Vince McMahon's Tactics

[Ruthless-RKO]

Just a few examples of Vince and what he would call his "Ruthless Aggression"

Raided territories for talent, eventually leading to their demise

Threatened to withhold WWF ppvs from cable companies that carried the NWA's Starrcade 87, thus killing its buyrate

Tried to get Harley Race to jump to the WWF with the NWA title before his match with Flair at Starrcade 83

There are many other examples I know and feel free to add, but what do you think overall. Vince had to run a successful company, I mean if you don't plan to be successful, then what's the point, but could he have done things differently where we could still have other promotions, or do you have to shoot to kill in this industry?

Discuss

 

[Jack-Hammer]

In the Rise & Fall of WCW DVD, J.J. Dillon was interviewed as part of the documentary segment of the compilation and he said himself that if he'd had the connections that Vince did that he might have done the same thing.

The pro wrestling industry in the states was a highly competitive entity during the territory days. I read a book a couple of years back talking about the general rise & fall of the NWA and how Sam Muchnick, who owned & operated the St. Louis Wrestling Club, was basically the guy that held the NWA together during its first decade or so of existence. The NWA itself came extremely close to disbanding altogether several times during the 50s because, frankly, the promoters didn't trust each other. Many accused each other of trying to operate shows in their territory without their permission, trying to poach stars, etc. Everyone denied it of course but it's almost a certainty that many were doing it and more. All the promoters were, first & foremost, out to do the very best they could for themselves. They put their companies first as one would expect. One reason why Muchnick was NWA president from 1950-1960 and then again from 1963-1975 was he was pretty much the only guy that everyone else in the NWA trusted to make sure things went as smoothly as possible. He stepped down after 1960 but basically had to take the job back as the NWA damn near imploded again for the very same reasons it almost collapsed during the first couple of years it existed.

Personally, I think the only reason the NWA stayed so strongly unified for so long was because of Sam Muchnick. Every other promoter was too greedy or too focused on their own companies to be trusted and Muchnick was able to keep people in line. By the mid 80s, the NWA was all but dead anyhow as Jim Crockett was the guy who really had all the power and control of any relevant aspect of the NWA.

Vince is someone that often gets painted as the devil in pro wrestling but it's not nearly as simple as some of the critics make it out to be. Like every other promoter, Vince wanted his company to ultimately be the top dog, to make the most money and to be the one that everyone was talking about. By the time Vince took over from his father, the territory days itself were almost gone anyhow. Satellite, cable television, syndication, etc. had as much to do with that as anything else.

I'm sure some promoters have a negative view of Vince and I can't say I blame them for it. Somebody ultimately ended up running me out of business because I couldn't compete with him, I'd be bitter to. It's only natural. At the same time though, Vince did something that the VAST majority of these older promoters didn't have: he was willing to embrace change. In the Rise & Fall of WCCW DVD, there was a segment in which Bill Irwin said that lots of wrestlers, especially Fritz Von Erich's sons, told him that he should take WCCW on the road. The company was doing huge business and had done a number of innovative things that the WWF would later do. But Fritz refused and kept to the old tradition of staying in his own backyard. The wrestling world might have turned out to be very, very different had Fritz had a more progressive view of things.

Also, it wasn't just Vince but it was the wrestlers themselves that deserted the other territories. Wrestlers wrestle to make money, to earn a living. Like any sensible person, they want to do what they love to do and make the most money they possibly can out of it. They knew they had a big chance to do that working for Vince McMahon, so they jumped ship. Vince would experience the same thing himself a decade later when many of his biggest stars jumped ship to WCW because of a potentially much bigger payday.

The days of the NWA territories were pretty much doomed anyhow. By the time Vince came along and took over his company, a large number of the NWA territories like Championship Wrestling from Florida, Central States Wrestling, Georgia Championship Wrestling, Stampede Wrestling, etc. were all struggling financially. Some like NWA Hollywood Wrestling and the San Francisco based NWA affiliates went out of business before Vince got up and going.

I think that if Vince hadn't had the initiative, I think someone else ultimately would have.

 

[dukes07]

Oh boy....I dislike Vince. And part of me is giddy when every venture outside WWF/E fails miserably as he tries to become "legitimate" in the eyes of the media.

We all know the downsides of him gobbling up the territories: Lack of competition, potentially less viewers as fans of the AWA are not necessarily going to tune in. And it hurts the workers as they cannot jump from organization to organization as it is pretty much WWE or bust.

