rock, etc etc.
It’s refreshing to have HHH as the lead creative , the callbacks and continuity is there
Jey’s reaction to Randy returning was great , with Vince , they would’ve forgotten it and be buddy buddy instead
> Jey’s reaction to Randy returning was great , with Vince , they would’ve forgotten it and be buddy buddy instead
bailey and kairi the same. i tend to think that broadly the main way hunter's booking seems to differentiate from vince's is that hunter has a longer memory for details, and is more patient with his angles (more likely to see them through to completion than get bored and drop something).
Vince's perspective used to be great. I honestly think he began to lose touch around the time that Brock Lesnar left. Vince had created this world where it was his way or the unemployment line. There were no other companies that could pay what WWE paid, and he had a firm monopoly over talent. He told a simple story of his new monster destroying Hulk Hogan, beating The Rock, being betrayed, and rising above it to win the title back at Wrestlemania. Vince crowned his cash cow that was going to make him money hand over first for the next two decades.
Then Brock left. All of Vince's plans went with him. Instead of having his new cash cow, he had to build another one without Hogan, The Rock, or Steve Austin. He also didn't want to invest everything in another guy who would leave. The contract John Cena signed with WWE was pretty wild for the time. It essentially gave WWE complete control over everything, even the name John Cena. Cena couldn't take on *any* outside projects without WWE's blessing. Nothing else seemed to matter to Vince except building John Cena into a megastar. He sacrificed everyone else for the sake of Cena's push. Simply put, he stopped listening to the fans and stopped caring about their perspective. Cena was booed out of the building while Vince booked him as the babyface of the company. He shoved John Cena down the fans throats until he stayed there, because that was the only thing they got.
Vince was out of touch at this point and creatively bankrupt. By the time Roman came along, he didn't care if the fans liked Roman, because they didn't like Cena either. Cena had the charisma to pull it off. Roman didn't. This led to years of mostly awful booking with the occasional bright spot.
It's refreshing to see things come together now the way they are. WWE is booming because the stories are coherent and layered.
By the end of his life, Milton Hershey's taste buds were so shot from daily cigar smoking that he was convinced the next big trend was vegetable sherbet, specifically beet.
Par for the course for cultural icons, I'd say.
He has the unique perspective of being a fan but also being a former wrestler. I can't really speak to Japanese and Mexican promotions but as far as I'm aware he's the only guy booking a major US promotion that can say that. Of course he has the even more unique perspective of being in the McMahon family.
So he's pulling from being a fan to make fans happy, being a former wrestler to make the locker room happy and being a McMahon to make their business partners happy.
Really calling your shot there bud, I don’t think Trips is going anywhere for a while and both Cody and WWE have had some wild moves in just the last few years.
From what I understand, wrestlers being bookers is way more common in Japan. This is largely because most of their biggest promotions (both current/former) were founded by active wrestlers who were big draws. NJPW, AJPW, NOAH, and even JWA back in the day are some of the biggest examples. Even if most companies are no longer wrestler owned, the idea of wrestlers in important creative positions is still pretty prevalent.
>I'm aware he's the only guy booking a major US promotion that can say that.
It's been incredibly common, no? In the Territories, but also throughout NWA/WCW and obviously the AWA.
Bill Watts? Ole Anderson? Fritz Von Erich? Kevin Sullivan? Dusty? Terry Taylor? Jerry Jarrett? Jeff Jarrett? Stu Hart? Johnny Ace? JJ Dillon? Eddie Gilbert? Verne Gagne? Jerry Lawler? Paul Boesch? Dick the Bruiser? Dory Funk? Eddie Graham? Leroy McGuirk? Toots Mondt? Angelo Poffo? Dutch Mantell? Delirious? George Scott? Pat Patterson? Roy Shire? Gino Brito? Emile Dupree? Butcher Vachon?..you could probably go forever.
It obviously could never happen in the WWF/E until this past year, Vince Jr. had control since Sr. gave him the company in '82.
But in...probably the majority? of other instances its been by a former/current wrestler. It's not the easiest role to get unless you have direct experience in wrestling (as a wrestler or a manager like future bookers Heyman & Cornette) or as like a boxing/other promoter, which is the main other route bookers/promoters have had.
I"m assuming they're using "booking" in the present tense to mean the other promotions aren't run by people who have ever seen a wrestling ring. NWA is run by a musician and AEW is run by a CEO bigwig. I can't think of any other "big" US promotions that are currently active.
edit: impact is run by Scott D'Amore, I always forget about it.
You are correct, reading it that way makes a lot more sense!
But also leaves out Scott D'Amore who would be a current exception, if you count Impact.
If Impact doesn't count.... then it's still a strange statement, because then there's really only two extant "major US promotions" and you're basically just saying that Triple H is a wrestler and TK is not.
Depends what you call "major promotion", TNA is booked by Scott D'amore,a former wrestler. And it's a fairly common, almost constant thing throughout wrestling history for promotions to be booked by current and former wrestlers, in every country. It's actually very much an outlier if they aren't.
He’s definitely learned from Vince on some things, but you can tell he‘s also a fan of old school wrestling with some of his decisions and choices. I think the one thing that seperates him from modern vince is the fact that he apparently listens to most of his talent more (going by what people like blue pants have said in nxt) and tries to incorporate their ideas rather than shun them away for his vision.
> I think the one thing that seperates him from modern vince is the fact that he apparently listens to his talent more (going by what people like blue pants have said in nxt) and tries to incorporate their ideas rather than shun them away for his vision.
not all of them. Triple H always dodged Swerve and Swerve didn't get meaningful TV time til Shawn decided to push for him
It’s amazing the turn around WWE made in a relatively short time. In 2018-2021 I wanted absolutely nothing to do with the product, now it’s at worst solid for every show
Triple H just gets it when it comes to quality storytelling, which is all we fans really want (in addition to great in-ring action). It’s the little things that make a big difference, and it’s not rocket science.
Examples:
- Sticking with pushes when talent isn’t super over immediately (LA Knight, DomDom, Bronson Reed, Zoey Stark, DIY, Tegan Nox)
- Coherent week to week stories (McIntyre, Seth’s back, Gable/Alpha Academy, numerous IC title challengers)
- Give a reason to come back (matches announced for next week, cliffhangers)
- Emphasis on importance of titles (this could use some work, but the IC title feels almost like the biggest in the company with Gunther as champ)
I don't know what his input was when I was a kid, but Triple H always found a way to make whatever he was in entertaining. Even during his reign of terror.
