BRM's Guest Booker Reviews Composite Thread

[Big Red Machine]

I have decided to re-review all of Kayfabe Commentaries Guest Booker Series, and to better compare them, have decided to institute a common rubric, which shall look as follows:

Interview?
I will grade the quality of the interview (duh!)

How is the booking?
I will grade the quality of the proposed booking on a purely theoretical and mechanical level, trying my best to leave my own opinions for later.

Practical?
Does the scenario being proposed face any major logistical, monetary, or environmental hurdles?
Want to use a guy under contract to a different company? Want to bring The Rock in to CHIKARA or book CM Punk vs. Steve Austin for WrestleMania XXXII? Want to push Doink the Clown as your top babyface in ECW or have Hulk Hogan do a clean job for El Torito? Well then I'll have to deduct points from this category. This doesn't mean the booking is bad. Just that it's not as realistic as possible and this category is meant for those who value that component highly.

Is it something I would particularly enjoy?
This is the part where my personal opinion comes into play.

Did I get what was advertised?
Did Kayfabe Commentaries deliver what they advertised on the box?

Fun to watch?
Was it enjoyable to sit through this DVD?

Production?
How were the production values?

Do I think it would have worked?
Given the booking proposed and the tastes of the fans in that place and time, do I think these ideas would have been successful?

[cero2k]

i'm super interested in this now, i've always liked these DVD reviews, but adding a rubric type of thing is cool

[Big Red Machine]

The first review in the new format will be Kayfabe Commentaries' most recent Guest Booker release:

Out of this World with Glen Gilberti

Interview? A (but in my heart, I want to give Disco himself an F)
Disco was very forthcoming about everything from creative meetings in WCW and TNA to his own childhood fandom and you can definitely get a sense of why he thinks the way he does, but this interview was hard to sit through simply because there were so many times when I just wanted to start screaming at him. The first such incident was when he flat out admitted that when he was growing up as a fan, he would always fast forward through the matches because all he cared about was the finishes and how the story progressed… which completely misses the idea that you can tell your story via the match itself.
Disco’s philosophy can best be summed up as the following: If the fans think they’ve seen this angle before but with different characters, they will think stuff is basically “re-runs” (his word, not mine). Therefore, to keep them interested, you need to keep swerving them by giving them things they’ve never seen before.
Disco himself flat out says that “the things that you should be doing are the things that have never been done.” He contrasts this with a quote from Ole Anderson that he says DDP used to often mention to him: “Just because nobody has ever taken a sh*t in the middle of the ring doesn’t mean you should do it.” I think most of us would take Ole’s adage as an important piece of cautionary advice, but Disco seems to only see it as needlessly limiting.
Disco very much sees wrestling as just another TV show, and one that is meant to draw ratings rather than as a vehicle for drawing money on PPV or house shows (he even says that the only measure of success is ratings, and doesn’t mention PPV buys or ticket sales at all), and thus doesn’t seem to understand any criticism of him (and his good buddy Vince Russo) based on that fact, and I’m going to stop now because if I don’t this already too long section is going to get a lot longer, but suffice it to say that I typed this much about the problems with Disco’s philosophy when I was specifically trying to avoid doing just that shows just how frustrating listening to this interview can be for someone with a more traditional mindset.
Before ending this section, I will say two other things, though: Disco seems very out of touch with the current product, claiming that John Cena has been the only guy in the past ten years who could talk (CM Punk? Daniel Bryan? Kevin Steen? Christopher Daniels? Drew Galloway? MVP? Motor City Machine Guns? Dean Ambrose? A million other guys?), and that today’s wrestlers only care about having great matches in the ring and don’t care about their characters at all. I also felt that spending over half of the DVD’s time on an interview when the main thrust of this is supposed to be the Guest Booker aspect was a little frustrating to me as a customer.

How is the booking? F
Lance Storm mentioned in one of his shoot interviews (I’m 99% sure it was RF Video Vol. 2) that with Disco Inferno, his priority always seemed to be booking things that were “funny” instead of booking things that might actually draw, and that is completely and totally on display here. Almost everything he talked about in depth was all just a set up for some joke or another that made you just shake your head and say “you were willing to waste how much TV time just to build up to THAT?” and the few ideas he glosses over, such as a tag team of 300lbs ghetto Chassidim called the “Jew Tang Clan” or the tag team of “The Johnsons… with Balls (Mahoney)” was stuff that is funny the first time you hear it, but has no legs whatsoever. All of his ideas might make for decent sketch comedy, but they’d be f*cking atrocious on a wrestling show.
About the Martian Invasion in particular, Disco asserts that the whole thing was always intended to be a joke in a booking meeting, leading up to a punchline that, while you could see coming, was actually close to being funny (which is quite the accomplishment for this DVD), and based on the way he frames his presentation of it, I do believe him… but if this DVD was his chance to show that his “out of this world” ideas were in some way viable from some point of view, then he did a terrible job of proving that.

Practical? F
While a lot of the stuff is technically doable, it would result in spending unnecessary money using sets and special effects for angles that would not possibly draw any money on their own and wouldn’t have any artistic merit, either, so I’m giving it an F.

Is it something I would particularly enjoy? F
Under no circumstances.

Did I get what was advertised? C+
While they did hit on all of the points mentioned in description, I was hoping to get a lot more in terms of details… or at the very least in terms of ideas. Much like Vince Russo’s appearance on Guest Booker, this felt more like a series of set-ups rather than solid ideas for how an actual feud or storyline would go. It’s like reading a three-chapter book that ends in the middle of the first chapter.

Fun to watch? F
In addition to booking that I find to be quite terrible, Disco could barely get through a sentence without laughing at his own wit, which is annoying enough when the person actually is funny, but I think I found at most TWO things that he said to be worth even a chuckle, never mind full blown laughter like Disco was engaging in.

Production? B
Nothing was annoying or in the way, but aside from the use of the Star Wars crawl in the opening (which was fun and almost topical), there was nothing noteworthy or helpful, either.

