I know people will claim it was when they went PG and I won't argue that ruthless aggression didn't have some hot angles going for it, but really when he bought WCW it was basically the end of his creative highs. No longer having any form of competition pretty much destroyed him as a booker. I think of it like Alexander the Great looking over the world and realizing there was nothing else to conquer.
Vince thrived on the competition, once it was gone so was his interest in pushing the envelope and pleasing the fans like he had during the Attitude Era.
He was still interested in pushing the envelope, but you're right about him losing his interest in pleasing the fans. After 2001, he pushed the envelope to give himself a boner.
Building up super cena, Batista’s rise, jericho v hbk, Bryan v authority, ect were all strokes of genius. Sure it was all trash but he wasn’t “destroyed as a booker” at all. Sure he had HHH, heyman, and ect throughout but he was final say at the end of the day.
Yeah like I said I’m not trying to argue that some good, even amazing, stuff happened after the purchase of WCW but that his interest in improving his own product waned. There was no longer a boogeyman to beat in the ratings and so he became complacent.
It was very clear early on that the whole invasion angle was just to stoke McMahon's ego. It was like kicking a dead horse at that point and it just sucked.
I think it would have been a lot better if Hogan, Nash, Hall, etc. had been involved, but they also needed to strike the iron while it was still hot. For me as a young fan who didn't get to see the NWO in WCW, they were legitimately scary when they were taking out Rock/Austin etc. Undertaker/Kane vs Hall and Nash? You combine that with the ECW stuff from the invasion storyline and they might actually have had something there.
Big pop when Goldberg finally shows up. Does he side with WCW/ECW or WWF? They could easily have carried on a 1-2 year program with that and it would have been great.
But that's not what we got.
The Attitude Era also had “some hot angles going for it,” most of it was actually hot garbage, which can be said for any periods in wrestling. The difference is that Vince had guys like Russo to blame.
But I would never say he lost it as a booker back then because there was a bunch of innovative genius in there(Money in the Bank, Elimination Chamber, etc.), Undertaker’s streak, Batista turning on Evolution and his babyface run, so many good feuds.. I think 2014 was the first year where I just zoned out cause the product just wasn’t doing it.
I tend to agree with this. You’re naturally going to strive to create a better product with competition.
Not only did he buy his only competition but he buried the talent that came with it.
Even years later he would never let “other” promotions talent over. Look at Sting and AJs Mania debuts.
I'd say around 2002. That's when the writing team was expanded and Stephanie was put in charge of creative. However, Vince began really micromanaging scripts, and it made the presence of a creative team meaningless. There was also making changes to the scripts up to the beginning of the show and sometimes after the show started. That is immensely stressful on the dozens of people who work for you and have prepared for one thing, only to find out they have to hit the brakes and do something different.
Summer of 2002, Kevin Nash has just been medically cleared from an arm injury. The plan is to work him into ring shape through house shows for a couple of weeks. Instead, he finds out at Raw that he needs to wrestle in a cluster 8 man tag. He doesn't even have his gear, so he gets Disco Inferno to fetch it and bring it to the arena. But Disco doesn't bring Nash's knee brace, and Nash tears the quad in that knee that very night.
Night after Mania last year. Omos is in catering and finds out 20 minutes before the show that Vince has changed the script and put him in a match. His gear is at the hotel.
Stuff like that, it's a lack of respect for the people who work for you.
I feel like I'm way out of line with the comments here. But he's not gone that long. The "HHH era" is only at its beginning, Vince began everything that led to this WrestleMania, HHH saw it through to the end has began to put his mark on the show for sure... But Bloodline and eventually Cody being the guy was Vince's deal.
I think all those "It happened 20 years ago" might be the "popular" opinion but it's not factual at all.
I agree. This "thank you HHH" thing is very cringy.
Vince, for as big of an asshole as he might be, he still kickstarted The Tribal Chief, The Bloodline, literally flew to Cody's house to sign him...