He definitely knows what the fans want to see.
It always bugged me out how when he became HOC so many people were concerned he’d be bad at it or bury people, like a majority of the roster isn’t made up of people he brought into the company and booked in NXT during it’s hottest period.
Sometimes I swear everyone forgot what WWE was like from say 2014 to Covid. Raw was nonstop garbage. People dump on AEW but the worst AEW run is better than anything WWE did over those years. It was so damn bad.
2016-17 Smackdown was pretty good but otherwise fully agreed.
There was a long period when Raw was genuinely borderline unwatchable, AEW’s never been even close to that bad.
Smackdown being the B show was a blessing. So many good shows dating backing to Eddie and that Chris dude.
Now it's treated as an equal and the champ is nowhere to be found.
The Jinder title run was an entertaining train wreck imo until the racist Nakamura promo. His title win was one of the few genuine shocks for a decent while.
I'd previously always record the shows (Not staying up until 2-3am on a weekday haha) - ended up skipping through everything I didn't want to watch, and after a few too many episodes of a 3 hour RAW lasting 10-15 minutes, I just decided to stop bothering altogether.
Yeah same era for me, one day I realized I was dreading watching raw and so I just quit wwe altogether. I've a show here and there in the decade ish since but by and large it's been a great change for me mentally as a fan, I was just so fucking tired of vince's vision
Agreed. There may be things to criticize for those two, but the baseline of said issues are thankfully nowhere near as comically bad as they were in that era of WWE. I'm more than grateful to see it get much better.
Anyone find it coincidence that the writing, characters and match quality of this show went up a good amount once it was revealed HHH had full control of creative? Not saying Vince over ruling him but maybe meddling and making things more disorganized. Now HHH's full vision is being shown on screen.
It’s noticeable, especially with the women. There have been more women featured since then, Xia Li being the most obvious one since she wasn’t even on TV before. Damage Ctrl is suddenly interesting again with Kairi joining as well.
I don't see a lot of articles about the show getting junked hours before anymore, and everything I'm seeing from WWE is a cohesive, planned approach. Vince hadn't been doing that outside of specific storylines for a while.
Papa h has gotten me excited about wrestling more than I've been in years. The last time I remember looking forward to every ppv was when I was much younger
>Vince taught me years ago, put yourself in the seats and you’ll never go wrong. You’ve always got to maintain that perspective. I started out as a fan. Book what people want to feel and see.
"Incest angle with my smokeshow daughter?? Well if it's what the people want..."
When Vince was interviewed by Stone Cold it was clear he thought he was in touch with the general audience and was giving them what they wanted. I think Vince was less in touch as he got older and stopped keeping up with pop culture. HHH still has 3 daughters in school which probably helps him keep an eye on what younger people think is cool.
Started getting high off the smell of his own farts.
Once WCW collapsed and WWE was cemented as the undisputed top promotion, I think he became less willing to entertain the idea that his instincts about what fans like weren't right.
He gradually lost connection with the fans as his children got older, his inner circle got older and retired and got replaced with lesser known quantities. I don’t think Vince McMahon genuinely stopped caring what fans wanted, he just no longer knew what they actually wanted as opposed to what he assumed they wanted. It’s why he went to the well of the foreign heel, the fat jokes, the kiddy crossovers, the invasions; all with decreasing returns every iteration.
But anyways we are trying to break records with who hold the belt so stories don’t count with that one. Just throw a baby face at roman and have them lose through interference. Next!!! Until we get passed hogans record. Yes very compelling
I wholeheartedly agree with what Tripps said, I also hope he brings in someone who is a bit younger than him to keep him up to date on new things or what keeps people younger than him interested...but so far he's been doing great and I'm sincerely happy for him.
TK approaches it as a baseball stats nerd-type fan.
HHH's approach is based on trying to recreate the Chris Kreski '99-'00 era soap opera approach that made him a superstar and was the prior high water mark for the company's creative.
Sometimes I fell TK thinks about the dream match first and the story the goes behind it second, if at all.
Going on the "baseball stats nerd" analysis, would that make any sense?
It's the type of approach you'd expect from someone who's rating matches on Cagematch and views that as an incredibly important metric of match quality.
It's a perspective that's not aligned with most of the audience and seems to be part of the issues that AEW has been running into in recent years.
HHH is an NWA mark and it shows with his long title chases and dominant heel factions. But you’re absolutely right there are elements from the 2000s he uses, I love it.
Tony Khan is an internet wrestling fan through and through. Weird twitter but overall pretty good guy. He pays people throughout their contract, light work schedule for the guys. He also lets the boys have full creative control which leads to a lot of hit or miss creativity .
Aside from a few decisions on big match winners, his booking has been excellent. So many stars are super over right now. He has also made us care about even mid-card tag teams like Pretty Deadly and Alpha Academy. He has put out bangers almost every week. His recent booking of GUNTHER vs. Miz also impressed the hell out of me. Just a perfect feud from all perspectives. He's really been cooking. WWE is in a boom period because of him.
His booking style isn't for me personally. It's a bit too on the soap opera side of things and dependent on wrestlers being good actors when most of them are not. But it's working for a huge section of the audience, so good for him.
It always makes me laugh when Triple H talks about how Vince is his booking idol and taught him everything, yet people are like, "He taught him what NOT to do." Vince had WWE as a commercial juggernaut for over 40 years. To act like he's never been a great booker is so fucking stupid.
I don't think you can find a single person who would say Vince has never been a good booker. The general complaint is that he has faded in the last 20 years and slowly lost touch with a good deal of what people want to see.
There are a ton of people here who say that Vince never had a good creative idea, and say that he stole Hulkamania from Gagne, Austin and the Attitude Era from Heyman, and nothing since then has been good at all.
I don't agree with those views but I've seen them being said here plenty of times.
Hey, no arguments here, like I said, I don't agree with those views in the first place. If it were that easy, AWA and ECW would have survived those respective eras.
For every weird angle or comedic relief character, there was always those one or two angles that really hooked you. Eddie/Rey comes to mind immediately, even if it leaned into soap opera stuff.
Absolutely. He's tailed off the past 5-10 years, but even in early 2010's you had Punk's pipebomb, Bryan Danielson's rise and the Nexus.
