Could the Radicalz have save WCW

[MINISTRYrising]

In early 2000 the group known as the Radicalz (Chris Benoit/Eddie Guerrero/Perry Saturn/Dean Malenko) left WCW and join WWE. Many people believe that this was the final nail in the coffin for WCW as the Company folded a year later.

The question is. If the Radicalz had stayed in WCW would the company have suffered the same fate or would they still be around today. Also which of the Radicalz was the biggest lose to WCW.

 

[theBec2101]

No. They still would of had to pay the like of Nash, Hall, Hogan etc. WCW simply ran out of money. Also WCW had alot of other fractions/stable. I think they had no idea after the NWO.

 

[dtroppe]

By this WCW was already failing, so a few wrestlers jumped from the sinking ship.

Of course they could not save WCW. If they were any kind of draw or help to WCW, then WCW would not have been sinking and they would not have needed to jump ship.

Lets make it clear, these were just a few wrestlers that left WCW for WWE. They did not have a massive impact on WWE ratings, nor did their leaving WCW cause it to fail.

WCW was failing due to chaos. The biggest names that left WCW after it ended were Hogan, Hall, Nash, Goldburg, Booker T, and DDP.

 

[FlairFan2003]

Fact is none of those guys were main eventers in WCW, and for the most part only Eddie became a consistent top tier talent in WWE after the switch. Benoit had a few pushes and a very brief title run that basically was just a set up to elevate Randy Orton, but he was never a full time top tier player in WWE.

Losing them in early 2000 really wasnt much of a blow to WCW. WCW really started losing steam when they @#$%canned the NWO storyline along with ending Goldberg's push as a main eventer in early 1999. The re formed NWO, Nash's heel turn, Hogan's return, was red hot in Jan-Feb of 1999, in part because WCW fans and wrestling fans in general really wanted to see their two main adversaries, the returning Flair and Goldberg, finally exact some revenge on them. Everything leading up to SuperBrawl 99 (which did a big buyrate by the way) had the now slimmer (they purged all the mid carders like Henning, Horace, etc from the group), evil NWO trying to leverage the World Title to control the company after Bischoff lost the Presidency to Mr WCW (Flair). While a re hash of Flair vs Hogan, this time with the dynamic swicthed (Hogan the heel, Flair the face) did some brisk business for them, the big money was in Goldberg vs Nash II or Goldberg-Hogan II. For whatever reason WCW decided to remove Goldberg from the title picure altogether, waisting his re match with the man who cheated to end his Undefeated Streak and steal the World Title from him (Nash) as a mid card match on a non signature PPV and never having him oppose Hogan. Flair's heel turn, which the fans clearly did not like, along with Hogan's face turn (also not popular) pretty much killed any momentum WCW had by the end of March 99. The whole time Goldberg was stuck in limbo, battling jobbers and beating Scott Hall, by now the resident NWO jobber due to his personnal issues.

If WCW had wanted to milk some $$ off Flair-Hogan III that's fine, but they didnt have to bury Goldberg to do it. If they wanted Flair to have a title run that was fine, but the double turn with Hogan did no go over with the audience and again, they didnt have to bury Goldberg to do it. In fact, they could have let Flair grab the belt and have a three way feud with Nash & Goldberg, Nash clearly the heel, GB clearly the fan fav, Flair kind of in between, and that would have been bette than what they did (it also could have been used to facilitate a Hogan face turn if they wanted as Nash pushes him out of the NWO leadership after losing to Flair, setting up a Hogan vs The NWO angle which also could have been huge).

By the time the summer of 99 rolled around the NWO was gone, Goldberg was not nearly as involved in the top of the card as he should have been, the product was disjointed, and ratings, which were in the mid 4's to low 5's from Jan-Mach of 99 were now in the high 3's, the audience having shifted to WWE as combined viewership was still about the same. This was the death of WCW, the moment they could not recover from.

The Radicalz were right to leave WCW. They had a brief push when Russo & Ferrero showed up but were being downplayed even befoe they left. When they got fired and the company moved back to an old school, 80s style of booking (albeit briefly, they brought Russo back in a few months, more indecission) there were not going to be a big part of the show. Even as mid carders in WWE they were on a bigger stage and probably getting paid better, or at least as good, again for a more stabile, and at this point successful company.

Did The Radicalz exit drive the final nail into WCW ?? No, not even close. They were next to dead before they left, in fact if they hadnt had a few 80s stars like Hogan, Flar, Luger, & Sting around they probably would have folded already, those guys at least kept some interest based on their career popularity in the product. If there was "final nail" it was Russo's return, the whole re do of the original NWO storyline with the New Blood, the hot potato World Title (I think it changed hands 5 or 6 times in May 2000 alone, I could be worng on that), de pushing and then pushing out everyone left that fans still cared about (Nash, Hogan, Sting, Flair) and forcing a bunch of unknown mid carders and newbies down our throats, that was the true end right there. The end began with the debacle of booking that was Jan-June of 1999 and died with Russo PT 2 in spring and summer of 2000. The Radicalz leaving was essentially a on factor, but for them it was a good career move.

