1. Jamie Kellner didn't kill WCW. He put it out of its misery. The company was DONE in 2000 and by 2001 the rats were looking at the corpse and thinking they were too good for it. This idea that everything was going great and then Kellner said "no wrestling around here" is ridiculous. Think about it: Kellner was named the head of the biggest media organization in the history of ever at that point, but he was stupid enough to get rid of something that was making a fortune and drawing in huge numbers?
That makes no sense.
WCW was done by that point and was losing a fortune every week. Think about it like this: would you cancel the top drawing TV show on cable today? Of course not. Why kill off something when it's on fire? WCW was dead in the water when Kellner got into power. Look at the TV ratings, the PPV buys, and the general aura around WCW in 2000. The place was horrible and everyone knew it. They had gone WAY longer than WWF did in straight weeks losing (WWF lost from June of 1996 until April of 1998, or less than two years. WCW lost from November of 1998 until March of 2001. Also, WWF was usually about a point to a point and a half behind WCW. Nitro was getting double and at times nearly tripled in the ratings by Raw. Not only was it not close, it was laughably not close.) and above all else, WCW showed no signs of life at all.
Oh and they were so hot that they had 94 networks BEGGING to put them on.....but none of them did because no one but Vince was interested in buying a ratings juggernaut for $3 million. Again, common sense is your friend.
This idea that Kellner killed WCW is nonsense and always has been. It was dead long before he as in charge and pulled the plug on it.
2. If the .com industry was so terrible and killed wrestling, what the heck did I watch on Monday, because apparently it wasn't wrestling. Again, WWE currently has what, five shows on the air? it survived the .com crash and TNA started about 14 months after WCW went under. The wrestling industry was strong but WCW was weak.
3. WCW died because it was a bad wrestling product and people stopped watching it. It had issues ranging from having no answer at all other than "let's have the NWO stay on top another six months" to "let's give Hogan and Nash the title over and over again because even though people have turned the channel in droves every time they do it, they were HUGE six years ago so maybe it'll work again" to "let's make sure no young guys EVER get elevated" to "let's make Vince Russo and David Arquette world champion!" to "I've spent all this time fighting to become world champion so now I'll lay down because I want Hogan to have it, even though he didn't beat Goldberg and no one buys him as champion" to whatever other reason you can think of.
Another thing to keep in mind: as far as mass appeal, WCW was clearly on top for about two years. The WWF was clearly on top for about the rest of time starting with the day Hogan won the world title. WCW had one insanely hot storyline and that's about it. Other than that, they were competitive at best and occasionally on top for a few flashes of time. Quality aside, they were never more popular than the WWF for long stretches.
But yeah, one day some guy came in and said "no more WCW" and that was it. Everything was going along great until then. Yep, it was all fine.
