Pro Wrestling USA - 1984

[PunchDrunkFun]

After I recently saw Guest Booker w/ Greg Gagne where he re-booked Pro Wrestling USA, I decided "Wow, that was a cool concept that was destined to fail". A bunch of wrestling promoters working together, that'll never work. You're right it won't.

 

So I'm not going in that direction. What if someone else had the same idea as Vince McMahon. For those of you who don't know when Vince originally acquired the USA Network timeslot, he asked promoters for tapes of thier top stars, so he could show them and "help promote" them so fan's on a National basis would become familiar with these workers when they came to their area.

 

My concept is this, I lured all these promoters. I will steal their top stars. If they go out of business, they go out of business. If they want to play ball and be my developemental. Then awesome. If not, we are at war.

 

The goal is to be the equivalent of the Monday Night Wars before the MNW existed.

 

More to come...

[PunchDrunkFun]

OOC: Obviously I don't know which arenas where in existance, circa 1984. So I'm not going to bother the specific arena where each event took place, just the city. Also, as far as "internet news" goes I'm just going to credit The Wrestling Observer as the course. Yes, acting 1984 in 2009 can have some plotholes. Thanks technology!

 

 

Pro Wrestling USA News, courtesy of The Wrestling Observer

- To the same degree that Vince McMahon has aggresivly been signing top regional talent to exclusive contracts. PWUSA has been doing the same. Not much is known, but Ric Flair, Dusty Rhodes, Kerry Von Erich, The Freebirds, Jerry Lawler, Terry Funk, Bob Backlund, Brusier Brody, and many others are in talks w/ PWUSA.

 

- The company will be doing TV in arena settings to begin with (similar to WCCW). The goal is to start with 5000 seat buildings, and within a year running 10,000 seat buildings for TV.

 

- A TV deal has been struck for a Thursday Night timeslot on ESPN at 8:00pm. This is about the best possible deal the company could have hoped for. Sticking to the WCCW TV Model, it will generally feature top stars vs. top stars, at least on the top of the card.

 

 

- The first 6 weeks of TV will be built around heading towards a mid-November Event in New York in a large arena. Las Vegas will probably be the sight for the second major event around Christmas.

[PunchDrunkFun]

Pro Wrestling USA News, courtesy of The Wrestling Observer

- The company will be taping all live events. They plan on a distribution of VHS in retail stores. This could really change the way the wrestling business is handled. I can see this being a money loser at first, but the upside us tremendous if it takes off. With the increasing popularity of VCRs, the tape trading in wrestling is growing, but still a small fanbase. It may be worth tapping into, but the jury is still out.

 

- Ric Flair, Tommy Rich, Jim Ross, Jim Cornette, Jerry Lawler, Kevin Sullivan, Jake Roberts, Dusty Rhodes, Bob Backlund, Kerry Von Erich, The Freebirds, Adrian Street, Tim Horner, Brad Armstrong and Brusier Brody have all commited to PWUSA. I don't envy whoever is booking this now with those egos. Arn Anderson rejected coming in, probably feeling the top of the card was too star heavy and he'd get lost in the shuffle.

 

- PWUSA has also been in talks with Randy Savage (ICW-TN), Billy Robinson, Tully Blanchard, Dick Slater, and Terry Funk.

 

- With recent fallout between Vince Jr, and Bruno Sammartino, Sammartino has expressed interest in coming in for a few Northeast shots. Its uncertain if he plans on wrestling, but he will be thrown absurds amount of money too do so.