Could the AWA Have Been Bigger Than the WWF?

[The Crock]

Think of the mid-1980s. Vincent Kennedy McMahon was attempting to kill wrestling territories, while in the AWA Verne Gagne was trying to preserve his. The AWA had a deep talent pool, which included the likes of Hulk Hogan, announcer "Mean" Gene Okerlund, manager Bobby "The Brain" Heenan, Jim Brunzell, Ken Patera, Adrian Adonis, and Jesse Ventura, all of whom jumped to the WWF. Many of those men would have stayed in the AWA if not for Verne Gagne's questionable decision making, for example, not allowing Hogan to go over Nick Bockwinkel for the AWA World Heavyweight Championship, pushing his son, Greg Gagne, into the stratosphere, when he was in fact not the best performer they had. This, along with the allure of the WWF, as well as the fact that the AWA lost their agreements to share talent with AJPW, led for the slow downfall of the AWA, and even though they had a great year in 1984, they would never be the same, finally closing their doors in the fall of 1990. That being said, had Gagne not made all those mistakes, could the AWA have somehow been bigger than the WWF?

While it is a possibility, especially since they had Hulk Hogan, I don't think they could have kept that talent, not a chance. The WWF was putting on WrestleMania, while the AWA was trying to remain smaller relying on their loyal audience to tune in, but once they lost that audience, they lost it all. They weren't focused on being a huge company, there was NO WAY they could have survived. Even though they had good young talent come in (Scott Hall, the Road Warriors, Larry Zybysko), even when they were nearing bankruptcy, it wasn't enough. The WWF was becoming too big, and on the other side, even WCW was becoming trouble. Gagne's mindset prevented the AWA from ever becoming something huge.

 

[realoldskoolfan]

no way and for one reason. Verne Gagne. its real simple, Verne was of the old guard way of thinking. don't step on other promoters toes, book your best/ most reliable wrestler as the champion,stay within your territory. unless he sold the company to somebody else or perhaps let Greg run more of it behind the scenes, there is no way it would have succeeded.

 

[((@))]

I agree that Verne was stuck in the past,but the AWA had a better talent pool the the WWF.....errr E had.

WWE built by raiding other companies,and many of the AWA stars,became prominant stars in the WWE.

So I wonder if it wasnt for the AWA and the stars the created,where would the WWE be today?

Heres a list of all the talent that began/or made,their career(s) in the AWA and made names for themsleves,before their WWE run.

Hulk Hogan
Nikita Koloff
Jerry Lawler
Rick Martel
Midnight Rockers (Shawn Michaels & Marty Jannetty)
The Nasty Boys (Brian Knobbs and Jerry Sags)
Ken Patera
Harley Race
Road Warriors (Animal & Hawk)
Superfly Snuka
Jesse Ventura
Tom Zenk
Curt Hennig
Scott Hall
Adrian Adonis
Badd Company (Paul Diamond & Pat Tanaka)
Sgt. Slaughter
Leon White(Vader)
Andre the Giant
Jeff Jarrett
Sherri Martel
Paul E. Dangerously (manager)
Bobby Heenan (manager)
Eric Bischoff (interviewer)
Gene Okerlund (interviewer)
Diamond Dallas Page (manager)

Looking back,IMO,AWA had the best talent pool,but nobody at the wheel.

 

[Midnite Express 2009]

No, I doubt they could have. The reason: The owner, one Verne Gagne. Verne was completely old school and wanted to do business his way...The old school way. He was a pioneer, but that's pretty much where it stopped. He had a gem in Hulk Hogan after Vince McMahon released him for doing Rocky III, and yet Verne still had no clue what to do with him. Beyond that, Verne refused to allow times to change, and more importantly, change with the times, and when he finally did, it was all but too late.

To be honest, Vince McMahon Jr. knew what he was doing by raiding the AWA first, and to be even more honest, he didn't so much "raid" the AWA more than he allowed those stars in the AWA to have an option to be apart of something bigger, better and with more exposure. They would have been fools to say no to what McMahon was offering. McMahon was thinking 10 years ahead while men like Gange was thinking only to tomorrow. Vince came at the AWA first because it was the weaker of all the other older major promotions. He got Hulk Hogan before he got anybody else, because he saw that if he was going to start a team, his #1 draft pick should be somebody that everybody else knew, and if they didn't, they were sure to find out. Those other promoters and owners were too busy trying to "protect" some invisible turf line while Vince was busy trying to make money. He did what he had to do and the AWA suffered NOT because of him, but because of their own silliness and unwillingness to change with what was about to happen.

Lastly, even Verne's own son said he father refused to change. Has Verne actually had someone else underneath him running things as well, perhaps things could've went differently. Instead, just like men like Fritz Von Eric, Bill Watts and others, Vince saw golden opportunities to offer talents a way out and a way in. A way out of the boring territories of the 80s and a way into the glitz and glammor of the WWF. Go back & look at WrestleMania I. Sure, it wasn't what other WrestleMania's became, as far as production value goes, but my goodness, it was still years ahead of where everyone else was. Look at it this way: Verne ended up doing exactly what Vince did years later when he started to promote those God awful Super Clashes. Case closed!

