MrHashasheen
Enjoying Wrestling
World Championship Wrestling will always be remembered as the promotion that managed to humble the McMahon juggernaut and rule for two years straight over professional wrestling. The revolution started back in July 7, 1996, when ‘The Outsiders” Kevin Nash and Scott Hall teamed up with the legendary Hulk Hogan to defeat Randy Savage, Sting and Lex Luger. The creation of the New World Order had set the wrestling fandom ablaze. Why had Hulk Hogan, one of the greatest wrestlers of the generation turned heel? The answers to that would be found on Monday Night Nitro, in what would later be called the beginning of the Monday Night Wars.
For the next two years, World Championship Wrestling was the greatest promotion in the United States, beating out both the World Wide Wrestling Federation and Extreme Championship Wrestling (both of the “Big Three”
, and rapidly grew from a second-rate promotion to one with a large cult-like following. However, with a growing and aspiring fandom, came the defeats that would help end the promotion. WCW was a hotbed for talented veterans who had already had amazing runs in the WWF, and many of whom had creative control placed into their contract as an incentive, people like Hulk Hogan, Kevin Nash, Scott Hall and many, many more. This caused a top-heavy tier of heavyweights who refused to put over new wrestlers from the mid-card, and begin to grow stale as the WCW increasingly relied on the NWO to counter the WWF’s numerous angles and storylines based around new stars such as Triple H, The Rock, Steve Austin and the Undertaker as well as stealing away wrestlers such as Chris Benoit, Dean Malenko, Eddy Guerrero and Chris Jericho, who were swept away from WCW due to serious frustration with the booking committee and their tendency to promote veteran wrestlers. Equally frustrating were the various creative control contracts held by those same veteran wrestlers, preventing younger promising wrestlers from rising through the ranks.
It was a long road for Eric Bischoff, instigator of the Monday Night Wars and the creator of NWO storyline, more so with the still climbing Attitude Era and the success of the ECW as the third big promotion. As the company drew more and more inward into its home of Atlanta, Georgia, the young talent left in large numbers due to the top talent refusing to put them over, and money became thin, very thin. In desperation, the executives of AOL Time Warner brought in Vince Russo, the self-proclaimed genius behind the Attitude Era that was shaming the WCW in the ratings.
What followed were nonsensical storylines, wasted title shots and often rapid face heel and heel face turns. Rapidly falling even further in the ratings, the executives ultimately added on Eric Bischoff in order to create a balance of the ideas the two men had in the hopes that the combined team could turn things around. They were wrong, and the WCW fell into such dire straits with an annual loss of $ 60 million in its final full year, allowing the WWF to pick it up for less than $ 2.5 million in 2001, a pittance compared to its worth not three years earlier.
But the reality that once was can always be changed; can’t it? Let’s head back to the year 2000, and the month of January.
Just a few years removed from being the biggest wrestling promotion in the world, World Championship Wrestling came into 2000 with a very cloudy future. Bleeding money and having eroded its fan base through bad booking, bad pushes and bad spending, the promotion’s fate was sealed when Time-Warner began its merger with America On-Line. Almost immediately after Jamie Kellner made his position that professional wrestling was not desirable programming for AOL-TW official to Ted Turner, WCW was put on the chopping block in January of 2000. Without a deal to purchase the promotion coming through, one of the major powers of professional wrestling in America would die a humiliating death.
Former WCW President Eric Bischoff and his quickly formed investor group made an offer of approximately $5m. That offer was quickly matched by Vince McMahon, who had the right to match any offer due a lawsuit settlement, and then increased with a following offer of approximately $19.5m and featuring a more aggressive payment schedule. But before the deal was finalized, a third offer was made to for a much higher price and to be paid at the same rate as the WWF. It was accepted, and after speaking to both the other investors, was the final offer. There was talk that McMahon was furious at AOL-TW over the third offer being accepted and while he considered legal action, he did not pursue that possibility is as the original offer he made apparently upset Viacom, which carried all WWF programming at the time. At the same time, Eric Bischoff was scheming to return himself to power in WCW by other means, attempting to gain meetings with the new owner to arrange to return his old position and haunting grounds. The meetings were refused and an upset Bischoff supposedly declared afterwards that he would simply run WCW into the ground, allowing him to pick up for a fraction of what his original purchase price was.
That all this occurred in the lead-up to Souled Out and afterwards led to a constantly changing card, which was completely finalized the day before Souled Out as below:
-
-
Despite weak pay per view buys, the show was critically acclaimed by those who did in fact watch. La Parka would proceed to win his first ever Cruiserweight Championship after outlasting 14 other very determined cruiserweights. Booker T would go over Stevie Ray in a brutal match that had their sister Midnight involved as the special guest referee. Both men would reconcile after the match and end their feud on that night on good terms, while Big Vito and Johnny would pin the Harris Boys to get their shot at the tag team belts.
The Revolution would be defeated by the Filthy Animals when Billy Kidman pinned Shane Douglas to secure the win for his team, which was then followed by the tag team championship match, where Vampiro and comedy wrestler and surprise partner Norman Smiley pinned David Flair after he was abandoned by Crowbar and Daffney to win the WCW World Tag Team Championships.