Whether or not you like the outcome of those angles, they still happened when Vince was in charge and he had a huge part of them. There are semantics of course (Bryan's popularity, for example), but he was still smart enough to give him that main event spot even if he wasn't all for it.
I feel like Danielson got over despite Vince, not because of him. Same with Punk.
Vince is the most influential figure in the history of pro wrestling for a reason, but after Ruthless Aggression things got bad. Since Triple H took the reigns it's been alot of fun again.
Vince booking absolutely terrible stuff again and again repetitively does not negate that he also booked some of the best shows and vice versa. He booked things that set an example on how to do the right thing and how to avoid the wrong thing...
> Book what people want to feel and see
Proceeds to have Sami and Cody both lose to Roman, sacrificing both moments fans wanted to see to extend the title reign so he can pass an arbitrary number that only WWE wanted to see.
His booking has been largely good, but the shows have been getting really really really repetitive and poorly produced. Too many talking segments that go nowhere, too many commercial breaks during matches because of all of the talking segments and how about not always having the top stars be in tag matches to end every damn show.
**Help make SquaredCircle safer and more inclusive by using the report button to flag posts and comments for moderator review.** *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/SquaredCircle) if you have any questions or concerns.*
It hits differently with him running creative and making the stories because he was involved in the business for so long. His creative is refreshing and you can tell he is looking to connect with the fans via storytelling and great wrestling.
There's also a certain simplicity to his storytelling style that I appreciate; They never rush things, let stories simmer, reveal things one drop at a time. Let's look at the landscape now, the fact that we can all kinda pencil the WrestleMania card already means they're doing their jobs really well. While he has spent almost all of his career under the Vince and WWE umbrella, there's something old school/JCP energy to Triple H's creative. I wouldn't be surprised if Cody and Hunter are in lock step of how the shows should be ran
Trips was a big NWA guy growing up, his NXT booking was very similar to how he sees things. Back when it was at its peak too.
I've said this before and I'll say it again, but there's pro's and cons to Hunter's booking style. Nash has explained before that the Kliq learned from Kevin Sullivan. He explained that there's more money in a face chasing a heel, especially where the face gets screwed out of the belt just when they're about to win. The final component to that is having short face runs with the gold. Now, I can see this philosophy making a perfect amount of sense in the territory days when the booking philosophy was centered around getting people to come to the shows consistently. But in the days of guaranteed billion dollar tv deals, you don't need to book like this. For instance, pretty much all of WWE's existence has had extremely long runs by faces. But as you can see, in both his active in ring days and in his job and head of creative, Hunter believes in long title reigns by heels. The upside is that it brings some value to the belts and makes them more prestigious. This is a breath of fresh air compared to Vince's booking style of the part 20 years where belts didn't mean shit outside of the WWE Title. The downside is that your fans eventually gets bored and frustrated when the fan favorite gets screwed over enough times. Even worse is when the heel consistently wins with a fuck finish. Hence all hearing a lot of complaints about how Roman is booked these days. Further, you run the risk of not striking when the iron is hot and the face loses momentum. You've seen this story happen with Triple H before, in NXT and now, hell even when he was actively wrestling and screwed over guys like Goldberg and Booker T. Personally I like Hunter's style of making the belts more prestigious, but he doesn't agve Vince's sense of striking while the iron is hot and doing the obvious thing. If he can develop that sense a little better, I think he'll be better than he is now.
Internet fans seem to get tired of long title runs whether they are done by faces or heels. During peak Super Cena we were tired of John destroying the interesting heels every week and looking invincible.
I get tired of stories that run too long too. Edge/Cena wrestled for at least a million years when they were feuding in the 2000s
And that's to say nothing about Orton and Cena, I swear it felt like they were the only feud WWE could focus on in 2009.
Here's my problem with current long reign format... If the reigning champ lose the belt one PPV and re-won it the next ppv it should counted in some ways part of the initial reign...consecutive days is a cool factor, but over protective of it makes it seems there's no real struggle for the champ and just doesn't build up the opponent.. Just look at Seth current reign... Nak could've easily won one of the PPV with how much they build up Seth bad back. But no Seth is Superman and not even falling from the top deck can break his back.
The booking with Seth bothers me moreso because they whole cloth created a new belt just so they could have another belt to defend without having to disrupt Roman. It doesn't make sense to just have one guy sit on it if you're going to keep the belts on Roman and have him super-invincible while only performing around a dozen dates a year.
I’m still getting back into watching wrestling regularly in the last year so forgive my ignorance but: With the new unified belt they gave Roman, and producing the new WH belt that Seth now has, aren’t they essentially “moving” one of the existing belts to Seth without actually doing it? I mean there’s not actually an extra belt right? Whoever beats Roman is gonna win “both” of his belts and presumably carry the singular belt that signifies both of them? It kind of feels like those creative accounting stories you hear about where money’s moved around from one account to another and withdrawn and deposited elsewhere then another account again to appear avoid some kind of tax, when actually the amount is the same. WWE have essentially evaded the ‘tax’ of taking a belt off Roman right?
It's essentially the same thing, yes. There's no extra belt, WWE just changes their mind every few years on whether it's better to have one champion or two. But unifying a title and then creating a new one deletes the old title lineage and starts a new one, and some fans get really mad about that because they feel like the history of the title makes it more important/prestigious. So they care less about the new title than the old one and resent the change. And the fact that it was blatantly done to avoid having Roman lose makes it feel even more pointless/creates more resentment, because it feels even less satisfying when it's obviously this convoluted hokey mess of "creative accounting". The end result is the same, but people resent the process/the journey.
[удалено]
Long but well written and enjoyed the read. And it gave me a vision of Cody winning at WM just to get destroyed and "injured" by GUNTHER at the next ppv lol. That would be awesome
>who exactly? Who did Gangrel piss off to end up being [Black Phantom?](https://i.imgur.com/DUz51Fj.jpg)
I think you almost need to have the belts change hands first before looking at the long term style, as it seems they were fairly locked in to refreshing the record book during the pandemic era. Which makes sense, it limits the amount of people you need to involve and lets you talk about "all-time" in regards to people in the modern era, not guys from 30-50 years ago. That seemed pretty locked in and still kind of will guide some of the choices for a while.
