THE SPECTACULAR LEGACY OF THE AWA
(WWE/SHOCK)
This is one of the World Wrestling Entertainment DVD releases which is probably essential for those viewers of a certain advancing age, waistline, and forgetfulness as to the location of their house keys.
It chronicles the history of the American Wrestling Association, under its owner and perennial World Champion, Verne Gagne, from its inception in 1957, until stumps somewhere around the mid-late 1980s. (And if it did limp into the ‘90s, it was as good as dead a few years earlier.)
Despite the name, the AWA was no more an “Association” than its slightly later territorial counterpart, the WWWF, was any sort of “Federation”. Like the WWWF, it was a breakaway group, of sorts, from the prevailing major influence in US, if not world wrestling at the time, the National Wrestling Alliance. The latter really was an alliance of various regional promoters, originating in the late 1940s, who agreed to recognise one world champion, and also, by many reports, to work together to crush opposition “outlaw” promoters, who tried to work in any regional territory occupied by recognised NWA promoters. (The book “Chokehold” by Jim Wilson and Weldon T. Johnson probably contains the most documentation on this subject.)
AWA (and Vince McMahon Sr’s WWWF) didn’t really fall into the latter category. In both cases, they were largely formed as “breakaway” promotions to recognise a different “World Champion” from the then-NWA incumbent title-holder. (Lou Thesz, on both occasions.)
However, they were already established territories within the existing system, and they didn’t seek to overstep their territorial bounds at the time. Vince Sr had the North-Eastern United States, and Verne had a good slab of the Midwest, and some of Canada sooner or later, and later expanded into parts of California. Whether or not they portrayed themselves as working within the NWA system, they fitted into that territorial system of the time. Also within their areas, they were possibly too established and big for the NWA to force out of business.
All this is covered - once over lightly on the NWA side admittedly - in the documentary section of the DVD.
It may seem curious that the one survivor of the big territorial wars in US pro wrestling, the WWE (former WWWF/WWF) would take time out to laud one of its former rivals. Of course, there’s a back-story to that, which is that Vince McMahon Jr bought out the AWA tape library and intellectual property a year or two back, specifically for the purposes of marketing it in such ways as this DVD.
This is one of the giant gorillas in the room that isn’t really mentioned on this release, and it’s far from the only one.
While “Spectacular Legacy of the AWA” is a pleasant nostalgic wallow for old-timer wrestling fans, and it basically tells a story in a watchable-enough fashion, they leave out so much information, minimise the contribution of so many key protagonists, and fudge so much of the story that you wind up wondering exactly who they thought they were making it for.
The reality is that a landslide majority of current WWE consumers, and definitely pretty much all those under 25-30, don’t care about this double-disc, and would recognise none of the major participants except those they’re familiar with from relatively recent WWE television product, such as Jerry Lawler, Ric Flair, Hulk Hogan, Shawn Michaels and a few others.
The old-timers know a lot of the story anyway, and it seems pointless pretending that the matches and certain storyline issues were “shoots” at this late date, or outright lying about other events, whether by omission or otherwise.
Unfortunately, there seems to be a general trend to shying away from “shooting” in WWE material, and while that’s one thing for the website, or on the TV shows, it seems particularly pointless and annoying in the nominally “documentary” sections of DVDs that are going straight out to hardcore, serious fans by definition.
It should have been mentioned that the WWE had bought the AWA library etc. It should have been mentioned, in between Vince Jr waffling on about how he felt it was “the right thing to do” to induct Verne Gagne into his WWE Hall of Fame, that this was also, almost certainly, predicated on the same purchase.
(Vince Jr with Verne Gagne at the WWE Hall of Fame induction, 2006, just before Wrestlemania.
This is the WWE’s pic from their site, and is only included here to illustrate the review of the DVD. )
While we’re on about little examples, the long-running fiction that with the advent of the AWA and WWWF, there were three major world titles, at least in the US, is perpetuated once again. In the 1960s, there was a fourth, the WWA title, operating out of Los Angeles and also making some appearances in Japan, and this was a major territory at the time. Also, it isn’t mentioned that for periods of the 1970s, and possibly 1960s, the recognised world champion within the WWWF was the NWA one, despite having their own title holder.
A lot of the 1960s, other than Verne having title reigns, simply isn’t really covered in any detail. Mad Dog Vachon is mentioned and shown, but that’s about it. (He turns up more in the extras.) Fritz Von Erich is mentioned in a World Class Championship Wrestling context, but not as former AWA champ. Mighty Igor is shown but never mentioned by name. Harley Race is only mentioned at the very end of the tape, despite being multiple tag champ. More importantly, you get very little idea of the shape of the promotion and what the content of the time was all about. There’s vague platitudes throughout the doco section about the AWA always being about “athletic competition” and people who could wrestle, and the reality is that some of the footage supports that, and when you’re talking about Crusher or Jerry Blackwell or whoever, it really doesn’t.
They fudge some of the footage as well. They talk a surprising amount - in a good way - about Verne Gagne’s background as a young man, and the poverty he grew up in, as well as his outstanding athletic background at collegiate level and subsequently. But when they talk about him being a star on 1950s network television, via wrestling matches shown on the defunct Dumont network, the footage they show is wonky black and white studio material from no later than the latter half of the 1960s, and it’s probably the 70s. This seems kind of pointless. There is surviving tape/kinescopes of Gagne wrestling on television in the 1950s. I own some of it myself. Admittedly the copies I have are outrageously poor 27th generation dubs, but for the fraction of a second it was going to be on screen, they could have used the real thing.
