A Little History Lesson

[klunderbunker]

Ever since the Hogan/Eric news broke, I've seen countless people say that the AOL/Time Warner merger is what killed WCW and I can't take reading this misinformed babbling any long. For once and for all: No one single thing killed WCW, period.

I could list off a ton of reasons that killed that killed the company, but trust me, it wasn't the merger that killed it. By the time that happened the company was long since dead. The wrestling had gone downhill, far too many workers were either unmotivated or gone, the writing was atrocious, the NWO and the old timers had choked the life out of the company, and giving so many wrestlers creative control among other things.

Also, I've read that Vince had nothing to do with it. Well that's wrong too. When people started changing the channel, they were happy with what they saw on WWF and kept watching. It was Vince that authorized all that stuff and had final creative say. People toss around words like Vince Kool-Aid and stuff like that and I'm sorry, but it makes you look completely uneducated and foolish. No, Vince and the WWF didn't win by themselves, but they damn sure had a lot to do with it. It was WCW that made people quit watching Nitro, but it was Vince that made them keep watching Raw.

Anyway, once more, the merger flat out didn't kill WCW. It put WCW out of its misery. Also, Vince didn't kill WCW, but he capitalized on its blunders. If anyone would like to try to prove me wrong on this, please do, but I'm just very tired of seeing all this incorrect material being thrown around here and I thought the record should be set straight.

 

[The Brain]

I hope this isn't considered advertising as it pertains to the topic, but I suggest everyone read the book "The Death of WCW." It is very imformative about this subject. It's also hilarious. I enjoyed it very much and highly recommend it.

I agree kb. The merger did not kill WCW, but it was the final nail in the coffin. Turner no longer had control and the higer ups didn't care about wrestling at all. I'm sure they would have if it was still making money. Because of previous mistakes it wasn't and as you say kb, WCW was put out of it's misery.

 

[The_Killswitch]

After reading and watching interviews from the likes of Jericho ,Big Show ,Malenko and Eddie Guerrero that company was like walking into a kindergarden during playtime.

And cheers for that infromation on the book Brain ,should be a good read..just where to find it in a Country thats just recently broadcasted all three wwe shows.

 

[WCW_Sting]

Put it out of it's misery? Isn't that a nicer way of saying "it killed it?" Look, say what you want about the politics, lack of pushing new stars, the writing, and whatever the hell else, but none of these things killed WCW. I grew up watching WCW, and I didn't start watching WWF on a regular basis (although I always kept up with it) until September 2000 when they debuted on TNN, but I will be the first to admit that yes, the writing, a lot of the wrestling, the continuity...it all pretty much sucked. Speaking of continuity...I don't know if anyone has brought this up, but Monday in the Evan Bourne/Miz match, why in the name of all things sacred didn't the count start over when Bourne suicide dove to the outside?!?! I don't like to criticize too much, but that's lazy booking. Just awful.

Digressions aside, the fact (or supposed fact) is that no one was behind the company anymore. I forget a lot of the things that were said in The Death of WCW and Bischoff's book (please no "but Bischoff is a biased source" comments), but I remember after reading those books coming to the conclusion that, when it came down to it, the merger is the culprit...the one that killed World Championship Wrestling. Not WWF and their ratings, not low backstage morale, not politics, not atrocious writing, not creative control clauses. All of those things definitely made WCW a weaker product, but despite all of those things, if Time Warner and America Online had never come together, WCW would still be here today.

So, once more, the merger flat out killed WCW. I understand your feeling the need to "set the record straight," but the fact (definitely a fact this time) is, no one on this damn forum or website knows exactly what happened. All we can do is speculate and form an opinion from what we hear.

 

[klunderbunker]

say what you want about

Alright then i will.

the politics,

If by politics you mean the guys like Hogan, Nash, Flair, Savage, Sting and Luger never leaving when they should have or at least putting guys over when they should have because that was their spot, then yeah I'd say that hurt the company. Let's see: how many times was the main event some combination of those guys? Off the top of my head I can think of at least 10 over about two years. Because of those guys just never quitting, fans got bored and watched something else. Although according to you, that didn't kill WCW so let's move on.

lack of pushing new stars,

Yeah it couldn't be this either. it couldn't be the concept of the best guys in the company that gave the legitimacy to the wrestling aspect of the show such as Benoit, Guerrero, Mysterio, Malenko or Jericho never getting above midcard status because we have to see Flair vs. Hogan 9 or Sting vs. Nash 11. The fact that we had the same six guys in the main event for about three years was just fine. No one wanted to see those wrestlers that they cheered for and who were putting on the best matches on the card night in and night out. Yeah that wasn't it either. Let's keep going.

