by Bruce Mitchell, Torch columnist

PWTorch VIP members have first-look access to all of Torch editor Bruce Mitchell's latest blogs in the newly upgraded VIP Forum. His blogs are published first in the PWTorch VIP Forum, and Mitchell interacts with other VIP members and Torch staff and contributors in the blog comments area afterward. Some of Mitchell's blog entries will be exclusive to the VIP Forum.

Continued from Bruce Mitchell's previous VIP Forum blog on WWE's Saturday Night Main Event DVD. MITCHELL'S VIP FORUM BLOG: A Lesson from WWE SNME for Ring of Honor .

The other thing that stood out to me from watching WWE's Saturday Night's Main Event DVD is just how much the direction of that company has changed. It's not just WWE has been (and is now) much more vulgar than they were in the show's heyday.

It's just that, in the last 15 years or more, even with all the excesses, the WWE product of today is much closer to that of their biggest competition back then, Jim Crockett Promotions, than it is to the Hulkamania-fueled Rock'n'Wrestling cartoon WWF of the eighties.

Comparing the SNME skits, like "Mean" Gene Okerlund interviewing George "The Animal" Steele, or Bobby "The Brain" Heenan bobbing for apples with the late Cousin Junior after mid-card heels and faces have a pass-the-apple-with-your-neck relay race during a Halloween party, or seeing the one-dimensional one-word gimmicks like "The Barber," "The Snake," ""Cowboy", "The Giant" and the rest, to the modern WWE product make the point obvious. WWE won the economic war with Jim Crockett Promotions, then adopted and improved on much of JCP's in-ring working philosophy over the years.

In the days of Saturday Night's Main Event, WWF's other national shows were USA's Primetime Wrestling and the syndicated WWF Superstars and WWF Wrestling Challenge. These shows had the typical star-squashes-jobber match formula. They only ran angles and competitive matches every few months, and the very top stars like Hulk Hogan appeared sporadically on these shows. There were no monthly pay-per-views or obsessive tracking of rating quarter-hours, though many territory wrestling shows, and WTBS' World Championship Wrestling, drew big ratings for their day.

House shows were where the money was, and in WWE's case they mostly ran a brutally strenous national schedule where it was enough that fans got to see the WWF TV stars. Their house shows didn't need, and couldn't deliver, work-rate matches or developments in the storylines. The WWF shows that tried that, old major markets like New York, Philadelphia, and Boston, saw dips in attendance because the talent often couldn't deliver to those fans' higher expectations, even with the cameras rolling. Big stars (and a big lead in merchandising) were enough to sustain WWE in the early years of the fight.

Jim Crockett Promotions, though, went to most of their markets on a monthly basis, and most of their fans wanted traditional wrestling blood'n'guts action along with their TV stars. Booker/Top Star Dusty Rhodes also wanted wrestlers who could fly around for him in the ring while he just stood (or sat) there.

WWE's model since the nineties Monday Night Wars with WCW requires stories and matches that can sustain fans interest beyond big muscles and easily recognizable catch-phrases. WWE has to feed five hours of national television (with the pressure of building those quarter hour ratings) and inspire fans to buy monthly pay-per-views. Now WWE brings the big event house show to your house through pay-per-view, leaving house shows themselves as an important after-thought.

WWE now relies on the same expectation of high in-ring work and a more disciplined version of the same type of storylines and finishes JCP used to become the WWF's biggest rivals in the eighties. (WWE has a much higher percentage of clean finishes throughout their programming than anyone did in the SNME days).

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25 YEARS OF BRUCE MITCHELL - DAY 10 (2000): Titled “Death of Hardcore” as Bruce discusses the apparent end of the Hardcore Wrestling era and also suggests what ECW must do to regain relevance

25 YEARS OF BRUCE MITCHELL - DAY 9 (1999): Titled “Children” as Bruce discusses Vince McMahon's marketing approach toward children and how he deals with controversy like a child would (with a great opening line)

25 YEARS OF BRUCE MITCHELL - DAY 8 (1998): “Stolen Moments” - Bruce lays out case for Flair as Greatest of All-Time as he dealt with locker room politics in WCW Nitro era