For this week’s column I want to do a more traditional historical piece on the power hierarchy of the WWF(E). While Vince McMahon has always maintained overall creative control of his product, there has generally been a constantly changing pattern of creative staff and booking team members.

What I want to do here is write a potted history (in no way exhaustive) of these different creative eras from 1995 to the present day, encompassing memorable themes, matches, and angles, as well as highlighting the actual wrestlers who were mainly featured by each regime. I’m starting in 1995, as this was just after McMahon’s acquittal from the long running steroid trials, which culminated in the summer of 1994.

First on my list was the unusual at the time choice of the independently minded ‘Cowboy’ Bill Watts.

Watts had been the creative genius behind the tremendously (at least during the mid 1980’s) successful regional promotion of the UWF. Watts would later go on to try to save money as WCW Vice-President, and while his ideas on wrestling already seemed slightly dated i.e. the ban of moves off the top rope, his 1992 run produced some of the most consistently entertaining TV and PPV run of all time. Fast forward to 1995 and Watts enjoyed a largely forgotten Summer run during three months of one of WWF’s worst ever years.

Watt’s booking reign brought many of his characteristic booking trademarks to the WWF, even if it was only for a relatively short period. Monster black heel Mabel was pushed to the top in a typical move, the fact that he couldn’t wrestle a lick was not important, as Watts had previously pushed the almost as limited Junkyard Dog in a big time babyface role back in the UWF.

Meanwhile episodes of RAW from the September/October 1995 period were much better than the norm, with the Yokozuna & Owen Hart & British Bulldog b Diesel & Shawn Michaels & The Undertaker match from the October 9th RAW in particular (with subsequent awesome beatdown of the faces by Dean Douglas and King Mabel) being totally reminiscent of the almost gang warfare-like era with the Freebirds against everyone in the UWF. Unfortunately Watts felt fettered by McMahon’s close control over his project, and would leave amicably before the end of the year.

While Watts’ reign as booker was too short to mean anything in the long run, the television that was produced during his tenure does hold up much better than other elements from the 1994-95 time period; one can only imagine what he could have achieved if circumstances had been different.

Jim Cornette rose to greater prominence as a booker in the WWF following Watt’s departure. On the closure of his own Smokey Mountain Wrestling promotion in November 1995, Cornette began to increase is backstage role beyond the purely onscreen managerial part that he had played, alongside guys like Yokozuna and the Heavenly Bodies since around 1993. Cornette’s passion for the business has never been in question.

But just the fact that his old school views of wrestling had already caused his business to tank, should have put McMahon off from putting too much power in his hands. Cornette’s main tenure as a booking force, from 1996- early 1997, saw WWF programming generally stagnated, especially compared to the cutting edge stuff brought along by WCW with the whole New World Order angle. Stand out WWE material during his period often came from wrestler’s who had some sort of creative control over their programmes, and Cornette’s run came to a crashing end in early 1997, when a RAW TV show headlined by Ahmed Johnson against Crush proved to be a disaster both creatively and ratings-wise.

In contrast to the previous two cases, the next notable booker, Vince Russo, had no experience in any kind of on screen role in wrestling, nor was he a many year veteran of the sport. However, this almost outsider-like status helped propel the WWF to some if its greatest ever financial and creative successes.

Whereas the WWF had previously been seen as the more conservative of the two major wrestling promotions, especially when looked at in comparison to the afterforementioned N.W.O, they now became the innovators of ‘crash tv’, a product that was closer to the Jerry Springer Show than traditional wrestling in many ways.

Many of the 1990s generation of fans fondest memories of the WWF are from the Rock/Austin/Mankind/Undertaker led Russo booking run. These include Mick Foley’s multiple personalities and rise to true babyface main event stardom, the whole Austin vs. McMahon saga, and the evolution of the rock from despised overpushed babyface to ultra cool corporate champion.

At the time many gave credit just to Russo for this huge turn around, but sadly this reputation would be exposed as fraudulent to a great degree on Russo’s departure from the WWF, where his unfettered ‘creativity’ would flush an already ailing WCW straight down the toilet.

