A coherent world vs micro universes?

[thebrainfollower]

Curious as to everyone's thoughts on this.

 

In 80's WWF everything sort of seemed to exist in its own universe. Outside the occasional lumberjack match and the jobbers coming out to break up a brawl, wrestlers and issues rarely crossed over into each other. This hit me recently when I watched a late 89 Superstars where Boris Zhukov of all people cuts a generic promo where at the end he challenges Hulk Hogan. It struck me as absurdly funny because obviously it meant nothing and went nowhere.

 

You never had Randy Savage and Elizabeth comment on what they thought about Jake Roberts-Rick Rude's feud for instance. Things took place in their own micro-universe. I always got the sense that if say 1988 Rockers had run into Andre the Giant in a backstage vignette, they wouldn't have fought, they probably wouldn't even known who the other person/team was.

 

But from what I've seen, Crockett, Mid South and Memphis ran things differently. I'm not just talking about everyone being forced to namedrop Dusty Rhodes a lot (though this is one of the more annoying examples) I'm referring to the sense that ALL these guys knew, cared about, and interacted with one another. At least in 2 cases you can argue this is because the top face was the booker, but this falls apart in Mid South pretty badly as a rule.

 

 

So is this a fair generalization I'm making and which style do you prefer?

[soup23]

I liken my favorite thing to Memphis. Memphis did have too many turns from time to time that could get tedious but there is always something endearing about seeing Jerry Lawler help a young RVD to the back and other Eric Embry fighting with everyone in 1991. I actually think the WWE storyline going on right now is probably some of the most cross promotion we have seen in a while even though all feuds besides the HHH hast all the power storyline feels compartmentalized.

[JerryvonKramer]

While I think Brain is mostly spot on in the premise of this thread, there was more cross-pollination in WWF than it might first appear, especially on the heel side of things. Take DiBiase, he was still sort of loosely allied with Heenan and with Andre even after the feud with Hogan / Savage was over. The WM5 run-in on Jake where he tries to steal Damian happens a full 9 months or so after him and Andre had any real storylines together and before his feud with Jake had started. Sticking with Ted, he had a loose alliance with Slick during this time: it was Slick who he bought the #30 ticket from at the Rumble, and it was again Slick he went to when he wanted to buy-off Bossman. At WM6, you get the neat moment where he has the match with Jake and then nails Bossman before his match with Akeem -- quite a bit of "cross issue" stuff going on for the era. Then in 1990, he sticks his nose into the Perfect / Texas Tornado feud and helps Perfect win the IC title despite not really being in a proper story-line feud with Tornado. And he was sort of "good mates" with Brother Love. So he was one character who had his own storylines but could act as a "bit-part player" in other people's stories. Just one example, but the heel side at times is more like a group of supervillains who are in league with each other, as I've argued before. Look at something like Macho King's coronation and who attends it. Just thinking about it there's also Rumble 90 where Savage and DiBiase are not in a storyline together but the angle is teased that Ted has paid Savage off for "help" during the Rumble. You kinda get these tacit alliances of evil with some (albeit limited) cross-over of issues. I am sure there are examples other than DiBiase, it's just the one (no jokes please ) that comes to mind most readily for me.

 

Mostly though you are definitely right that guys are "railroaded" into their specific feud. You can see it most clearly with the tag division. Although I do think there is always one team who is given the subtle role of creating the illusion of depth. It might be the Islanders, the Rougeaus, the Bulldogs or whoever at different times, but they often kept one major team "fallow" with no real issues going on so they could have a match with a team in the title picture and the commentators could say something like "well, whoever wins this will move up the ladder and surely have to be considered title contenders", or whatever. You know what I mean right? I guess you'd call them a "team without portfolio", floating around filling out the division.

 

I like this topic.

[Matt D]

I will say this is why, as a kid, I absolutely loved Survivor Series.