DDP would complete his heel turn by going over Buff Bagwell and brutalizing the younger superstar throughout the match and after he pinned Bagwell until he was pulled off by a horde of referees and ring-side crewmen.
Terry Funk would defeat Kevin Nash despite attempted interference from the Harris Boys which was stopped by both the returning Ric Flair and an injured Sting (who had come back for one appearance before returning to his recuperation) while Kevin Nash was pinned in the middle of the ring, thus giving the nWo it’s long awaited death.
In the main event, Chris Benoit would battle Sid Vicious for an amazing twenty minutes of wrestling to ultimately win the championship that Bret Hart had denied him at Mayhem ’99, the WCW World Heavyweight Championship.
Following the PPV of Souled Out, World Championship Wrestling shut down all shows for a two-week period. The entire roster was given "vacation time", from which many would never be brought back. TNN and TNT instead aired best-of-WCW compilation shows on their slots on Monday, Thursday, Saturday and Sunday. Despite being edited together rather hastily, these shows proved quite popular and drew decent ratings. It also indicated what the fans truly wanted was a focus on the in-ring action and not the theatrics Russo promoted or the cronyism prevalent with Bischoff.
During the shutdown, the new streamlined management team began to the processing of building a new WCW, starting with tearing down much of the old. A large number of contracts terminated as part of the purchase process, leaving the new era WCW with a much smaller roster. Some of those who didn't come with the purchase were the biggest stars, as they were contracted directly to AOL-TW. Those stars under contract directly to AOL-TW could accept a buyout of their existing deal at a portion of its remaining value by either WCW or the WWF, or remain under contract and not working, perhaps hoping for a full-value buyout down the road. Sting, Flair and Goldberg chose to take the buyout from WCW, signing new WCW contracts. The new owner met with them each directly, and convinced them to buy into his new WCW vision. They were joined by the likes of DDP, Booker T, Scott Steiner, and Lex Luger as forming the new core of WCW major talents. Some of the biggest names, including Hulk Hogan, Curt Hennig, Sid Vicious, Jeff Jarrett, Kevin Nash, and Scott Hall, either chose to remain on the sideline and sit out their remaining contracts, or were not approached in the first place.
As World Championship Wrestling began looking outside for some new talent as well, rumors were constant of WCW stealing talent from the WWF. It seemed that nearly every day of the shutdown, some new rumor from someone with supposed inside knowledge would circulate across the internet wrestling community - usually about how some big WWF name was going to jump ship. The rumors turned out to be baseless, for the most part, with the exception of those that focused on ECW talents defecting. A few ECW wrestlers would later on accept contracts from World Championship Wrestling, rumored to have been let go by Paul Heyman in exchange for large cash infusions for his promotion.
But for the most part, WCW looked to the independent scene for new talent. Established talent tended to be expensive. Inexperienced workers with no name value could be signed for very small amounts. AJ Styles, Christopher Daniels, Nick Dinsmore and Sonny Siaki were such exciting young talents signed, while several others were signed and sent to the Power Plant to continue working on their skills.
An immense amount of uncertainty and confusion surrounded WCW during the purchase and shutdown period. Particular management elements – mostly Bischoff - had a history of "working the boys" in the past, so there was a large degree of suspicion inherent amongst the roster over what was happening, and a lot of it was directed at the new owner. Practically unknown in the wrestling world with little to no information on the man’s finances made public, some wrestlers thought it was just another worked shoot by Bischoff or Russo with AOL Time Warner executive support.
But it was fact that World Championship Wrestling had a new owner and that the many problems of the WCW being slowly ironed out. But the question is, how long can this new ownership keep the WCW going, with the WWF circling them like sharks in the water, the loss of several main event draws and wide-spread dissatisfaction in the locker room leftover from previous regimes?
I guess you’ll just have to keep reading to find out…
For the next two years, World Championship Wrestling was the greatest promotion in the United States, beating out both the World Wide Wrestling Federation and Extreme Championship Wrestling (both of the “Big Three”
, and rapidly grew from a second-rate promotion to one with a large cult-like following. However, with a growing and aspiring fandom, came the defeats that would help end the promotion. WCW was a hotbed for talented veterans who had already had amazing runs in the WWF, and many of whom had creative control placed into their contract as an incentive, people like Hulk Hogan, Kevin Nash, Scott Hall and many, many more. This caused a top-heavy tier of heavyweights who refused to put over new wrestlers from the mid-card, and begin to grow stale as the WCW increasingly relied on the NWO to counter the WWF’s numerous angles and storylines based around new stars such as Triple H, The Rock, Steve Austin and the Undertaker as well as stealing away wrestlers such as Chris Benoit, Dean Malenko, Eddy Guerrero and Chris Jericho, who were swept away from WCW due to serious frustration with the booking committee and their tendency to promote veteran wrestlers. Equally frustrating were the various creative control contracts held by those same veteran wrestlers, preventing younger promising wrestlers from rising through the ranks. It was a long road for Eric Bischoff, instigator of the Monday Night Wars and the creator of NWO storyline, more so with the still climbing Attitude Era and the success of the ECW as the third big promotion. As the company drew more and more inward into its home of Atlanta, Georgia, the young talent left in large numbers due to the top talent refusing to put them over, and money became thin, very thin. In desperation, the executives of AOL Time Warner brought in Vince Russo, the self-proclaimed genius behind the Attitude Era that was shaming the WCW in the ratings.
