Is WCW relevant any more?

[Jersey Wannabe]

The WWE is working on The Rise And Fall Of WCW DVD. It has been more than 8 years since WCW in its true incarnation died.

My question is with the WWE using mostly home grown superstars, i.e. Cena,Batista,Orton, and a P.G. rating how much of an impact did WCW have on the CURRENT WWE product.

Sure WCW forced WWE into the Attitude era, but now that thats over, the WWE has taken a step back to where it was before the Monday night Wars.

Almost all of the old WCW guys are retired or in TNA. WWE still has Mysterio, Helms, Yang , and Chavo. None of those guys are Main event quality.

It seems to me , that we are seeing the same WWE product we would be seeing if The war never took place.


Thoughts?

 

[only1soe]

I think it has some relevance. As Vince says you cant keep throwing caution to the wind every night and not expect to get hurt. We all agree that WCW and ECW made the attitude era happen but more than 8 years later it has changed to more of a kids show thats pg. If we didnt have our attitude era then, maybe we would have it now.

Interesting point that there are no true blue WCW main eventers left in WWE with the exception of Mysterio.

One thing for sure is that William Regal is still a good hand and he is someone I would love to see to get a serious push. Also the reincarnation of the TV title is something that would be cool to see again especially with 4 shows a week. Maybe we could see more of someone like Morrison or Bourne.

 

[thesacredcow]

Interesting point that there are no true blue WCW main eventers left in WWE with the exception of Mysterio.

Is it really all that surprising that there's no WCW main eventers left in WWE, seeing as the vast majority of those main eventers were 35+ then, and most of them are pushing 50 now?

I think the only real relevance WCW has nowadays relates to TNA seeing as how the Main Event scene there is filled with WCW Alumni, plus the fact that they're repeating the New Blood vs. Millionaires Club angle. At least I think they are, to be honest the MEM/Frontline thing is...well I really don't know what it is. Not sure creative in TNA do either.

 

[MisterRob]

WCW as an entity doesn't have any relevance anymore and there's no reason why WWE would change that or place relevance on the company they beat in the Monday Night Wars and Vince wanted to kill off. But the impact of WCW and their existence can still be seen in WWE. Big Show was a main eventer in WCW and he's a main eventer in WWE. The talent isn't significant though, and I think the fact the WCW roster is relatively nonexistant in WWE is a very telling sign of what was wrong with the WCW roster. But the US title currently in the WWE, which is currently the number two title beneath the two World titles most would argue is a WCW product and championship. The World Heavyweight title is basically the WCW World championship. So the history and lineage of WCW is still relevant and can be found in WWE's product today.

 

[kingdirrtysouth1]

It will always be relative to me! I grew up on NWA/WCW! My fondest memories of pro wrestling happened on TNT/TBS! Nothing will ever make them not relevant as far as I'm concerned! I just hope they don't use the Ddvd to further bury WCW. They did enough of that during the "invasion"!

 

[Uncle Sam]

OK, so there aren't really any WCW wrestlers still around. Well, you could count Jericho and Big Show. All the same, Triple H, Undertaker and Michaels are hardly icons of the Attitude Era, are they?

I'd say WCW will remain relevant for quite some time yet. Even if you can't see its direct influence on the current WWE product in the form of personalities, the influences are still very much though. WCW revolutionised professional wrestling, and is just as important to the current WWE product as the WWF is.

 

[Jersey Wannabe]

OK, so there aren't really any WCW wrestlers still around. Well, you could count Jericho and Big Show. All the same, Triple H, Undertaker and Michaels are hardly icons of the Attitude Era, are they?

I'd say WCW will remain relevant for quite some time yet. Even if you can't see its direct influence on the current WWE product in the form of personalities, the influences are still very much though. WCW revolutionised professional wrestling, and is just as important to the current WWE product as the WWF is.

Your arguement boils down to "Yes WCW is still relevant because I said so"
I loved WCW and I miss it very much, but what my point is , is that we are seeing the same type of product that WWE was using before the MN Wars.
It is like the whole battle with WCW never took place. They could at least use the old WCW logo in their shows beginnings

 

[De Mysteriis Dom Satanas]

OK, so there aren't really any WCW wrestlers still around. Well, you could count Jericho and Big Show.

Sure there are, they're all wrestling in the indies now. For example, I saw fucking GLACIER work a CHIKARA show, in his full Blood Runs Cold gimmick. I've never marked like that for anyone.

 

[bxbigshow]

But the US title currently in the WWE, which is currently the number two title beneath the two World titles most would argue is a WCW product and championship. The World Heavyweight title is basically the WCW World championship. So the history and lineage of WCW is still relevant and can be found in WWE's product today.

I'll give some le-way with the U.S. Title although I feel the IC belt is the #2 non-World belt. It has WWE's history and that counts more to Vince than WCW's...the US Tilte may be on Raw now, but it is the 2nd midcard title to the company.

