Unsurprisingly, Vince McMahon has a whole lot in common with Ted Turner, his self-selected nemesis during the nineties. Both McMahon and Turner took their fathers names and, later on in life, their businesses, and each man transformed that business from a success into a massive corporate leviathan. Turner and McMahon clashed for the first time in the 1980s when the WWF was in the throes of trying to go national. McMahon bought a controlling interest in Georgia Championship Wrestling in 1984 specifically to gain access to their two hour Saturday evening timeslot on TBS, Turners cable network. That, plus his own USA Network deal, would have given him control over all nationally televised wrestling. Unfortunately, McMahon reneged on a specific promise to air original programming, sending in shows culled from matches already shown in syndication (also known as repeats). The event, pivotal in the history of the era, became known as 'Black Saturday'. TBS was deluged with complaints and, furious at being manipulated, Turner offered timeslots to Bill Watts Mid-South Wrestling and Ole Andersons new promotion Championship Wrestling from Georgia. McMahon was forced to sell his TBS timeslot to Jim Crockett and back out altogether. McMahon never forgave Turner for the supposed slight, having conveniently forgotten his part in causing it. The southern billionaire would become his boogeyman over the next fifteen years, leading up to open warfare in the Monday Night Wars. But rather than fight the man, there are plenty of lessons that McMahon could have learned from the way Turner did things.
Professional writer, punk werewolf and nesting place for starfish. Obsessed with squid, spirals and story. I publish short weird fiction online at desincarne.com, and tweet nonsense under the name Jack The Bodiless. You can follow me all you like, just don't touch my stuff.
