Bluegrassrivals

There have been several theories as to the true cause of the death of WCW. What are your thoughts? What do you think the main reason was for the death of WCW?

Great 2 hour interviews by Kevin Nash on Friday before Wrestlemania and Vince Russo the week before laid it all out! They Did not have "Wrestling" people running the Business. The CEO and Executive Management team were outsiders from Time Warner, who knew nothing about the Industry. Thus, they handed over the keys to "The Boys". That was a MAJOR mistake! The boys can book matches, but they knew nothing about running a business. So, they got into bed with Eric Bischoff, who was the only one to answer to the corporate Execs, and spent every dime of their money with no payback. This was simple "spend more than you bring in"! Bischoff played to his favorites, and that cost WCW their edge.

Vince is Wrestling Promoter who is also the Chief executive. He knows both angles, thus has found ways to avoid letting happen to WWE what happened in WCW.

They just started losing credibility left and right.

It's one thing to bring in Karl Malone and Dennis Rodman in...
but then you let Jay Leno have a moment in the spotlight...
and then...
and then...
you hand the most prestigious title in your business to David Arquette?!?!

You let Kevin Nash book matches and they have to figure out a way to stop Goldbergs streak...
so of course....Kevin Nash stops it

It just seemed like they "got away from it"

zaga, I am impressed! You need to pop into this forum more often!

[Image: you-are-wise-yin-penguin.jpg]

Stardust Wrote:zaga, I am impressed! You need to pop into this forum more often!

[Image: you-are-wise-yin-penguin.jpg]

My wrestling watching days are pretty much over...
but if I ever see anything around the 90s era of wrestling it piques my interest lol

I also think Vince Russo takes a lot of heat...some of it he deserved...but a lot of it was bad timing.
but in my opinion he left WWF when it was booming and jumped on the WCW train and there wasn't much left to save.

"The Millionaire's Club" versus "The Newblood" angle really didn't make a lot of people lock the dial on TNT on Monday nights, but I actually thought it was pretty good.
His leash was a lot more loose and I think him inserting himself into the storyline was an oversight. When Bischoff and McMahon did it they actually contributed to the story in a big way...
but it had already been done before and he wasn't the personality that either of those guys were.

^ Good points Zaga!

I first got into wrestling big in 97-98, right around the heart of the Attitude Era. When I first started watching it my parents tried to get me to avoid WWF because of the all-out nature with the middle fingers, cussing, etc. WCW had more of a family-oriented emphasis at the time which I think kept a lot of parents trying to push their kids to watch it. When Vince Russo came to WCW it switched from the family oriented style to the more all-out style that the WWF was doing at the time. Considering that WWF was already putting out a better product, that hurt WCW even worse because they at least had their own distinction prior to the change, and now they were competing heads on with WWF. This is one of many reasons for the decline - but I think that hurt WCW quite a bit.

All the guaranteed contracts did'nt help!

Shoulderblock73 Wrote:All the guaranteed contracts did'nt help!

The guaranteed contracts are also what led to them winning the Monday Night Wars for so long.

^ that's a great point zaga. It was normal to have 2-3 guys with $500K salaries plus shares of PPV revenues. WCW made it common to have guy's with $500K salaries: Hogan, Sting, Goldberg, Hall, Nash, Macho and Hart. Guy's like Flair, Steiner and Henning were over $250K. So, there was more money going out than coming in - BUT - that's how they were able to pull those guys over to WCW.

More so than the guarenteed contracts was Creative Rights. These guys got the money they wanted, but they also controlled their booking. So, you started seeing guys who refused to do the job. When WCW started having gimic finishes and DQ's all the time, fans started losing interest in the product. Coupled with DX's INVASION vignettes and the Stone Cold/Vince McMahon feud, WWF took control and never looked back.

^ Yeah, they had some pretty big contracts. Didn't Bret Hart have an insane contract?

I have watched the video about the death of WCW. The Big Show was on there talking about all the big contracts they had with people...and him being the world champion and making $125,000/year.

Since Zaga Fan happened to mention creative control, here is one of the most famous "creative control" incidents from WCW... ***WARNING: STRONG LANGUAGE!***

One thing that I liked about WCW was that they actually put a lot of stock in Nitro and Thunder.
WWE never has a world title change hands on Raw...
they save that for the PPVs.
but it was something that would happen on WCW every so often and some of the greatest moments in WCW history happened on Nitro.
I can remember when Goldberg completed his title run and beat Hollywood on Nitro.
Karl Malone came out to ringside and gave Hennig a diamond-cutter (which is hard to do when you're a foot taller than someone lol)

I can also remember two big blunders in the length of events as well..
I remember Halloween Havoc 98 when I was rooting for DDP against Goldberg for the title and the PPV cut out seconds into the match...

