How could Vince have better utilized.....

[Mighty NorCal]

WCW and ECW? While watching Rise and Fall of WCW in the airport, an idea dawned on me.

Why not just leave it? I mean, when Vince bought WCW, I think he shouldve made zero mention of it. At all. Keep Nitro, keep the PPVs, keep everything. It reminds me of Sly's idea of absorbing all the international promotions, leaving them alone for the most part, but keeping the money.

Of course fundamental changes wouldve happened. Fire the current staff, and bring back all the guys who kicked WWE's ass for almost two years? Shit yea. Keep them an entirely different entity, and act as if they had no relation to WWE. Remember Luger showing up on Nitro? You could create a moment like that whenever you felt like doing it. The NWO? You could do it whenever. They would be "invading from the WWE". Still sell WCW as its own tv, ppv, merchandise, everything. Same with ECW, and its niche audience.

All ive ever heard is that Vince just wants to make money, so it makes me wonder if he ruined this oppurtunity at potential profit just to crush and humilate his closest competition.


So, how do you guys feel the name brands of ECW and WCW couldve been better utilized?

NOTE: DO NOT turn this into fantasy booking land with the invasion angle. That has been done to death, and its not what im talking about. Whoever does that, ill kill you. Like, literally find you, and cut off your air supply, until you are no longer living. Thanks

 

[The Todd]

It's an interesting idea, but for it to work out best for Vince he would have had to change Nitro to a different night. Instead of his two shows splittng the audience, he could have had two, three if you count Smackdown, massive shows with big ratings in one week.

However, with Vince's ego it wouldn't have worked. Whilst he would have a good thing going, if Nitro started beating Raw in the ratings, even though he owned both, he would be angry the show he created wasn't coming off better. He'd start switching talent around and making fun of Nitro and making it look like shit. He'd also want people to know that he had won, he would never have kept it quiet.

It would have been interesting to see, but Vince just couldn't have made it work.

 

[Mighty NorCal]

See, thats the beauty of it though. The audience wouldnt be split at all. Wether they watched Nitro, or RAW, they are still watching WWE programming, wether they know it or not. Im fairly sure Vince or any sound buisnessman wouldnt care. They care about numbers.

He couldbe taken the main staff and bookers from each company and had them against each other, trying to beat each other. Pride you see. While he, gets all the money.

 

[Motor City Mayhem]

Look I get the whole concept but it wouldn't work. Cause look, either way look at how it would have went down. Sting wouldn't have stayed just because it was called WCW and Hogan and Bret would (More so Bret) would still not want to be in WWE because of the Screw Job, then you have to explain that to everyone.

Not to mention it wouldn't have taken to long for someone to say "Hey WCW and ECW are all owned by WWE". Like I get were you're going with this but no, it wouldn't work.

 

[The Todd]

See, thats the beauty of it though. The audience wouldnt be split at all. Wether they watched Nitro, or RAW, they are still watching WWE programming, wether they know it or not.

What I mean is if Raw and Nitro were still going head to head, Vince might have two programmes that are getting 4.0 ratings, instead of two programmes getting huge ratings each if Nitro was moved to a different night.

He couldbe taken the main staff and bookers from each company and had them against each other, trying to beat each other. Pride you see. While he, gets all the money.

Don't get me wrong, I would have loved the idea and it would have been great to see if Vince could have rescued WCW programming, but Vince's ego never seems to be satisfied with money and ratings.

For example, when he brought ECW back it started off as a huge thing, with an ECW wrestler winning the WWE championship. However before long VInce stripped the show of it's assets and it is now comfortably the C show. (I'd like to add I do like what he has done with ECW)

I don't see why he wouldn't do the same with Nitro, make it inferior to Raw, Vince's baby, to further proove that his idea was the best.

If Vince would do what you say, and leave it alone and just let it run, it would have been brilliant. I am not entirely convinced McMahon could let that happen though. That's the only problem I would have seen with it.

 

[johnnyblaze3:16]

you know i thought the same thing before and although it would be hard to explain it wouldve been great to see nitro and ecw stay the same like right now why do they evan call it ecw? no reason? if they kept them all the way they were the ratings and money wouldnt matter to vince but it would matter to the wrestlers like sting would never of worked for him but maybe if it was wcw nitro goldberg and hogan nwo red & black and well the rest of the now tna roster ecw keeps the originals and raw and smackdown could be one show insted of two(no brand split needed) then they could guest spot and all kinda of stuff i think it wouldve been great and good for bussiness! stars like ddp booker never made it in wwe but wcw yup

 

[onelonesapper70]

the other arguement against this is at the time tbs and tnt and decided not to keep wrestling on their stations. part of what the wcw sale so hard was distribution and in order o keep it running vince would have had to somehow quietly changed networks. i think in the end it probably went down the best way it could have.

