Is Vince McMahon Actually Good? | Explained | partsFUNknown - video Dailymotion

WrestleTalk

Sure, he built this whole thing, but is he good? Was The WWF Attitude Era Actually Good?: https://youtu.be/8EJ-BsiyKyE  He's the genius behind Hulk-A-Mania, Rock N Wrestling, WrestleMania and the entire WWE - but is Vince McMahon Actually Good? And what about the character of Mr. McMahon? Luke Owen finds out with the help of Sean Ross Sapp, Larson, and Alex, Queen of the Ring.  Sean Ross Sapp: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCS7fkAtgKoJAgoujvNrWIIA Alex, Queen of the Ring: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKjiYDoyBhpHbJQ8oiCDXgQ Larson- https://www.youtube.com/user/SteveAndLarson  SUBSCRIBE TO partsFUNknown: https://bit.ly/2J2Hl6q TWITTER: https://twitter.com/partsfunknown FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/partsfunknown/  Follow PartsFUNknown TWITTER: https://twitter.com/partsFUNknown FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/partsFUNknown  QuizzleMania: A Wrestling Comedy Quiz Show! On Apple Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/quizzlemania-a-wrestling-comedy-quiz-show/id1482419385  City British Wrestling: The Official Podcast Feed on Spotify https://open.spotify.com/episode/6RfWW29m4sk070YC03Kx5y  About PartsFunknown How Adam Would Book, No Rolls Barred, Explained. PFK makes wrestling EXTRA FUN. For brand partnerships, contact: dominic@playbookmedia.co.uk  #partsfunknown #wrestling #videoessay

Transcript

00:00 Final question for you guys, is that an unpopular wrestling opinion you've got?

00:05 Something that perhaps isn't shared by the majority of people that you sort of feel passionate about?

00:10 Vince McMahon is the greatest wrestler of all time.

00:13 [COUGHS]

00:17 I swear, he's one of the greatest wrestlers of all time.

00:20 Go watch any of his matches.

00:22 He has that chemical in his brain that Josh has,

00:26 where they refuse to not have the best match.

00:30 Like, if that 75-year-old man says,

00:35 "I'm going to light myself on fire and jump off of this building,"

00:39 he will do it.

00:42 And, find me one wrestler that had more heat than him.

00:47 Find me one wrestler that gets a bigger pop when their music hits, still, to this day.

00:53 When you hear that beginning of his song, "No chance! That's what you got!"

00:58 the building is blown up.

01:00 Vince McMahon, greatest wrestler of all time, should be on the Mount Rushmore of wrestling.

01:03 Huh.

01:05 Well, according to Ethan Page of Impact Wrestling,

01:08 Vince McMahon is one of the greatest wrestlers of all time

01:11 and should be on the Mount Rushmore of wrestling.

01:14 Josh Alexander and the other guys seem surprised, but really, should we be that surprised?

01:20 Like we talked about last week, the Mr. McMahon character is one of the best remembered of the Attitude Era.

01:25 His feud with Steve Austin is the stuff of legend,

01:28 the corporate faction with The Rock was incredible,

01:30 and really, he was the biggest heel in the company to draw a reaction.

01:34 His promo work was great, his facial reactions were perfect,

01:38 his selling was the right side of goofy.

01:41 One of the things that Shane and Stephanie never seemed to get, and what Vince did so well,

01:45 was he knew when to show his ass, both in the literal and figurative sense.

01:49 To get the babyface pop from the crowd.

01:52 People loved to see him get his comeuppance.

01:55 His matches, going by in-ring quality, aren't anything to really write home about.

02:00 Plenty of wrestlers who've been in the ring with him will tell you that he's as stiff as a teenager

02:04 who's just discovered Babestation, and he can't take a stunner to save his life.

02:09 But if you're just going by crowd reactions,

02:11 then surely it's academic to say that Vince McMahon was actually good.

02:15 But we find ourselves here asking the question,

02:18 is Vince McMahon actually good?

02:20 We can't however ignore the elephant in the room,

02:24 and that is that there are two sides to the Vince coin.

02:27 There's Vince McMahon the businessman, and Vince McMahon the wrestling man.

02:32 Plenty has been written about Vince McMahon being the greatest wrestling promoter of all time.

02:36 He's the genius behind the worldwide phenomenon of WrestleMania.

02:40 He's the genius behind rock and wrestling in Austin 316.

02:44 Raw's been on the air for 30,000 years.

02:47 He became a billionaire by selling out arenas and stadiums with fake fighting.

02:54 However, some of the things that are credited to Vince McMahon and his genius

02:58 can easily be disproved with a tiny bit of research.

