Scott's Mailbag
Rants

Carpetbagger Vince

By Scott Keith on 8 February 2025

Hey Scott,

A. How much of Vince's success was genius vs. just being richer than the competition and in a stronger territory.

I mean this in 3 separate phases: 1) His initial drive to make the WWF national 2) Monday Night War and 3) Beyond.

B. Separate but similar question: Why didn't WCW go into NY in '96-98. They had a number of recognizable names in that area both from '80-'90s WWF and even some WCW names. Plus, they had Turner's money backing them.

There's a lot of multi-parts in there. I think Vince was a genius-level booker for most of the Hulkamania era and he had some real bangers like Rock N Wrestling, the Orndorff turn, the Rumbles, etc. Really it was just the steroid trials that burned him out for a few years and then he got motivated again with the Attitude Era. But after that, definitely it was just the inertia of having more money and being too big to fail.

As for WCW, there was a lot of politics involved in going there and trying to get a foot in the door, and WCW weren't the ones to be breaking through that. It's not just as simple as going “Oh, I think we'll start running New York now” and then booking shows. Vince probably would have started calling in favors and making sure state commissioners found “problems” with the licenses or whatever.
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