Hi, Scott!
If I remember correctly, the first time the MITB ladder match and the
Elimination Chamber came out, it was as if Raw GM (at that time )Eric
Bischoff was the one who came up with the idea for the two matches.
Knowing that Bischoff was a real booker in the past, is there a chance
that he actually came up with these matches, or were the matches made
up by some other people backstage, and as the authority figure, he
just made it look like he thought of the matches himself?
Thanks and more power to the BoD!
Elimination Chamber came out, it was as if Raw GM (at that time )Eric
Bischoff was the one who came up with the idea for the two matches.
Knowing that Bischoff was a real booker in the past, is there a chance
that he actually came up with these matches, or were the matches made
up by some other people backstage, and as the authority figure, he
just made it look like he thought of the matches himself?
Thanks and more power to the BoD!
Bischoff was not a "booker" in the sense of devising storylines and ideas, he was more the guy who would take input from others and give the yes or no. He came up with broader concepts like the nWo invasion, but the day-to-day stuff was a committee.
That being said, the Money in the Bank match was a well-known suggestion by Chris Jericho, and Elimination Chamber was a case where they had someone design the cage and then kind of devised the match around it. I believe Pat Patterson was the idea guy behind the actual match, but I absolutely could be wrong on that one. I know that the Chamber cost in the range of $600,000 and so they had to push it as a major deal on several PPVs in order to recoup the money invested, but I'd say they've done a good job with that.
One of these days, I'd like to see one guy win two out of three of MITB, Elimination Chamber and the Royal Rumble so that he can challenge for both world titles at the same WrestleMania.
ReplyDeleteThey haven't had guys wrestling two matches at a WrestleMania since what, X? I always loved the concept of Bret getting upset in a classic only to win the WWF Title in the main event, because it set him up to be (rightfully) challenged by Owen down the track.
Hey, it'd be better than something like ADR vs. Swagger for a world title.
I'd love to see somebody get a title shot and have MiTB. It hasn't been done yet, and it could lead to some interesting possibilities.
ReplyDeleteWhich begs the question... Ultimate X.. Vince Russo, or Don Callis?
ReplyDeleteI actually thought the nWo invasion initially was Terry Taylor's idea.
ReplyDeleteThe nwo is no different than anything else. Everyone wants to have some sort of credit for it. Even by the time the nwo invasion happened pro wrestling had already had multiple unsuccessful "invasions". Two out of maybe the four or five biggest stars in the WWF over the last five years become available at the same time you would this k that would write itself especially during that hostile time period.
ReplyDeleteI'd like to see someone either challenge for the belt at the Rumble and lose, or lose the belt . Then go enter the Rumble in order to get a rematch at Wrestlemania and actually win it.
ReplyDeleteIt was a derivative of a big time Japanese angle. Forget where I heard/read it but saw some of the original Japanese clips with subtitles and it seems to hold water. Maybe someone can help me out with the details here...
ReplyDeleteOnly if that guy is John Cena!
ReplyDeleteYeah, I knew it was based off of Japanese angles - but I thought it was Taylor who said "hey, let's try our version of this Japanese story". But of course he didn't come up with the 'nWo' name or the logo that made it so successful.
ReplyDeleteThis got me thinking about all the invasion angles we've seen over the past 10-15 years; nWo, the WCW Invasion of the WWF, Aces & Eights, even something like Bam Bam Bigelow's initial feud with Goldberg- and all of them started off red hot but ended with a whimper. It seems like a good way to get a lot of initial heat, but pulling off the landing is trickier.
The only one I can think of that ended with a good blow-off is the ROH/CZW feud.
Yea, Im not exactly sure why either. It seems like itd br simple to book...have entity X invade promotion X, have a power struggle for awhile, have whatever side is face victorious in the end, disbanding the other side.
ReplyDeleteI think they tend to drag it out to long, and try to add to many moving parts to invasion angles.
Or have two allies or members of a stable involved. Like Big E or Dolph earlier this year. Have one guy hold the strap and another guy the MITB briefcase.