Do I think it would have worked?
As promotions like CHIKARA and HUSTLE and Lucha Underground have shown, professional wrestling can be used as medium to tell many different types of stories- even stories we would never think of as stories wrestling can be used to tell. And in the hands of someone like Mike Quackenbush, and in a universe like CHIKARA, I think that an alien invasion could actually be made to work. But in the hands of Disco Inferno… no chance in hell.

Don’t buy this DVD unless, for some ungodly reason, you like hearing Disco Inferno talk about how supposedly funny he is and spouting off ratings numbers.

[cero2k]

such as a tag team of 300lbs ghetto Chassidim called the “Jew Tang Clan” or the tag team of “The Johnsons… with Balls (Mahoney)” was stuff that is funny the first time you hear it, but has no legs whatsoever. All of his ideas might make for decent sketch comedy, but they’d be f*cking atrocious on a wrestling show.

was he booking WWE in the 2005-2010 era? Were The Dicks his idea?

[Big Red Machine]

such as a tag team of 300lbs ghetto Chassidim called the “Jew Tang Clan” or the tag team of “The Johnsons… with Balls (Mahoney)” was stuff that is funny the first time you hear it, but has no legs whatsoever. All of his ideas might make for decent sketch comedy, but they’d be f*cking atrocious on a wrestling show.

was he booking WWE in the 2005-2010 era? Were The Dicks his idea?

No. The Dicks just had a bad name. The Johnsons were two dudes dressed up like condoms named "Dick and Rod Johnson."

[Big Red Machine]

SHEERPHERDER LUKE: Rebooking WWE 1993... Hardcore

Interview? B+
It wasn’t a complete and total shoot, but it gave you a great idea of everywhere the Sheerpherders had worked and how their angles typically went.

How is the booking? A-
It’s very old school, but it’s a masterclass in the basic rules of “stips have to come from somewhere” and how to build from the finish of one match to the next stipulation.


Practical? A+
There is nothing that Luke booked that I can’t envision having been done at some point in history in some territory, and it all felt like natural extensions of the characters.

Is it something I would particularly enjoy? B-
Some of the stips were a little silly like “loser must clean the bathrooms” or some of the stuff he books with Goldust, but some of the Sheepherders' angle was stuff I thought was great. And in general, I’ll enjoy anything that is competently booked.


Did I get what was advertised? A
Luke manages to book some pretty edgy and violent stuff using some of the cartoonish undercard gimmicks in the WWF in the mid-90’s… but amazingly manages to keep the flavor of those characters alive as well. The timing on the roster wasn’t exact (the DVD cover said 1993, but a bunch of the names Luke was given to work with didn’t show up until 1995 or 1996 which is why I've given it a A and not an A+), but the idea is the same.

Fun to watch? C+
Luke’s accent made some things a bit hard to follow, and this was compounded by the fact that he would do things like occasionally refer to matches by shorthand names like a “lumber match” for a lumberjack match.
Things were also very repetitive verbally. There was a lot of “we’ll do this and this is the finish and then we’ll return with this and we’ll do this as a finish and we’ll return with this” and Luke spoke very fast so sometimes you had to really be paying attention or else you’ll miss a chapter.
Also, early on Sean Oliver is just in the way. He’s writing notes on the board, but they’re never complete and he’s leaving a lot of things out so his notes are useless to anyone trying to follow along, and he keeps asking what amounts to “so when to we get to the blood/violence/blow-off?” like he just doesn’t understand to how to really build up to something big. He did seem to learn his lesson, though, because he got much better (and quieter) by the end.

Production? B+
After all these years Kayfabe Commentaries seems to have finally learned that their graphics only get in the way and rarely help, so they only used them for the roster. They had some catchy chapter titles, too, such as one entitled “They Eat The Pig.”

Do I think it would have worked?
Probably.
As I said above, I can see any of these angles having been done at some point in wrestling history, and when you combine that with the fact that they all felt like natural feuds that the goofy mid-90’s characters we know could well have had, I think it probably would have worked.

[Big Red Machine]

JERRY JARRETT- WCW 2000

Interview? B+
Very good. You got some booking knowledge in general and insight into Jerry’s mind in particular, starting off with a focus on some of the particular issues that WCW had. Jerry’s slow cadence did make it feel a little tedious at times, but overall a great interview.

How is the booking? A
Everything is solid and there are some great moments and ideas. I have one major concern about it which I will get to below, but on a purely theoretical and mechanical level, this was all pretty great.

Practical? B
In order play into the idea of turning the company around (i.e. cutting salary to keep costs down), Jerry outlines his idea for figuring out what his roster would be by offering everyone a release from their contracts and asking them to come back at less money, but selling them on the “hope” of making more. He does a great job of explaining his rationale for it, but I’m just not sure he’d legally be able to stop anyone who wanted to stay but not take a pay cut. He might get stuck with the same guys making too much money. Also, I don’t know how happy corporate would be with a plan that would allow people to go work for Vince if they wanted to.

Is it something I would particularly enjoy? B-
I’m always a fan of good booking, but the minimalist approach and the extremely similar paths to get to the big matches made some of the angles (especially the world title and tag title angles) feel repetitive.

Did I get what was advertised? A-
While I was disappointed with the lack of detail on some of the angles, Jerry explained what he would do, why he would do it, and usually how each thing would help turn the company around.

Fun to watch? B-
Good booking is always fun and Jerry definitely comes off as insightful, but the booking was a bit minimalist, so if you saw where he was going, there usually wasn’t too much to do except wait for Jerry to finish talking (although the world title angle has some very good little detail moments that show off Jerry’s brilliance). The other thing that brings this down are the “behind the scenes” bits that they use as buffers between the chapters, most of which focused on TNA, and as a result of that, had this air of uncomfortableness about them as Jerry got very tense and basically told us that he didn’t think his relationship with his son would ever be able to be repaired.

