Yikes. Those Manhattan Center Raws were absolutely brutal. Felt more like a much worse 1 hour version of what WCW Saturday Night ended up being in the end with one or two star appearances via squashes.

The early Raw format was completely tedious yes, but the very worst aspect of those Raws was Rob frickin Bartlett, dude basically knew jack shit about anything. You think we have it bad with Cole, King & JBL

To be fair, Bartlett was only around for about 2 months. I still think Superstars was the A show for a while in Raw's history. At least it still felt like that early on.

youtube.com/watch?v=lIuDTDymsSo

 

This is the interview in question where Hogan calls the WWE title a toy. I saw this years ago, but totally forgot about it until this discussion.

If Yokozuna agreed to the impromptu title match and there was an official sanctioned referee that recognized the accepted challenge then the title switch is legit. Stupid yes but logical.

Ok, maybe it was the stupidity that made it make no sense to me. In my mind, a championship match had to be sanctioned by Jack Tunny and required contract signings and all sorts. This had none of it so, to me, it couldn't count.

 

WCW get a lot of stick for the nonsense they came out with at times but this really is on that level.

Yeah, maybe it was logical, but it was unprecedented and felt totally like something that was just made up on the fly to get the belt back on Hogan. Plus it totally shattered the illusion that titles were important at a time before switches became common place. And it really didn't make much sense by the kayfabe rules of the time, like if George Foreman challenged Riddick Bowe to an impromptu fight after he had just beat Evander Holyfield, to use a contemporary example, and it was allowed to go forward and Foreman knocked Bowe out.

What if any were the plans for Hogan? Did Vince know that he would be going to Japan, vanishing from WWF TV and only doing a handful of tags when he put him over Yoko? Beyond the Bret-Hogan thing, have Meltzer and co gotten an explanation for all this stuff?

What if any were the plans for Hogan? Did Vince know that he would be going to Japan, vanishing from WWF TV and only doing a handful of tags when he put him over Yoko? Beyond the Bret-Hogan thing, have Meltzer and co gotten an explanation for all this stuff?

I would assume the foremost original plan for Hogan when they decided to do it was for the crowd to appreciate the Real American from making sure that evil foreigner did not get to enjoy a minute of being the champion and that upon his return from Japan that he maybe would finish off the Yokozuna program leading into the Bret scenario at Summerslam (if they are to be believed) but alternatively I think if Vince never intended to go through with the Bret match, I do personally believe Luger would have gotten a big program to help offset the embarrassing cost of his contract with the failure of WBF. Maybe Luger as the heel Narcissist gimmick vs Hulk Hogan?

WONs at the time said that while everyone in the company liked Bret, house shows were not doing well at all in the first few months of 1993, so they felt like they needed a shake-up.

No I definitely get WHY the belt was taken off Bret. But the thing is Hogan barely worked any house shows between WM IX and KOTR 93.

 

Bret main evented the TV tapings after WM and it would seem Luger-Perfect headlined someof the post Mania European tour, with Bret-Bigelow the others.

 

Then Bret-Luger carries things through late May. After that Hogan/Beefcake vs. Money Inc headlines alternating with Bret/Luger for a few weekends but other than a good Meadowlands house, doesn't draw any better.

 

So my questions are - Did Vince know Hogan wasn't going to work houses? If not, why the heck not? If so how would taking the champion off the road and the WWF title with it and then headlining with the former champion and his next logical challenger had he kept the belt make ANY sense as a plan?

WONs at the time said that while everyone in the company liked Bret, house shows were not doing well at all in the first few months of 1993, so they felt like they needed a shake-up.

Didn't help to put the belt on a lukewarm upper midcarder in Bret in an untelevised match in the first place.

Well, they did it because they needed to do something to make a new top babyface quickly, and they didn't have the luxury of time. This wasn't them giving up on Bret, this was them thinking they could make him dropping the title and regaining it a few months later right the ship.

I understand the reasoning. I am just saying at the time obviously there was no social media. That kind of quick title change was never gonna work unless it was a rock star babyface like Hogan in 83 or 84 where the fans were just happy to get on his bandwagon and start rolling.

What I'm saying though is that I don't think when they did it they had any delusions Bret was going to be another Hogan. They needed to do something big, and they needed a top babyface that wasn't on steroids quickly. They could worry about cementing him at that level later.

What I still don't get is why they were so quick to move on from Randy Savage after he dropped the title. Savage was paranoid by nature according to pretty much everyone who has ever known him, and it's never been said, but I've always suspected that they were worried about him crumbling under the pressure at the time since he didn't handle it well at all when Elizabeth divorced him. Everything we've heard about Savage during that time suggests that he was probably going through a major depression, but I've never really heard that confirmed. Still, it makes sense.

