As reported on Wrestlezone. What are your thoughts on Bischoff saying this? Personally I think the Nexus storyline has been really good thus far. Its great seeing fresh talent getting over and I think Wade Barret has done a superb job in leading this faction. The stuff with Cena just makes sense and working really well.
What I do find boring is regurgitation. Fortune are just a copy cat of Evolution. The ECW group has been done time and time again. 2001 Invasion angle anyone?
Doesn't Bischoff understand that Wrestling fans want to see innovation and not immitation? The guy has become a joke. He is still dining off his WCW days when he beat Raw for a year or so. For my money him and Hogan dont have a clue about booking. They destroyed WCW and they are doing a good job in destroying TNA. I was actually a fan 6 months ago.
While I am not Eric Bischoff's number one fan, he said what he said and that was how he felt. I don't find Nexus boring and I have nothing against the faction but it's definitely not "something I've never seen before." Not that there's anything wrong with that, because let's face it, wrestling and all other forms of storytelling even some of literature, cinema and stage's finest works of art tend to reuse stories ALL the time. For example when you strip it all down, The Incredible Hulk was a 1960s retelling of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde with a little Mary Shelly's Frankenstein thrown in, and look how successful a story that is. Hell take a look at William Shakespeare's own work and amongst his prolific plays there are stories within that aforementioned work that have similarity i.e. Hamlet and MacBeth. So I am not here to bash the Nexus group, but I am just being damned honest in saying that this is in no way, shape or form an innovative angle by ANY means.
And if regurgitation as you mentioned is a crime, then Eric Bischoff is not the only way that should stand trial for such a charge, because Vince McMahon is someone you could slap that same rap on, not sure if any of you guys and gals here remember Demolition but they happened to be one of the one of the 80s most popular tag teams in the WWF who happened to share similarities with ANOTHER very popular team of the 80s who wrestled in the AWA and Jim Crockett Promotions, The Road Warriors. In fact many people cited such similarities right off the bat, and allegedly and I am not saying this is true because I don't know, but rumor has it, that Vince McMahon CREATED Demolition for the SOLE purpose that he could not sign The Road Warriors until the early 1990s. So tell me rge2010, are you going to just sit there and tell me that Vince McMahon has been 100 per cent original in everything he has promoted, I say hardly and I am giving you my reason why I dispute that.
Now getting back to the Nexus, I think it's a fine effort to see a new set of guys rise up and stake their claim as the future of the pro wrestling landscape. In concept it's a great idea, and I would say in execution it is doing well, the TV ratings are not epic by any means, but WWE is at least maintaining what they are doing and that's a good sign of the company's success, and I will not take that away from their creative efforts. Therefore I can't fault WWE for wanting to keep this angle alive. While I personally am not a fan of Nexus or much of WWE these days as a whole, I still have to concede they are THE company, not to offend the TNA fans because I think they have some great talent and they don't deserve the bad rap most idiot marks give them, but they are NOT WWE and I never say never, but it's going to be a while before WWE ever has to worry about falling behind another wrestling promotion.
Now to discuss Fortune, I read how you labeled them as a rip off of Evolution, well guess what came before Evolution, ever heard of the Four Horsemen, rge2010? Yeah, several parallels there, and the Horsemen happened to never exist as an entity in WWE. They were strictly a product of Jim Crockett Promotions and later World Championship Wrestling. WWE wasn't exactly reinventing the wheel when they came on the scene. But to be honest, there's nothing wrong with that, Ric Flair was in a wrestler/manager role and it was a very interesting idea to put together this group with Triple H, Batista and Randy Orton. In the end, it benefited everyone much like the Horsemen had in the 80s. Arn Anderson earned his title of "The Enforcer" and along with Tully Blanchard earned himself a status as a versatile in ring performer who could compete for singles and tag titles. Barry Windham was a multi time United States Champion and eventual NWA Champion, Sting and Lex Luger for their brief time in the group got a major rub into the main event spot by feuding with the Horsemen's leader, Ric Flair. Much of that success I just mentioned you can definitely attribute to why Evolution existed in the first place. Now I will admit it remains to be seen if Fortune can do the same thing, but I give it the benefit of the doubt, personally speaking I think Flair should step away completely from the active wrestling role and be more like JJ Dillon was in the Horsemen and be the manager of the group, but that's not my call. But definitely be wise to word that phrase better the next time you want to argue about how original or unoriginal Fortune was, because Evolution definitely wasn't a brand new idea either!