I also remember Sting losing the title to Hogan on Nitro after the cameras quit rolling the day after he won the title for his first time as the gothic sting.

I remember the Ultimate Warrior making a comeback that garnered a lot of interest but it was squashed quickly and he was written out of the script in general. I don't know the whole story but I'm assuming he went off the deep end again.

I loved everything about WCW but IMO they just got away from what was working.
Big name guys going at it every night...
there wasn't 50 stables going at it for the most part...
It was WCW vs NWO - Good Guys vs Bad Guys

The had something unique with the cruiserweight division...
that may have been more entertaining than anything else.
So many high flyers and tag-teams that just did crazy stuff on a regular basis.

They had the TV title that was defended every week and they usually had a few fan favorites going at it for that.

It lasted for 3 hours and they probably had twice the matches that WWF did all night.

But they just started getting stupid...
I don't know if they just ran out of ideas or if they just started getting cocky.

Dusty you may know this....
Didn't the american dream himself used to be in charge of the creative element at WCW?

WideRight05 Wrote:^ Yeah, they had some pretty big contracts. Didn't Bret Hart have an insane contract?

I have watched the video about the death of WCW. The Big Show was on there talking about all the big contracts they had with people...and him being the world champion and making $125,000/year.

Since Zaga Fan happened to mention creative control, here is one of the most famous "creative control" incidents from WCW... ***WARNING: STRONG LANGUAGE!***

Just watched this and remember it fondly...

Was it ever released if this was a work or Hogan was surprised with this?
I know he filed a lawsuit over it afterwards for defamation of character but Russo always said it was a work.

I don't remember what happened exactly, but if I remember correctly they had a fight about the outcome of the match and Hogan had some kind of clause in his contract that allowed him to override Russo.

Also, didn't Hogan win the title like this another time...
in his "feud" with Nash.
I could be wrong...
it's been a while lol

zaga_fan Wrote:One thing that I liked about WCW was that they actually put a lot of stock in Nitro and Thunder.
WWE never has a world title change hands on Raw...
they save that for the PPVs.
but it was something that would happen on WCW every so often and some of the greatest moments in WCW history happened on Nitro.
I can remember when Goldberg completed his title run and beat Hollywood on Nitro.
Karl Malone came out to ringside and gave Hennig a diamond-cutter (which is hard to do when you're a foot taller than someone lol)

I can also remember two big blunders in the length of events as well..
I remember Halloween Havoc 98 when I was rooting for DDP against Goldberg for the title and the PPV cut out seconds into the match...

I also remember Sting losing the title to Hogan on Nitro after the cameras quit rolling the day after he won the title for his first time as the gothic sting.

I remember the Ultimate Warrior making a comeback that garnered a lot of interest but it was squashed quickly and he was written out of the script in general. I don't know the whole story but I'm assuming he went off the deep end again.

I loved everything about WCW but IMO they just got away from what was working.
Big name guys going at it every night...
there wasn't 50 stables going at it for the most part...
It was WCW vs NWO - Good Guys vs Bad Guys

The had something unique with the cruiserweight division...
that may have been more entertaining than anything else.
So many high flyers and tag-teams that just did crazy stuff on a regular basis.

They had the TV title that was defended every week and they usually had a few fan favorites going at it for that.

It lasted for 3 hours and they probably had twice the matches that WWF did all night.

But they just started getting stupid...
I don't know if they just ran out of ideas or if they just started getting cocky.

Dusty you may know this....
Didn't the american dream himself used to be in charge of the creative element at WCW?

As for the bolded:

Dusty Rhodes was at one time in charge of booking, from around 85 - 88 until Ric Flair took over. I am not sure if he was during the mid-late 90's though.

And as for the Warrior, his run with WCW lasted two months and two matches. One match was a tag team on nitro, and the other against Hollywood Hulk Hogan at Halloween Havoc that year which was arguably one of the worst matches ever. WWE made a DVD around 2005 about the Ultimate Warrior. Compared to all their other DVDs, this one was different because they bashed him throughout the whole video lol. Apparently he wasn't good to work with. You can find that on YouTube. It breaks down his match with Hogan in 98 and goes into detail into how he screwed up his short run with WCW.