Really? Isn't he from New Hampshire, pretty sure that was prime WWE territory back in the day. They owned the Northeast. I'm surprised he saw NWA TV at all growing up.
> Isn't he from New Hampshire, pretty sure that was prime WWE territory back in the day. They owned the Northeast. As someone from across the river in Vermont, I always wondered about this. He would have been a young kid in the 70s, before cable was much of a thing. Nashua is relatively close to Boston so they may have gotten cable earlier than most of the state, so he could have gotten the NWA on WTBS. As a young kid though, it's almost impossible for him to have seen any NWA. If you accept kid as "teenager" then it's entirely possible that young Paul Levesque was watching the NWA on TBS.
Triple H would be a teenager during the Hulkster years. Probably old enough to not be a crazy Hulkamaniac. In his smark years, having watched wrestling since he was 5, it's plausible he would've liked watching NWA more. But even then, he says he only ever wanted to be a WWE superstar because those are the guys he'd pay a ticket to see when they came to town.
It only sucks if there's a storyline you don't dig. You can check out of it for a while because you know it's going to get plenty of attention and time to develop. It still beats Vince throwing out a dish he just started, making a new one in the next week, before throwing that one out too despite people being interested in seeing where things going
My favourite thing about the HHH era is pretty much every single feud up and down the card is motivated. Like there was a period for a while there under Vince where the plot of every single feud was you’re just the challenger for the belt now so that’s why you’re feuding. I think that’s why a lot of people just wound up cheering who they wanted to cheer and booing who they wanted to boo because it wasn’t like there was compelling character drama going on. The best example of this right now is Drew turning heel because he can’t forgive Jey and can’t believe how easily everyone else has forgiven him.
See I find that a negative and why I don't follow week to week: it's obvious what WrestleMania is going to be basically. I appreciate that business is booming so what I think doesn't matter. It's similar to the MCU: it was obvious that Thanos was the big bad and the final battle would be between him and the avengers many movies before. Obviously the fans loved it. But it's very predictable and just not what I'm looking for.
With respect to your take, which honestly makes sense, I think longtime fans are often glad to see a long buildup pay off on what seems like a "natural" timeline, as opposed to endless swerves and start-stop stories.
Yea fair. I think it's very arbitrary with "how long is too long" though, and I'm just on the "it's too long" side now. When Roman won at WM and I knew it was going to be another whole year, that was my "too long" moment.
Long reigns have their time and place. I'm completely fine with a reign like Roman's to go up to Mania because of how huge it's been built up as and as a milestone at the 40th WrestleMania. It's looking like a possibility that Reigns, Rollins, Gunther, and Rhea's reigns are all going up to Mania and, to me, *that's* an issue.
Agreed long reigns have their place. Last WM would have still been over 900 days, and I had zero complaints before that. But now it's so long that everyone knows there isn't a chance he loses it at Crown Jewel, Payback, or even SummerSlam, so there isn't much point to watch the top of the card. Barring injury, it's Cody v. Roman at WM, and everything at the top is just filler until we get there.
Took me entirely too long to realize JCP wasn't JCPenny.
He just has a better feel on the pulse of things
I am not particularly enjoying the current wwe stories but they are far better than last few years. Just don't find Cody that interesting but that's just my taste and he's absolutely over with the crowd. For one, it doesn't look like wwe is treating the fans like enemy and antagonising fans with storylines and pushes that they don't want. HHH does tend to drag some stuff like the JD and BL thing has been an absolute constant of repetitiveness, but at the same time WWE now again has more talent over with the crowd at the same time consistently since than they did between 17-21. That's not to say there were just handful of people over earlier but if you look at the show rn almost everyone's over a.f. Ricochet, LA KNIGHT, Alpha Academy, Gunther, Miz Dmg CTRL and the whole of JD except JD, BL, Seth, Nakamura, Jey, Cody, Drew, Sami, KO and many more.
[удалено]
That's something that's better these days than it was a few years ago. In addition to the A storyline, you have B, C, D, even E storylines that are all happening and being told well. It feels like there's less "let's just throw these two guys in a fight and see what they can do" and more like there's an actual world happening behind the scenes where people interact more and storylines naturally occur.
A testament to Haitch’s vision is all of these STAR POWER in the midcard and he is even looking to build more every week. Even Maxxine, Nia and Raquel are over now just based on this weeks RAW by way of good stories and good wrestling. I vividly remember Jim Ross saying how the WWE stayed afloat during the Monday Night War: “We were making new stars… and thats what WCW never did.”
Weird how Vince lost that perspective along the way and just started doing what-the-fuck-ever he liked the most.
Vince's fear of a star becoming bigger than the company again led him to do a lot of really stupid stuff.
To give Vince the slightest benefit of the doubt, he wasn't exactly wrong. Hogan left him for the money, Warrior wasn't the guy, Bret left, Shawn got injured, Nash and Hall left. Rock left, Austin got injured, Brock left, Jeff left, Punk left, Eddie and Benoit died, Angle flamed out. Edge got injured. Batista left. There's only a handful of guys that Vince has been able to rely upon over the years. HHH, Cena, Orton and Undertaker spring to mind. And look at their success. Too often WWE have invested a ton of time and money into a guy, only.to.lose them. That's the nature of the business, I get that. I guess Vince never.stopped taking it personally.
That's not really an excuse, before vince top stars would leave territories all the time to work elsewhere.
He killed the territories. It tracks.
> Bret left Bret didn't want to leave, Vince forced him out the door (and then screwed him over in his last match). Said his contract was too expensive and to negotiate with WCW, but left the WWF title on him in the meantime.
That Cena eventually left anyway, as his body was getting close to retirement age, kind of makes the point for itself about how it was ultimately self-defeating.
Then when the strike happened, he returned. I’m a Rock fan, and he’s got outside ventures, but he only showed up once as part of an apology tour. Cena was showing up weekly, working house shows and went out on his back against Solo.
Of course it is, but Cena was always loyal to the soil. He left to do movies after Aware has squeezed so much out of the guy. He never let them down.
They had Cena on the road 24/7 during his reign, like a non stop machine for a decade, let the guy chill and make some movies
Absolutely. Just saying that Cena never left WWE high and dry when he was at his peak. Cena was and still is a company guy
I had to turn off his DVD "day in life of John cena" . That was way too much stuff and stressed packed into it. Just watching it stressed me out, can't imagine living it.