EV 2.0, that's something I'll admit is well past its shelf life in my view, but then again I am biased because I was not as big of an ECW fan, I liked watching them from time to time, but without living in the Philly area, I was not exposed to the product as much, so for me it was always WWF or WCW, and the ECW guys never resonated with me as a fan, but there's that handful of wrestling fans out there that enjoy seeing these guys come back every once in a while, and personally, I don't see it as a crime if TNA wants to revisit that, but at the same time I don't find it to be must see TV either, but that's just my opinion, only because I just never liked the "hardcore wrestling" as much as your standard in ring action. The ECW Invasion though again was nothing new, the nWo was an outside organization that raided WCW and yes Eric Bischoff admitted that he got this idea from a New Japan angle, but he's not lying about it, he was being honest, and in the end people bought into the hype. So why should people begrudge WCW or any other organization for that matter who wants to either reinterpret or reinvent a storyline in wrestling?
Now, I am going to take another controversial stand and go to bat for WCW on a couple points, I am not saying I liked everything they did, but if you think hard enough about it, they're not as "bad" as the hind sighted ones like to say they are. Call me crazy if you want but I don't care rge2010, because I am going to at least back up and give you a solid basis for why I am saying what I am saying. On your end I don't see you doing any of that, because anytime I hear someone say "Hulk Hogan and Eric Bischoff destroyed WCW" or that "WCW never did anything for the youngsters" without a solid foundation to base that statement on, I cringe. I cringe justifiably because it's basically just a regurgitation, a word I know you love, considering how you brought it up earlier, of what so many other supposed experts have been saying for the past decade.
When people like yourself and some other posters on here say that young guys NEVER got a shot in WCW is ludicrous and I will tell you why. Think back in 1995 when a young guy called Paul Wight was getting his start in the business, he was being marketed as the new Giant of professional wrestling and in one of his first in ring appearances he defeated Hulk Hogan for WCW's World Title. A rookie did that, and WCW stood behind this guy because not since Andre The Giant did anyone see someone as massive as Paul Wight, and he generated an immediate interest, at the time the guy was barely the age that most people are when they get out of college! And he ended up beating icons like Flair and Hogan for the World Championship over the next year and to this day he remains a constant presence in wrestling when he jumped ship to WWF. Granted that he himself said that he was tired of wrestling for WCW, but hey they gave him the initial limelight and he eventually found his way to WWF, but who's to know how big of a star he would have been had WCW not given him a shot first. It's very debatable, I don't have the answer to that, but I can with confidence say that his time in WCW definitely didn't hurt his chances of getting a job with WWF, I am sure it did more than help!
I know people always mention how guys like Benoit, Guerrero, Jericho, Mysterio and several of the Cruiserweights got held down, but in defense of that notion, these guys got television time EVERY Monday Night on cable television and got to showcase some great matches. With the exception of Benoit none of these guys were World Champions in WCW, but look at it like this, Guerrero and Jericho were involved in the United States and Television Title scene and if anyone here is an old school wrestling fan, to be a holder of titles in those divisions and to have wrestled other workers in those divisions was a HUGE sign of prestige back in the company's earlier days as Jim Crockett Promotions and even into the Ted Turner owned era of the company. Ask many fans from that part of the country where WCW was most popular and they will tell you just that. Rey Mysterio was a stalwart in the Cruiserweight division which in my mind with the exception of that dark period where Ed Ferrara and Medusa feuded over the title, the WCW version of the Cruiserweight division was handled so much better than the WWE version...after all who can forget the legendary reigns of Chavo Classic and Hornswoggle? That's right up there with Ferrara and Medusa.
Benoit although they don't call it this in WCW, was a Grand Slam Champion...World, US, TV and World Tag Team Titles. The best of seven series with Booker T? Anyone want to mention that? Then there was Eddie Guerrero's finding of the Latino World Order, granted it was in some ways a spoof of the nWo, but Eddie got to dominate the air waves lambasting Eric Bischoff and creating a group based on his heritage, they even made t-shirts repping the group. Granted it did not last as long as some would have probably hoped, but Eddie Guerrero's near fatal car accident did not help that. Anyone remember Monday Night Jericho, hell Jericho even got to film a segment in the Library of Congress for his conspiracy angle where he thought WCW was out to get him, and hell he even got his own T-shirt too, which he got to film a promo spot for. Rey Mysterio even got to pin Kevin Nash in an upset victory in WCW, which to these day you can argue has led to his status as an underdog that can overcome insurmountable odds. Yes, while Jericho, Guerrero and Mysterio never won the WCW World Heavyweight Championship, they got MASSIVE exposure, and again while they all had successful careers elsewhere, their time on prime time TV on Monday Nights like the case with The Big Show, definitely helped and didn't hurt their chances of going to WWF, because again if they weren't on prime time TV in the first place with WCW, who's to know how much interest Vince McMahon would have really had if his direct competition didn't have them on his roster? Again, I can't answer that but I do know their time in WCW couldn't have hurt their chances in WWF.