 

[JJYanks121]

It's a fun idea, and even though the media would have picked up on it, there's ways to book it. The problem is, you would NEVER turn a profit putting on that many shows. To have so many wrestlers under contract, so much in travel costs, ring setup, etc, there's not way you could keep that going and be profitable. Remember that WWE is a publically traded company. If this idea was tried and losses were recorded were a quarter, stockholders would panic, stock would plummet, bad news all around.

Many times ideas sound great in theory, but in the reality of life, they're just not possible. For wrestling fans, it would be enjoyable to have that, but for one company to fun so much, it would just never work. Creative idea, cool idea, just not overly realistic.

 

[S.O.B. Radio]

The problems with this scenario stem from a few areas which I will list:

1. Amount of production work the WWE crew would have to do. If WWE were to run WCW and ECW as seperate entities, best be assured Vince would want his production people working on every aspect of the shows. If you figure in a two hour Raw, Nitro, Smackdown and a one hour ECW, you have seven hours of original programming on television. Add PPV's to this mix and you wind up with ten hours of television weekly. WWE's production crew as is can not hold the quality level up on the shows they currently have. And if Vince were to run Nitro and Raw on the same night, the production crew would be killed. I had a similar idea for the brand extension to place Raw and Smackdown both on Monday and have both shows live. Two lives shows would be murder on these guys.

2. Television contracts and the issue that would stem from WWE wanting to keep WCW on a Turner owned station. The idea behind the WCW sale initially was Ted Turner wanted completely out of the wrestling business and AOL Time Warner wanted WCW programming off its stations. With Vince having WWE programming at that time exclusively on Viacom networks, their only options would be MTV, TNN, CMT, etc. Vince would not be allowed to shop around the WCW wrestling shows under those circumstances.

3. The internet and the ability to provide this information in a quick fashion. Wrestling fans these days are able to use the internet and would already know that WWE owns WCW and creating an atmosphere where Vince would try to run both shows as if they were seperate would insult the average intelligence of most wrestling fans.

It's a lot of contractual crap in reality. What I would like to see Vince do with the WCW name, titles and image these days is create another territory (perhaps a syndicated show with new announcers, wrestlers and a new authority figure such as Arn Anderson).

 

[WinstonDeckard]

I believe McMahon has stated in an interview a while back that not leaving WCW as a separate entity was something he regretted. I feel that the creation of the separate brands was a means of remedying that mistake. In the end his ego didn't permit it and in the end WCW was for the most part was buried and left lying in the past.

 

[ECW2908]

I have been saying this since that night. It was the night when the wrestling business fell as a whole. I liked Shane buying WCW ok that was good, but why not just hand the company over to him? Let Shane run the damn thing. The McMahons would collect all the profits anyway. Also it would give Shane a shot at running his own wrestling company before he takes over WWE when Vinces dies or retires..lol I agree Nitro would have to be moved to a different night. It would be stupid to be going against your own show. WWE does all these damn brands like its different SD and ECW are WWE. The brands just piss me off. WWE lacks the talent to do this now we have 3 main event guys on each brand against mid-card jobbers. Thats why we get Cena vs Orton vs Triple H all the time.

Hogan, Sting and Bret would have probably left yes, but you would have still had Luger,Goldberg,Booker T and others. Plus WWE is better at pushing new talent to the top just look at Y2J, Saturn,Melenko,and others who crapped in WcW and went big in WWE. So Shane could have helped push new talent to the top. Also Vince had the WcW guys by the balls with no other option to wrestling available you redo contracts of the guys who made millions and helped WCW out of business. If vince was doing brands and wanted some kind of competition then why didnt he keep WCW. They had a history and seperate PPV's and look. It was a different company.

Also ECW was only growing on TNN. They were the highest rated show and drew the same ratings as TNA does now. The same 1.9 or 2.0 ratings. So TNN changed to Spike and ultimately got TNA who does the same ratings as ECW. The only thing ECW lacked was money to grow. Vince had money to help it flourish. ECW only held PPV's on alternating months and was a cheaply run product for Vince to keep alive. He could have kept it extreme and kept the hardcore viewers happy. Paul Heyman is a genuis in finding the best in people but a terrible business man. You let him be the ECW creative team. Hell he was the first to find talent like Rey Jr, Saturn,Raven,RVD,TAZ,the Dudleys, and so on. ECW was cheap to run and he had his own development field company with an established fan base on a national network. Why did he shit that away?

I am a true ECW fan but it was simply a stepping stone to careers. Rhino,Duldeys,RVD and more went on to do great in ECW. Vince could have still gotten guys from that show.