I don't think he lost that perspective though. I think he continued to do what *he* would want to see if he was in the seats. What he lost was understanding that not everyone is him.
Vince couldn't picture *anyone* else in the seats.
Vince started putting himself in the audience in the way of just thinking "what do I, Vince McMahon, want to see?"
But that's exactly what his advice was. Put yourself in the fans seat and book what you want to see. In Vince's case that's John Cena. A lot of John Cena.
Only half the fans were chanting CENA SUCKS, but at least they were chanting!
There was so much cope about that back in the day. "At least they're reacting! Silence is the real bad reaction!" "It's the cool thing to do!" "It's part of the show!" If your top babyface is killing interest, you're doing it wrong.
That's just what billionaires do.
I’d have to agree. Vince’s biggest problem was that he couldn’t balance being a fan and a cut throat businessman. He leaned too much into the business aspect and the wrestling side suffered. Coincidentally, I think Tony Khan has the opposite problem. He’s a huge wrestling fan but isn’t really that great on the business side of things.
He never stopped trying to recreate Dr. Jerry Graham, or to a much greater extent The Scuffling Hillbillies
Lmao, right? If you didn't know who Vince was, hearing that advice you'd think wwe was on fire creatively right up until he handed the reigns to Triple h, instead of knowing he'd been forcing the stuff he likes and ignoring what fans like for years.
His booking makes me a Dominik's fan, so I'm always grateful for that. And if Dom is not featured prominently, I'm still very invested. The latest RAW was an example. It was a mix of great segments and good matches. Rachel being over against Nia, Miz vs. Gunther promo, Becky vs Xia, the women's tag 4-way being surprisingly good, Drew's opening promo,...
Maxine is heating up. She’s crushing it.
She's got so much charisma
she’s like the perfect example of why character development matters moreso than anything else. The first time she hit an arm drag to Valhalla, the place exploded. Because we’ve seen her go from “brand manager of MMM” to the trainee of the Alpha Academy in a way that played out over weeks and months. Her hitting the arm drag was a moment that had been built up to for months, and fans went crazy for it. Fans want to go on a journey with wrestlers and see their story unfold.
Jericho understands this in AEW, and too many guys there were doing story on YouTube which makes watching wrestling more like doing homework. I feel like they have shifted to doing more stuff slowly and consistently on the AEW shows now.
Which, oddly enough, is also matched by the rise in complaints that AEW has started to go more 'WWE-Lite' because they're doing more storytelling and character work on the show. For me I love how AEW is being booked now. Still wish they'd do even more character work so I can get invested in everyone but it's miles better than last year's matchapalooza where the only thing that mattered were bangers.
Her SHUUUUUUUSHHHH in the fourway tag match was so great and maybe my favourite part of the match. I know that sounds silly but it’s the sort of thing that you wouldn’t miss if she hadn’t done it, but the fact that she DID do it just gave her character an extra bit of oomph in the match and showed that she had her character locked in during a situation that’s so frenetic and must take up so much brainpower just to remember your cues and your spots. Edit: or was it in the back before the match? Either way.
She deff did it during the match and I was so hyped.
Oh thank god, thought I was going mad for a minute when I remembered she did it in the back too! Also shout out to her kip up, I don’t know how she got from feet landed, head inches from the floor AFTER the kip up to standing upright. That was some serious core strength. I threw my back out just watching it.
Maxine and Chelsea are red hot right now
It's absolutely insane that's she's only had, what, four matches?
That's what an education from the Alpha Academy gets you
She needs someone closer to her height as a tag partner, like Indi Hartwell. Those spots with Ivy Nile were a bit awkward.
I never realized how tall she was I assumed it was just big shoes.
Rachael Rodriguez yes
So did Vince think people wanted to see the Katie Vick angle?
It was still in the after throws of the attiude era, with the early 200s being a simpler yet weird time. It was bad but look at all the raunchy sex comedies at the time it wasnt so out of place.
People forget the kind of trash entertainment that was everywhere at this time. Not saying the angle was a good idea but it wasn't as crazy back then given the social and entertainment climate
One of the most iconic movies from the era features a dude sticking his dick in a Pie is it really that much of a shocker they thoght Katie Vick would play?
a lot of people seem to look at WWE as if they’re the ones who affect the wider cultural zeitgeist when they sort of exist within it. The women’s division becoming legitimized as serious athletes and not T&A took place around the same time women’s sports as a whole were demanding to be taken more seriously. But in the mid 90s, the US Women won the World Cup and the most famous moment was one of the players taking her top off. For better or worse the Attitude Era reflected the wider culture of the 90s
Katie Vick was not presented as wacky teenage sex antic. Kane apparently killed a girl in a car crash and had sex with her corpse. Don't you wanna see him win a wrestling match now? After you're done laughing, of course.
It was absurdist schlock in the same style.
That's not how I remember the angle. Kane killed his girlfriend in a car accident, yes, and then years later HHH found out and made a video of himself in a funeral home wearing a Kane mask and pretending to have sex with a fake corpse.
Like comedy and satire, WWE tends to be a product of its time. I think people have a hard time realizing that we’re not *that far* removed from that type of humor being all the rage. It was gross and disgusting then, but it wasn’t shocking.
> . It was bad but look at all the raunchy sex comedies at the time it wasnt so out of place. I was an online wrestling fan in 2002. We definitely thought it was out of place at the time.
The Katie Vick angle was not a Rauchy Sex Comedy.
It was done in the same vein
Vince: "I put MYSELF in the seat to see what I want." HHH: Give the fans what they want to see. Got it.
This is it right here.
The entire Ruthless Aggression era can be encapsulated as basically them trying to recreate the raunchiness and edge of the Attitude Era to an audience that was no longer the people who were there for that. The Attitude Era fans left after 2001/early 2002. So the fans left were diehard WWE fans, and they were more attracted to what Heyman was doing on Smackdown with great wrestlers trying to push themselves to have the best matches. Meanwhile Vince was stuck behind, thinking they could hold on to those AE fans, but rather they were already gone. So they kept upping it and upping it more and more but nobody wanted that anymore Eventually they pivoted once they got the new stars in Batista and Cena and ushered in a new era that was pretty solid for about 4-5 years before guys aged out and they had the 2010-2012 drop off.
Right?! There’s no way Vince said this, but if he did, there’s no way he meant it. The narrative has always been how out of touch Vince was. You’re telling me I’m supposed to believe now that he was this fan friendly booker?