Production? B
Very few graphics, but all of them were helpful

Do I think it would have worked? No
This is a great example of where the theory and the real world don’t always mesh. In theory a legendary babyface overcoming the odds to go for one last run with the belt after beating a monster heel is a great idea, but this was WCW in the spring of 2000. I don’t think that the solution to turning their business around could possibly be “turn Hogan babyface and put the belt on him.” Fans were sick of Hogan as champion, whether he was babyface or heel.

[Big Red Machine]

Jim Cornette Books the Invasion

Interview? B+
There isn’t much you haven’t heard Cornette talk about before, but he’s always entertaining. Once you get into the stuff about OVW it gets more original, though.

How is the booking? A-
This was a very good example of how to do the type of thing Cornette wanted to do. That being said, I do take issue with one little thing he does that is actually a major lynchpin in his story (I disagree that if you win a match to get 5 minutes alone in the ring with X, those five minutes should be counted as a match).
As Corny himself explains, this would obviously be more intricately detailed if he was going week-by-week, but that would obviously take forever, so he couldn’t do it here in the few hours they allotted him. As a result of this, Jim spends most of his time talking about the angles that would take place at the PPVs, but a lot of that stuff felt like stuff that really belongs more on TV instead of a supercard (like a top guy from one promotion wrestling an undercard guy from the other just for the sake of being able to get a win and then cut promo on a top guy from the other promotion, or doing a handicap match as an angle to set something up for down the line). While Corny manages to give the overall whole (and also some of the smaller parts) the necessary epic feel, this seems like the sort of angle that would have worked best if it went a bit shorter (like six months overall instead of eight), but at the same time the length of time Cornette uses does feel like it is all necessary to set things up the way he wants them. As a whole, I think this would have been better if we had seen a lot more of the stuff that was happening in between PPVs, but obviously that wasn’t practical, and as a result, we do run into the problem of some of the happenings at PPVs feeling like they belong on TV.
There is also some stuff that doesn’t mesh quite as well as Corny would probably like (the idea of pushing the 34 year old Jeff Jarrett and 32 year old Dustin Rhodes as a “young up and comers” tag team from WCW to feud with the E&C or the Hardys- the oldest of whom would be 28- is a bit laughable), but those things are few and far between.

Practical? B
In theory, there are no practical hurdles to what Cornette books, but it would require WWE opening up its pocketbook in a way they (foolishly, in just about everyone’s opinion) showed they weren’t willing to do for the Invasion in real life. It is also extremely worked-shooty, including some legitimate worked fights (which sounds like a ridiculous thing to say now that I have typed it), but I will also give Cornette some bonus points for explaining exactly how he would sell such an idea to the workers.


Is it something I would particularly enjoy? B
There is a worked-shootiness that pervades the whole thing that I’m really not a fan of, but I would certainly appreciate the execution, and while one of Cornette’s big angles has a lot more goofiness than I like, there is no denying that the WrestleMania he books feels like the very definition of a “supercard” even if a few of the interpromotional dream matches are not the match-ups for those wrestlers that would appeal to me the most.

Did I get what was advertised? A+
Corny not only books an invasion from beginning to end (looking at you, Russo), but explains exactly what needs to be done to make it feel like an interpromotional war.

Fun to watch? A+
It’s Jim Cornette talking about pro wrestling! Of course it’s fun to watch!

Production? B-
It doesn’t get in the way, but it doesn’t do much to enhance things either. The red and blue backgrounds to differentiate the two companies did a good job to help keep track of which show Jim was talking about, but as for keeping track of things long term, the graphics and stuff were pretty useless.

Do I think it would have worked? YES!
But then again, doing a WWF vs. WCW invasion with all of the big names, it would have been impossible for it not to work.

 

[Big Red Machine]

VINCE RUSSO: The Invasion

Interview? B+
This interview took two forms. First there was the standard shoot interview, which was an informative look into the mind of Vince Russo. While you get an understanding of where Russo’s philosophy comes from, he just can’t help himself but sound slimy and political and self-serving, even when he is telling what I assume is the God’s-honest truth.
The second thing I am grading it on are various comments that Russo threw out about his opinion of how things were done in the actual Invasion, and a lot of those were mind-boggling, lowering the grade a bit because they are hard to listen to without screaming.

How is the booking? B-
For the stuff that Russo actually did book (more on this in a moment), it was all pretty solid (aside from a few logical hiccups, but when you’re dealing with Vince Russo, just “a few” logical hiccups is pretty good). Certainly not exceptional or in any way revolutionary, but it was standard stuff combined with huge names, which made it feel a bit more exciting.

Practical? A
Assuming that WWE was willing to actually open up their coffers to pay for the Stings and Flairs and Goldbergs and Hogans and Halls and Nashes of the world… but it’s a pretty well universally acknowledged mistake that they weren’t willing to.

Is it something I would particularly enjoy? A-
Yes. Everything Russo booked sounded entertaining and exciting (and probably would have been even more so in 2001)… up until the big climax which…

Did I get what was advertised? C-
That big climax from the above paragraph? It never comes. Russo leaves us off without ever even booking a WWF vs. WCW match. He sets up an invasion, but leaves you off right there without actually getting into the WWF vs. WCW part of the story, never mind anything that could even come close to being called a conclusion. As Bryan Alvarez and R.D. Reynolds said about Russo in Death of WCW, he can write a very good first chapter, he just has no idea how to follow up on that. In this case, he didn’t even try, and Sean Oliver didn’t press him at all, either. I found this to be extremely frustrating, and it is only the very strong set-up of what Russo does book that stopped me from giving this something in the D range.

Fun to watch? C+
As I said above, Russo cannot help but come off like he is constantly self-serving, even if he isn’t trying to be. Everything he says sounds like either a defense, a deflection, an attempt to take credit, or occasionally an accusation. It makes this very hard to watch when his tone and words almost beg you to concentrate on trying to find out who he is blaming rather than the story he is trying to tell.
There were also times when you just wanted to hit Russo for saying such dumb sh*t or slap Sean Oliver for not calling him out on it.