Let me get right back to the Nexus if I may, the Nexus is nothing new either, it's in no way a groundbreaking stable. Let's go back a decade ago so I can better state that. In the early 2000s, WCW started the New Blood stable. Despite what history says now, the storyline wasn't all that bad as far as the elevating of younger guys go...for instance several talents came out of this "darker" period of WCW and ended up getting their shot at the big time in the WWF afterwards. When WCW was finally sold to WWF, guys like Billy Kidman, Chavo Guerrero, Lance Storm, Shane Helms and a slew of others were all examples of talent that Vince McMahon gave the OK to join the WWF's version of the promotion. . While success is relative, you can't call the careers of any of those four failures. And while this period of WCW was my least favorite, the New Blood storyline gave these guys TV time and in effect when Vince McMahon bought WCW out, there was no mandate for him to acquire anyone's contracts from what I am gathering, but he chose to and as a result these guys got to go to the WWF. While these guys never won the big one, their careers can't be at all considered total failures. Kidman eventually became a trainer for WWE, Chavo still competes with WWE to this day, Lance Storm would eventually retire but before he did that he got his chance to work with names in this business like the Rock and Steve Austin, and Shane Helms spent nearly a decade with WWE. Again, while we can debate that WCW may not have utilized them to their full potential, they still got an opportunity and that says something right there. While the New Blood didn't redefine wrestling, it definitely didn't hurt the careers of these guys.
But rge2010, I do have to ask you an important question, while I myself may not support everything guys like Bischoff and the aging Hulk Hogan have done, I can't get over the audacity of you repeating everyone else's same old statement of them being WCW's sole killers. Again, I am not going to make this post a place to exonerate their egos as entertainers, but I can't see them being the only reasons why WCW got sold to WWF. Keeping in mind that there were other big stars in the promotion like Hall, Nash, Randy Savage, Ric Flair and Lex Luger, I am sure those guys were no picnic to deal with and then I assume someone at Turner's headquarters was thinking that Russo and Ferrara could bring their WWF formula of success to WCW, and when you combine all that with the corporate ownership by an entity like AOL Time Warner having the true final say over everything that WCW was allowed to do, you'll get yourself one massive gaggle fuck of chaos. That's what I think at least because unless any of you people were there to see what went on behind the scenes, then it's a rather bold statement to go and say that it was all Hogan and Bischoff's fault. Especially in Hogan's case, because if he was able to get away with all that the backstage rumors said he was, then the guy would have been wrestling's equivalent of Fidel Castro and the WCW World Title would have never left his grasp.
But again such thought on Hogan and the other aged talent continues to this day with TNA. Now granted, the TNA TV ratings are very slight when compared to WWE's but when you look at what else Spike puts on the air and how those shows fare, TNA isn't doing as bad as a lot of skeptics love to say. It's just when you put them up against WWE how can you really compete at this point? Guys like Flair and Hogan are just too old to pose a true threat to WWE's current viewership, but their presence does keep some fans around. Now it's up to these younger guys working with the veteran talent of TNA to try to get newer folks to watch. And no one should EVER say that these guys aren't being given a chance to shine after all look at the title pictures, all of them in TNA and what do you have? The World, TV, X, and Tag Titles are all held by individuals under 40, are they or are they not? If you either say no or can't answer that, then that means you are just hating on guys like Hogan and Bischoff and the other vets for the sake of it. By not competing for any of the titles at all, how can one be so quick to say that Hogan with Bischoff's help is truly destroying TNA?
rge2010, while I respect your opinion and can't argue with you being a fan of the Nexus, I'd appreciate a true reason for your statements regarding WCW and TNA. Also keep in mind that WWE is no less guilty than other promotions for re-imagining and reinterpreting ideas because they sure are. In my opinion, they do it better, and have a better way of marketing their product for the long haul than other promotions have, but anyone who makes statements in the vein that you are, clearly doesn't appreciate or truly understand the overall picture of professional wrestling. Not to slam ya man, but again as I said earlier, you called Fortune a rip off of Evolution. It's clear that either you are too young to have remembered the Four Horsemen or they were just a part of wrestling you are not familiar with. So in closing to get back to what you as the OP were saying, Eric Bischoff's labeling of the Nexus as boring I think isn't accurate, but it was how he felt and he said it on his own facebook page, it's not like he's going on to the WWE Universe social network site and harassing people over there.
Nice concept for a post, but in my opinion poor execution of what you were stating.