03:03 Jim Crockett Promotions and Mid-South and quite a few others were running shows

03:07 that sold out 20,000 seat buildings,

03:09 long before Vince McMahon supposedly took wrestling out of the smoke-filled bingo halls.

03:15 I mean, his dad sold out Madison Square Garden before he did.

03:18 This idea that McMahon undercut the territory system by going to local TV networks

03:23 and offering his WWF product for free would be true

03:26 if Van Garnier hadn't done the exact same thing three years prior.

03:31 The only difference is that Garnier took the AWA to TV networks that didn't already have wrestling.

03:35 McMahon just took a more cutthroat approach.

03:38 McMahon didn't make wrestling mainstream with Hulkamania.

03:41 It was kind of already mainstream.

03:43 Millions of people tuned in to watch World of Sport here in the UK

03:46 and Georgia Championship Wrestling was airing nationwide and pulling in really good ratings.

03:51 A 1957 match between Ricky Dozan and Luthez pulled in 70 million viewers,

03:56 which is quite a lot more than the 33 million that tuned in for Hogan vs Andre on the main event.

04:03 While WWE will tell you that it is,

04:05 WrestleMania wasn't the first supercard on closed circuit television.

04:09 Starrcade came 18 months earlier.

04:11 The name WrestleMania wasn't even Vince's idea.

04:14 He wanted to call it the Colossal Tussle.

04:16 It was Howard Finkel that suggested WrestleMania based off the Beatlemania craze of the 60s.

04:21 Hogan was a star before Vince McMahon got his hands on him.

04:24 Bret Hart only got a main event run because of the steroid trial meant he had to push smaller guys.

04:29 Steve Austin, one of the biggest wrestling stars of all time,

04:32 would have been a mid-carder for life in WWF as the Ringmaster

04:36 if it hadn't been for the curtain call pulling plans for Triple H to win King of the Ring 96.

04:40 The Rock was a babyface getting booed out of the building before the heel turn,

04:44 and the heel turn was only needed because his babyface presentation was so bad.

04:50 John Cena was set to be fired because his babyface presentation fell flat on its ass,

04:55 and it was Stephanie McMahon that went to back for him.

04:57 Batista was also going to get fired before Triple H backed him.

05:00 And that's not even to mention his failed business attempts outside of wrestling.

05:04 Ico Pro, the WBF, WWF New York,

05:08 the XFL, twice.

05:11 WWE Studios has produced a lot of movies over the last 20 years,

05:15 but not really any of them have made any actual money.

05:18 And one of WWE's biggest money makers in recent years, that Fox deal for SmackDown,

05:24 Vince wasn't a part of those negotiations.

05:26 In fact, the thing that gets praised most about WWE at the moment is NXT,

05:30 and Vince has nothing to do with that.

05:32 That's a Triple H product, and has been since Vince McMahon ballsted up 10 years ago

05:36 trying to do a reality TV show. The reports are he doesn't even watch the product.

05:41 That's not to say that Vince McMahon is a failure, because clearly he isn't.

05:45 Despite the falling ratings of both Raw and SmackDown,

05:48 WWE is set to have the most profitable year ever in 2020.

05:53 The Saudi Arabia deal, while morally bankrupt,

05:56 has made more money for WWE than any WrestleMania in history.

06:01 Steve Austin might have been a happy accident,

06:03 but it was a happy accident that McMahon ran with.

06:06 He's had his failings for sure, but I don't think you can deny that

06:09 Vince McMahon is the greatest wrestling promoter of all time,

06:12 simply for the fact that he's made the most money.

06:16 He's had failed businesses, but like a lot of billionaires

06:19 who spend millions of dollars on things that don't work,

06:21 he'll just spend more millions of dollars on something else that probably won't work, because...

06:26 Yay capitalism!

06:28 But really the most damning thing to look at when it comes to

06:30 Vince McMahon business decisions are the Raw ratings,

06:34 and the numbers don't lie Vince, and they spell disaster for you at Science-A-Fice.

06:41 That works.

06:42 Right, okay.

06:50 Let's science this.

06:51 Oh, hold on, of course.

06:54 Okay, so we're going to look at the Raw after WrestleMania ratings for WWE.

07:00 Now, why the Raw after Mania?

07:03 It's typically the biggest show of the year, right?

07:04 Because WrestleMania is the biggest show,

07:06 therefore the Raw after WrestleMania is seen to be quite a big deal.

07:10 But one of the things we do have to cover before we go ahead is that

07:13 the way that ratings are looked at has changed over the last 20 years.

