TOP FIVE LIST: Top Five National Bookers of the Modern Era (and who they sat under) from Heyman to Triple H to Sullivan

As much as it was a gimmick that didn’t achieve what it was set out to do, there is a real learning tree when it comes to most things one does, and that is no different in professional wrestling. I have been a fan of pro wrestling since childhood, and have watched very intensely at times. No matter how much wrestling I watch, I know I’m not ready for a match, shooting a match, doing commentary at a high level, or booking out a show worth of angles that last over weeks and months. The booking of angles has been my top criticism of AEW for years.

I don’t write to simply criticize, but hopefully Tony Kahn will find a way to slow down on stories and finish them while making sense. As a person who roots for an underdog, I want to see AEW having long term success. I was a punk rock kid, so mainstream wasn’t for me. In high school when others were listening to Green Day, I preferred Pennywise. Where most comic book fans look to Marvel as the top brand, I was always a DC guy. Part of it was the situation I was in and justifying the greatness of the brand you could afford, but I always felt that there are people working very hard on a product not getting the recognition they deserve, so I want to support that effort.

Where I feel Tony makes his mistakes is usually not having the experience needed to wear all of the hats he wants to wear. While I enjoy when Tony is collaborative with the talent in the ring, so key points are hit, it’s often the pacing of the story or the outright dropping of a story that is frustrating and makes it hard to invest. MJF and his “American Championship” and the Sting retirement rush to involve the tag team titles are two stories that bothered me the most. We are still as an audience wondering if there will be any payoff to the weeks of MJF being added to The Hurt Syndicate, in what seems to be an abandoned story.

I heard Bully Ray on Busted Open a while back talking about all of the great bookers (the lead writer or showrunner in the vernacular of a different television show), and how they learned their craft. On the opposite end, we have Tony Kahn, who may be a wrestling fan and have some fantastic ideas, but lacks experience in execution. As I thought about that segment, it really stuck with me. Each of the great bookers had to learn. They couldn’t just start a territory; they had to earn their spot and prove themselves.

Triple H

I put him in at number five, not because he is less brilliant than the other minds on this list, he is simply in the middle of his run, and it’s hard to accurately rank his performance. You would see some of it in his character when he wrestled. I called Triple H a video game boss years before the moniker of The Final Boss was used on WWE TV. He knew how to build heat and pace the story for when the blowoff would work best. Refreshing angles from wrestling’s past like the briefcase of cash for the hit he put out on Goldberg that Harley Race had used years earlier, you knew that the man behind the character knew his wrestling history and was looking for what could work with today’s audience.

When he took over NXT, he focused on building the talent with wrestling 101 booking. Simple stories where these characters would have interactions that would lead to a match. The simplicity, the eye for talent, the way women wrestlers were being treated, and letting more of the story being told in longer matches led to what many saw as a more enjoyable show than what was seen on Monday or Friday. Now with a couple of years behind him being the Chief Content Officer for the main roster (bookers get fancy corporate names now), we are seeing the third major wrestling boom from WWE.

For years, he learned by seeing Vince McMahon, then Triple H started sitting in on creative meetings. His mind was valued, and started to be developed. With NXT, he was given a shot with a smaller territory. For all of Vince’s flaws, and though it wasn’t on McMahon’s timeline, he was instrumental in leaving Triple H equipped to take over.

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Dusty Rhodes

The man who was 265 pounds of blue-eyed soul left a legacy that is still incredibly impactful today. Not only his youngest son being “the guy” for the largest wrestling company there has ever been, but his final class of trainees are many of today’s top stars. Bayley, Seth Rollins, Kevin Owens, and so many more talked about what they learned from Dusty in NXT.

Before he was everyone’s favorite trainer, he was one of the most famous athletes of his day. He’d even say “The second most recognized athlete next to Muhammad Ali,” when listening to Bruce Prichard tell stories of his time with Dusty. In his later wrestling days, he’d also take some duties in writing the shows.

Dusty had specialty matches, events, and even finishes that came from his mind. Not all of them worked, but he’d try. Even shows that were critical disappointments were still great when I was a kid. I loved the Battle Bowl idea, where names would be drawn at random, creating odd combination tag teams, who would compete in a qualifying match for a battle royal later that night. As I type that out, it was a little convoluted and I understand now why it may not have had the success I as well as Dusty hoped for.

He’d have stints of various degrees of success with WCW, TNA, Championship Wrestling from Florida, and many more. While his creative worked sometimes and at other times didn’t, the wrestlers he interacted with always learned something from the legend.

This started in Florida and learning under Eddie Graham. There will be better historians of that era and region to go over how he developed his approach to booking, but like all others on this list, he learned from another successful man who did it before him.

