By Tom the Actuary of Playboy

THE SECRET TO RECREATING THE OLD MAGIC by Tom the Actuary

I’ll get right to this… the WWF is never going to recreate the old magic. It can’t.

The WWF arguably jumped the shark* back with the Austin heel turn at Wrestlemania X-7. It has, however, been guilty of shark jumping many times in the past and somehow managed to survive… at least so far. The secret of their survival hasn’t been “getting the old magic back”. The trick has been figuring out how to make new magic.

Hulk Hogan was successful, but he wasn’t like Bob Backlund, or anyone else, really. Ric Flair used elements of other performers but combined them into something unique and immediately recognizable, which stood out like a blazing sun when he first debuted in the WWF back in 1991. Bret Hart worked because he was himself, not an imitation Hulk Hogan or Ric Flair. Steve Austin worked because he wasn’t an imitation anybody. The Rock is and remains an original. These performers (and many others) have been what has made the wrestling industry.

The wrestling industry has made successful by great performers. Not great promotion, although that has helped it reach it’s ultimate level. Not great writing, although giving the wrestlers something to work with always helps. Not great production, although it never hurts. No, great performers in and out of the ring are what have made the whole thing work, when it does.

Wrestlers have notoriously had little to no power whatsoever in terms of determining storyline direction or match outcomes. Bookers do this. Still, in the late 1980’s, the Honk-Tonk Man could totally change top card booking just by threatening to leave. Other wrestlers, like Hogan and Flair, have used the threat of departure to change the way things were done, so they had some stroke.

But nobody unrelated to the McMahon family by blood or other bodily fluid has that kind of pull any more. If you can believe the sheets, nobody but Vince McMahon has any kind of say about anything any more.

In Jay Bower’s brilliant tryout column, he makes a persuasive case that finally having absolute power in the wrestling industry has basically put Vince McMahon over the edge. He might be right. Another possibility, however, is that being the “sole survivor” in the wrestling promotion wars has convinced McMahon even more than the was that no one knows better than he what needs to be done to help the company recover. Because – and make no mistake about this - the WWF could just as easily go out of business as WCW did.

I would argue that wrestling is a lot more like the popular music business or fashion business than most people realize. The trick for the people in charge is to:

- Find the next big thing;

- Take advantage of it to your gain; and then

- Throw it away when it’s not fashionable any more, so as to not be associated with “losers”.

Heartless and insensitive as that is to the actual wrestlers or musicians or clothing designers or whatever, that’s why corporate leaders retire in big houses in Florida and why performers end up performing at the local county fair well into their 60’s.

Not to sound like a communist or anything, but capitalism works best for people who understand the game and play it right. Vince McMahon is a successful capitalist. Everyone who works for him has been at best a successful contract worker. The company has been making less money recently, so people have to be let go. In the mean time, he will milk everyone he has for all he thinks they’re worth and then cast them aside when they serve no further purpose. And hopefully the performers themselves know this and plan accordingly.

McMahon seems to be going with a variant of a formula successful in the past in an effort to tread water while searching for the next hot phenomenon to ride. If he finds it, the WWF will be back. If he doesn’t it, it will go the way of the AWA.

Because just because the wrestling business has always gone in cycles doesn’t mean it always will.

* Props to Josh Mann.