What the AWA could have been

[vampireblade]

I've been watching a bit of the AWA stuff, just watched the match between Nick Bockwinkel and Curt Henning for the AWA World Champion at Superclash 2 and it occurred to me at this time Hulkamania was just taking off. Now as is common knowledge Verne Gagne loved sound technical wrestling, and did not care for flashy or powerhouse or nothing else that as catching on at the time, ultimately it cost him and his company as Hogan who had so much popularity at the time had moved from AWA to WWF due to Gagne's inability to change with the times.My question is this,

1.Had Verne Gagne changed his view to suit the new times and put the strap on hogan and embraced hulkamania could AWA have survived?

2.If you dont think so what do you think it would have took to save the AWA or was it just doomed?

 

[Jack-Hammer]

It wouldn't just have to be Hogan that Gagne changed his opinion about, it would have to be pro wrestling as a whole. Gagne was someone who believed in the boundaries of the Territory System. Even though the AWA wasn't part of the National Wrestling Alliance, he stayed on good terms with top promoters for business purposes. The philosophy of the Territory System was basically "You do your thing in your back yard, I'll do mine in mine." For the most part, that's how every significant wrestling promotion in North America operated.

However, the Territory System was already beginning to die out by the time Hogan became something of a national sensation because of his well received appearance in Rocky II. This was due to the rapidly spreading availability and technology of satellite & cable television and syndication. Before Vince McMahon even took control of the WWF from Vince, Sr., WCCW was already sending out its programming throughout the country due to syndication. Because of it, people who were living in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Gagne's backyard, would be capable of watching WCCW even though it was filmed in Dallas, Texas. Gagne wouldn't get into the game of having his company garner national attention by being aired on ESPN until late 1985. WCCW was starting to decline by this time while WWF & Jim Crockett Promotions were going strong. The problem was that ESPN simply didn't treat AWA like a major priority the way USA & TBS did. For instance, AWA was often delayed in its airing on ESPN due to some other sporting event that was being shown. Sometimes it'd even be flat out preempted by something else or AWA's timeslot was changed.

I watched some of the reruns of AWA on ESPN Classic and looking back on it, AWA came off to me as an old time company trying to half heartedly masquerade as something up to date. Production values of AWA compared to WWF or TBS were usually significantly inferior, most of the wrestlers lacked in personality or charisma and most of the matches just weren't all that exciting. As the OP mentioned, Gagne was still very much someone who believed that technical wrestling & technical wrestlers should be the centerpiece of the show. There's nothing at all wrong with that if fans & viewers aren't bored with the wrestlers or the match; but the problem is that many of the fans were. The fans changed and wrestling had to change too. Most fans would rather watch Hulk Hogan, an ultra patriotic comic book hero come to life that gave them a charge by praising the values of hard work and the endorsement of Christian values than watch Nick Bockwinkel trade side headlocks and reverse chinlocks.

Bockwinkel vs. Hennig at SuperClash II may have been the last great huzzah for AWA. It was a genuinely great technical match that the live crowd was extremely into but it wasn't the kind of wrestling you saw most of the time while watching AWA for free on television. It was far, far above what you usually saw.

It wasn't simply Hogan that took WWF to places wrestling had never been before. You also had the talent pool and Vince's vision. Vince wanted to change the face of wrestling forever and was willing to gamble to do it. Nobody who ever made history or changed the world did it by playing it safe and sticking to conventional ways of doing things. That's why WWE is a company that took in roughly $660 million in revenue last year and why its contemporaries have gone the way Jim Carey's film career.

 

[TheHitMark-SirJoseOle]

I absolutely felt that the AWA could have been a force to be reckoned with into the 1980s had Verne Gagne changed his modus operandi. The fact is this, a good number of performers that the WWF acquired during the 80s expansion came from Minnesota. Jokingly but accurately, on one of the WWE retrospective DVDs, not sure if it was the McMahon DVD or the Spectacular Legacy Of The AWA, I'm thinking it was the latter. I digress but that said I remember someone being interviewed mentioning how by the time WrestleMania rolled around, WWF had more AWA stars than the AWA presently had. Jack-Hammer's points are incredibly spot on, and OP I definitely see a lot of where you're coming from.

Here's my take on it, the AWA indeed tried to keep their traditional wrestling values in place, while at the same time also trying to pander a bit more to the sports entertainment aspect of things. You could see that there was definitely an attempt to try though with how big they pushed Hogan. Granted Hogan never got the title except in a couple of those teaser finishes. And if you believe what you heard in the AWA retrospective, Verne Gagne was finally going to give Hogan the strap on the condition he got some of Hogan's Japan earnings. I don't know if that was just to add entertainment value to the AWA story or if it really happened. I'm not sure. Either way, I think the AWA missed the boat on keeping Hogan in the promotion and making him their champion. Considering all the other great talent they had in the company, many of which had gone to the WWF, they missed out on a lot. If Verne and his son Greg had the same mindset to adapt to change that Vincent K. McMahon had, they could very well have bucked the trend of what pro wrestling currently was. It would have meant ruffling some feathers and signing some of the Jim Crockett Promotions prominent players as well as wooing back some of the talent who jumped back and forth between Minnesota and New York, but it just seems to be that it just wasn't in the Gagne's nature to do that.Had they shared the same mentality as Vince, I wholeheartedly believe they could have accomplished what the WWF did because they did have the talent and the interest from mainstream media. After all, Hogan's presence piggybacking off the Rocky III movie was HUGE at the time. If what Greg Gagne said was true, there was even talk of CBS offering a prime time special to the AWA, Hogan's departure and subsequent return to the WWF prevented that from happening.

Had things stayed the course, and the Gagne's acquiesced to Hogan, as well as continuing to pile on the talent that it had, as well as make some controversial but necessary moves in the way of expansion, history could have ended up very differently. However, so much of this is hindsight, and as they say hindsight is 20/20. But with all of that said, despite the AWA's eventual dissolution in the earlier part of the 1990s. There were several talents that saw their careers benefit greatly by performing their in the 1980s, names like Shawn Michaels, Marty Jannetty, Scott Hall, Curt Hennig, Yokozuna, and even Jerry Sags and Brian Knobbs were all beneficiaries of having a stint in the AWA.

It's unfortunate that the AWA couldn't stick around as a viable competitor to the World Wrestling Federation and JCP/World Championship Wrestling, but they were a victim of their own code of honor in the business of promoting professional wrestling.

 

[THTRobtaylor]

Verne was the problem in the AWA pure and simple - he was insular, vindictive and more interested in keeping his cronies and son at the forefront of the status quo than actually building his or the business in general.

I don't see Verne ever making the changes people suggest, he kept the belt on Bockwinkel for so long because it suited him, many ask what Vince Sr. would have made of the WWF after his death and I imagine he'd have been a lot like Verne was... pissed off, not seeing the bigger picture and more interested in keeping things ticking over than growing.

In spite of Verne's foibles, the AWA for a time did have a shot at greatness, but it left with Hogan and once the 2nd round of talent started leaving like Martel, Hennig and The Rockers it was all over.

Many hated what Vince did, but they evolved - Verne simply wouldn't and that's what killed the AWA in the end like they say...you can lead the horse to water...