07:18 Back in 2000, which is the first period of time we're going to look at,

07:21 it was done on the rating.

07:23 It was sort of done on this Nielsen records thing that

07:26 a lot of people have now seen as a bit archaic,

07:28 whereas now, here in 2020, it's seen as sort of millions of people

07:32 actually watching the show, so the ratings are slightly different.

07:35 However, thankfully, there is a midpoint in 2010 where both things are counted.

07:40 So let's get started.

07:41 The Raw after WrestleMania 2000 scored a 6.44 rating.

07:48 Now, I have spoken to some people to try and get some clarification

07:51 on what this really means in the grand scheme of things,

07:53 but unfortunately, it's almost impossible to tell.

07:56 Not even Shawn knew.

07:58 And Shawn knows everything.

07:59 So let's jump ahead 10 years to the Raw after WrestleMania 2010,

08:07 which got a 3.76 rating, so that's down from the 6.44 10 years earlier,

08:13 with 5.53 million viewers.

08:17 That's really good.

08:18 5.53 million viewers tuned in to watch the Raw after the 2010 WrestleMania.

08:24 And the 2010 WrestleMania was really bad, you guys.

08:28 Really bad.

08:29 Where are we at now, the Raw after WrestleMania in 2020?

08:35 2.31 million viewers.

08:39 So we've gone from a 6.44 rating for the Raw after WrestleMania 2000

08:43 to a 3.76 rating in 2010 with 5.53 million viewers to 2.31 million.

08:51 They've run off half their audience.

08:54 But I know what you're thinking, comments, BigRuck42316.

08:57 I can see you're typing.

08:59 It's not fair to compare the Raw after WrestleMania 2020 viewing figures

09:05 because it's the pandemic era.

09:07 There weren't as many people that were really interested in watching those shows

09:10 because people didn't like the empty arena stuff, et cetera, et cetera.

09:13 And I do get that because we have seen over the last few months

09:16 that Raw ratings have, in particular, have sort of tumbled,

09:20 you know, during this pandemic era.

09:21 So let's go kind of one year earlier.

09:24 Let's shift it by one year.

09:26 Start with the Raw after WrestleMania 1999, which posted a 6.44 rating again.

09:32 I'm actually not sure that's right.

09:34 I think I might have read that down wrong.

09:35 Either way, it's like 6.54 or something like that.

09:37 Let me just double check.

09:40 Sorry, yes, 6.51 rating.

09:41 It's actually better than I initially put down.

09:44 So jumping forward 10 whole years, we get to the Raw after WrestleMania 2009.

09:50 And we have a 3.92 rating.

09:54 Let's put that there.

09:55 A 3.92 rating and 5.95 million viewers.

10:00 So actually, like, you know, the year after this was down,

10:03 5.6 million people were watching the Raw after WrestleMania 2009,

10:09 which is then quite staggering when you look at the Raw after WrestleMania 2019

10:14 to see it was 2.9 million viewers.

10:17 And that 2.9 million viewers now, given what we can see here

10:21 and we've seen over the last few weeks, this would be a huge win.

10:25 And it was only last year.

10:27 Just for [BLEEP] gigs, I looked at the Raw after WrestleMania in 2015,

10:32 and that got 5.1 million viewers.

10:34 So there's not been this gradual drop off.

10:36 There's just been a huge drop.

10:39 5.53 here in 2010.

10:41 5.1 five years later.

10:44 2.3 five years after that.

10:48 These numbers don't lie.

10:50 And again, just in case you might be arguing that you can't really

10:53 judge the Raw numbers at the moment in the 2020s because of the pandemic,

10:58 et cetera, et cetera, I did have a look at one 2020 number, which

11:02 was the Raw after Rumble 2020.

11:05 And it was 2.3 million viewers, almost identical to the Raw

11:10 after WrestleMania.

11:11 So really, what we're seeing here is--

11:15 and this is not like Dave Meltzer star ratings.

11:17 This is genuine scientific evidence.

11:19 This is actual numbers that you can quantify.

11:22 WWE and Vince McMahon has driven off half of their and his audience.

11:29 Scott Steiner was right.

11:30 These numbers don't lie.

11:34 So what caused the downturn?

11:36 Was it the creative decisions made by Vince McMahon,

11:39 not creating a new star since John Cena?

11:41 Or was it the business decision to permanently add a third hour

11:45 to Raw, which has been in place for the last eight years?

11:49 Now, the third hour of Raw, which was requested by USA Network,

11:53 was lucrative to the investors and McMahon himself.

11:56 But it stifled the creative process and has actively driven fans away.