The only comparisson of the WHC toi the WCW World Championship is the belt design. Y2J ended WCW's title lineage 7 years ago. That history now flows in the non-spinning tire rim that is the WWE belt.

 

[Fuel The Fire]

i was reading the eric turned down to take place in this dvd..how much will the affect the dvd? i dont know why he would turn that down.. does anyone have any explainations?

 

[twisterwrw929]

Sure there are, they're all wrestling in the indies now. For example, I saw fucking GLACIER work a CHIKARA show, in his full Blood Runs Cold gimmick. I've never marked like that for anyone.

He obviously didn't mean it like that. Obviously he was talking about bigger name guys, and talking about them in the WWE..........

And it's definitely still relevant, people are still interested in WCW. WWE is putting out WCW dvds, the Starcade one and now the Rise and Fall of WCW. And people are for sure going to go out and buy those, showing that people still have interest in WCW. The war between WWE and WCW was one of the biggest times in history for professional wrestling. Sure WCW has been gone for 8 or so years, but there was tons of great things to come out of WCW and it definitely affected professional wrestling.

 

[MetaphoriK]

I think if WCW didn't come out with Goldberg, then you wouldn't have had wrestlers like Lesnar and Batista with a similar invincible yet agile squasher type gimmick to get them over. Especially Batista, Brock is a better wrestler than both of them combined obviously, I would have loved to see Big Poppa Pump in his WCW prime vs. Lesnar.

 

[DC24]

i was reading the eric turned down to take place in this dvd..how much will the affect the dvd? i dont know why he would turn that down.. does anyone have any explainations?

He didn't want to be in it because Vince is going to potray as they dominated WCW the whole time which isn't the case and they will revise alot of WCW history to make them look like shit I wouldn't want to be apart of that either. I know personally miss WCW and I wish they still was around.

 

[Jonno]

WCW really has no relelvance anymore, even though I was a huge WCW fan for the longest while. Vince has spent all of his energy since 2001 burying WCW and destroying its legacy's and traditions. He simply took the things he thought worked for WCW and branded them with the WWE logo. He took in several of WCWs top stars and buried almost all of them using Triple H. Booker T is the execption, but any reference to Booker's WCW titles runs were all but forgotten in the WWE once the Alliance angle faded.

If this WCW dvd sells well, it wouldn't surprise me if Vince does indeed bring back WCW in much the same way he did ECW. But chances are it won't fetaure any of WCWs originals or even follow the same formula. It will no dout be a one hour program where developmental stars are given a trial run. I'd still probaly watch it.

I am looking forward to The Rise and Fall of WCW though, and I hope its an fair portrayal of WCW, and not just a bunch of WWE employees trashing it.

 

[notorious102]

No it's not ... It's gonna be in the history books just like WCCW, AWA, NWA, etc ....

It will be buried tho becuz Vince will make sure that everyone believes the WWE is & always was superior to every ther promotioin.

 

[Uncle Sam]

Your arguement boils down to "Yes WCW is still relevant because I said so"

Well, if you boil away all the points and add in the "because I said so", then yes, essentially.

I loved WCW and I miss it very much, but what my point is , is that we are seeing the same type of product that WWE was using before the MN Wars.

I think we're seeing an entirely new product, that's neither reminiscent of the Attitude Era or pre-Attitude Era WWF.

It is like the whole battle with WCW never took place. They could at least use the old WCW logo in their shows beginnings

Yeah, that's never going to happen. Considering Vince's position on WCW, it's odd that two of its titles and the name of a pay-per-view stay around. So, like I said, it's just as relevant as Attitude Era WWF, except its belt survived.

 

[PDepew2181]

I personally don't have much hope for the Rise and Fall of WCW DVD. The first reason is because Eric Bischoff declined to participate. Now I can understand his reasoning why, if what's been reported is true. If he doesn't want to aid WWE in "revising" history, as he said, fine, I can see that. He also pretty much told his story relevant to WCW in the Monday Night Wars DVD.

That brings me back to why I don't have faith in this being an exceptional DVD. Anyone remember the Monday Night Wars DVD? The documentary started out pretty evenly, with the ratings going back and forth. Then they spent a good deal of time about the creation and early success of the nWo. Then they shift over to WWF (that's what it was then, so that's what it is to me), and spend endless time talking about the Screwjob, Austin, and the Rock before ever going back to talk to anything about WCW. At that point, it was just all Bischoff challenged Vince, but Vince was "busy" reestablishing himself and was too good for a publicity stunt (as if Vince never saw a publicity stunt he didn't try to get on top of in his life); the only guy outside of the nWo they pushed was Goldberg (whine away, Eddie and Rey); and then Russo comes in and the product fails. So the war was pretty much depicted as being completed one-sided after about fall of 1996. Even when WWF was still getting destroyed in the rating, they're always depicted as being superior. And of course they're going to get depicted that way, since that's the company that owns everything!