ReplyDeleteI have to say, I'm against the Cena idea but I like the idea of Triple H winning both world titles in one night. He is the Cerebral Assassin after all.
ReplyDeleteThe idea always seemed to have a lot of possibilities open for it. Say one year Daniel Bryan has two shots, and he loses the opening match challenge to Dolph Ziggler but beats someone like Punk or Cena in the main. Down the road Ziggler loses the belt but he can challenge Bryan with the confidence that he already beat him. Or, one guy wins both titles at WrestleMania, and maybe the titles are combined into the "Undisputed" WWE Championship.
I think this would be a good idea for down the line when you don't have Rock, Taker, Brock etc. available for marquee matches any more.
That's a good way to elevate a team, especially if they're tag champions; not only are they the champs, but each one of them has earned a shot for a world title each.
ReplyDeleteYou can run a few angles from that, too. For instance, one of them wins the belt and the other doesn't, so there's animosity between the two while they're defending the tag titles. Perhaps both could win and then they're the Power Trip Mk. II.
While I have some thoughts flowing, here's an idea for the Royal Rumble, seeing as there are two other avenues for world title shots in the MITB and Elimination Chamber:
ReplyDeleteHave a jobber/midcarder win it.
First of all, it reinforces the idea that the Rumble can be won by anybody, which is the theoretical point of the whole thing. Secondly, that year when Santino nearly won, everybody in the room was marking out because we thought an underdog had actually won the whole thing. Thirdly, the last time it's been done was the first one where Hacksaw won it, although there were no stips involved so it doesn't really count.
Okay sure, you have someone like Santino challenging for a world title at WrestleMania, but nowadays there's no chance that ends up being the actual main event anyway. On the other hand, you could have someone like Sami Zayn floating around for 1.5 years as a midcarder win it, and at WrestleMania he challenges and loses a la Steve Austin losing to Bret (giving all that he's got but ultimately being defeated) and ends up a much bigger star as a result of the rub.
Yea, with good cohesive storytelling, something like this could be tremoundous. Im a mark for Brets WM 10 performance so any derivative of that id be in favor of.
ReplyDeleteThe interesting one is having MITB and winning the title shot at mania. You could book someone to cash in MITB just to fuck a guy up before his mania match or something to that extent. Theyd have to REALLY be behind a guy, like rookie Brock, for them to give him 2 of the 3 though.
Exactly. A tag team or partnership where one is the paranoid title holder as his partner lurks with the briefcase eould be great IMO. Something like the Power Trio or the unraveling of the Megapowers.
ReplyDeleteGreed. If they planned a beginning, a middle and an end, it would end, and in their minds they would never know how much more they could have milked it. So instead they choose to book on the fly, perceiving that this way they are milking it for all they can, Creatively it's less satisfying for us but to them it's the way of maximizing profit. Note that I don't necessarily agree with this just positing that that's their point of view.
ReplyDeleteBy most accounts, Bischoff came up with the idea while Taylor and Kevin Sullivan finessed it and brought in all the stuff we know. Like, Taylor was responsible for the hand signal and catchphrases, I think
ReplyDeleteYea? I cant really fault their line of thinking though either. Even when the nWo was creatively bankrupt, they still dragged money out of it for awhile. Once you invest so much time and resources into long drawn out angle, its hard to pull the plug on it from a promoter POV.
ReplyDeleteTotally agree. I've said the same thing for a long time. With two world titles there's no reason for it to not happen.
ReplyDeleteThere was the two triple threat matches between Angle, Jericho and Benoit at Wrestlemania 16.
ReplyDeleteWell, that was really two falls within one match.
ReplyDeleteAnd one of them is a murderer, so it doesn't count.
Mears, where the hell have you been?
ReplyDeleteAs a smark it's self serving but I really wish they would try once. Maybe it's short sighted the way they do it, and the way to build long term is to make themselves "must watch" every week. As it is now, anytime something big is going to happen they spoil it to "pop a rating," so there's never a sense that "I HAVE to watch RAW or I might miss something."
