My response to HarryThem
In your criticism of me you make good points actually. Let me clarify some of the things you're saying. The NWO 2000 wasn't that well accepted and didn't bring old NWO fans back in droves. You're right. Not because people hated the NWO but because of what i believe to be a number of reasons. First, their most important leader, Hollywood Hogan, wasn't there. Second, 1999 was such a bad year for WCW that a lot of fans gave up and never realized the NWO came back. They lasted for about 6 weeks and they included guys like Jeff Jarrett and the Harris Brothers and this pissed a lot of people off. Bret Hart could have done a great program with Hogan as the new NWO leader but he wrestled his last match about two weeks into the run leaving the NWO with no real leader. So really, NWO fans didn't abandon WCW when NWO 2000 formed. They abandoned WCW by the time the storylines made absolutely no sense and when Hogan and Savage disappeared months earlier. It had nothing to do with the reformation of the NWO.
I do agree with you when you say the over dependence of the NWO led to the demise of WCW. But i think it was more so the abrupt phasing out of it that led to WCW's demise. WCW overdepended on the NWO for its success and really needed to build future guys better to feud with/join the NWO to keep the NWO going till it could be logically phased out when WCW could survive on its own. It was the abrupt ending of the NWO that left fans completely disinterested in the rest of the mediocre product.
You are right about fans (NWO or not) tuning in to watch the other great wrestlers in non-related NWO storylines. I loved watching the first few hours on non-NWO stuff. I loved the luchadores, I loved the crusierweights, I loved the great matches between up and coming stars. I loved the buildup by the commentators who called the great matches but still managed to hype of the inevitable arrival of the NWO. Something i mean to say implicitly but i don't think comes across too well in what i write is that those who loved the NWO like myself also sometimes hated them at the same time and wanted to see guys like Flair, Sting, Goldberg beat them a little more often. I hated NWO so much in late 96 but they grew on me overtime. No matter how much I loved or hated them, I enjoyed watching them completely dominate for a long stretch and then have everything unravel on them as the underdog WCW would finally pull through once and a while to take them down. I loved to hate them, and near the end i just plain loved them and didn't want to see them disbanded. I always rooted for Sting to take them all down, and I was so disgusted when Savage joined his arch enemies..I wanted Goldberg and the Warrior to put the NWO in its place..but at the same time, I loved watching the NWO kick all their asses a lot of the time as well.
The NWO sucked and stank up the joint near the end of its run because of backstage politics and complaints by others wrestlers that the NWO should lose more often, get less airtime, and be phased out so they could get pushed. By 1999 they lost almost every week and looked really weak and that really ruined the whole angle in my opinion. There were many many mistakes that made WCW laughable, i agree, one major mistake I can see without tinted glasses is that the headline NWO guys should have feuded more with guys like Benoit, Booker, Guerrero in 97/98 to elevate them and make them more credible when the NWO was phased out. And guys that could have been elevated as heels should have joined the NWO to make two factions: The future of wrestling NWO and the old guys NWO with the newer guys phasing out the older guys over the span of a year or two. I know this was done through the New Blood/Millionaires Club, but it was a pathetic angle, it missed a lot of key guys on both sides, and was about a year too late. This would have given WCW a future and kept the NWO relevant a little longer while other changes were made to build the rest of the other guys up better. And you're right, guys like Stevie Ray and Virgil should not have been that second stable. That version of the NWO was god awful. And no, I didn't forget them, I just try to block them out. lol
WCW was going through a downward spiral booking wise for about half a year before the fingerpoke and the downward spiral in ratings came around April or May 1999. Everything DID NOT spiral out of control as a result of the fingerpoke episode or after it as a result of it and the reformation of the NWO. That is clear cut WWE propaganda. Like you said earlier, everything started sucking around the AOL/Time Warner Merger when Turner and Bischoff lost a lot of control. Things really got bad when the original NWO guys were divided into two parts, and the similar dividing of WWE into two brands is when WWE got really bad for me and when i stopped watching altogether. Speculating, I suspect this is what caused a lot of fan disillusionment at the time. I looked over the weekly ratings of the time just a few weeks ago and I didn't realize just how well WCW was still competing with WWE in 1999 considering the much shittier programming. You know WCW had very poor ratings before the NWO, and after the NWO ratings were still much better than they were before the NWO. Wrestling lost its novelty for casual fans or johnny come latelies who were WWE-only fans until the NWO. That's it. True NWO fans were there waiting for their return, casual ones gave up and didn't come back..the true fans made up that 3.8 rating week after week. The other 1 rating were likely casual fans that didn't find WCW as popular or as alluring anymore.
Yah, Turner lost power with the merger, you're right, but if he really desired it he had veto power to step in. Think what you want, but if Ted Turner wanted to he had the resources to put WWE out of business. I mean Ted Turner is Turner Broadcasting, he had the final say in anything. If he was in the exact same position as Vince and he absolutely relied on wrestling as his sole source of income, WCW would likely be around today and still offering crazy contracts to guys like The Rock, Edge, John Cena, Randy Orton who would have a really hard time saying no to three times the salary and two times less the workload. And WWE would likely be in a lot of trouble with less power to brainwash.
