What Made You Stop Watching WCW?

[enterkey]

At one time WCW was the biggest wrestling promotion around, dethroning Vince's iron grip on the wrestling community, stole his best stars, and basically beat him in every way. Before WCW created the NWO the wrestling world as a whole seemed to be slowly dieing and not even the great Vince McMahon had a solution to fix it and with that single event that included 3 former WWF main eventers WCW started their relatively short stint at the top of the business. The NWO rushed in a series of great stories and feuds that had man after man joining their group and defeating the WCW guys at every turn. As everyone knows this lasted for years and once it became stale the fans turned on it and in the scramble to fix the business justa bout everything in WCW went to shit. The stories and feuds that were once great turned to unbelievably idiotic crap that turned away fan after until the company went bankrupt and ceased to exist (I'm sure that's an oversimplified explanation but the majority of my WCW knowledge comes from wrestling books). So my question to you is what made you stop watching World Championship Wrestling, if you were one of the countless fans that did?

I personally was a sporadic Nitro watcher because by the time I was into wrestling WCW was losing its steam and I was simply brought up under the WWF brand. I do however remember the exact event that caused me to turn away from me altogether, it was a normal Nitro, or possible other WCW televised program, that featured an "I Quit" match for the WCW Hardcore Championship. Normally I would love these matches because hardcore wrestling was the shit back then but in this case it was between some cowardly champion that desperately wanted to end his title reign, I think he was a black wrestler, against a big muscly black guy that reminded me of Mark Henry. Why was this bad you might ask? Well before the match the cowardly champion made a deal with the challenger that he would take a dive and quit the match, he was cowardly after all, but as he was walking in the back some other wrestler for no discernible reason whatsoever decided to punch the champion in the throat causing him to lose his voice. So during the match the guy acts like he hits himself with a 2x4 or kendo stick and lays on the ground and tries to say "I quit" into the mic but nothing came out which infuriated the heel and caused him to beat the shit out of the guy and started screaming "SAY IT! SAY IT! SAY 'I QUIT!'" at which point the match was over and the champion retained his title in a rather ******ed way. Now I was 9-11 years old when I saw that but even back then I wasn't buying that shit and the last time I watched Nitro after that was when Vince was trying to buy WCW and I changed the channel when I saw Shane pop up and wanted to see if it was legit. Also does anyone happen to know off the top of their head who the Hardcore Champion was? Its been killing me for the past 9-11 years for some reason.

 

[CyDeez]

What caused me to stop watching WCW? Vince bought it and it ended!! LOL... Even though the last few years sucked, I still watched it because it was wrestling! The match you are talking about, I can't yet think of the big guy, but the champ you are talking about is Norman Smiley I think!

 

[Wrath Draven]

Well, the wrestler you are thinking of is Norman Smiley I believe, and as far as when I stopped watching WCW, I watched til the very end. I was a hopeless wrestling fan back then, so even when it got really bad, I didnt tune out.

 

[TheBoyWonder]

I think the hardcore champion at the time was Rhyno. Because i remember Mike Awesome showing up backstage and powerbombing him to win the title. This was the first time a WCW guy had shown up on RAW. If memory serves me correct lol.

 

[CraigThe13th]

The Fingerpoke of Doom!! I'm sure loads of people put that reason!

I still watched in on and off after that but that was what defo 'unhooked' me with WCW. In 2000 they kind of were like what TNA is now. Just very random and looked very small time by then.

I still miss it though, god bless you WCW. For a short time it was the very best!

 

[FlairFan2003]

This question has been done in a variety of ways, especially the previous discussions about the the 1999 "Finger Poke Of Dome" story featuring the return of Hollywood Hogan, Kevin Nash's heel switch, and the reformation of the NWO. Bottom line, WCW made several mistakes, each one adding to the misery and eventually killing itself off.