ReplyDeleteI did a deal in TNM7 a few years back where Evolution reformed as HHH, Batista, and Orton. Batista won MITB in the Summer, then Orton won the Rumble, leading to EVOLUTION EXPLODES~! w/ Triple H as champ vs. cashin-in Batista vs. Rumble-winning Orton. It was pretty clever.
ReplyDeleteTo me the best way to book MITB now would be for the briefcase to be stolen.
ReplyDeleteYou get two storylines out of this: 1- the person who originally won the briefcase searches for who stole it and 2- the champ becomes utterly paranoid because anyone could cash in at any time
Edge won the Gold Rush tournament in 05 to get a shot at Batista while simultaneously holding MITB, but they didn't really do anything with it, since I think WWE wasn't really sure what they potentially had with the briefcase yet.
ReplyDeleteI think if they were to do the same thing today, they'd handle it way differently. (As it was, the entire tournament seemed like little more than a setup to put Lita with Edge permanently -- and also to give HBK and Shelton Benjamin a reason to have a match together)
The Kliq had already been doing the "wolfpac" hand gesture. I had assumed Nash and Hall brought it down with them.
ReplyDeleteYeah, people complain about MiTB being tired shit, but there's so many things they haven't done with it.
ReplyDelete-Actually bringing a guy to WrestleMania with it.
-Having the Champ win or get MiTB.
-Face is Champ and BFF has MiTB.
That's a great idea.
ReplyDeleteOh God, here's what bugged the shit out of me: Nobody ever won MITB at WrestleMania, only to cash it in that very night after one of the main events.
ReplyDeleteFrom a wrestling is real perspective or from a behind the scenes perspective?
ReplyDeleteCause...well yeah, in kayfabe it's stupid, but out of kayfabe. Wouldn't you want to advertise who's going to win at the biggest stage? You'd have to heavily build them up, and have it be for the B-Title.
I'm not saying it should be done just for the sake of it, but take the example where Edge wrestled his last match against ADR.
ReplyDeleteIt was an advertised match, but what would have happened if Edge wasn't able to wrestle it? I forget if there was a MITB that year, but in that scenario I would've have the MITB match to open the show, and later you have ADR beat Edge in about a minute using a foreign object. Crowd boos, so on and so forth, and then MITB winner's music plays and you get a 20 minute match.
I think it's only effective if, for whatever reason, a heel won the world title and here comes a face to stop him from leaving as champ.
Don't forget about Big John Studd winning the 1989 Rumble. He wasn't exactly a main eventer at that point.
ReplyDeleteI could be wrong, but the Rumble had not yet turned into the "automatic Wrestlemania title match" stip though, so the Studd win didn't really mean much more than the match itself
ReplyDeleteThe difference with the first four Rumbles is that they weren't for anything, they were just regarded as a big match. So if the WWF wanted to put over new guy Duggan with a big win, give Studd a virtual retirement present, reinforce Hogan (or his ego) before he loses at WM6, that's fine. The 91 Rumble was a bit different since Hogan won and he got the WM7 title shot, though that wasn't the official reward at the time.
ReplyDeleteYou're not wrong, but the stip wasn't introduced until 1993, when Yokozuna won. Still doesn't change the fact that Studd and Duggan were both midcarders.
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely. I dig that, too--that anyone could really win it
ReplyDeleteI think that example could work. You don't want to screw the face, but at WrestleMania, let's take some scrappy young babyface and have the shit beat out of them in a ladder match, then they beat some dickhead sleazeball heel champ who Honkey'd him out of a title match?
ReplyDeleteYeah. I'd be careful about doing it too often, but they could do it once.
Making the Elimination chamber PPV in February was a brilliant move for WWE. By having 6 top level guys fighting each other at once, it makes it very easy to form feuds for Wrestlemania. It also gives people a reason to purchase what could have been the "filler" ppv between Royal Rumble and Wrestlemania. Lets face it, with the exception of 2000 and 2001, No Way Out, or any other name they gave the february PPV, was generally a filler PPV designed to hype wrestlemania and nothing else.
ReplyDelete