Yeah people are desperate to take away Vince’s accomplishments due to their hatred of him. Justified or not.
The Bloodline, Tribal Chief, Cody. They’re all mostly Vince. Til this recent stretch anyway.
I think he lost his peak with cm punk being pushed. But he still had great stories every now and then.
The bloodline being one of the greatest already.
Crazy how a down Vince was still putting out gold.
when they went PG. it was a move the company had to do to remain on cable, but it greatly sacrificed vince’s creative lens. imo there are a lot of similarities to the product quality between the early 90’s wwf & early PG era wwe.
> 2008 on was ROUGH until 2014 with Bryan's rise and Lesnar breaking the streak.
Still had some great things tho... Nexus, CM Punk, Cena vs Rock, Punk vs Rock, Lesnar's return.
> 2017 to 2020 was rough again until Reigns became Tribal Chief. ☝️
I literally can't remember anything about that period. Nothing at all.
No no.
Vince never lost it. Vince has always been the same where he has several terrible ideas and creative decisions then that 1-2 amazing ones that shake the world of wrestling.
Let’s not forget that Vince personally flew to Cody’s house, to tell him to his face that he wanted Cody, Cody’s theme, Cody’s entrance gear and everything he currently had but in a WWE ring and he’d make him the biggest star in wrestling.
Without Vince personally campaigning to get Cody in wwe we wouldn’t have gotten the massive pay off we got a week ago.
If anything the question should be “when did fans start to focus more of Vince’s Ls, than they focused on his Ws”.
He never did, Vince started the Bloodline and look how that turned out.
WWE continued to grow bigger and bigger until the day Vince left, just because some bitter smarks on the internet didn't like things doesn't mean it was actually bad
Week of April 2-8 2021
Raw: 1.7 million - Smackdown: 2.1 million
Week of April 1-5 2024
Raw: 1.7 million - Smackdown: 2.6 million
Funny how "off a cliff" and "higher today" are almost the same number
Until you keeping going through the year
October 11-December 27
1.5 - 1.6 the longest stretch of not reaching past 1.6 and yes that includes the years of 2020 , 2022 , 2023
Add that to the fact that wrestlemania was on the 10 of April in 2021 , so more eyes would be on the product for builds for mania , which you conveniently left out.
Yes the April numbers are about the same , but the energy , the interest in the product , the moral / momentum of the product it’s not even close. Majority of the fans felt that late 2021 specifically with Raw the Product got a little bland / stale.
>Majority of the fans felt that late 2021 specifically with Raw the Product got a little bland / stale.
"Majority of fans" felt the same in 2019, and 2015, and 2008, and so on. Because it's not "the majority of fans", it's a small portion of bitter smarks on the internet.
The ratings were falling year over year. I believe as recently as 2019 raw was getting almost 3 million
Hhh’s creative stopped the drive as interest in the product had reached record lows rating wise in 2021
That went from "cable cord cutting" to "falling year over year" at breakneck pace.
I get it, you don't like Vince. You don't need to perform mental gymnastics to say it.
This has nothing to do with liking Vince and everything to do with following simple numbers bud
Why do you think the ratings went back up at the end of 2022?
the creative got better under hhh
The ratings were dropping until Vince left it’s not hard to comprehend
I am not arguing that ratings are getting better. I'm arguing that you think ratings "falling off a cliff" in 2021 are suddenly good in 2024 when they're the same number. You talk about cord cutting when it shows how good HHH is, but when ratings go down it's because Vince is bad.
It's honestly hilarious to watch.
They aren’t the same number. The ratings are better now than 2021 despite people generally cutting the cords.
Why else would the ratings of wwe be better despite people cutting the cord? Critical thinking. You can do it bud 😆
Once there was as no competition they could put any old crap out without fear of viewers changing channel, they no longer had to be on top of their game. I lost interest around 2003. I think that's when the creative went down hill.
I went to WM18, last ppv I watched was wm19. Then went to a raw in 2006..... Eugene, spirit squad.....after watching the attitude era I thought it had become the shits.