It just proves to me that Vince is a sorry business man. He had the wrestling world by the balls and dropped the ball. If WCW and ECW were still around TNA wouldnt even have a chance. Yes we all know Vince would have owned it but i wouldnt stop watching either if they were still going strong. Now we get stuck watching crap branded shows. WWE lacks the talent of top guys. If WCW and ECW were still around then Cena,Triple H,Orton,Undertaker and others would all be on one show. We could have mainevents worth watching again instead of Cena vs Orton for the 100th time..lol Oh yeah brands also killed the tag teams. Now you try to move guys like the miz and henry to the top and they aint ready. When in a non branded company they would start in tag teams and move to singles after established. Like Edge and Christian, The Outlaws,The Stiener Brothers,Harlem Heat,Hardy Boyz and other tag teams of the past.

ok my rant is over with now..lol

 

[leroi]

yeah i agree with you idea of keeping the brands separately and letting Shane run the show but there are a lot of reasons why Vince chose to not let it happen:

Shane did not have the necessary experience and did not understand the wrestling business as Vince and his acolytes did.

A lot of talent including writers like Russo had left wwf and there was much heat and untrustworthyness accompanying them.

An egomaniac such as Vince also wants to be in control of everything and controlling 2-3 shows is almost impossible for only 1 man

So i really think that Vince Thought about this a lot but stilll decided to merge all of them into the wwf because of management issues.

Sure he would have made hell a lot more money and it would have been better for the fans but it could also sink all three brands. If you watch the rise and fall of ecw, its quite evident that mismanagement was the downfall of ecw and the only one responsible was Paul.E

 

[I'm Not a Fan]

if vince would have kept the names and the shows we would have a whole weeks worth of wrestling. could have changed the dates and there would have been no problem. this would have been my week.:

monday:RAW
tuesday:Nitro
Wednesday:ECW
thursday:Thunder
Friday:Smackdown
Saturday:Main Events or Superstars
Sunday:Heat and PPV's

 

[leroi]

It would have been good if they could have created 4 ppvs per annum wwe vs wcw vs ecw where an undisputed championship could be defended and remained exclusively on the brand which the champion belongs too and eventually only superstars on that brand could get a shot at the title unless being on a ppv.

 

[mdj2010]

The problem is that you can't just 'keep them seperate'. We all knew that vince owned the competition before Nitro's final moments and so some angle would have been needed. Personally I liked the attempt to retain the element of competition by having Shane buy it, but the fact that it was owned by a Mcmahon wasn't enough.
If I could fantasy book then I would have gone with an 'inmates running the asylum' angle over at WCW - Why not have Flair buy the company and come out at the end of Nitro instead and say 'Vince, if you think you're getting any of my talent then you're dead wrong, actually I may even take some of yours, I might even take one right now.... Glass breaks... Austin.' Still seperate companies, the competition is there, and youve got a starting point for future crossover.
Anyways, enough fantasy booking, essentially I agree that had they been kept seperate as companies then you could have milked the crossover possibilities for a long long time. If I had my way Monday night would be Raw, Thursdays would be Nitro and ECW would have kept the wonderful legacy Paul Heyman and his roster created when they folded. But then if I had my way I'd be back in 1998 watching Foley flying off the cell all over again. Basically it's never gonna happen.

As a side note anyone that hasn't seen the Jim Cornette rebooking of the invasion angle should get that DVD, retrospect is a beauty, but he just shows how much they messed it all up.

That's the rantiest first post ever isn't it?

 

[DC the Entertainer]

If Vince wanted to he can still do it. Granted he doesn't have the same level of talent but just he did with ECW, he can do a PPV entirely dedicated to WCW. If its successful he can relaunch it in via some storyline like he tried when he "sold" RAW to Donald Trump. He can "sell" the WCW name to someone and relaunch the competition.

 

[shooter_mcgavin]

I think inhindsight, it doesnt matter now if McMahon made WCW a separate entity or not. If you think about it back in 2002 to beyond, the spirit of WCW lived on in WWE programming.

If you look at the talents that time you have Ric Flair, Finaly, Chris Jericho, Chris Benoit, Eddie and Chavao, Mysterio, Gregory Helms, Torrie Wilson, Billy Kidman, Stacy Kiebler, Booker T, Eric Bishoff, Scott Steiner, The Big Show, referees like Nick Patrick and Charles Robinson, add that to the fact you had Lance Storm, Finlay, Arn Anderson, Johnny Ace, Dean Malenko doing backstage work.

Plus you had spiritual successors of WCW Titles like the World Heavyweight Championship, United States Championship, and the Cruiserweight Championship as part of the list of Championship belts in the WWE.

From my view WCW did live on the WWE. And let's say what if McMahon never bought WCW and Bishoff was able to find someone to broadcast WCW? It would just have been equally possible that some of the people in the current roster of the WWE like MVP, Batista, Orton, Cena, CM Punk, Morrison, etc., would have been WCW Superstars.

So just my 2 cents.