But if you look at comparable businesses, it was almost inevitable that something like this would happen. If not Vince it would have been someone else. While I dislike the man, he did put wrestling on the national map and he did what any other CEO would do. I just find it amusing when he decried Ted Turner for trying to put him out of business when he did the same exact thing and actually succeeded as he killed off numerous territories.

Anyway, there is no way there would be room for so many territories due to the fact that wrestling is not as big as it once was. Vince and to a lesser extend Ted consolidated all of that.

At the same time, Vince likes competition. He knows it is good for business. He does not want to be accused of a monopoly. My opinion is that he thinks TNA is a good thing, much like he kept ECW afloat here and there. He could put SmackDown against TNA if he wanted....he also knows that TNA will never be a threat, the market just will not bear two large wrestling organizations like it did in the 80s-90s. I mean he could open up new territories and run them, use them as feeder systems and that was a good thing back then because it gave wrestlers some training ground, and they would not come up so green into the big leagues. They had more of an opportunity for seasoning.

Piggy-backing off what Jack-Hammer said: A lot of the promotions only have themselves to blame. Many TRIED to do what Vince did. They tried to expand beyond their market and could not bear the costs. They tried to expand too far too fast, such as Crockett, and then some just kept spending money like they were not expanding, so that compounded the problem. Vince was smart, he came in and picked up the pieces, often getting a good price. So, while the WWF may have been pressuring them to expand or die or to sell at the same time, many promotions set themselves up for failure. They just could not compete with the WWF and later WCW.

 

[braveh]

I never thought the criticism was that he had a good business strategies? I thought it was the personal stuff people criticized? That's tactics too:

• David Shultz claimed that Vince told him to slap around that reporter that was doing the 2020 news report.
  
• There were rumors that Vince told Rock to be as brutal and stiff as possible when he went out and beat the hell out of Mankind with the chair on Beyond the mat.
  
• Maybe it was just good acting but Cena looked genuinely shocked when he was getting pummeled by Lesnar at Extreme Rules. I just picture the same scenario. Maybe Cena and Vince had some kind of disagreement at the time so Vince told Brock to go out there and beat the crap out of Cena.

 

[EastCoastFan]

If you ever watch Bill Watts' shoot interview, he gave serious thought to suing Vince for predatory business practices in 1987. He said he told Vince he had a good case against him, and Vince made him an offer to buy the UWF and give him a job with the WWF. The deal never went through because Jim Crockett made a bigger offer, fearing that if Vince got his hands on the UWF and their talent pool (the Freebirds, Sting, Steve Williams, ...) he could not compete with them.

 

[THTRobtaylor]

There are two schools of thought, the one that posts Vince as the visionary and the other as the predator.

I can see both arguments but you have to look a little deeper at Vince himself before you can decide. This is a guy who met his dad only as a teen and saw this crazy, but successful world. But his dad made him literally work from the ground up to be part of it, selling tickets, posting flyers and eventually being an announcer. Vince Jr. probably knew early on he could do things his dad would never dream of, but he had to play the game as it was until he could build a warchest of his own. That he was experimenting with Closed Circuit/PPV outside of wrestling shows he knew what he wanted to do but it only ever really came to pass cos his dad got sick. Had Sr. not been ailing I could have seen Vince only inheriting WWE too late to really make an impact, after Verne or Crockett had made the leap. So the first "unethical" thing was perhaps to hoodwink his old man into selling to him, promising to keep the status quo, knowing full well he'd be too ill to do anything to stop his plans once he had control.

Once he had control of the company, yes he went out and got the best guys and gazumped a lot of smaller promoters, but he did buy them out... he could easily have just starved them all out but generally, he did the honorable thing in offering a "fair" price for their business and jobs where he could. A prime example is with Stu Hart and bringing Bret, Neidhart, Davey and Dynamite over a part of the deal. How would Watts call "predatory practices", if Vince had more money and better TV then naturally people would want to go there. Again, he didn't have to make an offer but he did.

I'm sure he did try and get Harley Race, just as I am sure Verne tried to get Sheiky Baby to break Hogan's leg. It was 80's America, a cutthroat era and a traditionally ruthless business combined.

Was Vince always 100% ethical or morally right, not at all...the Superfly affair proves that but on balance Vince didn't start wars or feuds... but generally he made sure he ended them with him as the winner.