Chris Kreski was the most significant writer in the void left immediately following Russo’s departure in the latter part of 1999. Kreski’s writing would continue WWF’s hot streak throughout most of 2000, proving that the Federation could continue to at least as successful as they had been with Russo – ironically this seemed especially apparent alongside the rapidly bombing Russo-dominated WCW.

Kreski’s booking run was notable for the first elevations of Chris Benoit and Chris Jericho into the WWF main event scene, as well the solidification of HHH, with an incredible run of PPV main events, as the backbone of WWF’s top line worker’s during another tremendously successful year. However the very highlight of Kreski’s run, the genre convention busting saga of HHH, Kurt Angle and Stephanie McMahon, would also prove to be his last, as Kreski left shortly before its conclusion.

One of the components of this angle, Stephanie McMahon, proved to be his backstage replacement, and in a poor omen for things to come, blew the angle off in a spectacularly disappointing fashion, with nothing really being resolved.

From late 2000 through most of 2001, the McMahon’s, with Stephanie being especially powerful, were the driving force behind WWF’s creative direction. While Wrestlemania XVII was one of the most successful PPV’s financially and creatively for the WWF ever, things soon started to go down hill afterwards.

WWF’s purchase of long-time rival WCW was a dream scenario for man viewers, with most thinking that the buy out would result in months, and possibly years of previously impossible scenarios. What happened though, was a rushed and creatively bankrupt scenario, where essentially the whole of the WCW roster was quickly and systematically destroyed. The fact that no single WCW or ECW wrestler in this angle is still employed on their original contract today shows how well it turned out in the long run for those involved’s careers.

2002 saw the ideas bereft creative team bring back aging legends Hulk Hogan, Kevin Nash and Scott Hall for yet another rerun of the N.W.O angle that had already been driven into the ground in WCW.

While initially provoking interest through nostalgia in the build up to Wrestlemania XVIII, this kind of angle had no long term legs, and as such was doomed to falter out quickly without drastic alterations, which it inevitably did only a few months after its initial conception. Perhaps, this failure led to the booking change that continues to the present day – the televised brand split, and backstage break up of the writing teams to RAW and Smackdown specific units.

From mid 2002 onwards, the divide was pretty clear, and good things seemed to result. While RAW was still dominated by McMahon idealism, and comic book flunkey ‘head’ writer Brian Gerwitz, the promotion of former ECW (and yet another failed promoter turned WWE booker ) Paul Heyman to lead scribe of the Blue Brand, reaped dividends with the pushing of young fresh wrestlers that culminated in the fondly remembered ‘Smackdown Six’ era – where Heyman proved that if you just put good wrestlers in the ring together, they would have good matches, and more people would watch as a result.

One thing that Heyman isn’t though, is easy to get along with, especially in the eyes of the power-mad McMahons, and after one to many confrontations with Stephanie (there she is again!), Heyman was swiftly demoted to just an onscreen character.

Since 2003, WWE has continued on in roughly the same manner. McMahon continues to dominate creatively, and without an intermittently brilliant ideas man such as Vince Russo working for him, the whole operation tends to have a ‘been there done that’ feel to it, as those who stay in power for a long time (eg Gerwitz) are essentially nothing more than glorified yes men.

At present Smackdown writer Michael Hayes has established an entertaining holding pattern on Friday’s programme, and before that Dusty Rhodes as having equal minor successes with both this and ECW. Trends seem to indicate that ex wrestlers and promoters will always dominate when it comes to booking in the WWE, and when I couldn’t think of a single memorable character from the Federation’s seemingly open door policy of hiring failed Hollywood writers, it would seem that this is probably for the best.

Unfortunately Vince McMahon’s ego and business model will not allow him to take a back seat creatively to anyone bar his own children, and in Stephanie McMahon’s case, this has certainly proved repeatedly to be a bad idea.

One should just hope that one day one of these ex-wrestlers will be talented enough to allow Vince to give them that extra little bit of freedom, and the result will almost certainly a better product for everyone.

James Mustoe
james@wwepreview.com