What are you alls thoughts about who will take over WWE once Vince is gone?

Is shane and stephanie smart enough to handle it?
Will HHH use Stephanie to get to where Vince is?

As I read this forum, much of what I was gonna post has already been mentioned.

But 2 major events (one leading to the other) hasn't been mentioned. Or if they have, I must have over looked them.



Hulk Hogan turning heel. That may have changed the whole wrestling industry and started the whole nWo and Monday Night Wars. But if you look back on it now, that was a bad move by the sports biggest icon. Not only did that crush million's of little Hulksters around the world..... that gave the WWF more ammo to mock Hogan. I can remember several incidents when the WWF mocked thr Hogan character on Raw.

The finger poke of death.... Hogan vs. Nash for the WCW heavyweight title on Nitro. If my memory serves me right, WCW had been beating WWF in Monday night TV ratings until this happened. Then the following week, the WWF took the ratings back and the rest is history.



And as far as the "Return of the Warrior" goes..... as WideRight05 mentioned, the DVD "The Self Destruction of the Ultimate Warrior" is about and 2 hour beat down of the Warrior character and Jim Hellwig. Good info about how to make people Not like you in the wrestling business.

Pulp Fiction Wrote:As I read this forum, much of what I was gonna post has already been mentioned.

But 2 major events (one leading to the other) hasn't been mentioned. Or if they have, I must have over looked them.



Hulk Hogan turning heel. That may have changed the whole wrestling industry and started the whole nWo and Monday Night Wars. But if you look back on it now, that was a bad move by the sports biggest icon. Not only did that crush million's of little Hulksters around the world..... that gave the WWF more ammo to mock Hogan. I can remember several incidents when the WWF mocked thr Hogan character on Raw.

The finger poke of death.... Hogan vs. Nash for the WCW heavyweight title on Nitro. If my memory serves me right, WCW had been beating WWF in Monday night TV ratings until this happened. Then the following week, the WWF took the ratings back and the rest is history.



And as far as the "Return of the Warrior" goes..... as WideRight05 mentioned, the DVD "The Self Destruction of the Ultimate Warrior" is about and 2 hour beat down of the Warrior character and Jim Hellwig. Good info about how to make people Not like you in the wrestling business.

I think that was the single smartest move in the history of wrestling lol

zaga_fan Wrote:I think that was the single smartest move in the history of wrestling lol

I guess.... depending on your age at the time.

I was 13 at the time. Hogan was my childhood hero as Im sure he was for most of the kids my age at the time. When he comes out from the back to save the day as he had so many times before..... then you see him leg drop Savage. It was bad.

Dusty booked exclusively during the time mentioned above, but individual bookers ended at the beginning of the 90's. Booking teams, or better known as "creative" or "writers" started in the 90's. Dusty was part of many booking teams with WCW. The teams usually turned over every 18 months. In the 90's, the role of the booker changed, and the addition of the agent became a separate role. It's a misnomer that Bookers write the finishes. All the Booker does is write the direction of the character and storyline. Once the direction is set, it is not the booker who gives the talent the finish. The booker will sit down with the agent and many times the talent and tell the direction, but it is the agent who makes the final call for the finish on fight night. Guy's like Ron Bass, Pat Patterson and Terry Taylor are the best this business has known.

RunItUpTheGut Wrote:What are you alls thoughts about who will take over WWE once Vince is gone?

Is shane and stephanie smart enough to handle it?
Will HHH use Stephanie to get to where Vince is?

HHH has been groomed to take over the CEO of the company. He accompanies Vince in all matters of the business today and has been so for the past five years. Stephanie is very instrumental with the external relationships of the company such as television, advertising and promotion. Shane is no longer part of WWE. Lot's of questions about the WWE's PG brand and will they ever get back to the Rated R version of the attitude era. The final McMahon in the equation has dictated to Vince which version he will run. Linda is making another run for Senator of NY. She has set Vince's direction that WWE does not embarrass her, thus Vince is going against his own wishes and running the John Cena brand of WWE. November will give us all the future direction of the WWE. If Linda wins, WWE keeps Cena and the PG brand. If Linda loses, look for the new versions of the Rated R Super Star and DX.

Pulp Fiction Wrote:But 2 major events (one leading to the other) hasn't been mentioned. Or if they have, I must have over looked them.

Hulk Hogan turning heel. That may have changed the whole wrestling industry and started the whole nWo and Monday Night Wars. But if you look back on it now, that was a bad move by the sports biggest icon. Not only did that crush million's of little Hulksters around the world..... that gave the WWF more ammo to mock Hogan. I can remember several incidents when the WWF mocked thr Hogan character on Raw.

