Quoted By:
>So, I mean, when you're looking at Roman’s run—and again, not saying it’s exactly comparable because it’s obviously a completely different time period, different media landscape, different expectations creatively—but in terms of how protected he’s been, you really have to go back to someone like Bruno, or maybe even Hogan in the mid-‘80s, although Hogan was working a very different schedule, and even that comparison falls apart a bit because of how the territory system worked back then versus the modern TV-first ecosystem.
>But what’s interesting is, and not a lot of people bring this up, is if you go back to Kevin Nash in the summer of 1992, right before he jumped to WWF—this is still WCW, still doing the Vinnie Vegas gimmick—they hadn’t figured him out yet, but the potential was there. I mean, he wasn’t positioned like a top guy at all, and they were using him more for personality than workrate, which, again, if you’re looking at where the business was then, that wasn’t unusual. You had guys getting over more for aura than in-ring. And that summer, they kind of missed it with him. You could argue that’s one of those “sliding doors” moments in WCW history where if they had seen what Vince saw—or maybe if Dusty had still been booking—things could’ve turned out differently.
>And I think there’s something to be said about that in relation to how WWE now develops stars. Like, they didn’t pull the trigger on Roman until way after the fans had turned, but they stuck with it, and now you’re seeing the payoff.
>Anyway, different eras, but the long-term booking parallels are there if you look close.
Is Meltzer right?
