IRISHwhip78

Seriously at the end of his run he had Kerry Von Erich, Sgt. Slaughter, and Del Wilkes. Shouldn't he have taken a cue from VKM and Hulkamania and went the kiddie route?

Big Z

Verne was more about the "sport" of wrestling, even with the characters he had in the AWA over the years. Plus he never wanted to expand and go national like Vince because he was an Old School guy who didn't like to complete with anyone. Like the other promoters that Vince crushed, he was behind the times and didn't want to move forward. Apparently his son Greg tried to get him to go more down the WWF route but Verne refused.

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IRISHwhip78

You would have thought that after the success of Hogan in the WWF. He would have done more with the Gold mine that was Sgt. Slaughter

RyanPelley

Verne's stubborn ways are kind of funny in a way. Even after Hulkamania exploded and was turning the World Wrestling Federation into a global phenomenon, he still refused to change his ways. Good riddance. Throughout the 80's, Verne had an incredible stable of talent on his roster, and while some had good success and great matches, that's about as far as that went. At least we got the Wrestlerock Rumble before the AWA went under.

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777

In fairness, Verne ran a very successful promotion for thirty plus years. He also had his roster drained by WWF's offers of better money and national exposure. Despite the perception that Gagne was 'old school' he was at the forefront of really promoting the wild characters and personalities of his talent as well as being responsible for the training of hundreds of successful wrestlers.

He simply wasn't able to adapt to the changes taking place during that era, but he was a larger success than he was a failure.

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nevereveragainu

vernes son claims that because he refused to let vince buy him out vince went out of his way to screw awa at every turn

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IRISHwhip78

There might be some truth to this. It seems the WWF snatched more talent from the AWA (Hogan, Hennan, Mean Gene, Ventura, Adonis, Martel, Hennig, Badd Company, The Rockers, Beverly Bros., Boris Zukoff, Brunzell, Yokozuna, etc.) But Vern was known to be cheap and rip people off.

The AWA probably should have changed the format in the later years after the AWA-CWA-WCCW merger failed and instead should have played up GI Joe Sgt. Slaughter by giving him the strap and then bringing in top talent from Japan like Gordy & Williams for a few weeks.