the writing,

Yeah I'm sure you're right here too. Having such absurd stipulations as tag matches where the world title is on the line and the champion can be pinned by his partner (BatB 1999), reviving the NWO countless times, Viagra on a Pole, Oklahoma, the West Texas Rednecks, That 70s Guy Mike Awesome, and one guy holding 3 titles at once had ZERO to do with the fans giving up on the company. They were glad to have their intelligence insulted on a weekly basis and having no reason at all to keep watching despite the company never giving them a shred of hope to cling to. Who needs those edgy cool storylines where the man the fans love wins more often than not in the WWF? WE HAVE PINATAS ON POLES! Surely no problem here.

Digressions aside, the fact (or supposed fact) is that no one was behind the company anymore. I forget a lot of the things that were said in The Death of WCW and Bischoff's book (please no "but Bischoff is a biased source" comments), but I remember after reading those books coming to the conclusion that, when it came down to it, the merger is the culprit...the one that killed World Championship Wrestling. Not WWF and their ratings, not low backstage morale, not politics, not atrocious writing, not creative control clauses. All of those things definitely made WCW a weaker product, but despite all of those things, if Time Warner and America Online had never come together, WCW would still be here today.

So, to be clear here, the ridiculous amounts of money being loss, the ratings tanking, PPV buys and attendance going through the floor, all the talent leaving, the other company completely dominating, and the workers more or less being perfectly fine with the company going out of business so they didn't have to work there anymore all had ZERO bearing on the decision to cancel the show? So, the fact that FOX was looking at WCW and declined on it because of all the factors I just listed was a pure coincidence too I guess? Yeah that must be true. I mean, it's not like TIme Warner, a major media company, would pull the plug on a company that was tanking because it was tanking. Hell no. If the company had been doing terrible business like it had, it would still be around today, if not for that damn business accumen. Screw that stupid shit.

So, once more, the merger flat out killed WCW. I understand your feeling the need to "set the record straight," but the fact (definitely a fact this time) is, no one on this damn forum or website knows exactly what happened. All we can do is speculate and form an opinion from what we hear.

Yep. My opinion is that you're flat out incorrect, and I'd say a majority will agree with me.

 

[wolvdog316]

I agree completely with you Bunker, and I rarely agree 100% with somebody. But I agree 100% and would like to add.

All the merger did was postpone the inevitable. WCW made one huge star, ONE during their hot streak. Goldberg. Meanwhile WWF made Austin, Rock, Michaels, HHH, Mankind. And i'm not including the lesser stars who made huge impacts like Golddust, Hardys, Brood, Sunny, Sable.

When WWF's star went stale, Austin, they turn him heel. When one of their stars, HHH or Austin went down, somebody else picked it up, Taker or Rock or Mankind. Now I know some of those are after the War, but it shows how WWE thinks.

And the one poster is right. None of us know EXACTLY what happened. What we DO know is WCW, Bischoff, thought it was be AWESOME to expand to nWo to 466 members. Fail. WCW and Bischoff thought it would be AWESOME to have a nWo black and white, nWo wolfpac, and have the members change, get kicked out, join, so often you never knew who was with who. WCW and Bischoff thought it would be a GREAT idea for Hogan to beat a lying down Nash in a match that had A LOT of fans hyped about. All so they could DING DING DING, reform the nWo. I know the character Oklahoma was a horrible character. I know the Billionaires vs Kiddies was an awful angle. I know WCW treated Benoit, Jericho, Eddie like crap and they went on to headline multiple PPVs including Wrestlemanias. I know Bischoff stopped caring about the WCW fans, and only cared about burying Vince. I know Nash using his creative control ended Goldbergs streak. I know WCW RUINED Bret Hart from the moment he got there. I know the fans LOVED the Horsemen and Bischoff buried them every chance he got.

Those are all facts. Now take with them what you want. But notice none of those facts had ANYTHING to do with a merger

 

[WCW_Sting]

Yes!! I finally got one of those ultra-awesome "quote me, give a response, quote, respond, quote, respond" replies!! Thanks man. I would do one myself, but it's not my thing.

Dude, the fact that I was disagreeing with you must have caused you to miss my point. Or maybe I didn't explain it well enough. Forgive me...it's late.