 

[GameOver]

Talent jumps to the WWF
But as Vince McMahon and his northeastern-based World Wrestling Federation (WWF) attempted to end pro wrestling's regional era in the mid-1980s (by establishing the WWF as a national promotion), Gagne made several decisions that caused his AWA to lose momentum in the emerging wrestling promotion war, including overemphasizing his son Greg Gagne in AWA storylines (which led to speculation of nepotism by Verne within the company) and failing to make Hulk Hogan the focus of his company when he had the chance.
Frustrated by Verne Gagne's business decisions, Hogan accepted an offer from rival promoter McMahon to wrestle for the WWF, in December 1983. One month later, Hogan became the World Heavyweight champion. He and the WWF soon became a mainstream media phenomenon and virtually synonymous with professional wrestling in much of the national consciousness, vaulting past the AWA and NWA as the premier promotion in wrestling. Hogan wasn't alone in leaving the AWA. Some of the AWA's other top talent, including announcer "Mean" Gene Okerlund, manager Bobby "The Brain" Heenan, and wrestlers Adrian Adonis, Ken Patera, Jim Brunzell, and Jesse Ventura, also jumped to the WWF. The sting of the WWF expansion was not shouldered by the AWA alone. The NWA also lost top stars "Rowdy" Roddy Piper, Greg "The Hammer" Valentine, Jack Brisco, Jerry Brisco, Ricky "The Dragon" Steamboat, and "Cowboy" Bob Orton to the WWF during that same time.

On the Spectacular Legacy of the AWA DVD, Eric Bischoff revealed that one of the main reasons the AWA shut down was that Verne Gagne was leveraging money against a valuable property he owned along Lake Minnetonka. Local officials wanted to turn the property into a park. Gagne fought the decision for several years, but eventually lost the eminent domain case, leading to the creation of Lake Minnetonka Regional Park. As a result, he lost the financial resource he was using to keep the AWA up and running and had no choice but to shut down the promotion. In an interview during the late 1990s with KARE 11, an NBC affiliate out of Minneapolis/Saint Paul, Gagne spoke of the devoted fan base in Minnesota and joked about how he may promote again some day, but nothing ever materialized.

There's your answer....

Could they have been? absolutely WWF may never had gotten it's initial momentum if AWA/NWA were run correct, and just 10yrs later NWA/WCW started to pull it off b4 there funding was pulled too and talent jumped ship back to WWF.

Lol also reading that first bit it seemed Hogan was an egomaniac b4 he ever came to WWF and insisted he be the only one to be the focus of the company and when Gagne didn't he took his ball and went to another company. Gee how original, exactly how his jump to WCW happened WWF stopped using him as the sole focus and he got shitty and fled to WCW where they put him back into the number 1 slot.

 

[dmac]

I have watched some of the old AWA shows on ESPN Classic and I enjoy them. It was wrestling, not "sports entertainment" like we have now. It's such a shame that the AWA didn't get bigger than it did. If it had, who knows what it would be today. What a waste of all that talent by it being mismanaged from the top.

 

[EastCoastFan]

There were a lot of things. The biggest problem Verne Gagne had was that he underestimated Vince and what he was doing. He thought "sports entertainment" was a passing fad and that people would eventually come back to "pro wrestling". Verne was also hurt by his reputation as a cheapskate when it came to money (Jerry Lawler and Jesse Ventura will tell you about that).

I don't blame those guys for going to the WWF. Vince was offering them a lot more money to work for him. He was going national no matter what. If he didn't have Hogan aboard to be his flagship, Vince would have had someone else. Rumor has it Hogan was #10 on the list of guys Vince was considering to be his figurehead, but he was the one to say "Yes".

 

[Davi323]

No, the AWA could never have been bigger than the WWF. As others have alluded to, Verne Gagne is the reason. The one thing Vince McMahon had that Verne Gagne never had, was adaptability. If Verne could have opened his eyes to see how the world of pro wrestling was changing around him, MAYBE the AWA might have stood a chance. But Verne Gagne failed to see that. You can have all of the talent in the world, but if you don't know how to use that talent, you have nothing at all. Gagne's blindness towards the threat that the WWF and Vince McMahon's new way of doing things, namely the national TV exposure, guaranteed the AWA's failure.

 

[realoldskoolfan]

I agree that Verne was stuck in the past,but the AWA had a better talent pool the the WWF.....errr E had.

WWE built by raiding other companies,and many of the AWA stars,became prominant stars in the WWE.

So I wonder if it wasnt for the AWA and the stars the created,where would the WWE be today?

Heres a list of all the talent that began/or made,their career(s) in the AWA and made names for themsleves,before their WWE run.

Hulk Hogan
Nikita Koloff
Jerry Lawler
Rick Martel
Midnight Rockers (Shawn Michaels & Marty Jannetty)
The Nasty Boys (Brian Knobbs and Jerry Sags)
Ken Patera
Harley Race
Road Warriors (Animal & Hawk)
Superfly Snuka
Jesse Ventura
Tom Zenk
Curt Hennig
Scott Hall
Adrian Adonis
Badd Company (Paul Diamond & Pat Tanaka)
Sgt. Slaughter
Leon White(Vader)
Andre the Giant
Jeff Jarrett
Sherri Martel
Paul E. Dangerously (manager)
Bobby Heenan (manager)
Eric Bischoff (interviewer)
Gene Okerlund (interviewer)
Diamond Dallas Page (manager)

Looking back,IMO,AWA had the best talent pool,but nobody at the wheel.

please explain as to how Nikita Koloff, Superfly Snuka, Jerry Lawler, Jeff Jarrett, Paul E. Dangerously, Andre the Giant, and Sgt. Slaughter all made there names in the AWA?