12:00 So while in the short term, it was lovely for the bank balance,

12:03 it's not too healthy for long-term thinking.

12:06 Raw's creative team are tasked every single week

12:09 to come up with three hours of brand new content.

12:13 That's nine episodes of Friends without commercial breaks.

12:17 And I think I could tell you this for free,

12:19 but the writers of Friends didn't have Vince McMahon tear up

12:22 their scripts just before they started filming,

12:24 so he could rewrite them himself during tapings.

12:27 Peeling back the curtain on this show somewhat,

12:29 Oli Davis and Laurie Blake don't read my script while I'm writing it

12:33 and then tear it up and rewrite it themselves just before I record.

12:36 And that allows me to be quite creative,

12:39 like it allows me to film in a car park in Asda.

12:42 It allows me to say things like,

12:44 "Oli Davis is the best boss I've ever known.

12:46 I'm very lucky to..." Hang on a minute, that's not right.

12:48 So is Vince McMahon the businessman actually good?

12:52 He may be the most successful wrestling promoter of all time,

12:55 but his genius may not be quite as good

12:58 as WWE's rewritten history would have you believe.

13:01 He's also made a lot of bad choices along the way

13:04 and some detrimental choices that have really hurt the product.

13:07 Can you call a man who's driven away half of his audience

13:10 with millions more tuning out every single year a good businessman?

13:15 And I'll be honest, and I may get some heat for this in the comments,

13:18 but I struggle to back a man who still does businesses with Saudi Arabia

13:22 after the murder of Jamal Khashoggi just because they pay you well.

13:26 But then again, this is 2020 and that's just what business is now.

13:30 It's not about ethics, it's about the bottom line because...

13:32 Yay capitalism!

13:34 Is Vince McMahon actually good?

13:38 This is such a hard question to answer because undoubtedly,

13:46 as an on-screen character, Vince McMahon, Mr. McMahon,

13:49 is one of the greatest characters ever in wrestling

13:52 and one of the best performers too.

13:55 He's a diabolical genius.

13:57 The way that he transformed professional wrestling

14:00 into the sports entertainment that we all know and love today

14:04 by collaborating with MTV and creating Wrestlemania

14:08 and creating these moments,

14:10 whether it was the character of Vince McMahon

14:13 or when he was on commentary back in the 90s

14:16 and even down today with creating moments with all of the current superstars,

14:22 he knows how to do it.

14:25 He was largely responsible for the heights of professional wrestling

14:29 as we know it today,

14:30 but he's also largely responsible

14:33 for a lot of the low points of wrestling as we know it today.

14:37 He's responsible for the reason why it's not as exciting,

14:40 it's not as creative, it's not as cohesive or compelling or just good.

14:46 Vince is a man who has carried out his vision of what pro wrestling should be,

14:50 often with ruthless aggression,

14:55 and yet he's notorious for being extremely fickle

14:58 and changing his mind on a whim.

15:01 Some of his business practices have been head-scratching

15:03 and he seems to run the WWE fairly callously,

15:07 yet there are a lot of examples of him being extremely generous

15:11 to former and current talents.

15:13 As a businessman, I think his work over the last 15 years

15:17 is in danger of net outweighing all the good stuff he did beforehand.

15:22 The Saudi Arabia deal, moving Raw to three hours,

15:25 it's short-term thinking and ultimately it will backfire.

15:29 So, no.

15:31 But Ethan Pays there was talking about Vince McMahon the wrestler,

15:34 the Mr. McMahon character.

15:36 So, was Mr. McMahon actually good?

15:39 The character debuted after the Montreal Screwjob,

15:41 which was a total work according to Scott Hall.

15:44 He instantly became the blueprint of the Perfect Heel authority figure,

15:47 the total dick boss who sat in his ivory tower

15:50 while the working class men did all the work below them,

15:53 but didn't get the same level of pay.

15:55 Steve Austin proved to be his biggest rival,

15:57 a few that only got better when they brought in The Rock

16:00 as the corporate champion to go against the working class hero,

16:03 as well as the social misfit in mankind.

16:06 He had a doofus son in Shane McMahon,

16:08 a pair of bumbling buffoons in Patterson and Brisco,

16:11 one of his 80s products in Big Boss Man,

16:13 and a cage fighter brought in from another world in Ken Shamrock.

16:17 McMahon's character in the late 90s was magnificent.

16:20 And remarkably, it carried over into other time periods.

16:24 While I personally hated it with every fibre of my being,

16:27 the WWE fanbase lapped up his feud with cool dads

16:30 on a lad's holiday D-Generation X in the mid-2000s.

