Message-ID:  

http://www.ledger-enquirer.com/mld/ledgerenquirer/2004/05/07/living/8605063.htm

Fri, May. 07, 2004 

Ole still has talent for stirring up fans

TextBased on the e-mails we received after last week's column on Ole
Anderson's autobiography and the issues it raises, Ole (Al Rogowski)
should be thrilled. He has stirred up a major debate on wrestling in
Ole's era vs. today.

Throughout his heyday in the '70s and the early '80s, Anderson loved
nothing better than being in the middle of a verbal scrap.

Anderson, who never had any love lost for Vince McMahon Jr., contends
McMahon's national expansion of wrestling in the mid-1980s turned the
industry into a live comic book which blew open all of the game's
inside secrets.

Several e-mailers asked my take on Anderson's claims. I'll offer you a
synopsis:

• McMahon did kill wrestling as we knew it, as Anderson contends, but
if Vince hadn't, someone else probably would have. The explosion of
cable television and McMahon's ability to exploit it was the key.

• The umbrella which was the National Wrestling Alliance of
territorial promoters was good for its era because it maintained the
myth of a legitimate world champion. The title only changed hands
every few years which kept anticipation high in every region when the
world titleholder came to town.

• On the other hand, those promoters were not all peaches and cream
with each other. One of their weaknesses was exposed when they tried
to answer McMahon's first salvo in 1985 and produce a national TV show
of their own: they could not agree on which promoter's wrestlers would
be featured. The selfish divisions between them fractured what was
good for business.

• The old studio TV shows and the weekly arena cards were great for
fans because we believed the competitors were "our wrestlers." We had
closer access to them. Yet, as younger people saw the big coliseum TV
shows McMahon began to produce, the smaller, intimate shows began to
look pale and stale. Anderson could not stop that evolution.

The debate over Ole's era vs. McMahon's era has largely split among
generational lines. What is healthy is people are talking about what
they find most appealing about their favorite eras of wrestling. If
anything, that has made the book reflective of Ole's character -- make
'em talk, make 'em mad and make 'em spend money.


--- Internet Rex 2.29