Hardtime #96: The Power Of One (ECW)
    Submitted by RIPbossman on Saturday, December 9, 2006 at 12:12 AM EST



    Hardtime #96: The Power Of One (ECW)

    I have made it to the semi finals of ECW 3. ECW (Extreme Column Writing) is a tournament that takes place in the LOP Columns Forum between columnists in the forum and columnists on the main page (participation is voluntary.) You and your opponent are given the same topic to write about, and when both people have posted their columns, people in the columns forum can vote on who they think wrote the better column.

    The topic I got for this round is “Can one man make a difference?”.

    If you have any feedback for this column, you may send it to david12345575@yahoo.com You might not get a response (but I've been pretty good about responding to most of my emails lately), but I do promise to read every piece of feedback that I get.

    Here’s the column I wrote for this round…

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    Throughout the modern history of professional wrestling, there have been many powerful wrestling figures who have unquestionably made an impact on the business. Ric Flair, Hulk Hogan, Stone Cold Steve Austin, and The Rock, among others, are usually credited with making a big difference in the course of wrestling history.

    The topic for my semi final match in ECW 3 is “Can one man make a difference?”. I feel this question can be interpreted in many different ways. On one hand, is this asking if one man can carry a company entirely on his back? For example, Hulk Hogan had a huge impact on wrestling in the 1980’s. But if everyone else on the roster consisted of only the preliminary wrestlers of that era, I doubt wrestling would have gotten as big as it did back then.

    You could also interpret it as asking if every man contributes to the product. You might not think that most men contribute that much to the product, but if you added the contributions of everyone together, that would amount to something. You can’t get something from nothing. So clearly, every wrestler must contribute something. But that’s obvious.

    So then, I do not interpret this question as asking if one man can make a difference all by himself, or if one man can contribute at least something to the product. That being considered, here is how I am interpreting the question: Can the presence of one man in a wrestling product have a very significant difference in the success or failure of a company? (Also keep in mind that I am only discussing the modern history of professional wrestling.) To that question, I would have to say probably not. I’m not saying its impossible, but it’s very difficult to do. I’ve never seen it happen, at least not in my opinion.

    The first reason as to why one man probably can’t make a significant difference by himself is because no matter how good a wrestler is, how he is booked will play a big part in how much of a difference and what kind of difference he will make in the product. Face it, you could have a wrestler with all the talent in the world on your roster, but if you’re not using him properly, he probably will not make much of a difference in your product.

    Take for example the movie “Rocky 5”. Sylvester Stallone. does an excellent acting job in this movie, as he did in the four previous Rocky movies. But why is it that the first four Rocky movies all grossed over 100 million dollars, and Rocky 5 grossed around only 40 million? (And if you’re thinking that it’s because people got tired of the whole Rocky series, I really doubt it, because even at 4 movies, people were still very into the series. One more movie shouldn’t make more than half the fan base drop off.)

    It’s because the writing for the movie is poor. The formula for success in the previous Rocky movies was Rocky being a boxer and being part of an under dog story. In Rocky 5, Rocky plays a trainer, and while Rocky does play the role of an under dog in a street fight at the end of the movie, the audience has no idea the fight will happen until the end of the movie. Rocky plays a trainer in this movie, and it does not revolve around Rocky being a boxer. It’s more difficult for an audience to get behind a manager rather than the actual person being managed. Sylvester Stallone’s acting is as good as ever in this movie: but when the writing of the movie is poor, there’s not much that can be done to help the movie on the performance side of things. (This may seem to contradict my argument, as Sylvester Stallone was the one who wrote Rocky 5, and thus one man actually would be able to make or break the movie. But since writing and performing are two different roles, I’m counting that as being done by two different people.)

    This is how professional wrestling works. No matter how good the performers of a product are, the amount of impact they will have will be determined largely in part to how they are booked. For example, if Hulk Hogan didn’t win the WWE World Title in his first match back in the company in 1984, would wrestling have been revolutionized the way it had been? Probably not. There would not have been enough momentum for Hogan to become as big of a star as he had become and help draw in many, many new fans to WWE.

    Look at Stone Cold Steve Austin. Austin had undoubtedly helped to draw in many fans in the late 90’s. However, if Austin hadn’t been booked not to submit to Bret Hart in their now famous Submission Match at Wrestlemania 13, he never would have gained as much momentum as he had received, and thus possibly would never had become such a huge star in the business. This is not to say that writing can do everything. If you have good writing and poor performers, you probably will not be able to have a very good product as well.

    The second reason why one single person can not make a significant difference is because no matter how good of a product you may have, if the advertising is not done right, the product probably will not bring in many new viewers. I know this is looking at things from a financial perspective and not in personal taste of the quality of the product, but the financial perspective of any business is hard to ignore. Tommy Dreamer said on “The Rise And Fall Of ECW” that “You can have the best product in the world. But if no one knows about it, you won’t be successful.” (Paraphrased.) This is very true.

    Look at the last ECW pay per view, December To Dismember. There were only two matches on the card that were advertised. With fans not knowing what to expect from this pay per view in terms of what matches they would see, the buy rate for this pay per view was not as high as it is for a Raw or Smackdown pay per view. Why pay for something when you have no reasonable hope that it will be good?

    Take a look at the two biggest storylines in professional wrestling of the last ten years. The N.W.O. storyline was the hottest thing in the business in 1996 and 1997. And while it was successful financially, it was not as successful as WWE’s Attitude Era, which was headlined by the Austin/McMahon feud. When the N.W.O. storyline started, not many people besides the fans that wrestling already had were exposed to it. When Austin/McMahon had started to take off, many people had been tuning in to WWE programming to see Mike Tyson’s participation in the product. I know this may be stretching things in terms of what you may define advertising to be, but it’s still the same concept of attracting outside viewers to watch a wrestling product.

    The same concept applies to the original ECW. When ECW was around, most people had heard of ECW, but didn’t know when it came on the air while it existed only in syndication. Whatever the reason may be, ECW simply did not (or could not…I’m not sure) advertise their product very well. They didn’t have low ratings because people didn’t like the product, because the “Rise and Fall of ECW” dvd sold very well when it was advertised on WWE programming. When ECW was aired on TNN, TNN did not advertise ECW well, and did not even release one news ad for them. And thus, it was one of the reasons that ECW always remained a distant third to the big two in terms of viewership.

    Some people think that the successes and failures of wrestling are very dependent on single individual people. It’s very reasonable to think like that, considering that the periods of large success can usually be highlighted by the prominence of a single wrestler. However, one person can not make much of a difference of their own. The right writing must be in place, as well as good advertising. It is for those reasons that I feel there is not so much power in the power of one.

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    If you have any feedback for this column, you may send it to david12345575@yahoo.com You might not get a response (but I've been pretty good about responding to most of my emails lately), but I do promise to read every piece of feedback that I get.




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