Being that in 2013, the WWE is
celebrating its fiftieth anniversary, it is fitting for the company
to release a historical retrospective on the company. Thousands of
wrestlers have worked for the company, performing even more matches
over those fifty years, not including the Capitol time period. The
WWE has many stories to re-live from its history and they shed light
on most of them in this DVD package. One might expect a bit of a
biased perspective coming from the WWE concerning the history of its
own company, especially considering previous DVD biographies. This
set is no different but that does not detract too much from the
quality of this documentary. The bio fails to mention many of the
failures of the WWE over the years though. That withstanding, using
plenty of past wrestling footage and many interviews from wrestlers
from many generations, the WWE has delivered a very enjoyable
retrospective on the last fifty years of the company.
The documentary goes in chronological
order for the topics, without deviating too much. It started with
talk of the history of the McMahon family starting with Jess as a
boxing promoter, followed by Vince Sr. being part of the NWA and then
branching out to start the company that the WWE is today. This
showed a few newspaper clippings talking about Jess and Vince Sr.
with some historical pictures thrown in. Championship Wrestling from
Washington was shown and the Dumont Network television deal was
referenced. Personally, the beginning of this bio was my favorite as
it showed plenty of great vintage footage that you will not see on a
commercially released DVD set.
The next transition was to Bruno
Sammartino and his defeat of Buddy Rogers in May 1963. Out of the
whole feature, they spent more time on Bruno than any other wrestler.
Many interviews from wrestlers of his era were shown, including
Capt. Lou Albano, Arnold Skaaland, Ivan Koloff, and Stan Hansen,
among others. Bruno was also interviewed for this set, and he told a
story about how he drove a Rolls-Royce and because of that, everyone
who saw him thought he and wrestling were larger than life. He spent
a total of eleven years as the champ in the territory and sold-out
Madison Square Garden nearly two-hundred times. That number being
the usual exaggerated number they have been using this year, from the
actual one-hundred and thirty or so sell-outs, if my numbers are
correct (going by a September 2006 Wrestling Observer
Newsletter issue). This was a perfect segue to talk of Madison
Square Garden and its history with the company.
MSG was touted as being the most
important venue in the world. Sgt. Slaughter mentioned that as a
wrestler, one could not wait to be good enough to wrestle at MSG and
for the WWE. New York was mentioned as being the biggest territory
and that wrestlers made the most money in the territory. This was
often true, depending on the era especially from 1984 until onward,
excluding when WCW was doing better business than the company. The
next piece of history was Bruno's loss of the WWWF Championship in
1977.
Bruno said that when he would go to the
newsstand during his career, he would look at the wrestling magazines
and see his picture on most of them. By April 1977, his career as a
full-time wrestler was ending and his loss that month of the WWWF
Title signified a change in the company. The bio failed to go into
too much detail on the change besides showing little footage of
Superstar Billy Graham. At least, a little more footage of Bob
Backlund was shown and he was interviewed. They did not mention his
long reign as champion. One major oversight, as well, was not
referencing Graham at all. At this point, I realize that Billy
Graham is not in the WWE's good graces but he remains an important
figure in the history of the WWE. He certainly laid the foundation
for Hulk Hogan's babyface character in the early 1980's and his
career, in general.
Next up was a short piece on Andre The
Giant and then television syndication. The documentary featured very
little on Andre, which was surprising. They did go on to talk about
him a little more later in the feature though. Sgt. Slaughter told a
story about telling Vince Sr. he wanted use a tape of the Marine
Corps Hymn for his entrance when he came to the territory. At first,
Vince did not understand why he wanted him to play the tape but after
Sarge told him it was for his entrance, he understood why. This
transitioned into the WWE getting more star publicity and they showed
the angle with Gorilla Monsoon giving the airplane spin to Muhammed
Ali. After this was talk of the national expansion and Vince Jr.
buying the company in 1982. It was said to be a breath of fresh air
for the wrestling business. The WWE was mentioned as having a better
show than other territories and competitors, and better ratings. Of
course, that was not always the case when looking at history. Hulk
Hogan was the big star of the expansion period and he was everywhere
in the media. It was said that Hulk would not be Hulk without the
WWE and vice-versa. He, along with ventures with MTV, helped launch
WrestleMania in 1985.