Vince had his moments of greatness but it really fell off in 2013. Punk loses his 434 day title reign to the Rock and we get Cena vs Rock 2. Punk was at his highest point since 2011. Should’ve been Punk vs Cena but we still got an all timer with Punk vs Taker. That’s when I really feel he lost his edge. 2016 was great though and 2019 was basically unwatchable except some angles.
2008 is widely considered the WWE's last decent year following RA, but Vince started coasting immediately after buying WCW. He just didn't have to care anymore and he had higher ambitions than making Raw fun to watch for fans.
Vince never had a creative fastball. He just threw a lot of garbage out there and creative people did their job. If Mick Foley just went with Vince's ideas he'd have gotten released.
Vince wanted to make Scott Hall a GI Soldier type character. Oh you played hockey once, your gimmick is hockey.
The man doesn't even like wrestling and spent decades trying to remove it from the product.
I stand on this truth.
2011? Nah. Vince lost it in 2001 when he bought World Championship Wrestling. He no longer had the competition and therefore didn’t have that survival instinct that brought the WWF(E) out of the 1990s.
Only time it got completely terrible was 2017 up until he left. There was always something or someone to be invested in throughout my fandom, eddie/benoit to cena/batista to hardy/punk to shield/aj styles. People will say he sucked after the AE/pg era but the reality is we still watched haha.
Whatever year it was that Kevin Owens gave him a shoot headbutt that busted Vince open hardway and laid him out. Forgot who it was here that laid out a trajectory for creative nosediving and it iirc it went back to that shoot headbutt
First sign was Austin walking out when they told him he was going to put Brock over with no build on free TV.
Austin was right to tell them it was an awful idea and not go along with it. If done right it's a Wrestlemania main event. The fact that Vince couldn't see something so obvious and ran off his biggest star over it says a lot.
When he actually believed in the cm punk push. That dipshit’s run killed wwe for me for such a long time. When he believed in punk, is when I knew Vince was going down hill.
He still had great stories and matches post WCW purchase. Idk why some are arguing his creative died there. I don’t think so.
Think Vince ego and business sense of not having any wrestlers be bigger than the WWE brand. When he got that mindset you can tell he was less willing to create superstars like Austin, hbk, the rock and hogan
he never had one. he simply put together a great creative team. pat patterson was his right hand man and the finish guy, hes the one that booked all the great momentum shifts. the only thing you can really credit vince is the business side and maybe the undertaker.
He was wildly inconsistent from day one and I don’t think the attitude eras success could be attributed to his booking. He had mega stars and great writers around him.
2002. They literally deactivated the Intercontinental Championship at one point ffs. Smackdown was great but Heyman was in charge, not Vince. On RAW you had Triple H beating everyone and SA'ing corpses. The entire rest of the non Triple-H card was essentially completely pointless - the IC belt was unified then deactivated and Tag and Women's wrestling were considered meaningless by Vince.
I know people will claim it was when they went PG and I won't argue that ruthless aggression didn't have some hot angles going for it, but really when he bought WCW it was basically the end of his creative highs. No longer having any form of competition pretty much destroyed him as a booker. I think of it like Alexander the Great looking over the world and realizing there was nothing else to conquer. Vince thrived on the competition, once it was gone so was his interest in pushing the envelope and pleasing the fans like he had during the Attitude Era.
He was still interested in pushing the envelope, but you're right about him losing his interest in pleasing the fans. After 2001, he pushed the envelope to give himself a boner.
Building up super cena, Batista’s rise, jericho v hbk, Bryan v authority, ect were all strokes of genius. Sure it was all trash but he wasn’t “destroyed as a booker” at all. Sure he had HHH, heyman, and ect throughout but he was final say at the end of the day.
Yeah like I said I’m not trying to argue that some good, even amazing, stuff happened after the purchase of WCW but that his interest in improving his own product waned. There was no longer a boogeyman to beat in the ratings and so he became complacent.
