I was a little kid back then, Warrior was very popular, he was absolutely the right guy to try and give a shot to besides Hogan. Hindsight is 20/20, but there was nobody else to try and go with in 1990 besides Warrior.
They could have pushed Mr. Perfect or Rick Rude, both guys would have given Hogan great matches, would have made him look good going out, and they could have had return matches with Hogan if it didn't work out because they were both naturally good heels and tweeners.
His biggest problem was that he's a great technical wrestler, probably one of the best of all time, but he always had issues with cutting good promos and coming across as a bland good guy. Hart was not a larger then life figure like Hogan, Savage and the Ultimate Warrior were.
it wasn't that he sucked at giving promos, he sucked at giving these pre-shot, bland babyface promos. The minute you put a hot mic in Bret's hands he could talk, especially when he had a person to aim his voice at. Remember when the Hart Foundation was getting booed in the US? He could talk, and he was good at it. I think he's the first person to curse on live RAW as well when he stood in the ring and openly trashed Vince, outed him as the fuckin BOSS when fans thought he was just a commentator, and he did this before Austin did it.
The New Generation era was too goofy for its own good. Cartoonish gimmicks (Mantaur, Warlord, Bob "Spark Plug" Holly for example), the 1993 steroid scandal, bad writing, doing things like giving Diesel/Kevin Nash the WWF championoship and increasingly serious competition from WCW played a part in making that period of the WWF so infamous. Wrestlers with a good work rate supplement a promotion's success, they can only do so much if the whole package is lacking.
Man, I hate when you people talk about Nash like he was the reason he flopped as champ. They had him on TV wearing a fucking Santa hat singing Merry Christmas. He was a good heel, and they tried to turn him in to this shitty, white meat babyface nobody wanted at the time. They wanted big daddy cool, they didn't want Nash singing Merry fucking Christmas.
Should have clarified. You’re right. Warrior was the only option and Vince had the right idea. It wasn’t until after that Vince realized he had a lunatic as his champion and brought in Flair. I think Vince tried to pivot to Flair vs Hogan but he just hated the matches. Then he tried to pivot to Sid but Sid infamously told Vince he wanted to stay heel. So he just went back to Hogan and Savage until Bret. But he didn’t even want to give the full run to Bret and signed Luger which was another failure.
There is this famous story where after Luger basically tears down an entire quartered off sound stage by accident Scott Hall jumps up and goes “Is anybody else fucking watching this guy? Just fucking give it to me!” In my view, the right guy was always Razor Ramon. I’m not sure why Vince just didn’t give it him.
And Vince, being too far behind with the times, ignored the fans WANT for Sid as champ. Let him be a fucking heel champ. It sold like hot cakes with Super Star Billy Graham because a big, inhuman looking heel sells tickets. Sid was intense, he looked like he could beat the shit out of anyone, he had everything Vince needed AND he fucked off every summer to play softball. So Vince could have used the winter and spring to get his next babyface ready to take the strap off Sid so he could go play ball, then bring him back in the winter if the guy sucks and repeat.
Hall was a complete mess of a human, still failing to get help for the justified shooting of a man who tried to kill him. He was not champion material.
There's a recurring thing that's in the African American appreciation particularly when it comes to music where every time some famous white person involved in music dies that you get some ape tweeting about how there wouldn't be country/rock/metal without Ol' Blind Melon Chitlin' plucking away on his porch step with a gitbox like he was one of Fat Albert's friends.
That shits so retarded. I wish people would have responded with, "Well without whitey you wouldn't have had guitars, pianos, reed instruments, because your society had none."
There was a reason why WWF did a lot more international tours when Bret was on top.
Bret absolutely was a draw. Not on the level of guys like Flair or Hogan, but when you're stuck in shit feuds (seriously, how long did that godawful feud with Lawler last?) you can't really say that it is solely Bret's fault.
I don't think he would've been Stone Cold 2.0 or whatever if the booking was perfect, but he was miles ahead of Diesel if we're looking at it from a 'draw' perspective.
Yah, we need the room for your endless autism about literally every little thing that goes on.
He WAS SCSA 1.0. He was the one who outed Vince as the owner live on Raw before Austin was even a thing in the WWF. Hell, was he still in WCW or was he the ringmaster when that happened?
I would of gone with Steiner or Booker or maybe Mike Awesome
Too injured. Too old. Too dangerous.