Production? B
Nothing good, but nothing bad, either, which is above average for the Guest Booker series.

Do I think it would have worked? YES
But then again, it’s the Invasion, so it’d be hard not to.

This is one for the “rent it” category. It’s entertaining to hear what Russo would have done, but there is very (very, very) little knowledge you can glean from it, and not getting an ending to our story is almost as frustrating on the re-watch as it is the first time around.

[Big Red Machine]

BRUCE PRICHARD- Screwing Bret

Interview? A
A great interview in which they cut right to the meat of things, talking first about Bruce’s experience in backstage roles everywhere from Houston to Mid-South to WWF to TNA, and then some talk about the Screwjob. The Screwjob stuff is fine to listen to, but for the most part there is no info on here that you haven’t heard before, and, in fact, it was a bit less in depth then you’ll find other places (including, I believe, Prichard’s shoot with RF Video).
The more interesting stuff on this was hearing Prichard talk about the big problem with TNA, and about some of the WWFs more cartoonish gimmicks and both how and why they came about, why the WWF first turned to “writers,” and where that went wrong.

Also, here is a fantastic line to take out of context: “he f*cks every chicken in there.”

How is the booking? C
It really felt like Bruce didn’t do much booking. He gave us a few matches for the Rumble and WrestleMania and some ideas for after Mania, but it felt like it was more “here are some ideas for what we could do” as opposed to “here is the match and here is how we are going to get there, step by step.”

Practical? C-
One of the bigger, overshadowing things in the booking part of this DVD is Bruce’s decision to bring in Hulk Hogan. Bruce claims talks were happening and a deal was very close to being signed. Sean Oliver was intrigued by this, so Bruce asked him if he would rather do this with Hogan coming in or without Hogan coming in, and Sean chose with Hogan. Bruce’s ideas was basically to stick Hogan in the HBK spot as the leader of D-X, put the title on him, and have Austin beat him at Mania, clean in the middle of the ring. Sean was quite incredulous that Hogan would be willing to do a clean job his first Mania back, to which Bruce responded that (paraphrasing) “of course he would, Hogan is a businessman and would understand what is best for business.” The thing is, though, that based on Hogan’s actions at Starrcade that very year (never mind things he’d done many other times in his career, both before and after this), I don’t think he would have. And speaking of Starrcade, if Hogan the great businessman that Bruce claims (and that we all know) he is, why would he jump to WWF before having his big Starrcade match with Sting (and more importantly, getting his pay-off for it)?

Is it something I would particularly enjoy? C-
I’m not that big of a Hogan fan, so I can’t imagine that he would have a better match with Austin than HBK would have. The other issue I had with this is that a lot of his ideas seemed to be retreads of things we had recently seen, and at the expense of other stories which would have been both fresher and probably made more sense for Mania. For example, I don’t see what use there is in going back to Bret vs. Taker again for WrestleMania XIV when we had seen it quite a few times between then and Summer Slam (as well as earlier in 1997), and it seems even worse when you are doing it at the expense of doing Kane vs. Taker at Mania and finding someone who would get a lot more long-term benefit out of facing Bret (Ken Shamrock, for example). It’s not that what Bruce booked was necessarily “bad” per se, but I didn’t find it particularly appealing, either. Adding more details probably would have fleshed things out quite a bit.

Did I get what was advertised? D
The title of the booking chapter of this DVD was “Unscrewing Bret” which I assumed (correctly) to mean “so if you don’t have to do the Screwjob, how would you have booked the company from Survivor Series on, including Bret?” While Bruce did technically do that, the moment Hogan came into the discussion, it seemed like this was more of a “what would have happened if Hulk Hogan jumped to the WWF the night after Survivor Series 1997 and went on to face Steve Austin at WrestleMania (oh yeah and also Bret Hart is still there)?”
Further compounding this problem was that Bruce’s use of Hogan (pretty much sticking him in Shawn’s spot and doing everything the same) made this feel almost boring because you knew where he was going from moment one and exactly how they were going to get there. A lot of the fun of Guest Booker is the alternate history aspect of it. This felt less like an alternate history and more like crossing out “Shawn Michaels” and writing “Hulk Hogan” in a history book.
Another thing that really bothered me was that Sean Oliver would ask Bruce “so how are we going to get there” and Bruce would say things like “it’s already there” or “it’s built in already.” Sean was asking “so what angles are we going to do to get these stories from A to B to C to D to WrestleMania” but Bruce was only answering the question of “what’s the general idea here?”- and to him, the general idea seemed to be that the personalities involved (Austin, Hogan, and Tyson) would be all of the story you need. And maybe that is all you’d need to sell out the house and do a big buyrate, but for the people who buy Guest Booker, we are usually interested in all of the nitty-gritty details. The hows and the whys of the things that would be done. Seeing the whole story unfold, not just reading the back cover of the book.
I was also disappointed with the lack of stuff that was booked. Going from Survivor Series to Mania, I think Bruce mentioned a total of seven matches that would happen. I really should just expect this from this point on with Guest Booker (just like I should probably expect the interview to always dominate the vast majority of the DVD, which is another thing I am pretty disappointed about), but every time I get one, I somehow hope that they are actually going to do what they did in the early ones and try to book either an entire card or an entire story in detail.

Fun to watch? B-
It wasn’t unenjoyable, but I do wish there had been a lot more on the booking.

Production? N/A
There wasn’t much of anything to speak of here at all. Then again, that didn’t detract from the experience, either, as Bruce’s stories were so vague they were simple to follow without graphics.