I am in 100% agreement with you that WCW, for the most part, was awful. From the ridiculous storylines to the horrible gimmicks (I have to admit I was a West Texas Rednecks fan...how ironic is it that I love rap and hate country?...you be the judge), it seems even worse now looking back than it did when it was actually happening. So yes, I agree with you that WCW was comparable to a fucking carnival funhouse on crack and pixie sticks. They should have pushed new stars yada yada yada. Vince is a better businessman than Bischoff yada yada yada. nWo this, nWo that, nWo was overdone, LWO, nWo was too large, nWo, nWo, nWo GET SOME NEW MATERIAL! Don't get me wrong, I agree with all of it, but it's just not enough to kill an entire company.

All of what you're saying makes sense. Why would Time Warner pull the plug on a wrestling company that was tanking? Simple...because, like you said, it was tanking, and because they didn't give a shit about professional wrestling. They wanted nothing to do with it. My whole point was if someone who cared about pro wrestling (Turner, Bischoff) was behind WCW and financing it, it would still be in business. Or...it wouldn't be. Like I said, no one knows exactly what happened or what would've happened. So your opinion of me being "flat out incorrect" could be...well, flat out incorrect. Or it might not be.

And yeah, the majority will agree with you. You have lots of green up there and 600,000 posts. I know how it is.

 

[Kronik711]

OK, I have to say it like this, WCW was going down but without the merger it would not have been destroyed. All the things that are being listed were things that dropped it's value... but everything has a down time, I mean look at the WWE now if they were owned by someone else rather thatn VKM it would probably get the axe too. If an animal is wounded is it still alive? Yes its not dead until that final shot is put in it. The merger was that final shot. Yeah the other things wounded it but the kill shot was the merger so take that as you will. On to another thing...
WCW produced several stars, they may have gotten burried in the mix but there were several good names that came from WCW. They could have gone on to bigger days had Vince not destroyed them the same way yall bitch about Bischoff doing.

Oh and one more little tiny thing, Nash beat Goldberg in Dec. he did not start booking until feb. hmmm....but honestly at the time who else would have beaten Goldberg? Nash was the only one at the time that could have possibly done it and got away with it.

So, did the Merger kill WCW? Technically yes. I mean you said it yourselves with the nail in the coffin thing. Several things caused it to be wounded but the Merger finalized it.

 

[wolvdog316]

It doesn't matter if the Merger happened or not. Nobody was going to stick with a dying company. You don't hop on a dying product, you get out as fast as you can. Ya never hear the saying rats jumping on a sinking ship. WCW was screwed either way. Because wrestling fans were tired of Hogan, Nash, Sting, Goldberg, Savage, Luger. And Booker, Jeff, and Steiner could not carry them. Add into that all the expensive dates for Nash and Hogan, buy rates, and you can't win.

And this has nothing to do with people at the top not giving a crap. Business has nothing to do with that. This has to do with nobody in WCW thinking of the future, only the amount of weeks they beat WWF. Would WCW have lived on without the Merger, sure. But not long. They needed backing and nobody was going to back a dying product. That's like saying ECW is dead because TNN canceled them. No. If a company thought WCW was worth the risk, somebody would have invested in them. Nobody did, and so WCW is dead.

 

[Megadeth]

The one thing that truly killed WCW was Ted Turner loosing control of Time Warner. Had Ted been in control, I feel pretty certain that no matter how low the ratings got, or how much money they lost, Turner would have just kept pumping more into it. WCW was loosing Million of dollars a year before Bischoff took over, yet Ted just kept it going. Not to mention, when Turner started loosing control some of the Time Warner Execs decided to get more involved. Back in 1998 or so, right around the time the Attitude Era was getting into high gear in the WWF, but while WCW was still pretty fair ahead in the ratings, the execs started to require WCW to become more kid and family friendly, which is PART of the reason the booking started going down hill (I will admit that some of the vets were also responsible for this as well). They also slashed WCW's production budget, and made Eric Bischoff get approval for almost everything. Had Turner remained in control, he would have more than likely just left everything alone. And when all that happened and WCW started to loose, what did they do, send Bischoff home. And then it feels like the booker of WCW changed every other month. It is a little difficult to have decent booking when every booker has a different set of ideas and thus whole story lines would get changed every time a different booker took over.

Then finally when WCW was sold, Eric Bischoff planned on buying it with some investors at Fusient Media Ventures, and the deal was so close to being finalized that on the official WCW website it had said WCW was the property of Fusient, yet at the last minute the Time Warner Execs decided they didn't even want WCW on their network. Had they been willing to just let it continue to air on TNT then Bischoff would have bought it, but instead they were so anti-wrestling at that point they sold to McMahon instead for an incredibly low amount and that is THE reason why WCW is no more. The merger itself did not kill WCW, Ted Turner loosing control did.


