Why do we blame the champion?
By Scott Keith on 30 October 2018
Hey Scott,
Why do we blame the champion for business declining, and/or credit them for business soaring. I understand why to an extent, but isn't there a more nuanced approach to this argument?
For example, we blame the president when things go terribly, and praise him for when the economy soars. But, the truth is, there's an entire team, an economic advisor, defense departments with decades of experience, who are behind him, helping him. There can be external factors hurting him, too.
Take Vader in 1993 WCW. That era of WCW is pretty dreadful by most standards, but Vader as champion is one of the few high points. Is It fair to say he failed as champion when he may have been the only reason the company stayed afloat? He was one of the few reasons to watch, in my opinion.
I don't know, it just seems short sighted to say, "Business went down when XXX was champion, therefore he failed." Like, sure Diesel sucked as champion, but he's not the reason I stopped watching. I stopped because of the lame-ass gimmicks like Well Dunn and H.O.G. and Isaac Yankem and the boring Million Dollar Corporation storylines. Who could possibly be an effective draw in such a heatless climate like that?
Even Austin had McMahon to play off, Taker/Kane, DX, and a huge surge of wrestling fans coming back into the fold, plus the Monday night wars competition.
When we say "Business fell because Diesel was champion", that's because house show business immediately declined with him advertised as the headliner and there was a direct causation. It's actually been very easy to follow in wrestling history, because typically whoever is the champion will be the main person advertised and you can actually track how many people are paying to see them wrestle. In Diesel's case, the number started like, for example, where the WWE stock price was last week, and then quickly dropped to where the WWE stock price is this morning.
That being said, once it got into the TV ratings and WWE-branded era, things got more complex and it's really hard to say who's moving the needle when you have no idea what the card for the house show is going to be until you get there. These days it's more about how the WWE brand is doing in general when house shows are dropping. But probably still a little bit Kevin Nash's fault.