Do I think it would have worked? Hard to tell.
Austin-Tyson probably would have made things work, and the angle to set up Hunter vs. Shawn would have been fine, but… HULK HOGAN AS THE LEADER OF D-X? It’s just so bizarre to think about (mostly because it sounds like a crappy fanfic written by a ten year old) that I just can’t possibly imagine it. My gut tells me that it probably wouldn’t, as Hogan was more of a rambler in his promos whereas Shawn and Hunter actually cut good, modern promos, and their sense of humor was a lot different than the stuff Hogan said when he was trying to be funny (remember when he called Kevin Nash a “spoon?” LOL) that I just don’t see it working.

Overall review: skip it. You’ll learn nothing new from it, and hear nothing interesting.

[Big Red Machine]

GABE SAPOLSKY- Rebooking The New ECW

Interview? N/A
There was no interview. They just got right down to business… and quite frankly that’s what they should be doing every time. Anyone who is buying a Guest Booker DVD doesn’t need and quite frankly doesn’t want them to spend a third or a half of the DVD on basic info they already know. Everyone buying a Guest Booker DVD knows who these guys are. Gabe is probably the most unknown of all of them, and if you didn’t know who Gabe was going in, all you needed was to hear Sean’s quick intro which introduced him as the booker of ROH. I guess you could argue that it would help to establish exactly what Gabe’s connection to the original ECW was, but is there really anyone out there with enough of a passion for ECW that they have sought out this DVD and who is enough of a smark to have bought a DVD from Kayfabe Commentaries that doesn’t already know that Gabe was Heyman’s protégé?

How is the booking? A+
It’s Gabe. He’s the best. He books interesting feuds, stuff that you want to see, knows how to put a card together, and explains everything along the way. If you want to learn the basics of booking, this DVD is a phenomenal place to start.

Practical? A+
Gabe uses only talent that was available to WWE at the time and who he thought there was a realistic possibility of being allowed to use, and explains his rationale for everything. It’s possible that WWE wouldn’t have let him use Flair and Orton (or that Flair would have rejected his pitch), but at least Gabe explains why he thinks he would be allowed to use them and how he would convince Ric Flair to work ECW.

Is it something I would particularly enjoy? A+
Every time I watch this DVD (and there have been many), it makes me sad that the real life WWECW wasn’t like this.

Did I get what was advertised? A+++++
Gabe books the new ECW from the first TV show in June until six months later at the December to Dismember PPV, and explains every choice along the way. Not just the talent and the angles but venue choices, when to start running house shows, arena set-up, how to go about establishing this third brand as both a new entity and a legitimate successor to ECW, including both the do’s and the dont's.

Fun to watch? A+
It’s Gabe talking booking while Sean Oliver generally shuts up and stays out of the way (unlike later Guest Bookers where Sean feels like he is often getting in the guest booker’s way). I can see some people getting annoyed by Gabe’s tendency to use the same phrases over and over, but even then I can’t see someone giving this anything lower than an A.

Production? A-
This did have the usual problem that Guest Booker DVDs have where they stick this month-by-month grid on the screen that does not have any room to possibly fit more than one match under each month, so you often wind up with situations where, for example, Gabe would be talking about three matches that would take place on the same TV show, but due to spacing issues the on-screen graphics had them in three different months. It is baffling that they didn’t just drop the stupid grid, because without the monthly headings it would have been decent. Fortunately, Gabe does a good job of letting you know what the actual time-frame will be, so this is more of a “ha-ha Kayfabe Commentaries is incompetent” thing than an actual problem that causes confusion.
One thing that this DVD had that I have never seen on any other Guest Booker DVD was this neat little “poster” graphic that showed you the card as it was developing, complete with nifty little strips of barbed wire to separate the different matches. I thought this thing looked really great, and is a good chunk of the reason why this portion received such a high score.

Do I think it would have worked? A+
Absolutely. Hell… if WWE had done this, I think they would still have an ECW brand today. And Brent Albright would also be a huge star in WWE.


This is probably the best DVD in the entire Guest Booker series. It’s either this one or Kevin Sullivan booking WWF’s national expansion in 1984 but without Hulk Hogan, and personally, I prefer this one because the wrestlers involved are much more contemporary for me. As I said above, this is a great place to start for anyone looking for a DVD that is as close as you can possibly get to Booking 101, and with the added fun of looking into what feels like an entirely possibly alternate reality. If you don’t buy any other DVD from this series, buy this one.

[Big Red Machine]

ROBERT FULLER- Shawn Michaels jumps to WCW in 1996


Interview? B+
You got a decent sense of Fuller’s philosophy on booking and you learned about his booking career, but someone who had no idea who Robert Fuller was going into this (or even was only familiar with his time as Col. Parker) would still be left scratching his or her head wondering why exactly this guy was anything resembling a big deal.

How is the booking? B+
Light on gritty details, but there is enough there that you understand what he’s going for even if he doesn’t tell you every little detail. There were no plot holes and there was a respect for the continuity that already existed at the time. I’ll also give the Colonel some bonus points for not going the obvious route of doing a Kliq angle.

Practical? A+
Everything would have made perfect sense at the time, and Fuller explained how he would work over talents who might be… less than cooperative if asked to do a job.

Is it something I would particularly enjoy? B
There are parts of it that are a little cartoony and nothing is particularly brilliant, but it is all booked well.

Did I get what was advertised? A+
Not only did we get what was advertised directly (Shawn in WCW in 1996) but also the things most people probably would have expected from that description even if they weren’t explicitly advertised.

Fun to watch? A-
This one actually started out with Fuller giving an overview of his whole angle, except that they didn’t tell you it was just an overview at the time, so it was pretty confusing when the beginning of the second chapter seemed to be going backwards. Other than that it was perfectly enjoyable.

Production? B-
Not much from the graphics department here. Their graphic for the WCW roster was pretty much a giant wall of text, which isn’t their fault, but did still make it quite unenjoyable when it was up there on the screen with them moving around behind it- especially because its presence there served no real purpose.

Do I think it would have worked? Probably, but…
The direction Fuller would have taken things seems so different in tone from what we got from WCW, and yet also different from what we had been getting before that that the fans hadn’t been so fond of that’s it’s really hard to tell whether the fans would have latched onto this or not.