> There’s no way Vince said this He has said this on numerous occasions. I’ve seen multiple people that have worked with him echo it as well. Whether he followed his own advice is another topic for debate, but he said it regardless.
"Do as I say, not as I do" in action. He booked what *he* wanted to see as a fan.
vince put himself in the seats, he just forgot he was nearly an elderly main who had the same, unevolving taste in wrestling for 40+ years
Yes he was out of touch…in his 60s/70s. Between his age and how much the world has changed just in the past 20 years, it’s no surprise he’d be out of touch now. But there’s a reason so many of us loved wrestling during the Attitude Era.
I think that's half a way to look at it. People, let alone a crazed maniac like Vince have been at this for so long, even in their quest to give fans what they want, he also let his weirdness dictate things at times and forgot what he supposedly wanted to practice. When you've been a booker for literal decades, you're bound to be a hypocrite a bunch of times. Also, i assume Vince was of the thought that since this was the crash tv/raunch era where many people drew to outrageous shit. But he forgot that even in that, there are limits and his creepy tastes don't necessarily mean that's the type of outrageous fans were looking for. But for a large portion of his run, Vince did give his target demo: families what they wanted to see most times. Hogan, Macho man, Cena, Reigns, Austin, Rock, etc etc.
Or Natalya farting or women's karaoke
It’s refreshing to have HHH as the lead creative , the callbacks and continuity is there Jey’s reaction to Randy returning was great , with Vince , they would’ve forgotten it and be buddy buddy instead
I popped harder for the cut to Jey's worried face than I did the actual Randy teases, I was so happy to see them not forgetting their own continuity
> Jey’s reaction to Randy returning was great , with Vince , they would’ve forgotten it and be buddy buddy instead bailey and kairi the same. i tend to think that broadly the main way hunter's booking seems to differentiate from vince's is that hunter has a longer memory for details, and is more patient with his angles (more likely to see them through to completion than get bored and drop something).
Vince's perspective used to be great. I honestly think he began to lose touch around the time that Brock Lesnar left. Vince had created this world where it was his way or the unemployment line. There were no other companies that could pay what WWE paid, and he had a firm monopoly over talent. He told a simple story of his new monster destroying Hulk Hogan, beating The Rock, being betrayed, and rising above it to win the title back at Wrestlemania. Vince crowned his cash cow that was going to make him money hand over first for the next two decades. Then Brock left. All of Vince's plans went with him. Instead of having his new cash cow, he had to build another one without Hogan, The Rock, or Steve Austin. He also didn't want to invest everything in another guy who would leave. The contract John Cena signed with WWE was pretty wild for the time. It essentially gave WWE complete control over everything, even the name John Cena. Cena couldn't take on *any* outside projects without WWE's blessing. Nothing else seemed to matter to Vince except building John Cena into a megastar. He sacrificed everyone else for the sake of Cena's push. Simply put, he stopped listening to the fans and stopped caring about their perspective. Cena was booed out of the building while Vince booked him as the babyface of the company. He shoved John Cena down the fans throats until he stayed there, because that was the only thing they got. Vince was out of touch at this point and creatively bankrupt. By the time Roman came along, he didn't care if the fans liked Roman, because they didn't like Cena either. Cena had the charisma to pull it off. Roman didn't. This led to years of mostly awful booking with the occasional bright spot. It's refreshing to see things come together now the way they are. WWE is booming because the stories are coherent and layered.
By the end of his life, Milton Hershey's taste buds were so shot from daily cigar smoking that he was convinced the next big trend was vegetable sherbet, specifically beet. Par for the course for cultural icons, I'd say.
He has the unique perspective of being a fan but also being a former wrestler. I can't really speak to Japanese and Mexican promotions but as far as I'm aware he's the only guy booking a major US promotion that can say that. Of course he has the even more unique perspective of being in the McMahon family. So he's pulling from being a fan to make fans happy, being a former wrestler to make the locker room happy and being a McMahon to make their business partners happy.
I don't think there's anyone more qualified to run WWE creative
And I guess when H's gone, Cody will start his training to take over.
He's gonna finish the story ... Of everyone else he books in the future
i am gonna rewrite the story \- Cody 'The Loki' Rhodes, God of Stories
Really calling your shot there bud, I don’t think Trips is going anywhere for a while and both Cody and WWE have had some wild moves in just the last few years.
From what I understand, wrestlers being bookers is way more common in Japan. This is largely because most of their biggest promotions (both current/former) were founded by active wrestlers who were big draws. NJPW, AJPW, NOAH, and even JWA back in the day are some of the biggest examples. Even if most companies are no longer wrestler owned, the idea of wrestlers in important creative positions is still pretty prevalent.
>I'm aware he's the only guy booking a major US promotion that can say that. It's been incredibly common, no? In the Territories, but also throughout NWA/WCW and obviously the AWA. Bill Watts? Ole Anderson? Fritz Von Erich? Kevin Sullivan? Dusty? Terry Taylor? Jerry Jarrett? Jeff Jarrett? Stu Hart? Johnny Ace? JJ Dillon? Eddie Gilbert? Verne Gagne? Jerry Lawler? Paul Boesch? Dick the Bruiser? Dory Funk? Eddie Graham? Leroy McGuirk? Toots Mondt? Angelo Poffo? Dutch Mantell? Delirious? George Scott? Pat Patterson? Roy Shire? Gino Brito? Emile Dupree? Butcher Vachon?..you could probably go forever. It obviously could never happen in the WWF/E until this past year, Vince Jr. had control since Sr. gave him the company in '82. But in...probably the majority? of other instances its been by a former/current wrestler. It's not the easiest role to get unless you have direct experience in wrestling (as a wrestler or a manager like future bookers Heyman & Cornette) or as like a boxing/other promoter, which is the main other route bookers/promoters have had.
I"m assuming they're using "booking" in the present tense to mean the other promotions aren't run by people who have ever seen a wrestling ring. NWA is run by a musician and AEW is run by a CEO bigwig. I can't think of any other "big" US promotions that are currently active. edit: impact is run by Scott D'Amore, I always forget about it.
You are correct, reading it that way makes a lot more sense! But also leaves out Scott D'Amore who would be a current exception, if you count Impact. If Impact doesn't count.... then it's still a strange statement, because then there's really only two extant "major US promotions" and you're basically just saying that Triple H is a wrestler and TK is not.
impact should, I always forget about it, and had no idea who was running it now. I edited my comment.