16:34 His battle of the billionaires between himself and Donald Trump

16:36 created a lot of box office receipts and ticket sales for WrestleMania XXIII.

16:41 He had some messy moments along the way,

16:43 with the illegitimate son angle being foiled by Ken Kennedy's injury

16:47 and incompetent writing.

16:49 McMahon's millions exposed that Vince was now a granddad

16:51 who needed reading glasses and didn't know how phones work.

16:55 And the limo explosion angle might have seemed silly to some,

16:58 but Donald Trump thought it was so real,

16:59 he called WWE to make sure that Vince was OK.

17:03 And even after all that,

17:05 an announced Vince McMahon appearance on TV

17:07 would always and always pop a rating.

17:11 His last big feud was with Bret Hart,

17:13 the man he screwed back at Survivor Series 97

17:15 and birthed the Mr. McMahon character,

17:17 which led to their disastrous WrestleMania XXVI match

17:21 that's all sorts of awful.

17:23 He tried to reignite the Austin magic with Roman Reigns,

17:25 but it just didn't work the same way.

17:27 And since then, he's only made sporadic appearances

17:30 for those aforementioned ratings pops when USA Network get a bit upset.

17:34 But when Mr. McMahon was hot, there were none hotter.

17:38 The reaction to his WrestleMania X-7 match against Shane McMahon,

17:41 which apparently is Adam Blampied's favorite Attitude Era match of all time,

17:46 is as loud, if not louder, than The Rock vs. Austin

17:50 in the main event for the WWF Championship.

17:53 That's insane.

17:55 And the same can be said for his match against Hogan at WrestleMania 19.

17:59 But were those matches any good?

18:03 Let's science this up.

18:05 (MUSIC)

18:09 Hey, it's time for everyone's favorite part of the show

18:12 where I look at Dave Meltzer-style ratings

18:13 and try and use them as actual genuine evidence.

18:15 They're subjective.

18:17 Right, so Vince McMahon, no chance in hell.

18:21 For clarity here, what I've done is I've picked four Vince McMahon matches

18:24 basically at random, but also chose what his biggest matches are.

18:29 And I've kind of done the same for the people that I'm comparing him to.

18:32 So let's look at Vince McMahon's biggest match,

18:34 his first huge match that he had,

18:36 St. Valentine's Day Massacre 1999

18:40 against Stone Cold Steve Austin, two and three quarter stars.

18:44 That's a pretty solid first match.

18:46 Bear in mind that Vince hasn't really done anything up until this point.

18:49 Two and three quarter stars with the biggest star in the company.

18:51 It's the match where he takes that awful bump off the cell

18:54 and basically breaks his back and knocks the table.

18:58 WrestleMania X-7 vs. Shane McMahon,

19:01 Adam Blampied's favourite WrestleMania match of all time, I believe.

19:05 Three stars for his match with Shane McMahon,

19:07 which I think is criminally underrated.

19:10 Same again for the big racist hot dog vs. Hulk Hogan,

19:14 WrestleMania XIX, three stars for that match as well,

19:18 featuring a lovely cameo from Rowdy Roddy Piper.

19:22 And he has a pipe, pipe, Piper.

19:25 And then lastly, a match that I absolutely f***ing hate.

19:28 I hate this match. I hate it with every fibre of my being.

19:31 I hate everything that it stands for vs. D-Generation X

19:34 inside Hell in a Cell, where he teamed with Shane

19:36 and the bloody Big Show, three and a half stars.

19:39 So, granted he is getting himself in the ring here

19:42 with the biggest, maybe not Shane,

19:44 but the biggest stars that WWE have,

19:46 Steve Austin, Hulk Hogan, D-Generation X and the Big Show.

19:50 And the star ratings sort of reflect that,

19:53 but you can kind of see a pattern here.

19:56 That's consistency.

19:58 That is a consistent star rating of three stars.

20:03 That's great.

20:05 So for fun, I thought I would compare him to his son, Shane,

20:10 see how Shane gets on.

20:11 Now Shane's had more matches than Vince.

20:12 So these ones I really did sort of pick at random,

20:14 but again, kind of picked the popular ones,

20:16 the ones that you would expect to pick, right?

20:18 I've just noticed you can see this piece over here

20:21 as to mark for this camera.

20:24 So I know where the edge of my frame is.

20:26 Ignore that piece.

20:27 It's for WrestleMania X-7 from the last video I did.

20:29 Anyway, first match, WrestleMania XIV versus X-Punk.

20:34 Two and three quarter stars.

20:36 I believe that was for the European title.

20:38 Anyway, that's one of the better matches on WrestleMania XIV

20:40 as we covered it in the last video.