I don’t know if I’d say this one is worth buying, as I don’t know how often I’ll rewatch it, but it’s definitely enjoyable if you are a fan of the Guest Booker series.

[Big Red Machine]

RAVEN- Hall & Nash jump to ECW instead of WCW in 1996


Interview? N/A
There really wasn’t one, other than Sean Oliver telling us that everyone says Raven has a booker’s mind.

How is the booking? B+
It’s pretty well done, although getting there is quite the chore. There are some questionable match-ups booked, but most of it seems like it would at the very least be fun to watch the build-up if not the actual matches themselves. Raven also includes some very creative ideas on ways to shoot pre-tapes that give us movement in the story while also building up mystery within it.

Practical? A+
Everything Raven did was within the realm of possibility, and was done in exactly the style that ECW was using at the time, with angles shot at the ECW Arena shows and then played out on TV over the next few weeks. He also maintained a very ECW feel throughout, both in booking the matches and the types of angles they would use to set things up (in-ring segments that begin with Joey interviewing someone, slightly corny set-ups that you are able to overlook because the end of the segment makes it feel cool, etc.).

Is it something I would particularly enjoy? B-
It is certainly done competently and putting Hall and Nash and X-Pac in 1996 ECW would be a lot of fun, but many of the workers that Raven focuses on (Hall, Nash, X-Pac, Dreamer, Funk, Brian Lee, Dr. Death, and himself of course) are not the guys in ECW whose work I enjoy the most. To be fair to Raven, those were probably the guys in the best position to book together and the promos probably would have been great, but if I’m getting 1996 Scott Hall in ECW I want to see him against someone he can have a really great match with like Shane Douglas or Sabu. Your rating will probably be a bit higher if you are a fan of the Raven-style dog and pony show (personally, I think it would get old after a while) or if you are a bigger fan of 1996 Steve Williams than I am.


Did I get what was advertised? A-
They told me I would get Raven booking Hall and Nash coming into ECW in June of 1996 and booking them through Barely Legal, and that is what we got (well… in one case not the “Barely Legal” part), and we got X-Pac as a bonus.

Fun to watch? F
While there were some major production issues which I will talk about below, the thing that contributes the most to making this not very fun to watch is Raven himself. Raven came into this with no preparation whatsoever, and as a result he was constantly going back and adding or changing things, or thinking out loud, or changing his mind, so that it was very tough to follow what was actually “happening.” I just got done watching it and I can’t tell you who won more than four of the matches that Raven booked, booking at least two matches a month over an eleven month period. He would also jump back and forth between feuds with no transition, which only added to this problem, and there was a lot of stalling, especially in the second half of the DVD.

Then we have the other problem. If I not only said we got pretty much everything that was advertised and even got a bonus, then why did I only give that rating an A-? Because they ran out of time before telling us the finish to Nash’s match at Barely Legal. With X-Pac’s they seemed to just not care because a few minutes before the end of the DVD, when trying to wrap that angle up, Raven outright said that we wouldn’t know where his Dreamer vs. X-Pac would wind up going or even what would happen at the PPV “because I haven’t thought about it, so we’re not going to know.” That annoyed the hell out of me. You’re telling me they couldn’t have shot five more minutes of footage so that Raven could come up with finishes for two of the three matches he books for the PPV? COME ON!


Production? D- (and that’s me being nice)
Normally Kayfabe commentaries on-screen graphics only get in the way. I was quite surprised when in the beginning of this one they actually seemed to be helping. They actually did a good job of getting the right matches and events list under the right months… or so we thought. Once they got to October or so, Raven had forgotten something so he asked Sean Oliver (who keeps notes on a whiteboard in a similar fashion to the graphics they put up on the screen) what had happened. Sean’s rather minimalist note-taking didn’t help, and Raven’s total lack of preparation meant that he didn’t have anything written down either, so they sat around for about three minutes just trying to remember whether or not they used promos on TV to build up to a certain match. This led to even more confusion as they eventually discovered that Sean had screwed up somewhere and we were actually supposed to be in November now instead of October. Raven half-jokingly said that they should “clean it all up in post-production” and Sean told him that they actually do, in fact, do that. Well, apparently they suck at it because the graphics on the screen made the same error that Sean did.


Do I think it would have worked? Yes
I think the ECW fans would have loved getting rebellious nWo-personality Hall and Nash, Raven is very smart about only sticking Nash with guys he would be able to have decent matches with, and booking them immediately against himself and aligning them with Dreamer would have done a great job of ensuring that at least a majority of fans cheered for them.

A good booking exercise, but very difficult to enjoy watching it, so I can't recommend this one.

[Big Red Machine]

KEVIN NASH- Hall & Nash stay in WWF

Interview? D+
The first twenty-five minutes of this were fine, with your standard Guest Booker interview questions. Nash actually does have one or two interesting ideas about how to shoot and present wrestling and where the business should go.
Then it just KEPT GOING. For another HALF HOUR! This is not “shoot interview with Kevin Nash.” I don’t care about Nash’s opinion of every motherf*cker who ever helped book WCW, no matter how unimportant… and they weren’t even detailed thoughts, either. It was just “oh, he has a good mind for the business.” I don’t care about the rigors of booking two weeks of Nitro and Thunder, and I don’t care who was hard to work with in WCW. I bought this DVD to hear Kevin Nash book some angles.
We are now over an hour in and they’re STILL NOT BOOKING YET. Sean Oliver is now asking Kevin Nash about “the mechanics” of his and Hall’s jump to WCW. I can assure you there is absolutely no one buying this DVD who doesn’t already know the basic details of what happened, and the minor details, like who WCW called first, are not what I bought a Guest BOOKER DVD for! The booking finally started at 1:18:30 of this 1:55:00 DVD, and really stopped at about 1:45:00. That’s LESS THAN A QUARTER OF THE DVD.


