What exactly happened at WCW Bash at the Beach 2000

[President Evil]

So Ive seen several times on youtube Hogan going against Jeff Jarrett for the WCW title, the fans seems to be really into it and want Hogan and Jarrett to get it on. The bell rings and Jarrett hits the floor, Hogan looks puzzled and Russo is outside showing the belt to Hogan and even throws it at him. Hogan puts his foot on Jarrett for the 3 count and thats the end of it. Hogan grabs the mic and says "thats why this company is in the condition it is because of shit like this"

So what exactly went on here. By this time WCW was going down the toilet and I wasn't watching anymore.

Most likely Russo had a real dislike for Hogan and he was doing this to piss Hogan off to get rid of him. But it doesn't make any sense getting rid of Hogan because he could still draw no matter what situation he was in. I remember the storyline of Russo and Bischoff getting together with the Newblood storyline of 'out with the old in with the new'.

Are there any shoot interviews explaining what happened on that night?

 

[ih8myusername94]

From what I understand Russo wanted to do a worked shoot, because they were desperate for ratings basically. Plus Hogan has creative control which must have gotten in the way of Russos booking, thus Jarrett just laying down for Hogan. I thought it was brilliant, and I'm quiet certain it wasn't a real shoot. I could be wrong, though.

 

[Youngsleez]

have always woundered what was going on with that... it was one of those things I just didn't get. Like was it Russo, Hogan, a mixture of both... or did it become a issue of how the scripting for the match would go so in the end Russo did a spit in the face of Hogan and have Jarret lay down... for some weird reason I think Jerret was suppose to win, maybe a clean win in the begining of the writting for the match, maybe Hogan didn't want to put over Jerrett for the title

 

[finoj05]

The story goes that it was a worked shoot designed to start a major storyline feud between Hogan/Bischoff and Vince Russo/Jarrett.

Vince Russo's promo after it went too far as he buried Hogan, and Bischoff/Hogan didn't want to do business with Russo because of the way he buried Hogan on the mic. So the storyline never materialized and Hogan sued WCW for defamation of character.

 

[dahvoo]

From what I've read about it, it started off as a worked shoot that turned into a real shoot. Hulk Hogan, Eric Bischoff and Vince Russo agreed that Jarrett would lay down, Hogan would act confused and pin him, then leave with the belt. What was supposed to happen after (storyline wise), is there would be a tournament or something to declare a new champion, which would have ended up being a heel champion. Then eventually Hulk Hogan would make his triumphant return as the "real" champion and challenge the "fake" heel champion. All of this to put Hogan back on top eventually.

Russo basically decided to go along with it up until Hogan left with the belt. Then he did the hate speech about Hulk Hogan and the politics, and declared the Jeff Jarrett vs. Booker T match that same night to decide a new champion right then and there.

Hulk and Bischoff did not know Russo was going to do this, and that is why Hulk legitimately sued WCW for defamation and stuff and I don't think appeared on WCW ever again.

Russo claims something like he misunderstood the original plan and thought his plan is what they agreed to, but my opinion is Russo figured "screw this" to the Hogan getting back on top and did his own thing to get the title on Booker T.

 

[starkmoto]

It was great to watch, but probs real in certain ways, Hogan never again appeared in WCW so that says a lot. I remember getting the news about it on this site actually, so I went to the tv and purchase the replay which used to air directly after the live broadcast. Jarret is a loser, but Russo was kinda right about Booker huh? I'm a huge Hogan fan though so hearing punk ass Russo calling Hogan a piece of crap was like the Royals General Manager calling the Yankees crap.

 

[Carpathian Florist]

Hogan didn't wanna put over Jarrett and played his creative control card.
The idea was from then on that Jarrett laid down for Hogan, Hogan got the title. Then Russo would "fire" Hogan and start a new championship match between Jarrett and Booker.
Hogan would stay "fired" for a little while and then return, claiming he was the real champion and have a unification match with whoever held the belt at that point.
It was also supposed to calm down the locker room as well, because the bad influence of Hogan would supposedly be gone.
I believe somewhere in the middle WCW was supposed to go into a restart mode as well and this unification of the titles would play a part in that too.
However, Russo went too far with his "firing" of Hogan and legitimately offended him to the point where Hogan refused to be on WCW programming and filed a genuine lawsuit for defamation of character (and probably other things too) against Russo.