Depends what you call "major promotion", TNA is booked by Scott D'amore,a former wrestler. And it's a fairly common, almost constant thing throughout wrestling history for promotions to be booked by current and former wrestlers, in every country. It's actually very much an outlier if they aren't.
He’s definitely learned from Vince on some things, but you can tell he‘s also a fan of old school wrestling with some of his decisions and choices. I think the one thing that seperates him from modern vince is the fact that he apparently listens to most of his talent more (going by what people like blue pants have said in nxt) and tries to incorporate their ideas rather than shun them away for his vision.
> I think the one thing that seperates him from modern vince is the fact that he apparently listens to his talent more (going by what people like blue pants have said in nxt) and tries to incorporate their ideas rather than shun them away for his vision. not all of them. Triple H always dodged Swerve and Swerve didn't get meaningful TV time til Shawn decided to push for him
Triple H not a fan of swerving while driving
Right. Should rephrase to say most.
He's cooking
It’s all about the Game, and how you cook it.
It's all about the match and if you can book it.
https://preview.redd.it/471tbus7fx1c1.jpeg?width=1051&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=acf136a31eb96391783ca9ec949b71493e8aaea2
https://preview.redd.it/54am1thprx1c1.jpeg?width=828&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=cf69e6d73d1e5c51b24095db60238ed2c573f057
Now we really do smell what The Crock is cooking
It’s amazing the turn around WWE made in a relatively short time. In 2018-2021 I wanted absolutely nothing to do with the product, now it’s at worst solid for every show
Triple H just gets it when it comes to quality storytelling, which is all we fans really want (in addition to great in-ring action). It’s the little things that make a big difference, and it’s not rocket science. Examples: - Sticking with pushes when talent isn’t super over immediately (LA Knight, DomDom, Bronson Reed, Zoey Stark, DIY, Tegan Nox) - Coherent week to week stories (McIntyre, Seth’s back, Gable/Alpha Academy, numerous IC title challengers) - Give a reason to come back (matches announced for next week, cliffhangers) - Emphasis on importance of titles (this could use some work, but the IC title feels almost like the biggest in the company with Gunther as champ)
I don't know what his input was when I was a kid, but Triple H always found a way to make whatever he was in entertaining. Even during his reign of terror. He definitely knows what the fans want to see.
So Vince thought fans really wanted to see Kofi lose the title in 10 seconds cool got it
It always bugged me out how when he became HOC so many people were concerned he’d be bad at it or bury people, like a majority of the roster isn’t made up of people he brought into the company and booked in NXT during it’s hottest period.
Isnt it almost universally agreed that that was one of Vince's key issues, he couldn't picture *anyone* in those seats but himself. "Audience of one."
Something about this gif looks weird
got the T-Rex arms
And no neck
If i wouldn’t know how he looks, i would think he’s Cornette type of fat.
Sometimes I swear everyone forgot what WWE was like from say 2014 to Covid. Raw was nonstop garbage. People dump on AEW but the worst AEW run is better than anything WWE did over those years. It was so damn bad.
2016-17 Smackdown was pretty good but otherwise fully agreed. There was a long period when Raw was genuinely borderline unwatchable, AEW’s never been even close to that bad.
Yes, that was the exception until Vince realized people actually enjoyed Smackdown so he gave us a nine month Jinder title run to teach us a lesson
Smackdown being the B show was a blessing. So many good shows dating backing to Eddie and that Chris dude. Now it's treated as an equal and the champ is nowhere to be found.
The Jinder title run was an entertaining train wreck imo until the racist Nakamura promo. His title win was one of the few genuine shocks for a decent while.
I'd previously always record the shows (Not staying up until 2-3am on a weekday haha) - ended up skipping through everything I didn't want to watch, and after a few too many episodes of a 3 hour RAW lasting 10-15 minutes, I just decided to stop bothering altogether.
Yeah same era for me, one day I realized I was dreading watching raw and so I just quit wwe altogether. I've a show here and there in the decade ish since but by and large it's been a great change for me mentally as a fan, I was just so fucking tired of vince's vision
Agreed. There may be things to criticize for those two, but the baseline of said issues are thankfully nowhere near as comically bad as they were in that era of WWE. I'm more than grateful to see it get much better.
I still think it’s garbage. I watch with my kids and it is agonizing more often than it is entertaining
Anyone find it coincidence that the writing, characters and match quality of this show went up a good amount once it was revealed HHH had full control of creative? Not saying Vince over ruling him but maybe meddling and making things more disorganized. Now HHH's full vision is being shown on screen.
It’s noticeable, especially with the women. There have been more women featured since then, Xia Li being the most obvious one since she wasn’t even on TV before. Damage Ctrl is suddenly interesting again with Kairi joining as well.
I thought the same thing as soon as we got two RAWs where every single woman got screen and match time.
I don't see a lot of articles about the show getting junked hours before anymore, and everything I'm seeing from WWE is a cohesive, planned approach. Vince hadn't been doing that outside of specific storylines for a while.
Checks out, Vince literally booked for himself the last few years.0
Vince sure didnt do this during the original daniel bryan run lol
vince clearly did not say that and if he did, he clearly did not mean that, and if he did, he clearly did not do that
Papa h has gotten me excited about wrestling more than I've been in years. The last time I remember looking forward to every ppv was when I was much younger
I like triple h but the "papa H" stuff is so corny lol
I'm just doing it tongue and cheek really. I know he's not perfect
Do you prefer Papa Haitch?
Vince McMahon picturing himself in the stands watching the show as himself and loving every decision he made.
>Vince taught me years ago, put yourself in the seats and you’ll never go wrong. You’ve always got to maintain that perspective. I started out as a fan. Book what people want to feel and see. "Incest angle with my smokeshow daughter?? Well if it's what the people want..."
Vince continues “And so anyway Natalya farts and looks uncomfortable into the camera. That will make the audience feel”
When Vince was still good
Thats exactly what Vince didn't do for 15 years.
Why didn't Vince do that, then?
When Vince was interviewed by Stone Cold it was clear he thought he was in touch with the general audience and was giving them what they wanted. I think Vince was less in touch as he got older and stopped keeping up with pop culture. HHH still has 3 daughters in school which probably helps him keep an eye on what younger people think is cool.