How is the booking? D
Bland. Nash throws together a bunch of matches at a bunch of PPVs, but there is nothing resembling any sort of storyline. Nothing that would really compel you to want to watch the show. Nash talks about the need to turn the cartoonish gimmicks of mid-90s WWF into “real people” but puts zero thought into how he would actually accomplish this other than “some sort of Jim Jones cult leader,” and that sentence is literally all that he said about this the entire time.

Practical? A-
Everything he suggests was doable, with the exception of bringing in Sting in 1996, who I doubt was willing to leave WCW at the time… and that assumes he wasn’t locked into a contract.

Is it something I would particularly enjoy? C
All of the matches sound fine, but there are really no details to evaluate anything on.

Did I get what was advertised? D-
Yes, I got what was advertised, but only on a technicality. People buy Guest Booker DVDs because they want to see the Guest Booker apply their skills. This was just picking names out of a hat that sound good together. If I could do this myself with no effort, this is not worth paying for. Now add in that bit I said above about the booking being a mere quarter of this DVDs run-time, and this DVD is lucky I didn’t give it an F for this category.

Fun to watch? D+
It’s sometimes hard to tell what is happening when because there is a lot of jumping around. I also found the amount of time wasted before they got down to the actual booking and for about the last ten minutes of the DVD to be very infuriating. Also, Nash is one of those guys who thinks he is a lot funnier than he actually is and everything that comes out of his mouth gives you the sense that accusation of him being a backstage politician is 100% true.

Production? B
Nothing bad, but nothing good either.

Do I think it would have worked?
Probably… but then again with no details, it’s really hard to tell.

Don’t buy this. It’s Nash telling you sh*t you all already know, then essentially booking his matches via throwing darts at a chart on the wall.
 

[Big Red Machine]

BILL EADIE- The Break-up of Demolition

Interview? B
I liked that they focused a lot more on talk about actual booking philosophy and not the pointless crap Sean Oliver usually talks about. There was almost no pointless bashing of either past current wrestling except for one ten minute tangent at the end that Sean Oliver dragged Bill into by asking about the Red Rooster. I don’t even know what Sean was looking to get out of this question. It’s been asked for over twenty years, and the answers have never changed. Most people say it was meant to humiliate Terry Taylor while Vince, Pat, and Prichard all say it was not intended to be that and it was Terry’s negative attitude that turned it into that. We have gotten no new information on this topic since then, so why is Sean so damn outraged?
Then they swerved me, as instead of going to the booking after the break at the half-way point we got fifteen minutes of the sort of stuff I expect to hear on an ROH Secrets of the Ring DVD about getting over by staying true to your character, etc. etc. This means that in this “Guest Booker” DVD, there was less than thirty minutes of actual booking (less than one third of the run time). A good interview in terms of content, but this is not what I paid for so it should not be the vast majority of the DVD.

How is the booking? A-
A simple but solid and effective story to create a sympathetic babyface and heel you want to see the babyface get his hands on. It was little light on actual booking details, but Bill got his story across effectively without them.

Practical? A
It would have fit right in with the WWE product at the time (or even in any NWA territory), and had no major hurdles in terms of technology or backstage politics.

Is it something I would particularly enjoy? A-
As I said above, it’s simple, solid, and effective. I also like the way Bill humanizes Demolition a bit and shows us a side of them we’d never really seen before by putting them in a situation they’d never been in before.

Did I get what was advertised? A
Bill books a break-up of Demolition. That's what they advertised and that's what they delivered.

Fun to watch? A+
For once Sean Oliver’s questions actually help to pull the guest booker along instead of getting in the way, and Bill manages to do an AMAZING job of getting the emotions across. His delivery at times makes you feel like he is talking about something that really happened, and the humanization of Demolition while still keeping them as Demolition is amazing.

Production? D+
Occasionally there were words on screen telling you something Bill had just said. They did nothing to help you remember what had previously happened. Occasionally they had mistakes in them, too (unless Smash gets cloned at the end of the angle).

Do I think it would have worked? Absolutely!
And with Bill's brilliant delivery, I’m really sad that it never got the chance.


This was a very enjoyable watch, but it was only one angle being booked, and it is light on details. Don’t get me wrong: Bill gets the whole story across effectively. It was just more of a short alternate reality fan-fic than it was a full Guest Booker exercise that will satisfy those of us who love to see full cards and love to see how the pieces of the whole promotion fit together from beginning to end.

[Big Red Machine]

GREG GAGNE- The Opposition to the WWF Expansion

Interview? A
This DVD is from the period of time before Sean Oliver started asking that all-annoying question that he asks that basically amounts to “when did you first realize that wrestling was a work” except Sean has to find the most annoying way to ask it, like “when did you first realize that what you were seeing was being manipulated by someone?” Because Sean had not yet managed to make the interview annoying, it was mostly focused on establishing the situation at the time as was relevant to the topic being booked. In this case we got an inside story on why Pro Wrestling USA failed, which was pretty interesting (though unsurprisingly, Greg concludes that his father was in no way to blame). We then got Greg’s account of some of the stuff Vince pulled in terms of taking AWA talent (with the major focus on Hogan), and while a lot of this stuff won’t be new to many people, Greg’s closeness to the situation makes it much more visceral.

How is the booking? C… but Greg by himself gets a D
They really only booked two programs, and the main brainwork of the top one was done by Sean Oliver. Sean also seemed to have more of a grasp of what was necessary to create a lasting opposition movement than Greg did (especially as pertains to Greg’s desire to portray this as the promotions feuding with each other). I was also annoyed that Greg would let Sean pick who the champs would be at the beginning. It’s not that Sean made bad choices (he didn’t), but between that and some other comments and Greg’s general demeanor it almost seemed like Greg was unaware that this was being taped for commercial distribution (even though the camera was right in front of him and Sean would occasionally point at it or talk to it). It almost felt like Sean Oliver had won a “win a wrestler for a day” contest, and, for some explicable reason, had decided that he would cash in his coupon to ask Greg Gagne about booking.
The stuff they come up with together is fine mechanically, but for the main angle I actually felt that Greg was pulling Sean’s booking down… and based on the terrible lack of booking knowledge Sean has displayed in other Guest Booker DVDs, that is a feat in and of itself.