This is the situation to the best of my knowledge, although if anyone knows any better feel free to correct me

 

[Inittowinit]

I heard the same thing about how everyone was in on it but the rumor i heard from a few people who were there at the time (Im friends with a few wrestlers in the Atlanta area) Hogan was still in the building. The reason he stormed out of the arena was Russo called him a bald son of a bitch or something like that. Commenting on the horse shoe is crossing the line to hogan. lol.

 

[aaronmb]

From what I've read about it, it started off as a worked shoot that turned into a real shoot. Hulk Hogan, Eric Bischoff and Vince Russo agreed that Jarrett would lay down, Hogan would act confused and pin him, then leave with the belt. What was supposed to happen after (storyline wise), is there would be a tournament or something to declare a new champion, which would have ended up being a heel champion. Then eventually Hulk Hogan would make his triumphant return as the "real" champion and challenge the "fake" heel champion. All of this to put Hogan back on top eventually.

Russo basically decided to go along with it up until Hogan left with the belt. Then he did the hate speech about Hulk Hogan and the politics, and declared the Jeff Jarrett vs. Booker T match that same night to decide a new champion right then and there.

Hulk and Bischoff did not know Russo was going to do this, and that is why Hulk legitimately sued WCW for defamation and stuff and I don't think appeared on WCW ever again.

Russo claims something like he misunderstood the original plan and thought his plan is what they agreed to, but my opinion is Russo figured "screw this" to the Hogan getting back on top and did his own thing to get the title on Booker T.

Pretty much that. Bischoff explained it in that Controversy book. It still amazes me how Russo is actually still in the "wrestling" business. At its worst, wcw in 2000/01 was getting roughly a 2.0 rating. Its actually cheaper to have that instead of making a made for tv movie, etc, which would actually get a smaller rating. After reading his book, Biscoff lost a lot of credit for what he did. He pretty much just stole ideas.

 

[TUFFY54]

As other people have said, it was a scripted thing that turned into a shoot. Russo, Hogan, and Jarrett were in on the idea that Jeff would take a dive. Then Russo would say that we wont be seeing Hogan anymore. Hogan would come back months later and they would do a unification match. However, once Hogan left the ring, Russo being to trash Hogan to a far greater extent than was agreed upon. Hogan then filed a defimation lawsuit against Russo and WCW and was never seen again.

THE REAL STORY IS MUCH LESS COMPLICATED.
Russo is a shit booker who thinks everything has to be a shoot to trick the fans and wrestlers. Instead of just having the match people payed to see, he pulled another stupid stunt to get the internet fans buzzing. He's just a moron.

 

[shooter_mcgavin]

Most likely Russo had a real dislike for Hogan and he was doing this to piss Hogan off to get rid of him. But it doesn't make any sense getting rid of Hogan because he could still draw no matter what situation he was in. I remember the storyline of Russo and Bischoff getting together with the Newblood storyline of 'out with the old in with the new'.

Hogan could draw which is true and I personally saw promise in a Jeff Jarrett vs. Hogan feud in hopes that Jarrett could go over. Ok sure people see Jarrett as a midcarder for life but at least WCW is giving him the ball and see how he runs with it.

Going back to Hogan being a draw. Like I said, its true. But considering how much his contract was and the mediocre to poor ratings WCW had despite him appearing I don't think ratings and PPV buy rates justifies the cost of having Hogan on the show.

Though I believe this was the running theme of WCW even since the nWo era. They were probably beating RAW in the ratings but I am sure there were probably operating at a loss, I am not sure exactly since I don't have the books but if you consider the elaborate sets + celebrity appearances (and Robocop) + Hogan/Nash/Hall in iron clad contracts + a roster of 50+ + Michael Buffer + many more.

 

[jobesukulele]

From what I made of the situation, it wasn't a worked shoot at all.

The booking from Russo called to have Jarrett go over Hogan but Hogan refused, which ended up resulting in Jarrett laying down for Hogan.

I remember it as it happened, I think the worked shoot theories started coming around as damage control, to try and smooth it over as "planned".

It's hard to say though, the truth is probably somewhere in the middle of all the versions of the story.

 

[TUFFY54]

Hogan could draw which is true and I personally saw promise in a Jeff Jarrett vs. Hogan feud in hopes that Jarrett could go over. Ok sure people see Jarrett as a midcarder for life but at least WCW is giving him the ball and see how he runs with it.