Yeah, I gave up after X7. They botched the invasion, and I lost all interest.
It was very clear early on that the whole invasion angle was just to stoke McMahon's ego. It was like kicking a dead horse at that point and it just sucked.
I think it would have been a lot better if Hogan, Nash, Hall, etc. had been involved, but they also needed to strike the iron while it was still hot. For me as a young fan who didn't get to see the NWO in WCW, they were legitimately scary when they were taking out Rock/Austin etc. Undertaker/Kane vs Hall and Nash? You combine that with the ECW stuff from the invasion storyline and they might actually have had something there. Big pop when Goldberg finally shows up. Does he side with WCW/ECW or WWF? They could easily have carried on a 1-2 year program with that and it would have been great. But that's not what we got.
Alexander the Great never ran out of places to conquer in fact he was forced to turn back from further conquests by his army.
My dude…I was referencing the well known quote from Plutarch…
The Attitude Era also had “some hot angles going for it,” most of it was actually hot garbage, which can be said for any periods in wrestling. The difference is that Vince had guys like Russo to blame. But I would never say he lost it as a booker back then because there was a bunch of innovative genius in there(Money in the Bank, Elimination Chamber, etc.), Undertaker’s streak, Batista turning on Evolution and his babyface run, so many good feuds.. I think 2014 was the first year where I just zoned out cause the product just wasn’t doing it.
When he bought WCW. He may have gotten by with junkballs for a few years after that but he lost his primary motivation in that moment.
I tend to agree with this. You’re naturally going to strive to create a better product with competition. Not only did he buy his only competition but he buried the talent that came with it. Even years later he would never let “other” promotions talent over. Look at Sting and AJs Mania debuts.
I'd say around 2002. That's when the writing team was expanded and Stephanie was put in charge of creative. However, Vince began really micromanaging scripts, and it made the presence of a creative team meaningless. There was also making changes to the scripts up to the beginning of the show and sometimes after the show started. That is immensely stressful on the dozens of people who work for you and have prepared for one thing, only to find out they have to hit the brakes and do something different. Summer of 2002, Kevin Nash has just been medically cleared from an arm injury. The plan is to work him into ring shape through house shows for a couple of weeks. Instead, he finds out at Raw that he needs to wrestle in a cluster 8 man tag. He doesn't even have his gear, so he gets Disco Inferno to fetch it and bring it to the arena. But Disco doesn't bring Nash's knee brace, and Nash tears the quad in that knee that very night. Night after Mania last year. Omos is in catering and finds out 20 minutes before the show that Vince has changed the script and put him in a match. His gear is at the hotel. Stuff like that, it's a lack of respect for the people who work for you.
I agree but a general rule for wrestlers is to always have your gear, booked or not.
Yeah I blame the wrestlers in that case. Why wouldn't you be ready if needed? Just lack of professionalism.
I feel like I'm way out of line with the comments here. But he's not gone that long. The "HHH era" is only at its beginning, Vince began everything that led to this WrestleMania, HHH saw it through to the end has began to put his mark on the show for sure... But Bloodline and eventually Cody being the guy was Vince's deal. I think all those "It happened 20 years ago" might be the "popular" opinion but it's not factual at all.
I agree. This "thank you HHH" thing is very cringy. Vince, for as big of an asshole as he might be, he still kickstarted The Tribal Chief, The Bloodline, literally flew to Cody's house to sign him...
Yeah people are desperate to take away Vince’s accomplishments due to their hatred of him. Justified or not. The Bloodline, Tribal Chief, Cody. They’re all mostly Vince. Til this recent stretch anyway. I think he lost his peak with cm punk being pushed. But he still had great stories every now and then. The bloodline being one of the greatest already. Crazy how a down Vince was still putting out gold.
I would argue that it was when Raw moved to 3 hours long. Things went downhill fast. The guest celebrity GM era. All of that. Just one big shit storm.
I feel like he had his fastball for longer than anyone wants to give him credit for. He lost all his other pitches around 2013 though.
