As an aside, I was always a Four Horseman guy.
But the coolest gimmick in the history of wrestling was the NWO. Until they added too many members and split it up into two factions.
Those were great gimmicks.
The Four-Horseman thing came about when there were still individual promotions throughout the country.
That's what I grew up with.
I missed out on what many consider the "golden age" of pro wrestling... The 50's until the early 60's, when many local shows (like those held in Buffalo) were shown on prime time TV.
When I started watching it, wrestling TV shows were on Saturday afternoon. We got the one out of Canada on CHCH. Then Vince's father started the one that was on at Midnight on WOR.
When Vince either bought out or forced out all the small promotions, a lot of "intrigue" went out the door too. Fans only learned about other wrestlers from magazines, which did a great job setting up personnas so when a guy like Ernie Ladd entered the WWWF, you knew he was a bad guy.
That's the other thing that is missed now. You no longer have the guys that roamed from promotion to promotion. Guys like Ladd, Ivan Koloff, Ox Baker, Stan Stasiak, Stan Hansen and such would show up in a promotion. Ascend to the top, lose to the champion, then compete for the promotion's tag belts or secondary championship. They would hang around for 4 to 6 months then they'd be off to another promotion. Wrestling rosters were always in a state of flux.
A lot of that intrigue went away after Vince went on his buying spree.