20:42 So here comes the sweat.

20:43 Here comes him getting a concussion.

20:45 Four stars for his excellent, excellent match

20:49 with Kurt Angle at King of the Ring 2001.

20:51 That is a brilliant match.

20:53 He hears voices in his head

20:54 and he sees those punches missing him by a mile

20:57 versus Randy Orton, no way out, 2008.

20:59 Three and a half stars there for Shane O'Mac.

21:03 And lastly, I couldn't, I possibly couldn't

21:08 look at Shane McMahon's star ratings record

21:12 without picking what is easily

21:15 the greatest wrestling match he's ever had

21:18 versus The Miz at WrestleMania with MizDad.

21:23 Sorry, I actually put too much effort into that.

21:25 With MizDad.

21:26 What did Dave Meltzer give it?

21:28 One and three quarter stars.

21:29 (beep)

21:30 Meltzer, one and three quarter stars.

21:33 Are you out of your (beep) mind?

21:35 That match was amazing.

21:36 It was the best match of the night.

21:38 I love you, Dave.

21:40 And this is, I found this quite staggering actually

21:42 while I was doing this.

21:43 'Cause again, like these are his most popular matches,

21:46 but they're also, I did kind of pick them around.

21:48 There are loads of matches

21:49 that I could have picked versus Kevin Owens.

21:51 There's loads of matches I could have picked,

21:52 but I picked these kind of at random.

21:54 Three star average for Shane McMahon.

21:58 Exactly the same, that's very good consistency again.

22:02 So I thought, okay, right,

22:03 or maybe it's just an anomaly

22:05 that Vince and Shane are pretty good in ring

22:08 and can tell some decent stories in ring.

22:10 So let's look at Stephanie McMahon and the Queen down.

22:15 Should I put an E on the end?

22:16 'Cause I'm an idiot.

22:18 So No Way Out 2001 versus Trish Stratus.

22:21 I think this is Stephanie's first pay-per-view match.

22:23 Two and a quarter stars there

22:25 versus one of the greatest of all times

22:26 we discussed in the Charlotte video.

22:29 In the words of Randy Adidatson,

22:31 can you believe it?

22:32 They put this on pay-per-view.

22:35 Stephanie McMahon versus Vincent Kennedy McMahon

22:38 from No Way Out 2003, two and three quarter stars.

22:42 It's not bad, is it?

22:43 For versus old Vince with his,

22:45 again, look at this consistency for Vince.

22:47 God, you love to see it, it's impressive, right?

22:50 Remode!

22:51 Two and a half stars for their SummerSlam 2014 match

22:57 with the Nikki Bella heel turn that made zero sense

23:01 and was forgotten about within a couple of weeks

23:04 versus Ronda Rousey and Kurt Angle at WrestleMania 34,

23:07 four and a quarter stars there.

23:10 Now, obviously we can't put all of that onto Stephanie

23:12 because there's Triple H, Kurt Angle,

23:14 and Ronda Rousey in that match,

23:15 but still, Stephanie was really good in that match.

23:18 Like, let's give the devil a do.

23:20 To again quote Randy Adidatson,

23:23 can you believe it?

23:25 Three stars.

23:27 It's a three star average.

23:28 Look at this McMahon consistency.

23:32 Oh, it's beautiful.

23:34 Three, three, three.

23:37 Great stuff, absolutely brilliant.

23:40 So, perhaps maybe looking at a McMahon is unfair

23:44 when asking is Vince McMahon actually good?

23:46 Because it turns out the McMahon family

23:48 appears to be actually good.

23:50 So, let's look at the other classic heel authority figure

23:54 from Vince McMahon's golden period of time.

23:56 Let's look at Adam Blampied's dad.

24:00 He's back!

24:01 Better never abyss off!

24:06 From Starrcade 1997 versus Larry Zbysko.

24:11 Quarter of a star.

24:13 Quarter of a star.

24:20 Oh, Eric.

24:24 Doesn't get much better, I'm afraid.

24:25 Road Wild 1998, where he teamed with Hulk Hogan

24:28 to take on DDP and Jay Leno at Road Wild '98.

24:32 Star and a quarter.

24:34 Starrcade '98, he's in the ring,

24:36 I mean, he's in the ring with Larry Zbysko here,

24:37 but he's in the ring with Ric Flair.

24:40 Ric Flair!

24:42 In Starrcade 1998, two stars.

24:45 For a match with Ric Flair,

24:47 maybe we should look at his WWE run, right?

24:50 Where he faced Steve Austin after Vince McMahon

24:53 got two and three quarters out of him.