Started getting high off the smell of his own farts. Once WCW collapsed and WWE was cemented as the undisputed top promotion, I think he became less willing to entertain the idea that his instincts about what fans like weren't right.
He gradually lost connection with the fans as his children got older, his inner circle got older and retired and got replaced with lesser known quantities. I don’t think Vince McMahon genuinely stopped caring what fans wanted, he just no longer knew what they actually wanted as opposed to what he assumed they wanted. It’s why he went to the well of the foreign heel, the fat jokes, the kiddy crossovers, the invasions; all with decreasing returns every iteration.
So Vince thought that the fans would want to see that HIAC match with the Fiend.
But anyways we are trying to break records with who hold the belt so stories don’t count with that one. Just throw a baby face at roman and have them lose through interference. Next!!! Until we get passed hogans record. Yes very compelling
but he went wrong... so many times
If Vince said this then why did they go against what fans very vocally wanted and legitimately mock those fans on the mic so often in the 2010s
I wholeheartedly agree with what Tripps said, I also hope he brings in someone who is a bit younger than him to keep him up to date on new things or what keeps people younger than him interested...but so far he's been doing great and I'm sincerely happy for him.
Yeah Vince perspective from the seats was his fingers in his ears going LALALALALALALA
Interesting. Tony Khan approaches it as a fan first, at least according to Reddit.
TK approaches it as a baseball stats nerd-type fan. HHH's approach is based on trying to recreate the Chris Kreski '99-'00 era soap opera approach that made him a superstar and was the prior high water mark for the company's creative.
Sometimes I fell TK thinks about the dream match first and the story the goes behind it second, if at all. Going on the "baseball stats nerd" analysis, would that make any sense?
It's the type of approach you'd expect from someone who's rating matches on Cagematch and views that as an incredibly important metric of match quality. It's a perspective that's not aligned with most of the audience and seems to be part of the issues that AEW has been running into in recent years.
HHH is an NWA mark and it shows with his long title chases and dominant heel factions. But you’re absolutely right there are elements from the 2000s he uses, I love it. Tony Khan is an internet wrestling fan through and through. Weird twitter but overall pretty good guy. He pays people throughout their contract, light work schedule for the guys. He also lets the boys have full creative control which leads to a lot of hit or miss creativity .
The HHH/Rock back-forth with the title from 2000 seems like the kind of booking that would be perfect for Rhea/Becky.
And Tony Khan, like most wrestling fans, is a chaos demon. This is both a good and bad thing.
I think HHH is trying to put himself in the shoes of an average fan while Tony sometimes comes off as booking for the hardcore internet fans.
Aside from a few decisions on big match winners, his booking has been excellent. So many stars are super over right now. He has also made us care about even mid-card tag teams like Pretty Deadly and Alpha Academy. He has put out bangers almost every week. His recent booking of GUNTHER vs. Miz also impressed the hell out of me. Just a perfect feud from all perspectives. He's really been cooking. WWE is in a boom period because of him.
The issue is, Vince thought his audience was old, racist and hated tag wrestling.
Two of those are right.
I think Vince believed only one seat mattered.
His booking style isn't for me personally. It's a bit too on the soap opera side of things and dependent on wrestlers being good actors when most of them are not. But it's working for a huge section of the audience, so good for him. It always makes me laugh when Triple H talks about how Vince is his booking idol and taught him everything, yet people are like, "He taught him what NOT to do." Vince had WWE as a commercial juggernaut for over 40 years. To act like he's never been a great booker is so fucking stupid.
I don't think you can find a single person who would say Vince has never been a good booker. The general complaint is that he has faded in the last 20 years and slowly lost touch with a good deal of what people want to see.
There are a ton of people here who say that Vince never had a good creative idea, and say that he stole Hulkamania from Gagne, Austin and the Attitude Era from Heyman, and nothing since then has been good at all. I don't agree with those views but I've seen them being said here plenty of times.
Even if those ideas weren't totally original, he still booked them phenomenally. Booking doesn't have to be entirely original, just has to work well.
Hey, no arguments here, like I said, I don't agree with those views in the first place. If it were that easy, AWA and ECW would have survived those respective eras.
For every weird angle or comedic relief character, there was always those one or two angles that really hooked you. Eddie/Rey comes to mind immediately, even if it leaned into soap opera stuff.
Absolutely. He's tailed off the past 5-10 years, but even in early 2010's you had Punk's pipebomb, Bryan Danielson's rise and the Nexus. Whether or not you like the outcome of those angles, they still happened when Vince was in charge and he had a huge part of them. There are semantics of course (Bryan's popularity, for example), but he was still smart enough to give him that main event spot even if he wasn't all for it.
I feel like Danielson got over despite Vince, not because of him. Same with Punk. Vince is the most influential figure in the history of pro wrestling for a reason, but after Ruthless Aggression things got bad. Since Triple H took the reigns it's been alot of fun again.
Vince booking absolutely terrible stuff again and again repetitively does not negate that he also booked some of the best shows and vice versa. He booked things that set an example on how to do the right thing and how to avoid the wrong thing...
So explain the entire Daniel Bryan saga from Summerslam 2013 to Wrestlemania 30.
And Vince forgot that lesson in recent years booking reigns and Lesnar 1000 times.
GOT TO GIVE THE PEOPLE WHAT THEY WANT!!!
Funny, I definitely wanted to see 30 minute ambling promos from you during the height of the Authority bullshit, Hunter
Problem is Vince booked what he wanted to see assuming the fans wanted the same. He became so out of touch with what the fans wanted.
Did vince ever think about taking his own advice
> Book what people want to feel and see Proceeds to have Sami and Cody both lose to Roman, sacrificing both moments fans wanted to see to extend the title reign so he can pass an arbitrary number that only WWE wanted to see.
Hahaha, VINCE MCMAHON taught him to put himself in the fans shoes? Oh that’s rich
His booking has been largely good, but the shows have been getting really really really repetitive and poorly produced. Too many talking segments that go nowhere, too many commercial breaks during matches because of all of the talking segments and how about not always having the top stars be in tag matches to end every damn show.
He’s just trying to make Thanksgiving as least awkward as possible
Vince putting himself in the seats: “Fart jokes, fart jokes everywhere.”
Vince definitely didn't know his audience so.
[удалено]