Practical? A-
Everything Greg suggested was doable, although I’m going to take some points off for realizing four fifths of the way into the DVD that he also wants some undercard guys to beat even though he already picked a thirty-man roster even though the original parameters were twenty-five. A nit-pick? Yes. But as I explained above, I’m quite annoyed at Greg, and this is my review so I think it’s fair.

Is it something I would particularly enjoy? C+
Hard to tell. I’d definitely have enjoyed the world title angle and I would have been fine with the stuff booked in the tag division, but the fact that Greg’s “supercard” included two squash matches a DQ to set up a gimmick match down the line when he had SIX MONTHS to BUILD UP TO THIS PPV give me the impression that I wouldn’t be enjoying the bottom two thirds of the cards that Greg’s promotion would book.

Did I get what was advertised? B+
If we’re being technical about it, I did get everything that was advertised on the DVD cover, but while watching the DVD, it didn’t quite feel like I was getting what I should have been. There was only one angle that was really booked out fully, and that angle felt more like it was NWA vs. AWA than an attempt to book one opposition promotion. Meanwhile, most of the other stuff was haphazardly thrown together in the last five or ten minutes while they were talking about the actual big show that they built up to, so I really didn’t feel like I was getting a fully-booked opposition promotion as opposed to two top angles and then semi-random names thrown together.

Fun to watch? C-
As I said above, it felt like Greg was making Sean Oliver do most of the work for him, and the whole time I was watching them I almost felt ripped off that Sean was doing a better job than Greg. Greg seemed to be just throwing random thoughts out there, as there were a lot of ideas that were discussed but went nowhere or things picked up again after forty minutes (like the whole tag title scene) or previous results not considered when they wanted to use someone (“oh don’t worry. We’ll just rebuild Kerry.”) While Sean Oliver was nowhere near as annoying as he would become in later releases, he does have a few well-placed lines that annoyed the f*ck out of me at just the right time to make me really hate what I was watching.

Production? D-
It’s Kayfabe Commentaries. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, their graphics suck, and this time was no different. They didn’t record the finishes of the matches (which is pretty much the most important part), and it even took me forever to figure out how they were marking even the winners and losers for each match. You had things occasionally showing up in the wrong line or being deleted for no reason, and putting their rudimentary colored-words graphics up on the screen on top of the hotel room-plus-Sean-and-Greg background made for the usual eyesore. I am amazed that they haven’t just given up on these graphics all together, or moved to a system where the graphics are all we see so they will have more room to present them and it will be a lot less of an eyesore (and let’s be honest: we really don’t need to see Sean and the guest doing nothing but futzing around on a dry-erase board).

Do I think it would have worked? It’s complicated
I think it certainly would appealed to a lot of fans in that day and age, but I’m not sure that it would have been more appealing than the WWF product was at the time. At the very least it maybe would have held its own, but that assumes that none of Vince’s tricks would have derailed them. I also don’t buy the assumption that they would have been able to keep talent away from Vince with this alliance when you consider how much talent they gave Greg access to for this exercise. Simply put, it’s way too much to use in one promotion, so even if you are pushing your Dibiases and Road Warriors and Jakes and Horsemen and Dustys and Bockwinkels and Dr. Deaths and Sgt. Slaughters, you’re not going to be able to stop the Lawlers and Midnight Expresses and Windhams and Duggans and JYDs of the world from going to take the opportunity that Vince can offer them that you can’t because your card is too full. So if we are defining this “working” as “beating Vince” then I don’t think so, but if we are defining it as turning itself into a big, stable, national promotion, then yes, I think it would have accomplished at least that.

I’d put this one in the “don’t buy it” category. There wasn’t enough booking done, and especially not by the guest booker himself. Sean Oliver should have felt ripped off by Greg here, although that would require Sean to have integrity which his various rip-off products in this series have clearly shown that he doesn’t.

[Big Red Machine]

MIKE GRAHAM- The CWF-Crockett Merger

THERE WAS ABSOLUTELY NO BOOKING DONE ON THIS DVD! They spent an hour and ten minutes on an interview and the rest of the time picking rosters. SEAN OLIVER AND KAYFABE COMMENTARIES SHOULD BE ABSOLUTELY ASHAMED OF THEMSELVES FOR SELLING THIS. They are scammers and con-artists, and BECAUSE OF THIS I WILL NEVER BUY ANOTHER PRODUCT DIRECTLY FROM THEM.

Look… I understand that they probably paid Mike Graham a lot of money for this and they want to recoup some losses, but there were much better options out there than falsely advertising a product. There was absolutely no reason they couldn’t have just cut out the roster-picking and sold this as a shoot interview with Mike Graham. But instead they chose to rip me off, and they knew exactly what was going to happen, too. There was a point in this DVD when Sean asked how much time he had used, and was told one hour (into a shoot that Sean clearly knew was only scheduled for ninety minutes… and then Sean decided that this meant that he had plenty of time to pointlessly ask Mike about WCW in 2000. He knew how much time he had left and how much time this booking should take, but he clearly didn’t give a sh*t about delivering what was advertised. He just wanted to get Mike Graham talking about crap that he thought he could put in the trailer because he’s a scumbag.
There was not one single match booked on this entire DVD. For that reason alone it doesn’t matter what was said in the interview or how good the graphics were or whatever. This product was rip-off, so it gets Fs in every category. Don’t buy this. I’m going to mail mine back to Kayfabe Commentaries with a letter explaining that they’ll never have my business again because of this DVD. F*ck you, Sean!

Interview? F

How is the booking? F

Practical? F

Is it something I would particularly enjoy? F

Did I get what was advertised? F

Fun to watch? F

Production? F

Do I think it would have worked? F