Does Winning a Long Feud Matter?

[pepentorresHHH]

We all have our favorite long fueds beween our favorite superstars or tag teams..... Since i started watching in 98 regularly my favorites remain HHH Rock - HHH Stone Cold- Stone Cold Rock, Hardys Dudleys E&C, cena Punk, cena edge, taker kane among others..... Now im not talking about 1 or 2 months programs im talking about programs that go for years....

My question is..... Once they have their final battle, does it matter who won?

Lets take HHH vs Shawn Michaels.... Friends from 97 till shawns injury.... Came back in 2002 and finished at bad blood 2004 when HHH beat shawn..... They had great battles but HHH won.... Both guys looked good won titles but HHH won

Rock Stone Cold..... Battles for the IC and wwe title and just personal sometimes..... Stone cold won the first two encounters at mania but the rock beat him to get rid of the alliance and pinned him on wm19.... So the rock technically won

Shawn bret.... Battle numerous times throughout the years and in their final confrontation shawn "won"

Edge beat cena at the end at ER 2009 in the LMS match...

Going somewhere recent.... Christian and Randy Orton feuded for the belt back in 11 and they fought from may to august alternating the world title and at the end randy won....

My question is..... Does it matter who wins in a personal long drawn feud? Or it DOES matter who wins at the end?

 

[closet_fan]

It used to. I remember Dusty Rhodes used to have long battles with the Four Horsemen that seemed to last forever, but it still kept people interested.

Steamboat/Savag/Steele was pretty drawn out as well.

The last time I remember a feud actually mattering who won at the end was Michaels/Jericho when Jericho made it personal with Michael's wife. At that point, fans wanted Michaels to destroy Jericho when the match finally came.

With a PPV every month, however, there simply isn't enough time to build up a long-standing feud where everything culminates in one match. It's all "Okay you won this one. I won that one. Now let's fight again."

Like you said, feuds take months to build. Now it's just weeks. My point being, feuds don't culminate from matches. In my opinion, they come from everything else outside the ring until they finally square off.

 

[Wald]

Used to matter more than it does now because they'd only square off on PPV two or three times in a long feud, not so much any more.

I'd say where you go over matters more than how you go over or how many times. It's why when people look back on Brock vs Triple H's feud they won't remember that Brock won 2-1, they'll remember that Triple H won at Wrestlemania.

 

[J3Piecenickas]

What constitutes a long feud anymore? The only ones that I can think of are The Rock vs John Cena and CM Punk vs John Cena which are both currently dormant. They will always be pitted against each other because of their characters and the big differences between them. It is much like The Rock vs Stone Cold back in the 90s because they are the two primary main event players and will always come to blows whenever the company needs it. However, if done correctly the Bryan vs Cena feud could top Punk vs Cena. The main constant today is that Cena is the one who is involved. If the WWE were to start feuds with mid card guys then you could lay the groundwork for bigger things in the future. They need to create more feuds in that area of the roster.
But in reference to your question about does winning a long feud matter: the answer is dependent on what is at stake. Nowadays people's attention spans are much shorter and with social media and the increase in programming, feuds can gain more depth much quicker. If the major championships are at stake it certainly adds to the feuds but it does not mean that the winner will gain anything significant. The only person to benefit from winning a long feud of recent memory is CM Punk. By defeating John Cena he was able to cement himself as one of the top guys in the company. However, due to a lack of long feuds nowadays it is difficult to say if coming out as the winner is beneficial to either wrestler. Personally, if it is two established wrestlers feuding for a significant length of time then it does not really matter who wins. If it is between one superstar wrestler and another on the rise then it is imperative that the one on the rise wins to make winning this sort of feud matter. But if the fans do not respond or tire of it then it does not matter at all.

 

[salopstick]

No

I remember when wwf ran quarterly feuds to coincide with the 4 PPVs they did, the next lot of feuds would start without hardly any reference to the last lot

 

[Zeven_Zion]

I don't think so. What matters for a wrestler are individual performances and the frequency at which he or she delivers. Nobody cares if you were written as the winner of a feud. Countless feuds are won by a guy who didn't perform better than the other wrestler.

To me, the only thing that matters is how you perform. Short feuds, long feuds, no feuds it doesn't matter.

Does anyone really think Rock is better than Austin just because he retired him? Hell no. I don't think 'Taker is better than Shawn or that Shawn is better than Flair.

 

[nWo2]

I doesn't matter who wins the matches because HEELS may win by cheating, but since the winners are predetermined by the storyline I venture to say that it doesn't matter at all because Daniel Bryan's storyline and character development may be hinging on him beating Cena only for Orton to turn heel and cash-in MITB

I believe its more important who carries the promos and matches that is the real winner of the feud and THAT will lead them to larger ones in the future. See: CM Punk vs. Cena

 

[THTRobtaylor]

The idea of a long game feud is all but dead in todays WWE. The format worked in the past because you had three months between PPV's and a maximum 2 hours of taped TV with a live SNME every 6 months... It worked though cos of a full touring schedule. The two feud partners could literally spend 3 months on the road, wrestle 50 times and build the match that eventually took place on PPV, even though crowds had seen parts or all of it, it still was fresh to that PPV crowd and of course, the red light was on so they got the 110% effort version. They added tag matches and combined feuds to often make this take 6 months in some cases.