The company definately allowed backstage politics to have to great an influence on the onscreen product. Killing pushes for stars like Flair and Goldberg when they were red hot, pushing Hart into the midcard, there's so many stories out there it gets hard to keep track. Other than Goldberg and to a lesser extent DDP the company never made any of it's own stars, from 1993 when Flair came back through to the end of the NWO era in 2000 virtually every top star was either made famous by Jim Crockett's NWA Wrestling before Ted Turner bought it (Flair, Sting, Luger, Steiners, Arn Anderson) or became famous working for Vince in WWE (Hogan, Savage, Nash, Hall, Hart, Syxx, and to a lesser extent Jeff Jarret and Curt Henning).

Not enough time was invested in building stories for talents other than the top few so it didn't take long for the TV to get very boring very quick. Remember WCW had Chris Jericho and Eddie Guerrero too but did nothing with them. Seeing the NWO always win and always beat down your favorites got old too. Every great heel faction that drew money and drove ratings had to lose and get the heads handed to them at some point, regardless of who they were. Crockett got that with The Four Horsemen, McMahon got it with The Bobby Heenan Family, DX, and the variety of alliances he headed over the years. Yeah the bad guys have to win to keep things interesting and exciting but if they never lose ppl wont watch, there has to be a belief that the heroes will prevail. It's just as boring if the good guy never gets beat, why watch. The NWO rarely lost anything from 96-99 when they essentially disbanded (there were a handfull of short lived reunions, even one in WWE that didn't last long or produce anyting of consequence, for all intents and purposes they ceased to exist in WCW stories by April of 99) Letting the inmates run the asylum didn't work for WCW. McMahon certianly gives some stars more sway than others but he has never been as bad about letting the guys run the show as Bischoff and Company were.

When you think of the lineup WCW had - Hogan, Flair, Savage, Hall, Nash, Sting, Luger, Hart, add in Jericho, Guerrero, DDP, Hening, and keep in mind that no wrestler in 98-99 in any company not named Steve Austin was a hotter commodity than Goldberg, it boggles your mind that they ever went under. It's the football equivalet of taking the Steelers defensive line, adding Ray Lewis and Darelle Revis, then having Larry Fitzgerald and Andre Johnson as your WR with Drew Brees at QB with Adrian Peterson at RB and your team goes 6-10.

Keep in mind the wrestling audience was huge then too, WWE was bringing in young viewers with their "Attitude" programing but WCW had a solid young demographic too plus they had brought back all the old audience from the Crockett era. There were multiple times in 1999 when both Raw and Nitro each drew ratings above the 5.0 mark despite being on at the same time. Raw would kill for a 5.0 rating today with no other wrestling programming opposite it. TNA would kill for 2.0.

 

[enterkey]

What caused me to stop watching WCW? Vince bought it and it ended!! LOL... Even though the last few years sucked, I still watched it because it was wrestling! The match you are talking about, I can't yet think of the big guy, but the champ you are talking about is Norman Smiley I think!

Thank you very much, looked up the guy on Wikipedia and it was him so now I can rest assured knowing it was a guy with a mediocre push that never made it to WWE. You must have some damn good patience going down with a sinking ship like that, the captain of the Titanic would be impressed. I would have probably watched it more often if it was not at the same time as Raw since back then if you missed an episode of Raw you were fucked and wouldn't understand wtf was going on on Smackdown that week since there was no brand extension. I feel that I made the right decision though, definitely missed very little during that time aside from David Arquette and Jeff Jarrett's horribly undeserved main event push. The only things I regret are having never seen sting wrestle a match and not knowing or caring who DDP was back in the day.

 

[llennellV3]

I remember I was a big gamer back then and, believe it or not, all the WWF games from Genesis but really more from PS1 got me into watching their product over WCW's and was hooked on the whole attitude era....I was so sick of Hogan and all the other same old guys that I never went back. Then I stopped watching WWE and started watching TNA...and I'll be damn Dixie starts bringing those old bastards (With the exception of Flair, he's always something to watch.)