The finger poke of death.... Hogan vs. Nash for the WCW heavyweight title on Nitro. If my memory serves me right, WCW had been beating WWF in Monday night TV ratings until this happened. Then the following week, the WWF took the ratings back and the rest is history.

The first one I have to disagree with. Personally, I thought it was pure genius to turn Hogan heel. For starters, I was already more of a WCW/NWA guy, going back into the mid-80's. I loved guys like Ric Flair, and couldn't stand Hogan. When he signed with WCW in the mid-90's, that had to be some of the worst wrestling that company had ever put out. Remember all that nonsense with "The Hulkster" and his buddy Brutus "The Booty Man", fighting against the mean old Dungeon of Doom? Ugh, just brutal. But having him join all the other ex-WWF guys in the NWO? Brillliant. Now, Hogan could just be his usual pompous self, and I could continue to hate him just as before.

As for the finger-poke, that WAS a really bad moment. But still not as bad as David Arquette being the world champion. Kinda makes it hard for anyone to take your company seriously when that happens. From that point on, WCW would always be the punchline of a joke.

Really, the death of WCW was a sad day for me. I grew up watching the old NWA as a little kid. I made my parents put the TV on TBS on Saturday nights so I could watch during supper. I asked my parents to get me the tapes of the Bash and Starrcade for Christmas. I thought the first Clash of the Champions was the greatest thing to ever hit TV (I mean, a PPV-quality program on free television? Yes, please.)

To me, the root of all WCW's problems in the late 90's was the thinking that anything could be fixed by simply throwing more money around. Hiring Hall, Nash, and Hogan was a good move, although giving them so much control over their own booking was not smart. But I can name a list of names, both wrestlers and non-wrestlers, that the company foolishly threw money at. Remember these names?
* Ultimate Warrior
* Rick Rude
* Virgil
* Tank Abbott
* Master P
* Insane Clown Posse
* Karl Malone
* Dennis Rodman
* Jay Leno
* David Arquette

I can't count the number of times I said to myself back then, "Here's how I would do it if I was running things..."

More Cowbell Wrote:The first one I have to disagree with. Personally, I thought it was pure genius to turn Hogan heel. For starters, I was already more of a WCW/NWA guy, going back into the mid-80's. I loved guys like Ric Flair, and couldn't stand Hogan. When he signed with WCW in the mid-90's, that had to be some of the worst wrestling that company had ever put out. Remember all that nonsense with "The Hulkster" and his buddy Brutus "The Booty Man", fighting against the mean old Dungeon of Doom? Ugh, just brutal. But having him join all the other ex-WWF guys in the NWO? Brillliant. Now, Hogan could just be his usual pompous self, and I could continue to hate him just as before.

As for the finger-poke, that WAS a really bad moment. But still not as bad as David Arquette being the world champion. Kinda makes it hard for anyone to take your company seriously when that happens. From that point on, WCW would always be the punchline of a joke.

The bold brings up a good point......
Off the top of my head during the nWo/WCW days I can think of a few WWF "cross-overs."

Hulk Hogan
Kevin Nash - Diesel
Scott Hall - Razor Ramon
Bret Hart
Big Bubba Rogers - Big Boss Man
Rowdy Roddy Piper
The Warrior - The Ultimate Warrior
Sixx Pack - 123 Kid
Curt Henning - Mr. Perfect
Randy Savage
The Booty Man - Brutus Beefcake
Ted DiBiase
Vincent - Virgil
VK Wallstreet - I.R.S.
Rick Rude
Miss Elizabeth
Brian Adams - Crush


And these are just the people I remember off the top of my head. Im sure there are more. And most of these were aligned with Hogan somehow along their WCW career. So I guess More Cowbell was right. The nWo vs. WCW should be called Old WWF vs. WCW.

Pulp Fiction Wrote:The bold brings up a good point......
Off the top of my head during the nWo/WCW days I can think of a few WWF "cross-overs."

Hulk Hogan
Kevin Nash - Diesel
Scott Hall - Razor Ramon
Bret Hart
Big Bubba Rogers - Big Boss Man
Rowdy Roddy Piper
The Warrior - The Ultimate Warrior
Sixx Pack - 123 Kid
Curt Henning - Mr. Perfect
Randy Savage
The Booty Man - Brutus Beefcake
Ted DiBiase
Vincent - Virgil
VK Wallstreet - I.R.S.
Rick Rude
Miss Elizabeth
Brian Adams - Crush


And these are just the people I remember off the top of my head. Im sure there are more. And most of these were aligned with Hogan somehow along their WCW career. So I guess More Cowbell was right. The nWo vs. WCW should be called Old WWF vs. WCW.