 

There's a third element to this i think, which is continuity over years, something really rare in today's WWE. I feel like it takes a wrestler to actively care, like Big Show seems to, to make mean something.

[efrim]

This is an interesting subject that I haven't really seen addressed before. The point about Survivor Series is a good one, it had the appeal of a Justice League comic book or something along those lines -I guess thats something I enjoy about that style of booking: if you hold to it, when you present an event as causing a crossover, it instantly seems important or cool even if its really a frivolous exhibition.

[ohtani's jacket]

To be honest, I always got the impression watching late 80s WWF that the faces were one big fraternity and the heels another, except that Hogan didn't dress with the boys, Bobby Heenan and Jimmy Hart's factions probably didn't trust one another and Bad News Brown didn't have any friends. I always assumed as a kid that the heels dressed in one locker room and the faces another like the home and away teams. That would have been kind of awkward when you turned. Imagine Jake showing up for the first day in the babyface locker after all those folks he'd laid Damien on. Somehow I imagine Duggan as the peacemaker.

[Johnny Sorrow]

I remember how refreshing it was that when Piper first turned face in WWF, the other babyfaces didn't trust him at first and immediately like him after years of abuse. The only faces who helped him were the Bulldogs, and they didn't show that on TV. Heh, I actually read that in the first Observer I ever saw that my buddy had gotten. After the Piper's Pit/ Flower Shop debate where Adonis, Muraco, and Orton beat up Piper...the Bulldogs came out to save him but it wasn't shown.

[Carnival]

I always assumed as a kid that the heels dressed in one locker room and the faces another like the home and away teams. That would have been kind of awkward when you turned. Imagine Jake showing up for the first day in the babyface locker after all those folks he'd laid Damien on. Somehow I imagine Duggan as the peacemaker.

There needs to be a wrestling mockumentary with this kind of thing as the central storyline. There's something so deliciously absurd about changing all your friends, changing the way you wrestle, and even changing where you dress out, all because your manager turned on you or your tag team partner accidentally hit you with a foreign object.

[ButchReedMark]

I remember how refreshing it was that when Piper first turned face in WWF, the other babyfaces didn't trust him at first and immediately like him after years of abuse. The only faces who helped him were the Bulldogs, and they didn't show that on TV. Heh, I actually read that in the first Observer I ever saw that my buddy had gotten. After the Piper's Pit/ Flower Shop debate where Adonis, Muraco, and Orton beat up Piper...the Bulldogs came out to save him but it wasn't shown.

Would that be because Piper was kayfabe British?

[thebrainfollower]

Scottish. Prepare to get punched in the face the next time you meet a Scottish nationalist.

[ButchReedMark]

Fuck Scottish nationalists.

[Migs]

I always assumed as a kid that the heels dressed in one locker room and the faces another like the home and away teams. That would have been kind of awkward when you turned. Imagine Jake showing up for the first day in the babyface locker after all those folks he'd laid Damien on. Somehow I imagine Duggan as the peacemaker.

There needs to be a wrestling mockumentary with this kind of thing as the central storyline. There's something so deliciously absurd about changing all your friends, changing the way you wrestle, and even changing where you dress out, all because your manager turned on you or your tag team partner accidentally hit you with a foreign object.

 

This was something I always liked about ECW. They tended to be very good about respecting the history of the characters. If two people who used to be enemies found themselves on the same side, there was always discussion of whether they could get along, trust each other, etc. It added depth to the storytelling and a sense of realism.

[Ditch]

One of the reasons I tended to prefer WCW to WWF through '99 was that I think WCW did a better job of mixing things up. Like, you'd have some force of nature dude like Goldberg or 'win streak' Wrath tangling with someone involved in a standard storyline/feud. And granted, 99% of the time this meant that there would be a run-in or non-finish, but the concept was intriguing. Sure, Wrath plows through jobbers, but tonight on Thunder he's facing Saturn! Whereas WWF/WWE tends to be either jobber/JTTS matches or standard inconclusive feud matches on TV.