I know it may sound like I think Eric Bischoff is some wrestling genius who never made a mistake, and that is not my intention. He made plenty of mistakes that have been well documented, but he took a company that was loosing allegedly as much as $10 million a year and at its highest netted around $40 million in 1998, so clearly he did get a lot of it right.

 

[Big Ol' Buckta AIDS]

wooooooooho slow down. whoever even thought the merger was the reason wcw failed? ive never even heard that. the fact is once aol merged with time warner, ted turner didn't have total control over aol timer. WCW by that point was on its last legs, and the board at aol time warner didn't want to keep it going. so they sold it to WWF. if its was up to ted turner, they would have ket it going. plus the fact its, that last nitro that ever aired, aol wasn't giving WCW a channel to broadcast on anymore, so even if WCW wasn't bought, it wouldn't have had a TV station to be broadcast on. WCW's lack of ratings and the aol time warner board killed WCW.

 

[Jetspete]

asm is 100% right in his assessment. the whole corporate change from WCW being a Ted Turner playtoy to Time Warner to eventually the ridiculous merger with AOL spelled the inevitable death of WCW. I recently read the Rise and Fall of WCW (or whatever it was called, i think it was a Mark Madden book), and it is important not to have revisionist history here.

Creatively, WCW started to go downhill when Nitro was expanded to three hours and there seemed to be little actual wrestling to fill those hours. Then they decided to go adult if you will and alienate families that had been watching through 1998. The final nail, creatively, was bringing in vince russo. Yes, he had the new blood storyline which was fun, but then his antics with Jarrett ruined WCW for good.

But remember, all of this was done because of who owned WCW and the importance of the bottom line, whereas in the mid90s Turner really didnt care if a profit was made. Add to the fact that time warner / aol saw wrestling as a taboo, and you have all the ingredients for its death. Great post asm

 

['Classic' Ric]

What a fucking ego??? Why bother reading anything when our man KB here seems to have all the answers. You would think he was there when this all went down, no? No, judging by his age he would have been at school, or should have been at school when WCW closed. Was there a business class focusing on WCW? No. NO NO NO NO NO!

I don't have any strong beliefs on this subject I just think that human beings don't deserve this 'matter of fact' bullshit!! YOU SIR KNOW NOTHING!

CLOWN

 

[samboisdead]

Well my opinion on the subject is that if the merger didnt happen WCW would still be here. The reason I say this is Turner has always liked being involved in wrestling plus he hates Vince. At the same time if WCW had been making big money when the merger happened whether they liked wrestling or not they would not have closed the doors. So the merger did kill WCW but at the same time the writers beat it down and prepared it for the kill. Rember guys WCW had always been pretty cheesy in booking and storys. The Giant and the monster truck battle, the Dungeon of Doom, the Ding Dongs, Arachnid Man, need I go on. I mean even during the NWO heyday they still had some pretty cheesy stuff going on. Anyone rember all the build up for the blood runs cold crap lol. I mean just to prove my point the NWA which became WCW was tanking and dying when Ted turner bought it. The company could have been built back up everything was there but one thing. Say Fox or someone else bought it, well you would have to shell out millions for nothing just to keep any of the marquee names. Remember Sting, Luger, Nash, Goldberg, Flair and all the other big stars had guaranteed contracts that would have had to been bought out if you bought the company and wanted them in it. This is why no one bought WCW because they would have ran a company where the biggest stars were Billy Kidman and Booker T.

 

[oogieboogie]

I just wanna comment by saying this has been a good read. I never knew the reason as to why wcw folded but reading comments in this thread have given me a better understanding of what was going on and what factors led to the demise of wcw.

 

[The Brain]

What a fucking ego??? Why bother reading anything when our man KB here seems to have all the answers. You would think he was there when this all went down, no? No, judging by his age he would have been at school, or should have been at school when WCW closed. Was there a business class focusing on WCW? No. NO NO NO NO NO!

I don't have any strong beliefs on this subject I just think that human beings don't deserve this 'matter of fact' bullshit!! YOU SIR KNOW NOTHING!

CLOWN

What's with all the hate here? Of course none of us were there when WCW was shut down. None of us know 100% of the facts. KB was just giving his opinions. Sure he presented them as fact, but people tend to do that in a discussion forum. I think he made some good points which is more than I can say for you. I'm surprised you didn't mention Tom Zenk could have been the savior of WCW. You've mentioned him for no reason in all your other posts. I've been watching wrestling since before KB was born, but I've come to respect his opinion on a lot of things, old school included.

To get back on topic I think KB is right except in the absolute literal sense of the word. All the things he mentioned lead to the inevitable demise of WCW, but it was technically the merger that finally killed it. I only say technically because as was said before that was the final nail in the coffin and the actual end of WCW.