Thought of the Day: The WWF Was SLOW
I got to thinking about the amount of title reigns in various companies today and did some checking.Ring of Honor has been around for over 11 years now and Jay Briscoe is the 18th world champion. There has been one two time champion (Austin Aries) in the history of the title. Here’s the interesting part: the WWF Title had its first two time champion after ten years, it’s second two time champion after 26 years, and it’s first three time champion after 28 years.
Think about that for a minute when you hear Cole talking about Orton and Cena and HHH having like 40 world title reigns between them. They’ve done that in less than 15 years combined. The 40th WWF Title reign took 35 years to reach in 1998. See why old fans get annoyed at how fast the title changes hands in modern times?
By 89 and 90 no he didn’t as much but syndicated TV was rapidly dying off. They lost I believe three TV shows in 1986 alone.
There were stil 5 hours of syndicated programming into the 90’s.
Wrestling Challenge, Superstars, All American on USA Sundays, and Prime Time Wrestling, I live in South Dakota and I had that much.
He wrestled more than I though early but guys just didn’t wrestle that often back then. He did interviews all the time and was on the programming but he didn’t wrestle. Guys now wrestle more on TV in a month than Hogan did in a year back then. Add in the fact that no one ever went over clean and it was just such a different time. And after it all I was agreeing with your initial point, wrestling used to be really slow moving, Santana and Martel feuded forever.
In 86 there were even more shows.
Other than sat night main event he wrestled once on superstar in 88. Against Boris Zhukov. Maybe he wrestled on tv more from 85 87. But from that point forward he did not wrestle much on tv. Especially when compared to today top stars. What Hogan matches have you reviewed from superstar, wrestling challenge, all American wrestling, or prime time wrestling? Not very many. These shows were on once a week and hogan sure as hell wasnt wrestling on them. He was on sat. night main event but those became pretty rare events.
1984 – 15 syndicated TV appearances, plus another 8 that I reviewed on VHS/local TV shows
1985 – 8 syndicated TV appearances, plus 4 SNME, plus 6 VHS/local TV shows
1986 – 7 syndicated TV appearances, plus 4 SNME, plus 7 VHS/local TV shows
1987 – You’re much more correct here as he only wrestled 3 syndicated TV matches, plus at least 3 SNME plus 5 VHS/local TV shows.
This is all not counting interview segments which are too high to count. The point is, Hogan wrestled A LOT on TV that people don’t remember. I, being a person with no life and far beyond a sane knowledge of wrestling, have seen most of these matches.
I will look at the years after this but local shows do not count. They are seen by a very small percentage of the population.
Go to TheHistoryOfWWE.com Bud,awesome Site.
These are the dates they took place, not necessarily aired
1/24/89 Hulk Hogan beat Big BossMan by countout
02/03/89 Mega Powers vs. Twin Towers, Mega Powers explode
Holy shit Hogan wrestled the Big Boss Man in every town in America, twice.
4/25/89 SNME Hulk beat Boss Man in a steel cage
7/18/89 Beat the Honk Tonk Man on SNME
09/21/89 Beat Dibiase on SNME
01/03/90 Hogan and Warrior beat Perfect and Genius
02/14/90 Hogan beat Dino Bravo wrestling challenge
04/23/90 Hogan beat Perfect SNME
09.18/90 Hogan and Tugboat beat Rhythym and Blues
03/11/91 Hogan beat Gen. Adnan
04/15/91 Hogan in a Battle royal
07/29/91 Hogan beat Slaughter by DQ
01/27/92 SNME Hogan and Sid beat Flair and Taker via DQ
Almost all of those are SNME. I may be missing a few but not very many. Like I said I start 89-90. He very rarely wrestled on TV in these years. He did wrestle at almost every show but not on TV. Plus I was 6 so I didn’t get to watch when SNME too often.
I remember when I first started watching when Ultimate Warrior was WWF Champion. Id flip on Superstars,Challenge,or All-American to see him the most but Id never see him hardly and wonder why.
That’s what I remember. But kb tells me I’m wrong, they were on tv all the time apparently.
If anything, reigns need to be shorter sometimes these days. Because you have old school fans, we never get a short reign which I think would help. There’s this feeling that after a title change, a guy can’t lose the title in his first defense because “he just won it so it’s too soon”. If he did lose it, it brings and air of unpredictability that the title sorely needs. I say mix in the long and the short so you never know when a title change might occur.
Ok, did I do something to your mom or something, just kind of a dick. The point was that he very, very rarely wrestled on television. Which is true.
Hardly. He wrestled on TV more frequently than people remember.
The reigns are definitely too short these days but the way wrestling is, there’s no way someone holding the belt for 2-3 years or longer could work anymore.
To be fair though wrestling has completely changed since the early days of the WWE. I started watching in 1989, now even back in those days wrestlers of any value rarely wrestled each other. Even when they did it was often a DQ or a countout. That is including the big four events. Often feuds were built for months and months just so they could have blowoff matches all over the country at house shows while those of us who were only television viewers watched Greg Valentine wrestle Saba Simba in the big match of the week. If they tried to run their product today like they did back then they would have a hard time keeping an audience. Sure champions defended their titles often back in the day but they were rarely heavy hyped television and PPV matches. The single and only goal in those days was to sell tickets, this continued into the Hogan era as he had numerous lengthy title reigns so they could sell out arenas all over the country. Now don’t get me wrong I enjoyed the wrestling of my youth but my mind was so blown when Monday Night Raw started airing three matchups every Monday between to name competitors. WWF was slow back in the day but I don’t necessarily think that was a positive thing. Think of how much more wrestlers are on TV now, how much more often they perform on live, or taped, television. How many more meaningful matches that they have on a month by month basis on a forum that every wrestling fan can see. Other than Saturday Night’s Main Event, how many TV matches do you remember Hogan having. I honestly cannot think of one off the top of my head.
Several. I’ve reviewed quite a few of them.
Speaking of titles…We get a HISTORIC Champion vs Champion match tonighht becuase….its July?