Remember how the NWO angle even started? It was Scott Hall coming out of the crowd during some throwaway match on Nitro, climbing into the ring, and getting on the mic. Then he said "We are coming down here, and we are taking over." It definitely made it seem like it was the WWF was invading the WCW...

Stardust Wrote:Dusty booked exclusively during the time mentioned above, but individual bookers ended at the beginning of the 90's. Booking teams, or better known as "creative" or "writers" started in the 90's. Dusty was part of many booking teams with WCW. The teams usually turned over every 18 months. In the 90's, the role of the booker changed, and the addition of the agent became a separate role. It's a misnomer that Bookers write the finishes. All the Booker does is write the direction of the character and storyline. Once the direction is set, it is not the booker who gives the talent the finish. The booker will sit down with the agent and many times the talent and tell the direction, but it is the agent who makes the final call for the finish on fight night. Guy's like Ron Bass, Pat Patterson and Terry Taylor are the best this business has known.

Thanks Dusty
That clears a lot up.
I watched the Stone Cold documentary the other day and Austin said that Dusty told him he was going to get a big singles push once.
Then later on they changed it to a tag team and him and Brian Pillman would form the Hollywood Blondes and he had to go back and talk to Dusty about it.
Then Dusty split the tag-team up later on.

I just assumed that he was writing the finishes.

Pulp Fiction Wrote:The bold brings up a good point......
Off the top of my head during the nWo/WCW days I can think of a few WWF "cross-overs."

Hulk Hogan
Kevin Nash - Diesel
Scott Hall - Razor Ramon
Bret Hart
Big Bubba Rogers - Big Boss Man
Rowdy Roddy Piper
The Warrior - The Ultimate Warrior
Sixx Pack - 123 Kid
Curt Henning - Mr. Perfect
Randy Savage
The Booty Man - Brutus Beefcake
Ted DiBiase
Vincent - Virgil
VK Wallstreet - I.R.S.
Rick Rude
Miss Elizabeth
Brian Adams - Crush


And these are just the people I remember off the top of my head. Im sure there are more. And most of these were aligned with Hogan somehow along their WCW career. So I guess More Cowbell was right. The nWo vs. WCW should be called Old WWF vs. WCW.

Fair, but these guys were probably stars in their own right in the NWA (WCW) territory before they ever went to WWF, thus all of them were crossovers. These guys went back and forth between NWA/WCW - WWWF/WWF for years. Virtually everyone of these guys listed had worked in the NWA at somepoint before going to WWF.

For all those guys listed above, you also had guys like Lex Luger, Steiner Brothers, Ric Flair, Arn Anderson. I'm missing some others just because I can't remember the roster back then.

As to the question posted by RIUTG, I would agree with Stardust. Shane McMahon is now the CEO of YOU On Demand and I don't think he would give that up. Triple H has been groomed for years to take over as CEO and I see him doing that at some point in the future.

I agree that WCW gave people way too much control over their characters. Just for fun though, looking back, I would have loved to see what Scott Hall could have done as a booker. It is sad that he has let drugs and alcohol nearly ruin him. But the times I have seen him talk about ideas I always felt he had excellent knowledge in that area. I disagree how he rebelled in this match I am going to mention, but one time he was scheduled to fight a very young Chris Jericho who was a "jobber to the stars" at the time. He was supposed to beat the crap out of Jericho and then powerbomb him repeatedly after the match. Before the match he told Jericho "The only way we're going to get a reaction here is if you beat me. Find a way to beat me out of my finisher, and if Bischoff said anything, I told you to do it." The result was Jericho pulled a shocker, then an "angry" Scott Hall powerbombed him repeatedly. Made for a better storyline. I admired that unselfishness from Scott Hall, and even though he rebelled I thought it was a good example of his creativity. I always thought a booker is one thing he would have been really good at.

Scott Hall was never sober enough, from the time he started in AWA, to every work in a creative role. What a wasted talent he became.

^ It's sad. Had he stayed sober, he could have done wonders both in the ring and on the creative side...I haven't heard much about him lately but what I have heard is that things aren't looking good. Hope and pray something happens good and he turns everything around.

I miss WCW. I do believe it was better than WWF