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[QUOTE="jncuse, post: 4493858, member: 1969"]
I think you spelled out the reason above.   Vince Sr, built up his federation on faces for 15 years- Bruno, Pedro (who was also apparently fairly brutal), then Bruno again.   That was the formula he believed in - having heels chase the champ and the champ holding on forever.    Very short term transition heel champs.   It was the exact opposite of what the NWA did at the time - much more frequent changes, although the heels still held the title most of the time.

Not saying Vince Sr. made the right call taking it away from Graham but that was his philosophy.   It was clearly the wrong call.    I have heard great things about Graham as a heel, and seems like many analysts of that time never understood Backlund.

It certainly hurt the WWE business a lot, but the WWE still stayed fairly decent as a territory.   The one thing you can argue though is that Backlund for 5 years probably took away much of the value from the WWE,, and that allowed the purchase price to be low enough to allow a young Vince McMahon to actually be able to buy the company.  A better product in 1982, and perhaps Vince never is able to buy and to change wrestling forever.  The product was terrible in 82 -- Iron Mike Sharpe had a feud against Backlund FFS!
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