 

[AssInFaceGuy]

You know Enter Key let me start off by saying i really haven't seen a question or topic that has intrigued me in awhile..So thank you.


OK so i at the time was a real big WCW fan and needless to say i was big on the Goldberg Movement and NWO but who at the time wasn't ... But the thing that made me REALLY HATE the company was how badly they FucC up when Goldberg was finally taken off his Pedestal In STARCADE 98 and lost the Belt to Kevin Nash(Big Sexy) i thought the way it was done was terrible and I was really turned off to WCW .

 

[coledogripper]

The first time I have ever been unhappy with WCW was the January 4, 1999 episode when Tony Schiavone made the bad remark about Mankind winning the WWF Championship over The Rock saying, "Ha, that will put some butts in the seats."
But when David Arquette won the WCW championship, that was it for me but I'm not gonna lie, I miss the shit outta WCW!! I miss the badass Nitro music and the lovely sound the ring would make when the guys would hit it... WCW! WCW! WCW! WCW! WCW!

 

[Ruthless-RKO]

I remember replying to a thread so similar to this one not long ago...

Anyway..like I said then..and I will say it now..

I watched WCW even when it started dying..but it wasn't me who called it quits, it was TNT!!...they moved Nitro to Bravo here in the UK and I couldn't get it anymore!!

Thats why I was forced to stop watching it!!

 

[King Blitzkonic]

Normally I would love these matches because hardcore wrestling was the shit back then but in this case it was between some cowardly champion that desperately wanted to end his title reign, I think he was a black wrestler, against a big muscly black guy that reminded me of Mark Henry. Why was this bad you might ask? Well before the match the cowardly champion made a deal with the challenger that he would take a dive and quit the match, he was cowardly after all, but as he was walking in the back some other wrestler for no discernible reason whatsoever decided to punch the champion in the throat causing him to lose his voice. So during the match the guy acts like he hits himself with a 2x4 or kendo stick and lays on the ground and tries to say "I quit" into the mic but nothing came out which infuriated the heel and caused him to beat the shit out of the guy and started screaming "SAY IT! SAY IT! SAY 'I QUIT!'" at which point the match was over and the champion retained his title in a rather ******ed way. Now I was 9-11 years old when I saw that but even back then I wasn't buying that shit and the last time I watched Nitro after that was when Vince was trying to buy WCW and I changed the channel when I saw Shane pop up and wanted to see if it was legit. Also does anyone happen to know off the top of their head who the Hardcore Champion was? Its been killing me for the past 9-11 years for some reason.

Oho you remember "Screaming" Norman Smiley vs Mr. Hughes (aka M.I Smooth) after Muta did a throat thrust on Smiley. See Smiley's reign seemed to be WCW's parody of Crash Holly's hardcore title reigns. Difference is that Crash actually wanted to keep the title!

Back to the topic though: I watched WCW right up till the end even though i was sickened by the Fingerpoke and the Laydown (Jarrett to Hogan) as well as (I think this happened) Russo becoming champion. Long live ROH!

 

[Mr_billy]

I thought the Finger poke was BS, but honestly, it was Jeff Jarrett becoming an MEer. I could never get into him, except when he tagged with Owen. That is when I officially stopped watching. During that time the World belt was being passed around more than hardcore belt, and just made the whole thing a joke.

 

[AmericanDragonSW]

There are a few things off the top of my head that killed it for me with WCW.

1) The United States Championship. They handed it to an inexperienced David Flair on a silver platter and had him beat Buff Bagwell (when he was good and needed a push) and Chris Benoit. To me, that was disgraceful and disrespect to the belt and those who held it prior.

2) They had one night where the fans voted on who would fight Booker T for the belt. The fans had spoken and voted for Sting. What happens? They screwed the fans out of it by having Goldberg attack Sting and it ended up being Goldberg vs Booker T anyway. That to me is like sticking the middle finger to all wrestling fans.