Also long feuds were more likely because everyone on the roster had one... Look at Wrestlemania 6, you had the culmination of feuds that had gone for 3 months, like Warrior/Hogan, and some that had built over a much longer time like Rhodes/Savage, Perfect/Brutus, DiBiase v Jake and Collossal Connection/Demolition... Add into that the shorter term "push feuds" like Bossman v Akeem and Rude v Snuka and you have a system where long feuds work cos they don't seem that long.

Take that match with Jake and DiBiase - it had a very long build up with Jake taking the Million Dollar Belt, DiBiase humiliating the fans/plants in the ring and both guys taking a long time to even come to blows... The whole thing probably started October/November of the previous year and got it's pay off in April... most memorably, the match didn't really have a "satisfactory" ending, there was no definitive winner, DiBiase got his belt back but Jake got the moral victory. It left a bad taste in the mouth as that was it, despite stellar build up and promos and the fact it could have gone onto Summerslam and even Mania 7 as a "loser leaves WWE match" or similar, they used a crappy finish and it led to the depush route for both men instead, had either of them definitevely won it, then both would have come out looking better. A year later, again Jake had a long feud with Rick Martel... this one screamed out for a Martel win at Mania, but they chose the awful Blindfold stipulation, that could only ever end with a DDT finish and Martel was screwed as a character. Had Jake lost that match (still "blind in one eye" for example) then he wouldn't have lost anything, the fans would have bought his eventual heel turn far better but Martel would have become a top level heel right away... maybe he then gets the IC title instead of Perfect or Mountie... he has great matches with Bret and when Flair comes in, perhaps we see a Horsemen type stable with Martel instead of what we did get.

The last great "long feud" was Shawn v Jericho, and winning that DID matter for Jericho - but ultimately he lost it, sure as the heel he perhaps should have done, but that feud had easily another 3 months in it by double turning he and HBK... had that happened, Shawn coming out on top made perfect sense, but as it was it stalled Jericho for a while.

Today you have PPV every month, 5 hours of TV... a Long feud is 3 months tops because people will tire very quickly of the same matches and feuds... you struggle to even do the old style "career long rivalry" stuff. Remember how every Royal Rumble Tito and Martel would batter each other? So would Shawn and Marty? and periodically the feud would resume? You couldn't really do it these days as people moan "we saw this last year"... they tried it with Barrett and Orton and good as it was, people said just that...

So no today winning a long feud doesn't matter, cos you're not likely to get one... and if you do whatever momentum will stop the moment you get to Super Cena, Taker and their like.

 

[Deste003]

If done correctly both guys should gain something from the feud. Whether they win it or not.

 

[dWs]

If done correctly both guys should gain something from the feud. Whether they win it or not.

I think a good example of this would be Jake Roberts/Ricky Steamboat in 1986. Without that feud, both guys would not have gone on to bigger things in the WWF.

For the Jake/DiBiase feud, it actually ran a little longer than mentioned, so it was time to end it at WM6. It began at WM5, when DiBiase randomly came down to ringside during the Jake/Andre match to steal Damien's bag. Didn't make sense, but they began scheduling a Jake/DiBiase feud post-WM5. DiBiase then attacked Jake after a match with Virgil and it was on. Jake left the WWF for reasons uncertain (a lawsuit is the common belief), so they back-tracked and said DiBiase's attack sidelined Jake. DiBiase then went around all summer, bragging about how he had ended Jake's career.

 

[Jack-Hammer]

It depends on a few factors I think. In the grand scheme of things though, probably not. Or, I guess I should say that's my opinion as I'm sure some others will have a different one.

My perspective is that if both men ultimately come out of a long feud looking good, then that's probably as close to an ideal scenario as you can get. Some fans are going to prefer Wrestler A over Wrestler B and vice versa, some are going to enjoy both wrestlers on a generally equal basis; but I think the overall goal of a long, major feud is that both wrestlers involved come out looking like a star no matter who might have the most number of wins or losses.

The big problem with a long feud, in my eyes, comes about when it's clearly one sided instead of both the guys looking generally equal. If Wrestlers A & B wrestle 10 matches in their feud and Wrestler A loses 9 out of 10 of those matches; then it really drags down the feud and saps the energy from it. Such a one sided feud results in the feeling that it's needlessly being dragged out while interest among a lot of people fades to boredom. Especially if most of those wins come about with Wrestler A either being pinned or forced to submit.