I know this might be a dumb question, but is the split happening on the 7th? That leaves tomorrow's Smackdown to set-up the ANGLE of 2002. Sounds kind of a short set-up to me. But Russo resets are the WWF right about now anyway.
January 4th 1999 - The day WCW injected itself with 10 gallons of Liquid Anthrax...AKA...The day Hogan "Defeated" Nash to win the WCW title in front of 40,000.
Frankly, I will be stunned if it happens in January at all. But hey, with a "Creative" team that managed to flub the WCW Invasion, anything is possible.
I guess they are going to do the whole...Ric and Vince can't coexist at all after Ric kicked Vince's ass, so now they have to split up the company.
January 4th 1999 - The day WCW injected itself with 10 gallons of Liquid Anthrax...AKA...The day Hogan "Defeated" Nash to win the WCW title in front of 40,000.
I wonder what the rational for running two PPVs a month when right now they aren't even breaking the 1s on buyrates for ONE PPV? Why do I get the sneaking suspicion that Vince is trying to kill his own company?
I get the impression that Vince is surrounded by nothing but "Yes" men. So any idea that comes up, they tell him it is great.
2 PPVs a month is not going to work. I loved the idea of 1 PPV a month and they just alternate. I am sure that is what will happen eventually anyway.
January 4th 1999 - The day WCW injected itself with 10 gallons of Liquid Anthrax...AKA...The day Hogan "Defeated" Nash to win the WCW title in front of 40,000.
I think they're still doing one PPV a month, with the companies alternating each month with no interaction between the two entities. That was the plan I heard, as of a few weeks ago.
Boy oh boy, this split seems like a rather flawed idea. The WWF doesn't have the starpower or the interest right now to pull in 2/3 of its peak audience. Will cutting the roster in half do any more to increase that current audience? Probably not. Worse yet, the more likely scenario that the audience will be reduced will probably come to pass. Time to dig out old AJPW tapes, methinks.
Hmmm...I'm torn on the whole split thing. It definitely would be a good idea to split the company and have the two halves put on 6 PPVs a year each, but if that is to have any impact, they need to wait until they get some bigger name "WCW" guys, like Steiner, Nash, Hall et al.
Also, the fact that they will be both WWF (as far as I've gathered from reports) pisses me off. They spent money on the WCW franchise, purchased the rights, media libraries and signed half the roster and now they're just going to let it go to waste? Sounds like bad business to me. I seriously hope that someone buys the WCW brand from the McMahon's, so they finally have some competition and WCW isn't completely buried.
If the WWF is serious about turning the company into two separate factions (with no interaction between the two), then that could actually help WWF business by giving the writers more time to develop storylines ... If each faction holds a PPV every OTHER month, then that should help relax the "rushed" feel of the current WWF product, where every storyline seems to have just a 2-3 week shelf life so that Vince can get the blow-off match out of the way on PPV.
- Right after Suvivor Series, when Flair showed up, the company line was the split would happen on 1/7. I believe this might have been mentioned in that quarter's WWF teleconfrence in vague terms ("there will be a split, and then we'll be running SEPERATE PPVs after WM"), and then the Torch was the first one to mention the specific date
- As the date's gotten closer, there was talk about pushing it back but Vince wanted to stick hard to that date and wouldn't listen.
- Sometime in the last couple weeks - maybe at the last couple tapings, maybe later - Vince was finnally convinced that they couldn't pull it off in time, and 1/7 was changed from "the split" to "the beginning of the split."
The actual time of the split seems to change depending on who you hear it from and when, and of course since it hasn't happened yet there's a chance it may never ever happen at all.
The Original Plan was that BOTH companys would run PPVs - PPV companies are begging for more PPVs, and if each PPV gets 60% of what they're doing now, they're still coming out ahead. It's a gamble that there's a strong enough group of hardcore people that will buy everything the WWF puts on PPV. This is all subject to change.
In a way, they'll have LESS time to build up feuds and angles. One side gets RAW, one side gets Smackdown, and each gets about 4 A-level shows to build up each PPV. While it's expected that Heat (and maybe by neccesity Jakked/Metal) will have (more) storyline development, that's 12 hours to build instead of 16 to 20.
Mainly I'm wondering about the Wrestlemania ticket I have right now and if they do split how would it affect that. And I like the product as it is now...instead of having one company with many good talents you now have two companies with SOME good talents.
Not to mention it will GREATLY reduce that amount of feuds going on, unless there is alot of ship jumping.
I'd personally like to see it. It would make sense, and it'd get more talent out there. As long as they're not feuding with each other EVERY SINGLE MATCH like the InVasion. I mean, sure I liked the InVasion, but I like a lot of stuff. I think it could be good.
But hey, I used to like WCW. Does that make me wrong on everything involving wrestling?
I too like the split idea, but I must agree with Loosie - how is WrestleMania affected?
While I have no doubts it'll be a fantastic show, what happens to the talent that gets pulled to the "wrong" side? Do they not perform at WM? I hightly doubt they'd do an "InVasion II" angle only two months after splitting (assuming the split happens after the Rumble), plus if I was a WWF performer, I'd be pretty ticked off about not being able to participate - so how do they keep everybody involved?
Dragging the Flair/Vince thing out until March, bringing it to a head at WM, and doing the split right afterwards would seem to make more sense, but we'll have to see what happens over these next few weeks.
I think JR has mentioned that they want to do WrestleMania like the World Series with the two sides meeting at one big championship event. That would make sense since they want to do the split in an American League/National League-type format.
We'll see. It seems to be every time I go to a news site, the WWF has changed their plans again....
Personally, I think the split is a great idea. There's way too much talent sitting on the sidelines (developmental, injured or ex-WCW) that needs a shot on TV, but with the current roster, they aren't going to get it. And you can't complain.. with proven draws like HHH, Rock, Austin, Jericho, Benoit, RVD, Booker, Undertaker, Kane etc etc all there, how many casual fans would want to watch a Leviathan or a Brock Lesnar?
A split is the only way the WWF can make the most of the people they have, and the only way to stop themselves being forced to cut loads of people and give XWF or whoever a huge talent influx.
However.. I do think they'll need a few more big names first. This is why Nash may be a good idea.. providing they can persuade him to retire quickly, and not stink up the joint for long. He'd bring either faction a little bit of extra starpower.. for a while, anyway.
Then the normal fans would realise he was shit, and stop cheering.
Ah, swearing is wonderful...
JayGo Has nothing to do with either ITVR, or the SWF. Honest.
And what will happen to the "Unified" Championship? Split them up and give the old WCW belt to the other side?
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This came to me after a few beers, so it could be waaaay too far-fetched. Heck, you may not even see this post -- I may decide while typing it that yup, it was too many beers. Then again, I don't like wasting typing, so most likely it'll stay.