3) The infamous David Arquette winning the world title. Do I really need to go into more detail than that?

 

[mpn62]

Two things made me stop watching WCW on a consistent basis: 1.) nWo angle became very stale. WCW destroyed the whole concept of the nWo angle by adding too many people to the group. If they left it at a core group of people, I think it would have been way more successful. 2.) STONE COLD STEVE AUSTIN!!! The man who put the WWF/E back on the map after WCW/nWo steamrolled through them for a year plus. If it wasn't for STONE COLD, I think the WWE may have gone under or be regulated to TNA status. Just my opinion.

 

[LFC20]

Nothing ever made me stop watching WCW, because I felt a loyalty to that brand. I watched it from the very beginning, and I felt that since that company gave me so many great memories, I should return the favor and be loyal to the brand until the very end.
I loved WCW and I remember crying during the last episode. I hated how Vince treated the WCW guys on camera in wwf, such disrespect. But anyway...I was loyal to WCW for the entire time of its existence.

 

[TruckaHoganFan]

what made me stop watching the great WCW are the same reasons why i don't watch the WWE now : the guest hosts, storylines that remind some of an episode of Days of our Lives, the NWO whuppin & inducting a new member every week. I grew tired of non-wrestlers, i.e. Karl Malone, Rodman, Arquette, etc., constantly being written into storylines. I knew Turner, Bischoff, Hogan, Russo, and God knows who else wanted a Hollywood-type program but that shit got stale quick. i was able to stomach some of the bullshit they put out but once Vince took over, that was the nail in the coffin.

 

[kingjaekob]

I stopped watching WCW, when they broke into the Red and Black and Original nWo. It was a BIG mistake breaking them up! Plus The WWE Attitude Era was Awesome! Very Entertaining watching The Rock, Austin, Val Venis, etc... I also hated watching Jeff jarrett! He is not a major talent, I liked Scott Steiner being world Champion, but Guys like Booker T, Jarrett, Goldberg, and the Stupid story lines they had, made me watch WWF! in late 80's and early 90's WCW had the best talent, and best wrestling matches ever! I always wanted to see a match between STING vs Shawn Michaels! Would have been an AWESOME MATCH!

 

[MWRedskins]

that featured an "I Quit" match for the WCW Hardcore Championship.
i remember this match!!!!
but in this case it was between some cowardly champion that desperately wanted to end his title reign, I think he was a black wrestler, against a big muscly black guy that reminded me of Mark Henry.
the black guy you are talking about was Screamin' Norman Smiley, in my book that was one of WCW's best gimmicks. Was he great wrestling, not really, BUT unlike WWE's attempt at humor with Hornswoggle, Screamin' Norman was VERY funny.

Why was this bad you might ask? Well before the match the cowardly champion made a deal with the challenger that he would take a dive and quit the match, he was cowardly after all, but as he was walking in the back some other wrestler for no discernible reason whatsoever decided to punch the champion in the throat causing him to lose his voice. So during the match the guy acts like he hits himself with a 2x4 or kendo stick and lays on the ground and tries to say "I quit" into the mic but nothing came out which infuriated the heel and caused him to beat the shit out of the guy and started screaming "SAY IT! SAY IT! SAY 'I QUIT!'" at which point the match was over and the champion retained his title in a rather ******ed way.
i actually loved that match because of how funny it was. First off the guy who attacked Norman was the Great Muta while the Dark Carnival watched, it was funny because the ref, said that the big guy (think he was a member of the new Harlem Heat at one point) said, "say i quit, say i quit, i quit" then the ref says, "that's it." that was pretty funny i thought, much like the WWF Hardcore title changing hands every chance it took with the 24/7 rule.
So my question to you is what made you stop watching World Championship Wrestling, if you were one of the countless fans that did?
what made me stop watching it was, it went off the air. It was a good program, not great, but decent enough to get a look. WCW was getting better then it died. During the last days of it, they had Ric Flair leading a heel group and Steiner as World Champion, it wasnt great, but it kept me watching and also was good in case WWE had a boring show or match at the time.

