BrooklynBomber
The Champ is Here
- Joined
- Feb 26, 2005
- Messages
- 9,069
- Reaction score
- 0
I hated how Vince turned the Road Warriors face in WWF.
Vince didn't turn the Roadies face, the crowds did. Verne had them as heels when he brought them into the AWA but the crowd reaction for them(particularly in the northeast when Verne and JCP ran the Meadowlands) was so strong that Verne had to turn them face.
Mick Foley actually told a great story about how the first time he had met Curt Hennig was a Meadowlands AWA/NWA show in January or March of 85 and it was Curt and Larry Hennig against the Warriors with Paul Ellering and the Warriors were getting the crowd behind them. So Verne not being totally blind on the next supercard gets Crockett to agree to book the Warriors against the Koloffs to really cement them as babyfaces.
By the time the Roadies are leaving the AWA and jumping to Crockett they're already full fledged faces and feud with the Russians, Midnight Express, Horsemen, Powers of Pain, etc etc etc. So Dusty in his infinite wisdom is booking Crockett at the time, and decides that he's so over he can turn the Warriors heel by having the Warriors attack and turn on him, and he can give Sting a rub by teaming with him. So the Warriors jump Dusty on tv and use a shoulderpad spike to try to carve his eye out, and people cheer like all hell.
We get to the big Warriors vs. Sting/Dusty tag match and the crowd is about 70:30 for the Warriors. The Warriors are quickly turned face again and wrestling the likes of the Varsity Club and Skyscrapers before eventually jumping over to Titanland with Vince, where they really never got over as desired.
The problem was that by the time they brought in the Warriors, Demolition(Bill Eadie/Barry Darsow version) had established themselves over three years as one if not the best tag teams ever in the WWF, and with WWF television being so strong in every market the WWF fans really didn't see Demolition as the rip off, they saw the Road Warriors as guys trying to be Demolition.
Not to mention that when the Warriors officially came in and made their debut(7/14/90 IIRC on Challenge), Bill Eadie had just had a near death experience after an allergic reaction to shellfish that had similar effects to a heart attack. So they brought in Brian Adams as Crush and it became a watered down version of the team that the fans weren't really excited for. So the matches between the teams were either LOD vs. Smash/Crush, or six man tags with the Ultimate Warrior and Ax joining the fray. But there was never that big good blowoff match with the real Demolition against Hawk and Animal.