In your criticism of me you make good points actually. Let me clarify some of the things you're saying. The NWO 2000 wasn't that well accepted and didn't bring old NWO fans back in droves. You're right. Not because people hated the NWO but because of what i believe to be a number of reasons. First, their most important leader, Hollywood Hogan, wasn't there. Second, 1999 was such a bad year for WCW that a lot of fans gave up and never realized the NWO came back. They lasted for about 6 weeks and they included guys like Jeff Jarrett and the Harris Brothers and this pissed a lot of people off. Bret Hart could have done a great program with Hogan as the new NWO leader but he wrestled his last match about two weeks into the run leaving the NWO with no real leader. So really, NWO fans didn't abandon WCW when NWO 2000 formed. They abandoned WCW by the time the storylines made absolutely no sense and when Hogan and Savage disappeared months earlier. It had nothing to do with the reformation of the NWO.
I do agree with you when you say the over dependence of the NWO led to the demise of WCW. But i think it was more so the abrupt phasing out of it that led to WCW's demise. WCW overdepended on the NWO for its success and really needed to build future guys better to feud with/join the NWO to keep the NWO going till it could be logically phased out when WCW could survive on its own. It was the abrupt ending of the NWO that left fans completely disinterested in the rest of the mediocre product.
You are right about fans (NWO or not) tuning in to watch the other great wrestlers in non-related NWO storylines. I loved watching the first few hours on non-NWO stuff. I loved the luchadores, I loved the crusierweights, I loved the great matches between up and coming stars. I loved the buildup by the commentators who called the great matches but still managed to hype of the inevitable arrival of the NWO. Something i mean to say implicitly but i don't think comes across too well in what i write is that those who loved the NWO like myself also sometimes hated them at the same time and wanted to see guys like Flair, Sting, Goldberg beat them a little more often. I hated NWO so much in late 96 but they grew on me overtime. No matter how much I loved or hated them, I enjoyed watching them completely dominate for a long stretch and then have everything unravel on them as the underdog WCW would finally pull through once and a while to take them down. I loved to hate them, and near the end i just plain loved them and didn't want to see them disbanded. I always rooted for Sting to take them all down, and I was so disgusted when Savage joined his arch enemies..I wanted Goldberg and the Warrior to put the NWO in its place..but at the same time, I loved watching the NWO kick all their asses a lot of the time as well.
The NWO sucked and stank up the joint near the end of its run because of backstage politics and complaints by others wrestlers that the NWO should lose more often, get less airtime, and be phased out so they could get pushed. By 1999 they lost almost every week and looked really weak and that really ruined the whole angle in my opinion. There were many many mistakes that made WCW laughable, i agree, one major mistake I can see without tinted glasses is that the headline NWO guys should have feuded more with guys like Benoit, Booker, Guerrero in 97/98 to elevate them and make them more credible when the NWO was phased out. And guys that could have been elevated as heels should have joined the NWO to make two factions: The future of wrestling NWO and the old guys NWO with the newer guys phasing out the older guys over the span of a year or two. I know this was done through the New Blood/Millionaires Club, but it was a pathetic angle, it missed a lot of key guys on both sides, and was about a year too late. This would have given WCW a future and kept the NWO relevant a little longer while other changes were made to build the rest of the other guys up better. And you're right, guys like Stevie Ray and Virgil should not have been that second stable. That version of the NWO was god awful. And no, I didn't forget them, I just try to block them out. lol
WCW was going through a downward spiral booking wise for about half a year before the fingerpoke and the downward spiral in ratings came around April or May 1999. Everything DID NOT spiral out of control as a result of the fingerpoke episode or after it as a result of it and the reformation of the NWO. That is clear cut WWE propaganda. Like you said earlier, everything started sucking around the AOL/Time Warner Merger when Turner and Bischoff lost a lot of control. Things really got bad when the original NWO guys were divided into two parts, and the similar dividing of WWE into two brands is when WWE got really bad for me and when i stopped watching altogether. Speculating, I suspect this is what caused a lot of fan disillusionment at the time. I looked over the weekly ratings of the time just a few weeks ago and I didn't realize just how well WCW was still competing with WWE in 1999 considering the much shittier programming. You know WCW had very poor ratings before the NWO, and after the NWO ratings were still much better than they were before the NWO. Wrestling lost its novelty for casual fans or johnny come latelies who were WWE-only fans until the NWO. That's it. True NWO fans were there waiting for their return, casual ones gave up and didn't come back..the true fans made up that 3.8 rating week after week. The other 1 rating were likely casual fans that didn't find WCW as popular or as alluring anymore.
Yah, Turner lost power with the merger, you're right, but if he really desired it he had veto power to step in. Think what you want, but if Ted Turner wanted to he had the resources to put WWE out of business. I mean Ted Turner is Turner Broadcasting, he had the final say in anything. If he was in the exact same position as Vince and he absolutely relied on wrestling as his sole source of income, WCW would likely be around today and still offering crazy contracts to guys like The Rock, Edge, John Cena, Randy Orton who would have a really hard time saying no to three times the salary and two times less the workload. And WWE would likely be in a lot of trouble with less power to brainwash.