24:56 Eric Bischoff managed two and a quarter

24:59 at No Way Out 2003.

25:00 So, you can't argue with that consistency.

25:03 It is consistently pretty poor.

25:06 That does give him an average star basis

25:08 of one and a half stars for Eric Bischoff,

25:11 not as good as the McMahons.

25:13 I know what you're thinking, Big Rook 42316.

25:17 I know what you're thinking.

25:18 You're thinking to yourself,

25:20 where's the other classic heel authority figure?

25:23 Where's the other heel authority figure

25:24 that ranks amongst the greatest, like Vince McMahon?

25:29 Where is John Laurinaitis

25:32 and People Power?

25:33 Well, People Power only really had one big pay-per-view match

25:37 but it was against the biggest star in the company,

25:41 who wasn't the WWE champion, it was CM Punk, of course.

25:44 He had a match against John Cena over the limit 2012,

25:47 which scored from Dave Meltzer, a big old dud.

25:50 If you've never read The Observer before,

25:52 dud is nil-poi, that is zero.

25:54 Big fat zilch, absolutely nothing, nada.

25:57 So, what have we learned here?

25:59 What have we learned?

26:01 We've learned that I use old pieces of paper

26:04 to be my edge of frame,

26:06 but we've also learned that Vince McMahon

26:08 has been consistently good in-ring throughout his run.

26:11 Three stars, you can't buy that level of consistency.

26:15 And so has Shane, and so has Stephanie,

26:18 and in a weird way, so has Bischoff.

26:21 I find this interesting because you can see here

26:24 that it's not all about the in-ring work

26:26 because Vince and Stephanie

26:28 aren't the greatest in-ring performers,

26:30 but they know how to tell a story,

26:32 and they know how to get a crowd invested.

26:34 And I think that's why Vince McMahon

26:35 has got this very good three-star rating.

26:39 Using this very scientific evidence,

26:42 subjective stars,

26:44 Vince McMahon is actually good.

26:47 Vince knows how to get a crowd to do what he wants.

26:52 He knows how to make them react to things.

26:54 That's not something all wrestlers can do.

26:57 Like Ethan Page said at the top of this episode,

27:00 Vince McMahon might be one of the best wrestlers of all time.

27:04 However, when I put up the poll on Twitter,

27:06 it seemed that people focused not on Vince McMahon

27:08 as a businessman or as a wrestler,

27:10 but as a creative mind for the wrestling business.

27:14 For the first time since launching this series,

27:16 it was three to one votes for no.

27:19 And the replies tell a story.

27:21 - In terms of creativity, no.

27:24 He's out of touch with that.

27:26 - He's fallen out of touch in wrestling,

27:27 not pushing stars like Ricochet and Cedric Alexander.

27:30 - He was the man behind many, many signings

27:33 of major talents.

27:35 He gave us Mania.

27:36 However, I think his age has made him worse.

27:39 And he's lost his game.

27:40 - Good?

27:41 Yes.

27:43 Out of touch?

27:44 Yes.

27:46 - He's out of touch nowadays,

27:48 while he used to be good in the boom period of wrestling.

27:51 - He was good,

27:52 but over time I think he's become stuck in the past.

27:55 Time has moved on, but he hasn't moved with it.

27:58 - Imo, the bad that Vince is responsible for,

28:00 both directly and indirectly,

28:02 far outweighs the good he's done by that same metric.

28:05 So yeah, I'm clicking no.

28:07 - Over the last few years of working with WrestleTalk

28:09 and by extension, partsFUNknown,

28:11 I have seen a very common reply in YouTube comments.

28:15 Vince needs to retire, or words to that effect.

28:18 If we have a news video about a bad business decision,

28:21 Vince must retire.

28:22 If there's a bad episode of Raw, Vince must retire.

28:25 If he's not pushing a wrestler that we really like,

28:28 Vince must retire.

28:30 But there's good reason for that comment.

28:33 Vince McMahon is the be-all and end-all of WWE.

28:38 We spoke earlier about Vince McMahon

28:39 often showing up to Raw just before it goes on air

28:42 and tearing up the script so he can rewrite it himself.

28:44 And pretty much every wrestler that leaves WWE

28:47 does a podcast where they talk about

28:49 Vince McMahon's wacky antics backstage.

28:52 Jon Moxley's Talk is Jericho podcast

28:53 was a blistering takedown of Vince McMahon

28:56 as a creative force that birthed the

28:58 it's such good (beep) mean.

29:00 Brian Myers on Impact Wrestling recently said

29:02 that it disgusts him that all major decisions

29:05 in this business are made by a 70-year-old man

29:07 who is out of touch.