 

[ECW Sandman]

Nothing could have saved WCW in the end not Benoit, Eddie, Saturn, and Malenko if you remember Chris Jericho and The Giant jumped ship a year or two prior, WCW was not pushing there new stars like they should have.

I remember watching guys like Ultimo Dragon, The Jung Dragons Billy Kidman Rey Jr Chavo Jr and a lot of other young and up and coming guys get buried just because of the older guys, And it really bugged me that guys who were in WWF were getting pushed then the guys who were not in WWF, You would think WCW would have let they younger stars shine.

Now at the end of it's run they ( WCW ) was letting guys who have never been in the hunt for a World Championship get there chance and it was too little too late.


WCW went Under and Vince bought it and that's the end of WCW.

 

[Griezz]

@FlairFan2003 Correction: for Eddie and Chris, it was a good career move. However, for Perry and Dean, nothing really changed. Malenko may have gotten one or two small title runs, but as a character, he never got any kind of push. As for Perry... he became known as the brain-damaged moron who chose the company of a wigged mop over a lovely woman like Terri Runnels. (Just look at Nick Dinsmore, a great wrestler and person who will spend whatever is left of his career doing variations on "Eugene", because that is how people will remember him.)

 

[UFOcalling]

Ideas like these just seem silly to me. WCW failed because of the AOL/Time Warner merger. When WCW ended, it was because the "new guys" in charge didn't want to have a wrestling show on television PERIOD.

If Stone Cold, The Rock, The Undertaker, and HHH all jumped to WCW in 2001 it still wouldn't have saved the company. So many people are willing to place the blame where it doesn't belong (ex: Vince Russo, the nWo, Kevin Nash, Hogan, Bischoff, etc). Fact of the matter is that it wasn't any of their faults. Hypothetically, WCW could have been doing even better than WWF at the time and they still would have gone out of business. Sorry, but The Radicalz staying with the company wouldn't have made a difference either.

 

[Radical Canadian Goose]

Although, I am seeing some mockery this is a good question. Benoit was a valuable commodity to the company and won the WCW title one day before bolting for the WWE the next day.

Benoit and his group of 4 bolted upon news that Kevin Sullivan was named head booker. As has been documented many times, we all know the all to real history between Sullivan and Benoit. I am pretty sure that Sullivan would have made him relinquish the championship as soon possible then relegate him to WCW Saturday Night. As for the other 3 , they weren't really relevent in WCW at the time.

Ok,to answer your question(s). Would they have saved WCW? No, WCW was already beyond saving and under the Sullivan regime the Radicalz were bound to be buried so they would have had no impact whatsoever in the final days of WCW.

Which member benefitted the most: Tough question but I have to say Malenko as he gained longterm employment as a road agent from this move to WWE. Yes, I know, Eddie and Chris may have became agents as well, they also could have jumped to TNA, went to Independents, etc... I am not willing to foretell what may have been, so because of unforseen circumstances I say Malenko benefitted the most

 

[EastCoastFan]

No. WCW was already a sinking ship by then. They grossly overpaid talent, the top guys' egos were out of control and Bischoff was never really firmly in control. If WCW had pushed them earlier and used them better (instead of letting the same guys hog the main event slots), they might have broken through and WCW would have had more stars to utilize.

There was clearly no future for them in WCW, and they did themselves a favor by leaving.

 

[anvilx8]

No. Not trying to sound like an ass here.. but HOW exactly could they have saved wcw, when they were IN wcw and were under-used and mistreated while they were there?? Besides, they didn't control the booking... so it still would have been horrible. Terrible mismanagement killed wcw, and Russo finished it off.

 

[byrnside]

After reading several of the replies, it absolutely amazes me how often the "death of WCW" conversation gets brought up, and how often so many of you are wrong.

WCW closed because Time Warner, Ted Turner's company, merged with AOL. AOL wanted nothing to do with wrestling as it was and WCW just wasn't generating enough ratings to be taking up 5 hours of prime time television. End of story.

As to the OP, could the Radicalz have saved the company? In a word, no. The only two that are really worth mentioning are Eddie Guerrero and Chris Benoit. Nothing against Saturn or Malenko because they were great talents, but they just simply weren't big enough draws to have accomplished any thing major. I think, in regards to Saturn and Malenko, especially Saturn, what made them more popular in the end was the entire Radicalz invading WWE angle. All 4 of them were great wrestlers. Guerrero was great on the mic and that's what made him stand out. Benoit was an amazing wrestler with a great story simply because he was old and hadn't really won a big title except for one WCW world title. Eddie and Benoit were never huge draws in WWE either.

