Scott's Mailbag
Rants

Wins and Losses in the 80s

By Scott Keith on 18 January 2025


Scott,

Here's hoping this finds you and your family well.

I know we at the Blog love to make fun of Hulk Hogan or Mil Mascaras for being stingy with putting people over, and we can at least see Roddy Piper's logic behind when and where he jobbed, as out of date as it is to today's standards. But they were draws, and kind of earned the right to call their shots (same with, say, Andre the Giant).

But then you have some midcarders who basically never looked at the lights despite being upper-mid at best. (Looking at you, Jim Duggan and Bad News Brown.) So my question is two-fold:

1. What other people were, shall we say, overly concerned with win/loss record in that time?
2. Why didn't Vince or Dusty or Verne or someone go to them and say “Hey, look, I'm in charge and this is my story; play your part or you're fired”?
Duggan didn’t give a shit about losing at that point, it was Vince protecting him as someone who could draw decent B show numbers with top guys. Bad News Brown was also happy to do business when the time was right and he put Hogan and Savage over clean as a sheet. By the same token, he didn’t need WWF to make a living and if someone went to him with that attitude he’d just tell them off and go back to Japan. Also, in general, people skills are important. If Vince just swung his balls around and told people what to do all the time he wouldn’t have developed good relationships with all the guys he needed to be on his side. Part of his genius was taking credit for the good stuff and shifting blame for the bad stuff to his underlings.