The other "historical" promotion DVD's that WWE has released don't really suffer from these problems, at least to the best of my knowledge. The Rise and Fall of ECW DVD is pretty good depicting the whole history, and Heyman was pretty candid saying they failed because of the escalating salaries and being betrayed by TNN. But, at the same time, while WWE isn't depicted so badly in that DVD (since, of course, they let ECW come on in '97), WCW is depicted as Satan for treating Heyman badly (when Bill Watts ran the company) and then stealing his talent (which, in my opinion, Bischoff did a pretty good job of defending himself since what he did was exactly what Vince did circa 1984, and no one dare criticize Vince for that).

The AWA and WCCW DVD's are also pretty good, and those companies are depicted as going out of business for simply not being able to compete on the business level of WWF, for running out of talent, or due to tragedies that occurred with the talent. WWF and Vince in particular is even depicted as somewhat villainous in the AWA DVD, but not really to the point where he ruined the company.

The Starrcade DVD is interesting. Again, Vince is actually depicted as a ruthless bully in his pressuring of PPV outlets carrying Survivor Series over Starrcade if they wanted WrestleMania IV. But, let's also remember, WCW isn't the poor whipping boy in that scenario, Jim Crockett Promotions is, since they hadn't sold out to Ted Turner at that point. Then there's very little mentioned of WCW's version of Starrcade outside the matches themselves and talking about the '97 Hogan-Sting event.

So this brings me back to my point: WCW has always been and will continued to be shit upon by Vince and WWE for all times. Why? Simple: they almost put WWE out of business! Hey, I'd probably still hold a grudge for that, but how many companies did Vince buy out/marginalize/force out of business during his life? Pretty much all of them! It's not like he's some angel that deserves sympathy from us. But I digress.

I am still very interested to see this DVD, just because I'm curious to see how effective it can truly be without Bischoff's involvement. I mean, how many of the backstage power brokers are going to be heard from in this DVD? We know Bischoff won't be heard from. I'm pretty sure you won't get interviews with Ted Turner and Vince Russo, either. Ole Anderson, of course, won't be on this DVD. Did they try to interview Jim Herd? Doubtful. Kevin Sullivan? I'd be surprised. They'd probably be able to interview Bill Watts now, but that might be about it. So I think there's just going to be a lot of things said in this DVD that are going to be second-hand stories, at best, and there will be a lot of things missing/omitted. And there's going to be a lot of talent not on there either. At the very least, you're probably not going to get anything from the likes of Sting, Vader, Kevin Nash, Scott Hall, Goldberg, Scott Steiner, Lex Luger, Mick Foley, Randy Savage, and of course all those who have passed away.

So I want to see this DVD, but I just can't see it being the real total story of WCW. I guarantee you'll be able to tell how good this DVD is without even watching it. Just look for the running time of the documentary. If it's less than 3 hours (the time the ECW documentary received), then it's not going to tell you much that you probably don't already know. I sincerely hope Vince proves me wrong and lets his bias against WCW slide so we can have some sort of definitive history, but I'm not holding my breath.

 

[It's...Baylariat!]

It's really been 8 years. That's scary to me. It seems like yesterday when I was sitting in my bedroom, with remote in hand, switching back and forth between TNT and USA. Those were the days. To be honest, I watched an equal amount of both the WCW and WWE/F since the early '90's. TBS was very prominent in using WCW as a marketing tool, but until the WWE branded out with Raw, there was only Wrestling Challenge and Superstars in syndication. I remember watching the USWA, then SMW...and THEN Wrestling Challenge on my local CBS affiliate on Saturday mornings. Those were good times.

As far as the WCW being relevant. Well, they're doing a DVD about it, many people in the forum discuss WCW, and there are still quite a few WCW alumni wrestling in different promotions, so in a way, the WCW IS relevant. Take a look at the people of WCW's past. Ric Flair, Sting, Jericho, Mysterio, Giant Show, and many others are still around the biz. Arn Anderson, Michael Hayes, Dean Malenko, and Finlay are still backstage and wrestling, too. So there are bits and pieces of WCW all around the industry.

Just because the WWE changed formats...again, doesn't mean the Attitude never existed. It doesn't mean the Monday Night Wars were for not. Think about this, it was real close for the WCW. We'd be seeing Nitro and Thunder instead of Raw and Smackdown if it wasn't for some changes by the WWE. That makes the WCW very relevant in my eyes.

 

[Shua]

IMO, they really shouldn't come out with a Rise & Fall of WCW. Really, they already travelled down that road with The Monday Night Wars DVD (which was fantastic).

However, if WWE insists on making this DVD, you better believe it won't be anywhere near as "friendly" as R&F of ECW was, given that WCW provided more of a direct competition.