A lot of people liked and even loved them, myself included, but correct me if I'm wrong, I don't think they pulled in a lot of extra revenue as WWE and World champions respectively. They were given world titles because they were great workers who deserved to have held the big titles and the company really needed fresh faces as champions. A lot of us tend to get caught up in the fact that we simply loved these guys and thus make them a lot bigger than they were. As awful as it came across, there was some merit to what Nash said several weeks ago. I wouldn't say it was as bad as killing the business, but he had some good points.

WCW would've certainly been better off having pushed Benoit and Guerrero as world champions/main event stars, but it couldn't have saved them in the end. The writing/story lines still would have been odd and inconsistent which was probably the biggest problem WCW had.

 

[New Hot Fed]

Fact of the matter is, the reason why some of the Radicals ever had a good career in the WWF was because the WWF was low on talent. They could never succeed in WCW because WCW was stacked as Hell.

Radicals left in late 99 but in 2000 there was a huge influx of new talent in WCW to help feed the New Blood storyline and even with new guys like Mike Awesome and Vampiro and Lance Storm and with the many big stars WCW stlll had under contract, it still went under.

 

[Soulblazed]

Sad truth is, The Radicalz wouldn't have even saved WCW Saturday Night, much less WCW itself..Reason being, they were held back from the get-go in terms of doing any long-term high midcard/main event feuds..Obviously Benoit beat Sid for his first of 2 WCW World Heavyweight Championship reigns(his 2nd WCW World Heavyweight Championship reign of course was in WWE after winning it at WM20)..But if Benoit chose to stay in WCW he would've just been booked to lose the title back to Sid and then probably jobbed to various nWo members erstwhile fading into obscurity..

So The Radicalz trying to "save" WCW would've went nowhere..I mean that's like saying Barry Horowitz is going to go on a "winning streak"..Ain't gonna happen...The best thing that happened to The Radicalz was jumping ship to the WWF

 

[The Hillside]

Not really saved them, but they would have definitely made WCW go on a bit longer and made its last days more fun and interesting. Ofcourse all 4 of them had potential to be good main eventers (2 of them became later on in WWE).

I would rather buy into Eddie Guerrero vs. Goldberg match then Scott Steiner vs. Goldberg match.

Chris Benoit could have had good matches with DDP in the main-event.

Dean Malenko could have been given small shot at main event against Bret Hart or Ric Flair.

Perry Saturn could have had an entertaining feud with Booker T.


There would have been some fresh content in WCW and better matches in the main-event had The Radicalz been given main-event pushes. Maybe even Radicalz could have feud with each other towards the last days or simply the whole stable goes against the likes of Booker T, Scott Steiner, Jeff Jarrett and Ric Flair etc.

It's not that WCW did not push talented guys towards the end, Booker T, Scott Steiner and Buff Bagwell were given decent pushes but WCW was dying anyways.

Remember even in WWE, The Radicalz got help of DX, HHH, Foley, Jericho and Angle etc. to get over right from the debut. Maybe in the same way Bret Hart, Flair or Sting could have helped them in WCW or something like that.


We are missing the point that WCW never used its veterans or established main-eventers to help the midcarders or newcomers.

 

[Rayne]

It does not matter one whit how good your product is. If it isn't profitable, it will close down.

We aren't watching WCW today because a bunch of actors went from one program to another, we aren't watching WCW today because their financial house was in such horrible order that no one wanted to make a legitimate offer (no, Eric, demanding a multi-year guarantee of television time isn't a legitimate offer) to buy it.

 

[dman1373]

Ideas like these just seem silly to me. WCW failed because of the AOL/Time Warner merger. When WCW ended, it was because the "new guys" in charge didn't want to have a wrestling show on television PERIOD.

if i was a part of that and i saw that wcw was losing 2 million dollars a year, then i would have ended it too.

 

[rokuma]

I'm going the other way on this. The Radicals may not have saved WCW, but they could've made it a lot more interesting in 2000/2001 when WCW kicked Hogan to the curb, Sting was off TV, Booker T and Scott Steiner where WCW/US champions, and Jarrett was the main event. Can you imagine Benoit/Booker T recreating their famed best of 7 series for the WCW title or at least for a shot at it? What about Eddie getting pushed and feuding with Jarrett? I would argue both Eddie and Benoit's WCW work far surpassed the matches they had in the WWF/E. Saturn was also a viable US Title contender and Malenko was always solid. And what about Jericho? He left not long before they did. What if they had pushed Jericho? He was a solid main eventer. He and Goldberg could've had that feud they tried to build up to, but never quite got to. It would've been entertaining. WCW would not have been saved because AOL/Time Warner simply wanted it off their network, but maybe Bischoff's group would've bought it without the TV time just because of the roster. They wouldn't have had the main event level guys, but they would've had a solid roster of familiar faces and maybe WCW would be alive today. Wrestling was still on fire at that point and I'm sure another network (maybe Spike/USA depending on the timeframe when WWE wasn't on there) would've wanted WCW to replace WWE (much like Spike did w/TNA)