Wasn't Savage just as big a steroid offender as Hogan and Ultimate Warrior? If the idea is to quickly put the belt on guys the government wouldn't question, Macho Man Randy Savage is not the guy...even if he was slimmed down from an earlier peak form. It just takes an idiot Congressman to put together a 1987 video of Randy Savage and charge the crime to a small 1993 version of Savage regardless.

At this point in time, Savage either wasn't on steroids or was cycling off. He was noticeably smaller, as you said. My point wasn't that he should have been the champ. It was that taking him out of the ring for the most part was a big overstep because as WCW proved, he still had some good years left in him.

Yeah dunno what that was all about. Did Savage ever talk about that period? Like did he complain about not being used or something? If not, maybe it was something he asked for, a break from all that stuff while not being shut down completely?

Savage-Flair drew some really bad houses. I don't think you can blame that on Savage but Warrior-Shango actually did better overall.

 

So the plan was to BOOST business in the long term, knowing that Hogan wouldn't work houses from Mania-Summerslam much where at SS he would put over Bret? Was that what you're saying Loss?

I don't know about what the plan was post-Mania, except that they didn't want Bret as champion anymore -- at least for the time being -- because he was not drawing well.

Then I am still confused.

 

They don't want Bret as champion as he is not drawing well. Okay got it.

Step 1 - Get title back on babyface legend Hogan. Makes perfect sense.

 

Step 2 - Hogan barely works any shows, only a pair of 3 day weekends as a tag team guy.

Step 3 - Have said guy, Bret Hart, who was NOT drawing well, headline the vast majority of the shows against Lex Luger. Only this time without the belt at all.

 

WTF?

 

Did they think Bret would draw BETTER without the belt? The game plan here just makes absolutely no sense. The only thing I can see is that Hogan never told Vince he wasn't going to work houses, Vince didn't wanna just strip Hogan of the title and so he had to wait things out till KOTR where Hogan agreed to drop the belt to Yokozuna. There's still something in all this that makes no sense.

 

Anyone else have any insights about all this? Anyone ask Meltzer recently and point this logic out?

I seriously doubt Vince would have put the belt on Hogan if he knew Hogan wasn't going to help carry the house shows...BUT... maybe he did let Hogan off the hook thinking maybe a happier Hogan would be a more agreeable Hogan in the future plans, ie hypothetically putting Bret over later that year. This way he can build up Bret more so he would be a suitable champion by virtue of having beaten the iconic Hulk Hogan after a string of strong showings. Think like how they dealt with Daniel Bryan

They put the belt on the guy when he wasn't anywhere close to ready to carry the load, had him eat a boot 18 seconds into his Wrestlemania title defense to lose, then spent the next two years building him as an offensive powerhouse with a major chip on his shoulder going into the Summerslam match with the long time babyface ace and making him in one night with a knee to the face (let's forget what happens next for the sake of the analogy). Maybe Bret was supposed to have a truncated version of that rebuild. Problem is Vince would then realize Hogan was never gonna play ball. So he took it all down at KOTR and went somewhere else.

I went to a WWF House Show in June of 1993, just before Hogan dropped the title. It was at Maple Leaf Gardens and it was a Duggan-Yoko main event with a carny style Ted Dibiase contest running throughout the show: "anybody who can slam Yoko gets $1000 of my dollars!" Ted chose three guys from audience, all awkwardly put their hands between Yoko' legs. It was fucking brutal. 3,000 people, maybe, in an arena of 16,000 seats in a city of 4 million people, in the best Hulk Hogan market on earth (see WM18 for evidence). Point being: Bret, Luger, Yoko, title or no title, the house show business was as dead as George Hackenschmidt in 1993. So BrainFollower is right, if Hogan was supposed to be a house show saviour... he certainly wasn't doing much saving.

Alternate theory, we all saw Hogan's WCW contract, was this decision based on a stipulation in Hogan's contract? Could WWE have been convinced to do with Bret at the top guy, but decided to take a 'breather' to satisfy Hogan's contract by letting him have a run until WWE could continue the REAL story they wanted to tell. I am going to have to watch it again, but I remember Hogan being a Lame Duck champion in WWE at the time.

I think whatever he says Vince's intention was to replace Bret as the top guy before WM IX and never had any serious intentions of giving him a run again until support for Lex Luger vs. Bret Hart made it clear that's what fans wanted. Thankfully Vince had more sense back then otherwise Bret would never have gotten the belt back.