 

[SyndicateSaint]

The Hardcore Champ you are talking about was "Screamin'" Norman Smiley. Funny thing is...he's a LEGIT badass. I believe he trains the up and coming WWE guys in one of their farm club feds.

There was a few things that got me out of WCW.

1. The firing of all the Cruiserweights. Russo said nobody in a mask would ever get over...Kane did..but anyway, while the La Parka and Juvi stuff was funny, I was pissed about the disrespect they showed for the IWGP Jr Heavyweight title. At the time THAT title had more prestige then the WCW Heavyweight title.

2.David Arquette. No matter how much press you got from it. This should have NEVER happened. I could kill David Arquette. That means I should have been WCW champ. Get my point? If they were gonna put it on someone famous, at least it should have been a guy who resembles a wrestler..JUST A LITTLE BIT!

3. The Mega-nWo. Finger poke of doom and all that jazz. Another way to disrespect the sport and title.

There's a bunch of other things, but those are the "big" ones for me. I won't lie though, I have the last Nitro on VHS here...I figured it would be important to see the last show.

 

[fenfool]

I watched to the very end...it was quite a sad day when Vince bought them out, then buried the ones he hated most on their own show. I was not a fan of the attitude era, and have never liked Shawn Michaels or HHH, so it was over for me, for a while. The 'reset' where they stripped everyone of their titles and started over again was kind of the death knell for me, but I kept watching...I was a fan of many of the performers, so I still watched for them, but it was more like having it on in the background while I was doing something else.

 

[BigRed007]

Ted Turner's wCw sucked at the end because of Vince Russo and the fact that he thought he was responsible for WWE's success. The fingerpoke of doom. After 160 or so wins in a row, they have a guy who has 3 moves beat Goldberg, not a clean victory either then to top that Nash vs Hogan and Nash lays down for Hogan. That is a insult to every worthy champion who held the belt previously. Especially Goldberg. They could have at least had him lose clean with no outside interference, then have Nash and Hogan be a legitimate match. Ironic how wCw Nitro beat Raw 84 weeks in a row or whatever the number was, and TNA iMPACT! couldn't get a rating above 1.5 to save it's life even with Bischoff and Russo. TNA is wCw what AAA is to MLB. wCw also never pushed anybody but Goldberg. They stupidly brought in the Warrior and he had a horrendous match with Hogan, they should have used Bret Hart to be their top guy, instead they hardly give him any title matches or respect. The should have given Benoit the title and not stripped it from him, give Jericho or Eddie Guerrero a push because they had the talent to be the top guy, but they never did that. They kept making Hogan, Nash, Jarrett champion.

 

[Maestro48239]

the infamous fingerpoke of doom was really it for me. I kept watching, but after that, I wouldnt be bummed out if I missed an episode. and after that, it seemed like a chain reaction, the company started to implode. bad writing, main eventers jumping ship for the WWE, and just utter confusion out there week after week.

 

[Total Impact]

I watched WCW till the end and loved it some much. I'm a southern wrestling fan and loved the fact that I watch USWA (Memphis) wrestling saturday morning & WCW saturday night. I never saw anything wrong with WCW & never saw anything kill WCW except for Vince buying it & not being able to get a tv deal. WCW was good till the last show, it was still pulling ratings in the 2's, better than what TNA has ever done. I'm still hoping one day it comes back, I mean we have the world title, the US title, all we need is the return of Nitro. Maybe when the WWE gets its own network a return of the new WCW could happen as another farm league.