 

[FlairFan2003]

Strictly speaking while Vince did violate some "unwritten rules" of business etiquette while trying to expand nationally in the 80s he was not alone. Remember, Vince started forcing arenas to sign "Exclusivity" agreements (they wouldnt host any other wrestling shows except WWE) in the 80s as Jim Crockett started moving into his territory. Crockett expanded into Philadelphia and was doing very well, even after Vince got him banned from the largest arena, he was still selling out and drawing good ratings there. Same in Pittsburgh, although it took much longer for Vince to get an exclusivity agreement with the largest arena there. Once Crokcett moved into Nassau Coliseaum and drew 13,000 plus Vince was forced to protect his own turf. Bottom line, when you look at the whole situation, Crockett had many of the same goals and ideas Vince did, and probably a better roster, but he expanded too quickly (monthly shows all over the US instead of focussing house show business in core areas while staurating rival markets with your TV while hlding live shows occassionally, AKA "The Vince Model") and lacked Vince's marketing prowess, never capitolizing on the merchandise the way WWE did.

This is why I never complained when the IWC roasted Bischoff for raiding the WWE talent roster, giving away match results of taped Raw shows during live Nitros, or flat coppying old WWE stories (Ultimate Warrior vs Hogan, Flair vs Savage, Flair vs Hart). He essentially was copying Vince's old playbook, and for awhile running the plays better. Even when it comes to talent aquisitions I never blamed Bischoff. Where would WWE in the 80s have been without siging Hulk Hogan from the AWA, Randy Savage from the Mid South area (he wrestled in different independents, some associated with his father, clutivating his image, name, and the Elizabeth part of his gimmick there), Jake Roberts, Roddy Piper, Greg Valentine, and Rick Rude from the NWA, Curt Henning from the AWA, etc.

What do I think of it all ? Vince was ruthless and saw an opportunity to build the industry much larger financially than anyone else at the time did. Considering that Crockett & Bischoff did many of the same things to him I dont feel bad for Vince or because of him. In the end, while we as fans may complain that the product suffers from not having smaller promotions where the talent can develop their work rate and characters and the top talent suffers from not having a viable alternative to WWE that can match their national presence and payscale, the industry as a whole is much larger and more profitable than it ever was, and the talent work less days for more money than they ever did.

Ruthless ? Yes - Business Genius ? Yes Again - More ruthless than his counterparts ? Hardly. Remember, not only was Crockett willing to emulate much of Vince's tactics but the other promoters had horrible reps when it came to treatment of talent, payouts, etc. Fritz Von Erich was constantly accused of pushing his sons above all other talent regardless of crowd response or their own individual talent (and covering up for their alleged drug use), Verne Gagne famously demanded a portion of any wrestler's payouts during their time as World Champion (a major sticking point between him & Hogan when Hulk was being groomed to unseat Nick Bockwinkle as AWA Champ), the stories abound.

Vince was at one time a veritable business genius - I do think he was ruthless towards the competition but at the same time so was the competition, in the end he was just better at it.

 

[FlairFan2003]

There are two schools of thought, the one that posts Vince as the visionary and the other as the predator.




I'm sure he did try and get Harley Race, just as I am sure Verne tried to get Sheiky Baby to break Hogan's leg. It was 80's America, a cutthroat era and a traditionally ruthless business combined.

Was Vince always 100% ethical or morally right, not at all...the Superfly affair proves that but on balance Vince didn't start wars or feuds... but generally he made sure he ended them with him as the winner.

Business van be ruthless, one point however... Vince typically did not buy out smaller promotions, etc. He did drie them out of business. Vince had no desire to buy the AWA, Mid South, World Class, etc. He could have attempted to buy the UWF but stayed out and let Crockett buy it instead. Vince really was "bleeding them dry" so to speak, bankrupting everyone along the way and scooping up whatever talent he wanted.

The only time he really went out with the intent of actually buying a competitor was WCW in 2001. Even then Vince made sure that all he purchased was the video library, no physical asetts or talent contracts were included. Smaller WCW stars could opt of their deals with Time Warner without any issue. Larger names were offered limited buyouts from WWE that would reimburse small portions of their forfeited remaining contracts. The company as a whole was left to die, Vince just grabbed the one thing of true value, the video library, which he has been making money on now for a decade.

It was actually one of his smartest deals. He was the last man standing at that point and had a full roster, he didnt need to inherit all of WCW's talent. He could pick and chose lesser known talent he was interested in and make new deals with them while they forfeited the rest of the remaining Time Warner deals which TW had no issue with because they did not want to pay them. Larger names like Hogan, Flair, Nash, etc certainly could be good additions to the company but they were not needed. Therefore, Vince could wait while they sat home collecting their money from their Time Warner deals until those deals came close to a close or they decided they wanted to work again, giving them the cheap buyouts and negotiating new deals. And if none of those guys ever had signed, WWE could still make money off the video library.