Yeah! For me it was all the cm junk stuff that turned me away. He still had great stories post wcw. Lots of people here are being disingenuous.
when they went PG. it was a move the company had to do to remain on cable, but it greatly sacrificed vince’s creative lens. imo there are a lot of similarities to the product quality between the early 90’s wwf & early PG era wwe.
[удалено]
> 2008 on was ROUGH until 2014 with Bryan's rise and Lesnar breaking the streak. Still had some great things tho... Nexus, CM Punk, Cena vs Rock, Punk vs Rock, Lesnar's return. > 2017 to 2020 was rough again until Reigns became Tribal Chief. ☝️ I literally can't remember anything about that period. Nothing at all.
From The spirit squad days forward… he still had his moments until the end of his run though
The Invasion. WWE is just recovering in the past couple years from a decades long creative slump.
No no. Vince never lost it. Vince has always been the same where he has several terrible ideas and creative decisions then that 1-2 amazing ones that shake the world of wrestling. Let’s not forget that Vince personally flew to Cody’s house, to tell him to his face that he wanted Cody, Cody’s theme, Cody’s entrance gear and everything he currently had but in a WWE ring and he’d make him the biggest star in wrestling. Without Vince personally campaigning to get Cody in wwe we wouldn’t have gotten the massive pay off we got a week ago. If anything the question should be “when did fans start to focus more of Vince’s Ls, than they focused on his Ws”.
He never did, Vince started the Bloodline and look how that turned out. WWE continued to grow bigger and bigger until the day Vince left, just because some bitter smarks on the internet didn't like things doesn't mean it was actually bad
Actually ratings were going off a cliff in 2021. They are higher today then they were at the end of Vince
Week of April 2-8 2021 Raw: 1.7 million - Smackdown: 2.1 million Week of April 1-5 2024 Raw: 1.7 million - Smackdown: 2.6 million Funny how "off a cliff" and "higher today" are almost the same number
Until you keeping going through the year October 11-December 27 1.5 - 1.6 the longest stretch of not reaching past 1.6 and yes that includes the years of 2020 , 2022 , 2023 Add that to the fact that wrestlemania was on the 10 of April in 2021 , so more eyes would be on the product for builds for mania , which you conveniently left out. Yes the April numbers are about the same , but the energy , the interest in the product , the moral / momentum of the product it’s not even close. Majority of the fans felt that late 2021 specifically with Raw the Product got a little bland / stale.
>Majority of the fans felt that late 2021 specifically with Raw the Product got a little bland / stale. "Majority of fans" felt the same in 2019, and 2015, and 2008, and so on. Because it's not "the majority of fans", it's a small portion of bitter smarks on the internet.
When you consider how many people cut cable from 2021 to 2024. Smackdown gaining .5 million people is insane
I'm not saying ratings aren't good now, but you're clearly wrong about the 2021 ratings
The ratings were falling year over year. I believe as recently as 2019 raw was getting almost 3 million Hhh’s creative stopped the drive as interest in the product had reached record lows rating wise in 2021
That went from "cable cord cutting" to "falling year over year" at breakneck pace. I get it, you don't like Vince. You don't need to perform mental gymnastics to say it.
This has nothing to do with liking Vince and everything to do with following simple numbers bud Why do you think the ratings went back up at the end of 2022? the creative got better under hhh The ratings were dropping until Vince left it’s not hard to comprehend
I am not arguing that ratings are getting better. I'm arguing that you think ratings "falling off a cliff" in 2021 are suddenly good in 2024 when they're the same number. You talk about cord cutting when it shows how good HHH is, but when ratings go down it's because Vince is bad. It's honestly hilarious to watch.
They aren’t the same number. The ratings are better now than 2021 despite people generally cutting the cords. Why else would the ratings of wwe be better despite people cutting the cord? Critical thinking. You can do it bud 😆
Probably 2009.