Kevin Sullivan

Another man who Eddie Graham was responsible for developing was “The Taskmaster” Kevin Sullivan. Again, I’m the right person to say who, but not the how. There are better people to learn from when it comes to 1970s Florida wrestling. What I saw when I was a fan was a wrestler who was portrayed as a top guy in many ways, but never at the very top of the card. I didn’t understand his place in the company when I came back to watching wrestling and, to that 15 year old, he was an odd guy in the Dungeon of Doom. I can’t believe I came back during that era, then stuck around for the rest of my life!

Later I would learn who Kevin Sullivan was, and that was the man that put it all together. The man knew how to draw heat and how to enrage an audience, so that the babyface is that much more cheered when the heel got what was owed to them.

Kevin was the man who booked, alongside Eric Bischoff, perhaps the most important wrestling angle ever, when Hulk Hogan became a heel and joined the NWO. Sullivan had the idea to take a guy you didn’t want to hear talk as much as you thought you did, and build mystique around Bill Goldberg. Sullivan saw a wrestler who was special when used in short, explosive matches and made Goldberg WCW’s Mike Tyson, wearing short boots, all in black, and were quick wins. Without Kevin Sullivan helping take over as the top wrestling brand for a short period of time was what spurred the former WWF to compete, and stepped up their product to never be outdone again.

Vince McMahon

Articles and books can, have, and will be written filled with all of the accomplishments Vince McMahon made in professional wrestling. Becoming a national, then global promotion. A legacy family brand that can be enjoyed by people of all ages bonding with others over the art of professional wrestling today was shaped by Vince McMahon more than anyone else. He started WrestleMania, creating a spectacle out of a wrestling show. He brought wrestling into mainstream and created stars. He was a pioneer in PPV, streaming, and national touring, just to name a few. Vince didn’t just do it, he learned how to, and strategized on how to do it bigger.

Vince, after meeting his biological father and having a way to get into the wrestling industry, made it his life’s mission to make wrestling a worldwide juggernaut and it was going to be his vision of what he called “Sports Entertainment” that was going to get him there. Before the strategy came the learning. From his own dad and the former wrestlers, now in the office. who worked for the elder McMahon was a master class of learning. Combined with the ambition to do it on a large scale helped when he was able to take the company over from his father and take it to the heights he had planned for.

Paul Heyman

Heyman Hustle is more than just branding that is recognizable, that has been Paul’s life. Sneaking his way into shows at Madison Square Garden as a photographer, Heyman started his way into wrestling through manipulating. In the context of wrestling, manipulation of other people is a goal, so it’s not always a negative trait as one may assume, but it’s gonna be our Pee-Wee’d word of the day.

Paul spent time in New York, he went to work for wrestling promoters as a manager after some relationships he had made as a photographer encouraged him to do so. He went to Florida, Memphis, AWA, the Carolinas, and, when national wrestling ended the territories, he ended up in WCW with his Dangerous Alliance.

After leaving WCW, he ended up working with Eastern Championship Wrestling, where he would eventually take it over, rebranded it to Extreme Championship Wrestling, and was putting out weekly shows that you’d look for through scrambled antenna signals, read about in a magazine, or be lucky enough to be involved in tape trading in the ’90s. ECW was revolutionizing wrestling and large promotions were paying attention.

Paul had seen good bookers book well, and poor bookers book poorly. He saw the old timers who wouldn’t change with the time and stay relevant. The brilliant minds he watched from Dusty Rhodes, Eddie Graham, both Vince McMahons, and his time with Eddie Gilbert, Heyman would observe and soak up like a sponge. When his input was asked for, he’d always have something. It often was great, and if he would let the idea stand on its own, Paul would just have to learn how and when to pitch those brilliant ideas.

ECW did a great job of connecting with the audience that was looking for what they offered. It wasn’t for everyone, but if it was for you, you loved it. The music, attitude, and identity of that crowd was captured and used to make wrestling relevant and relatable to them. He knew what to highlight about performers, and also what not to.

After ECW had come to a close, he’d have multiple stints with WWE. The learning how to pitch an idea would often be the tension between him and Vince McMahon, shortening the stints that Heyman had with the company.

I would argue that when he was involved in creative, the shows were better. WWE’s version of ECW, while snakebit from the beginning, had a dip in quality after Heyman, as did his prior work on Smackdown when he left at that time. His work in getting over Roman Reigns had to do with Heyman as much as it did anyone when it came to adding credibility to Roman’s push.

We have to learn from the generations before, and reading the books and watching the TV shows are not an acceptable substitute for being in the mix and seeing the decisions. How they were made and when they were made. For the future of wrestling alternatives, I hope that decisions are made for the fans so that we can enjoy the show, knowing that our investment in the characters we see will be paid off in a way that means something and makes sense.

(Griffin is a lifelong fan of wrestling, superheroes, and rebellious music of all forms. He is the owner of Nerdstalgia, and you can shop online, learn about visiting the store in Colorado Springs, or catch him at a comic con in the Rocky Mountain area by going to http://nerdstalgia.shop)