29:09 According to Aiden English, Vince McMahon thought

29:11 Rusev Day was us fans taking the mic out of Rusev

29:16 and not chanting for him as a babyface.

29:18 Like, that's insane.

29:20 Matt Hardy on his Talk is Jericho podcast

29:23 said that Vince McMahon basically admitted to him

29:26 that he may be out of touch if people like

29:28 the Broken Hardy gimmick and well,

29:31 people really liked the Broken Hardy gimmick.

29:33 I got some heat for saying that it was good

29:35 because I didn't say it was great.

29:37 And that idea is backed up with scientific evidence.

29:40 If you think star ratings are science,

29:43 you can't say that the creative in WWE is okay

29:45 and the company is on a roll

29:47 if the audience have switched off.

29:49 The decision to build the entire company

29:51 around one star in John Cena has not benefited them.

29:55 Roman Reigns is great, but he's not the guy.

29:58 But there are plenty of guys that could be

30:00 the guy on the roster.

30:02 It could have been Daniel Bryan

30:04 who won the Royal Rumble in 2015,

30:06 which is what we the fans were asking for,

30:09 but they went with Roman Reigns

30:11 because that's what Vince wanted to do.

30:13 And if you spend long enough telling the audience

30:15 that your opinion doesn't matter,

30:18 eventually they will switch off the product

30:20 and go do something else.

30:22 To put perspective around this,

30:24 Jinder Mahal was WWE Champion

30:26 when they brought up Shinsuke Nakamura from NXT.

30:28 They had to push Nakamura into a title program

30:31 because he was over,

30:32 but Jinder couldn't lose because of business deals in India.

30:36 So Nakamura lost, never got his heat back,

30:38 and is now just another guy on the roster.

30:41 And to make matters worse,

30:43 the deals with India didn't pan out

30:44 and Jinder dropped the title to AJ Styles.

30:47 WWE has Shinsuke Nakamura on their roster

30:51 and he doesn't feel special.

30:54 And that can be said for a lot of guys.

30:56 It's stunning to look at both the rosters

30:58 of Raw and SmackDown and see how many top level talent

31:01 don't feel special.

31:03 All because Vince's booking hasn't moved on since 1985.

31:07 And as a quick reminder to those at the back,

31:09 that was 35 years ago.

31:12 Really, my feelings on Vince McMahon

31:14 are summed up in this tweet.

31:16 He was good, but times change and he hasn't.

31:20 So yeah, I don't think Vince McMahon is actually good

31:24 as a wrestling creative mind.

31:26 Certainly not in 2020.

31:27 And I don't think he is actually good

31:29 as a businessman again in 2020.

31:32 He might have been in some cases,

31:34 and I'm sure you can make some arguments

31:35 about that in the comments,

31:36 but if you've driven off two thirds of your audience,

31:40 that can only last so long.

31:43 But I do have to agree with Ethan Page

31:45 that Vince McMahon might be one of the best wrestlers

31:48 of all time.

31:49 As an in-ring talent and character, yeah,

31:52 I do think Mr. McMahon is actually good.

31:55 And if anything, I think Mr. McMahon is actually great.

31:59 Not my microphone there, sorry.

32:02 My favorite Vince McMahon moment probably isn't,

32:08 that doesn't really count,

32:10 because it's not like a character thing or an angle.

32:12 It's the unplanned bit when he runs down

32:15 for the Royal Rumble finish between Cena and Batista,

32:18 which was botched, that they both

32:20 spectacularly eliminated themselves at the same time.

32:23 And he's walking down there, both his quads tear,

32:26 as he gets in the ring, oh my God, it looks so painful.

32:28 And he just sits there fuming like a toddler,

32:32 like an angry toddler.

32:34 - When his face came up over the ring apron

32:37 in his WrestleMania match with Hulk Hogan,

32:39 he had the blood streaming down his face

32:41 and just that look, man.

32:45 Facial expressions were such a big integral part

32:48 of why Mr. McMahon was actually good.

32:51 - His story with Mick Foley, I don't know,

32:53 was truly kind of like the heart of that particular period.

32:57 Their chemistry was fantastic.

32:59 It solidified Mick Foley as a main eventer

33:04 after paying his dues for a long time.

33:07 It gave us that really,

33:09 granted I haven't seen it in 20 years,

33:10 so it might be awful now, segment in the hospital,

33:13 which saw the debut of Mr. Sacco,

33:16 stone cold beating up Vince with a bedpan.

Is Vince McMahon Actually Good? | Explained | partsFUNknown

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