Ex-WWE Announcer Hugo Savinovich talks how NXT vs. AEW differs from the war against WCW (Exclusive)
I had the pleasure and the honor of catching up with the legendary Hugo Savinovich, who was the voice of WWE for many years, in addition to serving as a member of the Creative team back when the company used to be known as WWF. He is still an active force in the wrestling world, and in fact, is putting together a grand show called Fight Forever: Tribute to Bret Hart.
The legend shed light on the show when I caught up with him. This is what the man had to say recently:
"For many years I've done shows in South America. In every show we've honored somebody from professional wrestling. This year we're honoring Bret The Hitman Hart. He has a lot of Latino fans. And years ago, when he was very young and I was very young, one of his first international matches was against me. His brother, Smith Hart and him against Cowboy Frank Williams and myself. I felt like it was very important to do a tribute to a man that symbolizes a true wrestling professional."
Having served as a member of the WWE creative squad, Mr. Savinovich is a wealth of wrestling knowledge. I asked him about Vince McMahon's reaction to the arrival of AEW:
"I don't think he's scared but he's very frustrated because they can't seem to get the creative back on track. My first year with Vince, I was in the creative team. It was Vince McMahon, Pat Patterson, Bruce Prichard and myself. That was the whole creative team. And then WWF became WWE. It became a monster of a production and entertainment company. With big success came a lot of pressure!"
Mr. Savinovich elaborated about how the volume of content that WWE produces has led to a worsening of its core product to a great extent. He said the following:
"Every week, they have to do 3 hours of RAW live, 2 hours of SmackDown and now with the war on Wednesdays, now they have to produce 2 more hours of live content. The bigger you get, people expect more of you. And right now that is the problem. They are the Number 1 company in the world but they're not doing too well creatively. That has affected their house shows, their ratings."
However, Hugo Savinovich is not worried about his old boss. He knows that Vince McMahon has the situation well under control:
"However, I feel like it's a matter of readjusting. I worked for Vince for 17 years and one thing I know about him is that he will reinvent himself and somehow, make it work."
I asked Hugo Savinovich, who was very active even during the wars between WWE and WCW, to compare the two wrestling wars. He had an interesting answer:
"I think the difference is that back then Vince did not have the tools and the money he has right now. Even all the money that the Khan family has and the great money they have with Cody Rhodes and Kenny Omega and Jon Moxley and Chris Jericho and all these beautiful, talented people; they have more connections and they have the finances. Back then, Ted Turner used to give Eric Bischoff millions of dollars every month. They would just take talent and it was Ted Turner who wanted to have all the Network connections."
The scale of the current wars don't measure up to the Monday Night Wars and Mr. Savinovich explained why:
"Even as far as them winning every Wednesday, the ratings are not even reaching 1 million viewers locally in the United States. So, that's a big problem for Triple H with NXT and for the Khan family for their product AEW. They have to come up with a way to regain the Attitude Era fans. We had 10 million viewers. And now, you see the ratings and SmackDown, RAW, AEW and NXT... none of them are reaching the right target!"