 

[ilapierre]

I watched WCW off and on to the very end. It was painful though. Watching WCW started to get less enjoyable around the time Hogan and Bischoff did a program with DDP and Karl Malone. Hogan took a hiatus in October 98 and the NWO vs Wolfpack storyline made no sense anymore because you had Hall and Nash feuding and the whole NWO vs NWO feud lacked direction and intensity.

What to this day still goes over wrestling fans' heads and should become a discussion topic is that the whole NWO vs Wolfpack program (from the day Hogan announced he was leaving wrestling to run for US presidency) was (as part of the storyline) suppose to be seen in hindsight as all one big illusion orchestrated by Bischoff, Hollywood Hogan and the entire NWO so that Hogan could come back and immediately regain the title he lost from Goldberg. If memory serves me right, on the night of the Fingerpoke of Doom there was suppose to be a rematch between Nash and Goldberg with Hogan making a one time appearance to address the fans seperately. Hogan had unattached himself to the NWO and was appearing as the 'good guy' Hogan. Months prior, Scott Steiner assumed the leadership role of the NWO declared that Hogan was now their enemy. During that Nitro of the Fingerpoke of Doom, Goldberg was arrested for assaulting Elizabeth, all part of the conspiracy, and Hogan was instead given Goldberg's title shot (as Goldberg lost the title to Nash a week or two prior with outside interference by his recent enemy but newfound friend Hall). Fans were teased, it FINALLY looked like Nash and Hall had turned on Hogan, who was now getting cheered as a face, and then Nash laid down for Hogan. Fans were stunned and a lot were apparently turned off.

As disgraceful as it was to wrestling, it should have been regarded as one of the biggest and thoroughly constructed swerves in the history of wrestling entertainment. (I mean, we can say Arquette winning the title was disgraceful to the title's history or that Nash laying down was disrespectful to viewers. But what about Vince winning the title in WWE, was that not disrespectful to the title, or the necrophilia storyline with Triple H and Katie Vick, was that not disrespectful to the viewers?? To me, both incidents just as disrespectful as WCWs but have over time become forgiven and almost forgotten). WWE-paid revisionist spin doctors have spun some very influential anti-WCW anti-Hogan anti-Bischoff rhetoric through WWE's video library to convince those still watching wrestling that the Fingerpoke of Doom was a senseless, tasteless one time stunt for ratings that backfired and led to WWE winning the ratings war. Today, I hear so many of today's fans, young and old, regurgitating the same pro-WWE rhetoric from this site and from WWE home video, like how they didn't like the 'shoving of Hogan and the NWO concept down their throats since they didn't want anymore Hogan or NWO' but rather great wrestlers like Benoit and Guerrero. It has become almost convenient for them to forget their version of the past and remember only what they last saw a year or two ago in a pro-WWE documentary or what they now think in hindsight. As I remember it and still see it, minus the storyweaving by the company who now controls and dictates wrestling history but doesn't control and dictate my own separate interpretation of what i saw that really happened, fans wanted WCW to make sense and most still tuned in to see Hogan and the NWO dominate. However, the whole storyline was so complicated that it went over fans heads and that's why to this day so many wrestling fans agree with the pro-WWE spindoctors that the Fingerpoke of Doom ruined everything for them. I'd argue that the months prior to the Fingerpoke of Doom actually ruined it for them, and me, instead as this period consisted of terrible senseless programming that left a lot of viewers confused and not really paying attention to the poorly executed plot or the artificial animosity among the NWO.

It was actually the Fingerpoke of Doom night that made the previous 4 or 5 months of suck finally make sense and give me some hope again. For me, the beginning of the end was when for no apparent reason the NWO just ended mid storyline in April 99. Things just got worse when Vince Russo started writing, when Jeff Jarrett was pushed as World Champ, when Hogan and Flair fought pointless programs with Jarrett and Billy Kidman, and all of a sudden WCW's most invincible stars became easily beatable. The booking and politics destroyed WCW but the behind the scenes stuff with the execs at Turner set the ball in motion for the suck in the summer of 98.