Going back to Hogan being a draw. Like I said, its true. But considering how much his contract was and the mediocre to poor ratings WCW had despite him appearing I don't think ratings and PPV buy rates justifies the cost of having Hogan on the show.

Though I believe this was the running theme of WCW even since the nWo era. They were probably beating RAW in the ratings but I am sure there were probably operating at a loss, I am not sure exactly since I don't have the books but if you consider the elaborate sets + celebrity appearances (and Robocop) + Hogan/Nash/Hall in iron clad contracts + a roster of 50+ + Michael Buffer + many more.

You make some good points, but your kind of missing the main thing. Hogan had the biggest contract in WCW through AOL/Time Warner. Russo "firing" Hogan on screen had absolutely no effect on the contract. After the angle was a bust, Hogan sat at home for a year and a half making millions.

The the book THE DEATH OF WCW if you like this kind of stuff. It's amazing. You can get it at any big bookstore for about 20 bucks. It talks about the ways WCW wasted money and will blow your mind.

-They only had 50 guys the last year. Before that they had over 200 wrestlers on contract. They changed bosses so many times that they didn't even know who was working for them. Great story: One of the new bosses thought it would be a good idea to bring in Lanny Poffo to feud with his brother Randy Savage. They were thinking about offering him a deal and started making an account for him on the computer. When they typed in his name as old account showed up. Turns out an old boss had signed him to a contract 2 years before for 150,000 thousand dollars a year. That boss left and the angle was never picked up. Poffo never once wrestled for WCW and collected hundreds of thousands of dollars from a company that didn't even know he worked for them!

-It wasn't until 2000 that WCW actually looked at who was wrestling before sending out plane tickets. Every single week they would just send out hundereds of plane tickets to everyone on the payroll, despite only using about 30 guys. Everyone else would just cancell their flight and get the cash for the ticket. They lost millions of dollars a year doing this.

-Finally, everyone talks about the huge contracts putting WCW out of business. You have to remember that all the top guys had these same deals in 97-98 when the company was making millions of dollars in profit. They storys went to shit and the fans stopped paying. Thats why the company lost 60 million in one year. If the contracts were really that expensive, then WCW would have never made a the profits it did when they were hot.

 

[whoopin' ass]

Bischoff's book explains it really well - it would have worked over everyone and got people talking about wcw. sounds like it could have been a quality angle - a chance to get some newer talent like booker over and then the epic match to see who is the real world champ. I don't know what the outcome would have been though - I can't see Hulk losing in a title vs title match like this. in the end, Russo just thought he was smarter than everyone else and knew how to get the angle over bigtime by bashing Hulk - worked really well.

one thing to remember with wcw and money is that they were in an unusual place. first, watch the wcw dvd that wwe put out and it explains how in the early days they were always operating at a loss since they didn't make anything from tv. this happened for a long time. also while wcw was its own company, it was also a part of the ted turner organization and it seems that is where the problems were. you didn't call wcw for plane tickets, ted had people to do that. that is where a lot of the waste came in and it was from ted's pockets not wcw. i don't think anyone has ever actually written about how it was all handled and whether that loss actually went against wcw or was just absorbed by ted but i get the feeling it was all ted's. and with the contracts, yeah they were high when wcw was in trouble but they were relatively low when wcw was making good money. and the contracts did make them money. does anyone think wcw would have been as successful as it was if hogan, nash and hall never joined? the nWo was huge for wcw and made them a pile of money, more than enough to cover their contracts. plus the bigger talent was signed to turner not wcw - that is why wwe didn't get them when they bought wcw. in the end, it wasn't the amount of money in the contracts that killed wcw, it was the creative control. when you can refuse to work and still get paid the same as if you put on a 5-star match, then there is a problem.

 

[punkrules]

what i heard was that hogan played the political card and wanted to beat jarrett for the belt but russo and jarrett didn't want that to happen but were forced to do it so jarrett layed down for a protest and hogan took off mad and russo knew that the fans would be pissed if jarrett was the champ and there was no real main event so later that night he had booker beat jarrett for the belt, schiavone said that no one had any idea that jarrett/booker would happen and that booker would win the belt before it happened

 

[LaCosaNostra]

i also heard the "worked shoot" was just damage control. bottom line, russo wanted JJ to go over Hogan. Hogan's ego wouldn't allow that. which led to the crap you saw. luckily, Booker finally got his time at the top, too bad he was like the captain of a sinking ship by that time, thanks to backstage politics from OLD wrestlers, and an idiot named Russo ruining every storyline he came up with in WCW.