 

[donfryeismyhero]

No single or group of wrestlers could of saved WCW. AOL/Time Warner had decided they wanted nothing to do with wrestling & that it was something that they just didn't want on their networks. This was during a time when wrestling was super hot so to them it didn't matter how much money they could make from it, it just didn't fit into their vision of what TNT & TBS should be. The only person that could of realistically saved WCW was Vince when he bought the company but chose to kill it off.

 

[JJohns]

What ultimately killed WCW was the fact that they didn't have a TV outlet after March 2001. Like other posters have stated, 4 talents that left a year before weren't going to make much of a difference. WCW probably would have survived had it not have been hemorrhaging money. If I remember the figures correctly, in the last year that WCW was in existence that it had lost over a million dollars.

The person that could have saved WCW was Ted Turner. Had he not have made WCW a part of Turner Broadcasting and kept it a separate entity, it would probably still be in existence in some form today. But when Time Warner purchased Turner Broadcasting, they acquired WCW at the same time. WCW was still going to survive after that. It wasn't until after the merger between Time Warner and AOL, when Ted Turner lost pretty much all control over Turner Broadcasting, that the the Nail was placed in WCW's coffin.

 

[HBsam31]

No, i don;t think they would have saved WCW. Being that they left because Sullivan was the new head booker it is doubtful they would have been used in a way that would save WCW anyway. Honestly aside from Benoit maybe, they weren't even main event stars. I know Benoit one the title the night before he left, but I can't really remember what he had been doing before that. That being said I think Benoit was the biggest loss to WCW as he was the champion, and it probably didn't look to good that they gave him the title and he bolted anyway. He also seemed to be the first one of the 4 that was getting his feet wet in the main event scene.

 

[Rayne]

No single or group of wrestlers could of saved WCW. AOL/Time Warner had decided they wanted nothing to do with wrestling & that it was something that they just didn't want on their networks. This was during a time when wrestling was super hot so to them it didn't matter how much money they could make from it, it just didn't fit into their vision of what TNT & TBS should be. The only person that could of realistically saved WCW was Vince when he bought the company but chose to kill it off.

*wham* *wham* *wham* That is the sound of my head, hitting the desk.

Television executives are not cultural purists. They are media pimps, providing whatever will return the greatest cost on their investment. WCW had, at one point, provided income. By 2001, it wasn't doing that anymore, and had bled off half of its audience while still maintaining the same cost of production.

If WCW was worth saving- meaning that it could have generated someone profit- someone would have stepped up with the cash to do it. Vince McMahon bought WCW for a price between $4-7 million, which is virtually free. The reason why no one stepped up with a better offer? No television network in the country was going to dedicate a weekly slot to a program trending downwards in the ratings, while going through a very public financial overhaul. (Bill Busch took over in 1999. His job training was as an accountant. There's exactly one reason why you'd put an accountant in charge of your company.) Eric Bischoff made an 'offer', contingent on TNT guaranteeing them a multi-year guaranteed television deal, with no backside guarantees should WCW fail to turn around. (Translation: If WCW continued to lose money, as the world expected they would, Turner would end up on the hook, either providing funding to WCW or ending up with a huge hole in their primetime schedule.) That kind of offer is unheard of for successful programming, let alone programming that had lost half of its audience over the past three years.

It doesn't matter one bit how 'good' your product is. If your revenue is less than your expenses, your business will fail. No one who had the money to back up their opinion thought that WCW was worth saving in 2001.

 

[Texas Tornado]

They were given world titles because they were great workers who deserved to have held the big titles and the company really needed fresh faces as champions. That being said I think Benoit was the biggest loss to WCW as he was the champion, and it probably didn't look to good that they gave him the title and he bolted anyway.

 

[original1316]

No the Radicalz could not have saved the company from going under. When they left WCW for WWE the company was in a bad way and was already on the edge of going under. For years the top guys in the company had refused to help put over new talent and in the end this is what lead to the downfall of wcw. the only person who could have saved WCW was in my opinion Eric Bishoff. When WCW started to loss the ratings battle with WWE Bishoff should have turned around and said enough is enough and started to bring through young talent like the Radicalz to replace guys like Hogan and nash but he did not do that and just continued to allow guy's like Hogan and nash to carrie on doing what they wanted when they wanted and well the rest is history.