WrestleMania was mentioned as being a
big risk and they showed some footage of Hulk and Mr. T taping a
segment, working out on the beach, which was interesting. S.D. Jones
was even shown talking about WrestleMania. Dick Ebersol talked about
the birth of Saturday Night's Main Event and how it did better
ratings than Saturday Night Live, at times. Throughout the feature,
Ebersol was shown numerous times, along with Basil Devito. Sadly, no
sign of attorney Jerry McDevitt in the bio. Slaughter was back
telling a story about meeting President Nixon on an airplane and
Nixon saying he watched him sing the Pledge of Allegiance twice and
how he made everyone in the room sing it on the spot that day.
Merchandising was expanding, showing footage of Piledriver.
Basil Devito then mentioned WrestleMania III and how he initially
asked Vince how to do the seating for it and how the NBA did 40,000
fans in the Pontiac Silverdome for their All-Star Game. However,
Vince wanted to break the attendance record. The ongoing theme of
the documentary was how great and smart Vince McMahon is. The 93,000
attendance number was brought up and this segued into a piece on
pay-per-view expansion and more shows.
The next transition was the steroid
trial for Vince McMahon. Essentially, the bio skipped 1988-1992.
There was lots of great footage for this though but it certainly gave
one the impression that steroids were only being used for
injury/health recovery in the business. Roddy Piper mentioned that
he had to use them to rehab his body from his wrestling schedule, in
order to feed his family. It was never really alluded to the fact
that a certain image needed to be maintained, through the help of
steroids, in order to get the best position on the show and with the
company. Still, this segment is one of the best parts of the
documentary. Steroid testing had depleted Vince's roster and he
needed to make new stars, as a result.
The debut of Monday Night Raw and the
subsequent heavy competition from World Championship Wrestling was
referred to next. Vince had to create new stars like Bret Hart since
WCW had signed away all his old talent. Plenty of great interviews
were shown including Lex Luger, Eric Bischoff, and Vince Russo.
Vince could not afford Bret Hart's contract and this led to the 1997
Montreal Screwjob. It was never really talked about how bad business
had gotten for the company, up to that point. This led to the
creation of the Mr. McMahon character and the ushering in of the
Attitude Era and how wrestling being talked about everywhere. They
talked about some of the biggest stars, specifically Steve Austin,
The Rock, and Triple H.
Another interesting piece was on the
death of Owen Hart in 1999. Jim Ross had some interesting things to
say about being at ringside when Owen fell and how he had to make the
call on-air about his death. Linda McMahon mentioned how she called
Martha Hart to tell her she would try to help her in any way
possible. Footage of the Raw episode the night after his death were
shown. The debut of Smackdown, the company going public in 1999, and
the WCW buy-out in 2001 were talked about but not in great length.
Also, the brand split between Raw and Smackdown was referred to and
how everyone got more television time, as a result. This led to the
PG Era for the company and a small piece on John Cena and the
charitable work of the WWE, in the past.
The spotlight was on WrestleMania
returning to big venues in 2001 and the Hall of Fame. They talked a
little more about Andre here and how he was the first Hall of Fame
inductee. The creation of the WWE Film Studio was next up and
subsequently, the transition to HD for the company. Also briefly
talked about were the WWE's social media presence, the WWE
Performance Center in Florida, and how Vince never stops. No one can
create a star like him and he is the mastermind behind everything.
The segments after Owen Hart's death were just modern pieces on how
the WWE is so great and all the endeavors they have tried in the last
few years.
As mentioned previously, the amount of
wrestlers interviewed is vast. They interviewed almost anyone you
can imagine including wrestlers, some celebrities, and a couple fans.
Other notable interviews not previously mentioned include Mad Dog
Vachon, Ernie Ladd, Jake Roberts, and both Blackjacks.
The WWE was made to look invincible,
most of the time, as they apparently could do no wrong. This bio
featured no mentions of the WBF, XFL, business declines, or WWF New
York. Also, as mentioned, this does not go into Superstar Billy
Graham, besides showing some decent footage on him. Macho Man Randy
Savage was never mentioned and only shown in footage a handful of
times. Not much was shown on the Ultimate Warrior either but he was
more of a memorable character more than an important factor in the
company's history in any way.
Overall, this piece is certainly worth
checking out, if not for all the footage and interviews alone. It
has some behind-the-scenes footage but I would have liked to have
seen more, since what we got is pretty interesting. Most of the
matches on the second and third discs of the set have been on
previous DVD sets, although the February 25, 2013 John Cena/C.M. Punk
match is featured, which is new. This is a very enjoyable and
thorough documentary on the WWE. It has some revisionist history and
omissions, along with lots of Vince praise but that is to be
expected, I suppose. I would recommend this set, as it is one of the
best bios the WWE has done yet.
Steve Viglio
http://stevegraps.blogspot.com
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