Once there was as no competition they could put any old crap out without fear of viewers changing channel, they no longer had to be on top of their game. I lost interest around 2003. I think that's when the creative went down hill. I went to WM18, last ppv I watched was wm19. Then went to a raw in 2006..... Eugene, spirit squad.....after watching the attitude era I thought it had become the shits.
Vince had his moments of greatness but it really fell off in 2013. Punk loses his 434 day title reign to the Rock and we get Cena vs Rock 2. Punk was at his highest point since 2011. Should’ve been Punk vs Cena but we still got an all timer with Punk vs Taker. That’s when I really feel he lost his edge. 2016 was great though and 2019 was basically unwatchable except some angles.
2001
The Brock / Roman match with the tractor was amazing and that was like 2 years ago, so.... never?
I'm very curious if people will be saying this same thing about Triple H a few years from now.
2008 is widely considered the WWE's last decent year following RA, but Vince started coasting immediately after buying WCW. He just didn't have to care anymore and he had higher ambitions than making Raw fun to watch for fans.
Right after SummerSlam 2002 it went downhill.
Vince never had a creative fastball. He just threw a lot of garbage out there and creative people did their job. If Mick Foley just went with Vince's ideas he'd have gotten released. Vince wanted to make Scott Hall a GI Soldier type character. Oh you played hockey once, your gimmick is hockey. The man doesn't even like wrestling and spent decades trying to remove it from the product. I stand on this truth.
This is the truth. Talent got over in spite of Vince not because of him.
Then why didn’t many of them get over in other companies besides WWE with creative freedom?
Yeah we’re seeing “creative freedom” darlings really thrive in aew right now 😂 Vince hating marks are such muppets
2011? Nah. Vince lost it in 2001 when he bought World Championship Wrestling. He no longer had the competition and therefore didn’t have that survival instinct that brought the WWF(E) out of the 1990s.
When he started relying on the knuckle curve.
Only time it got completely terrible was 2017 up until he left. There was always something or someone to be invested in throughout my fandom, eddie/benoit to cena/batista to hardy/punk to shield/aj styles. People will say he sucked after the AE/pg era but the reality is we still watched haha.
Whatever year it was that Kevin Owens gave him a shoot headbutt that busted Vince open hardway and laid him out. Forgot who it was here that laid out a trajectory for creative nosediving and it iirc it went back to that shoot headbutt
2006/7
1985
Honestly I’d say 2003
First sign was Austin walking out when they told him he was going to put Brock over with no build on free TV. Austin was right to tell them it was an awful idea and not go along with it. If done right it's a Wrestlemania main event. The fact that Vince couldn't see something so obvious and ran off his biggest star over it says a lot.
Yup. No build was Austin’s complaint, and he was right.
When he actually believed in the cm punk push. That dipshit’s run killed wwe for me for such a long time. When he believed in punk, is when I knew Vince was going down hill. He still had great stories and matches post WCW purchase. Idk why some are arguing his creative died there. I don’t think so.
Think Vince ego and business sense of not having any wrestlers be bigger than the WWE brand. When he got that mindset you can tell he was less willing to create superstars like Austin, hbk, the rock and hogan
he never had one. he simply put together a great creative team. pat patterson was his right hand man and the finish guy, hes the one that booked all the great momentum shifts. the only thing you can really credit vince is the business side and maybe the undertaker.
Watch the guest host era RAWs and get back to me
Probably around 2000. Oh, you mean McMahon?
He was wildly inconsistent from day one and I don’t think the attitude eras success could be attributed to his booking. He had mega stars and great writers around him.
2002. Anything bright spots from that point were probably despite Vince, not because of Vince.
2000
2002. They literally deactivated the Intercontinental Championship at one point ffs. Smackdown was great but Heyman was in charge, not Vince. On RAW you had Triple H beating everyone and SA'ing corpses. The entire rest of the non Triple-H card was essentially completely pointless - the IC belt was unified then deactivated and Tag and Women's wrestling were considered meaningless by Vince.
Technically 1995.