 

[UFOcalling]

Originally Posted by jobesukulele
From what I made of the situation, it wasn't a worked shoot at all.

The booking from Russo called to have Jarrett go over Hogan but Hogan refused, which ended up resulting in Jarrett laying down for Hogan.

I remember it as it happened, I think the worked shoot theories started coming around as damage control, to try and smooth it over as "planned".

It's hard to say though, the truth is probably somewhere in the middle of all the versions of the story.

I agree with you, I also believe that the "worked shoot theories" were cooked up after the incident took place, as "damage control".

I remember watching this PPV live (when it originally aired), and being really confused when I saw Jarret lie down. The announcers didn't seem to know what the hell was going on...either they weren't told what was going to happen (at all), or it was a last-minute change. My belief is that Russo told Jarrett "lie down right after the match starts, let him pin you immediately", and I think Jarrett was told this right before he went down to the ring.

I don't think Hogan knew Jarrett was gonna lie down like that. Hogan's reaction was: "...this is the reason the company's in the shape it's in, because of bullshit like this..." (something like that).

I believe Hogan's reaction was legit (when he saw Jarret lie down), at least it comes across that way to me. Hogan isn't that good of an actor, and he seemed genuinely pissed. I think Hogan was expecting a "real" match, ending with Jarrett getting pinned. Like I said earlier, I think Russo told Jarrett to "lie down for Hogan", without anyone else's knowledge.

As others have already said, maybe there was a storyline in there...but what happened on television that night had almost nothing to do with what was planned. I also don't think that Jarrett vs. Booker was supposed to happen that night. I think that match was Russo's big "fuck you" to Hogan & Bischoff (and the rest of WCW management). IE: "...you wanna see a real face champ? I'm gonna make Booker a huge star 'overnight', and he'll be more popular than Hogan."...something like that.

 

[whoopin' ass]

thats the problem with wrestling - you never know how much of it is legit and how much of it was made up after the fact to save face. i believe it was a work between russo, hogan and bishoff (maybe jarrett too) - they had a general plan as to what they wanted but i don't think any of them actually said "this is what we are going to do". that is why hogan's reaction came across as so real - it was but later on it became "i knew that was going to happen but the rest of the boys didn't". i think hogan and bishoff thought that was all there was to it and left and russo either thought the angle was weak or had it planned all along and went out there to do his thing. or maybe they knew he was going to do and didn't like what he said afterwards and decided to play stupid. you have to remember, russo came from wwf and a lot of the wwf fans(and wcw fans for that matter) felt exactly like him in regards to hogan so it made sense for him to say what he did. it is like punk's recent comments about cena/wwe or cena about the rock - you just repeat what the fans are saying and they will side with you. i can't believe hogan and bischoff were that surprised by it. by now, i don't think anyone actually remembers what the original plan was.

 

[Headman]

From what I made of the situation, it wasn't a worked shoot at all.

The booking from Russo called to have Jarrett go over Hogan but Hogan refused, which ended up resulting in Jarrett laying down for Hogan.

I remember it as it happened, I think the worked shoot theories started coming around as damage control, to try and smooth it over as "planned".

It's hard to say though, the truth is probably somewhere in the middle of all the versions of the story.

This is how I remember it aswell. The dirt sheets at the time claimed that Hogan had been told that week that he was going to lose to Jarrett but in the production meeting before the ppv Hogan pulled the "creative control" card and refused to job. Russo got pissed... Hogan got GOT.

 

[President Evil]

It was in either Bischoff's book, or Hogan's book (the one he put out in 2002/03 when he was in WWE) where this Bash at the Beach situation was mentioned. Where apparently yes the whole thing started as a storyline, but somewhere down the line Russo didnt put the brakes on it and went too far with it. Perhaps Russo went too far with it when he went out to the ring and said "you'll never see that piece of shit Hogan again in a WCW ring" perhaps Hogan felt genuinely insulted and upset by this. Somewhere its mentioned in one of those books that Hogan left the place with the belt. But later on the line between storyline and reality blurred together.

Maybe perhaps also Hogan was used to having his way in WCW during the "Bischoff is in charge" years, now with Russo it was going to be a different ballgame and Hogan knew it. Yes Hogan still had creative control but Russo was going to give Hogan a hard time with it. Perhaps Hogan said screw this and chose not to go back.