Apart from anything else, it’s kind of ridiculous when they lurch from stills of Verne with a full head of hair in the 1950s, to supposedly “50s” footage where his hairline is somewhere around the back of his neck.
The lack of frankness comes up again and again, in various ways. All the interviewees to a man talk about Billy Robinson’s technical excellence in the ring. And there’s no doubting it, he was technically sound to an extreme level, and even watching him now, he still moves quickly by current standards. However, that’s hardly the full Billy Robinson story. As has been reported on any number of occasions virtually whenever his name comes up, Billy was disliked by a proportion of his colleagues in the industry, because he was a shooter who allegedly had a tendency to hurt people from time to time, and not necessarily out of carelessness, if you get the general drift. There are a lot of eyeball-bulging stories about Billy R, and you’ll hear precisely none of them on this release. I mean, at least it’s acknowledged by a couple of people that Mad Dog Vachon really lived up to the first part of his name.
On the upside, it’s fun to hear some war stories and a certain amount of bullpoo from Verne himself, Greg Gagne, Mean Gene Okerlund, Hulk Hogan, Vince doing his humble “Just sustaining wrestling’s legacy” routine, Jim “Baron Von” Raschke, Nick Bockwinkel, Bobby Heenan and Larry “The Ax” Hennig.
On the other claw, it’s kind of inexplicable who they left out. Flair is on the cover and mentioned a number of times as an AWA alumnus, but never says a word on the entire disc and only even shows up in the Hall of Fame material. He actually included plenty of material in his book about the brutal training methods in the AWA, and while the grimness of the training conditions is mentioned, and shown in home movie footage (which is great) it’s not really expanded on like Flair did. Let alone that he was THERE and he’s a contracted WWE player.
Don “The Magnificent” Muraco worked there, and he’s not in it. Iron Sheik is shown in stills, and was cited by Flair as having a particularly rough time in training (due to Robinson) but no interview material. (Well, they could have added subtitles later.)
No Road Warrior Animal, and it’s surprising how little Road Warriors is in there. No Shawn Michaels, and comparatively little on the Midnight Rockers run as tag champs.
I’m not surprised Scott Hall wasn’t asked in for a cup of tea, a biscuit and a chat, but when they show him as Curt Hennig’s tag partner at no point do they ever point out that this was the guy who became Razor Ramon. They probably should have, even though he later used the Scott Hall name again, because he looked completely different in the earlier incarnation.
Jim Ross makes a number of contributions, and is interesting as usual. He never worked in AWA that I’m aware of, and certainly sounds like he holds no particular fondness for it. The mask slips with Vince a number of times, and it borders on contempt how little he saw the AWA as competition after he raided its major talent in the mid-1980s. This is undoubtedly Vince at his most sincere. Hulk Hogan is another contributor who you might not normally expect the utmost in honesty from (and there’s the usual Hogan timeline adjustments and HulkaHistory revisions) but I suspect you’re getting exactly what he thinks about Verne and his time in the AWA, as his assessments are also not noticeably kind or glowing as a rule.
I think Eric Bischoff is mostly shooting. There’s an awful lot of Bischoff in there, considering what his contribution was, and that hardly any other (sometimes much longer-running) members of the on-air staff are even mentioned by name, but he tends to be more interesting and frank than a lot of other contributors.
Greg Gagne’s all right, walking the diplomatic tightrope. (He spent some time as a WWE road agent - don’t know whether that’s still the case.) The annoying company shill for this outing is Michael Hayes, taking the role normally played by Bruce Prichard, of giving the spin Vince wants out there, but doesn’t want to be seen saying himself. Nick Bockwinkel is fun. Baron Von Raschke looks like some regular nice old guy you’d have as a neighbour other than possibly being in possession of the most cauliflowered ears in medical history. Dusty Rhodes possibly should have been heard from a little more - not something you hear all that often about Dusty these days - considering his Texas Outlaws partnership with Dick Murdoch. Verne actually comes over a little more focussed than might have reasonably been hoped for. He’s still working the old matches and storylines, but if there’s one guy in here that that’s entirely acceptable and understandable from, it’s Verne.
Overall, somewhat disappointing, but a likeable nostalgic wallow at least.
The extras tip it over into an essential purchase for the afternoon-nap generation, with some nice if rambly war stories from the good Baron and Nick Bockwinkel, old and funny TV interview footage conducted by Mean Gene (with Heenan, Mad Dog, and Jesse Ventura/Adrian Adonis), and a liquored-up allsorts style selection of matches, in which they include the legendary tag-teams of Bockwinkel/Ray Stevens and Pat Patterson/Stevens, and yet somehow pick the wrong Curt Hennig-Nick Bockwinkel match for inclusion (This is after Bockwinkel in the extras describes the famous 31/12/’86 aired TV match in which he and Hennig worked the full hour time limit, as one of the greatest of his career. Naturally, they omitted that match and included a different one.)
Absolute highlight of the whole thing is also in the extras, and is the description by many hands of the plane that Verne bought to fly his wrestlers around his territory, described by Larry Hennig as “The Flying Coffin.” Apart from the general terrifying description, one flight in particular is described, in hilariously harrowing documentary detail by a number of the survivors, the trouble apparently beginning when Mad Dog Vachon, slightly the worse for whiskey, decides it’s a lovely night and it would be nice to let in some fresh air. Unfortunately the plane is airborne at the time. Chaos ensues.
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