What followed were nonsensical storylines, wasted title shots and often rapid face heel and heel face turns. Rapidly falling even further in the ratings, the executives ultimately added on Eric Bischoff in order to create a balance of the ideas the two men had in the hopes that the combined team could turn things around. They were wrong, and the WCW fell into such dire straits with an annual loss of $ 60 million in its final full year, allowing the WWF to pick it up for less than $ 2.5 million in 2001, a pittance compared to its worth not three years earlier.
But the reality that once was can always be changed; can’t it? Let’s head back to the year 2000, and the month of January.
Just a few years removed from being the biggest wrestling promotion in the world, World Championship Wrestling came into 2000 with a very cloudy future. Bleeding money and having eroded its fan base through bad booking, bad pushes and bad spending, the promotion’s fate was sealed when Time-Warner began its merger with America On-Line. Almost immediately after Jamie Kellner made his position that professional wrestling was not desirable programming for AOL-TW official to Ted Turner, WCW was put on the chopping block in January of 2000. Without a deal to purchase the promotion coming through, one of the major powers of professional wrestling in America would die a humiliating death.
Former WCW President Eric Bischoff and his quickly formed investor group made an offer of approximately $5m. That offer was quickly matched by Vince McMahon, who had the right to match any offer due a lawsuit settlement, and then increased with a following offer of approximately $19.5m and featuring a more aggressive payment schedule. But before the deal was finalized, a third offer was made to for a much higher price and to be paid at the same rate as the WWF. It was accepted, and after speaking to both the other investors, was the final offer. There was talk that McMahon was furious at AOL-TW over the third offer being accepted and while he considered legal action, he did not pursue that possibility is as the original offer he made apparently upset Viacom, which carried all WWF programming at the time. At the same time, Eric Bischoff was scheming to return himself to power in WCW by other means, attempting to gain meetings with the new owner to arrange to return his old position and haunting grounds. The meetings were refused and an upset Bischoff supposedly declared afterwards that he would simply run WCW into the ground, allowing him to pick up for a fraction of what his original purchase price was.
That all this occurred in the lead-up to Souled Out and afterwards led to a constantly changing card, which was completely finalized the day before Souled Out as below:
-
-
Despite weak pay per view buys, the show was critically acclaimed by those who did in fact watch. La Parka would proceed to win his first ever Cruiserweight Championship after outlasting 14 other very determined cruiserweights. Booker T would go over Stevie Ray in a brutal match that had their sister Midnight involved as the special guest referee. Both men would reconcile after the match and end their feud on that night on good terms, while Big Vito and Johnny would pin the Harris Boys to get their shot at the tag team belts.
The Revolution would be defeated by the Filthy Animals when Billy Kidman pinned Shane Douglas to secure the win for his team, which was then followed by the tag team championship match, where Vampiro and comedy wrestler and surprise partner Norman Smiley pinned David Flair after he was abandoned by Crowbar and Daffney to win the WCW World Tag Team Championships.
DDP would complete his heel turn by going over Buff Bagwell and brutalizing the younger superstar throughout the match and after he pinned Bagwell until he was pulled off by a horde of referees and ring-side crewmen.
Terry Funk would defeat Kevin Nash despite attempted interference from the Harris Boys which was stopped by both the returning Ric Flair and an injured Sting (who had come back for one appearance before returning to his recuperation) while Kevin Nash was pinned in the middle of the ring, thus giving the nWo it’s long awaited death.
In the main event, Chris Benoit would battle Sid Vicious for an amazing twenty minutes of wrestling to ultimately win the championship that Bret Hart had denied him at Mayhem ’99, the WCW World Heavyweight Championship.
Following the PPV of Souled Out, World Championship Wrestling shut down all shows for a two-week period. The entire roster was given "vacation time", from which many would never be brought back. TNN and TNT instead aired best-of-WCW compilation shows on their slots on Monday, Thursday, Saturday and Sunday. Despite being edited together rather hastily, these shows proved quite popular and drew decent ratings. It also indicated what the fans truly wanted was a focus on the in-ring action and not the theatrics Russo promoted or the cronyism prevalent with Bischoff.
During the shutdown, the new streamlined management team began to the processing of building a new WCW, starting with tearing down much of the old. A large number of contracts terminated as part of the purchase process, leaving the new era WCW with a much smaller roster. Some of those who didn't come with the purchase were the biggest stars, as they were contracted directly to AOL-TW. Those stars under contract directly to AOL-TW could accept a buyout of their existing deal at a portion of its remaining value by either WCW or the WWF, or remain under contract and not working, perhaps hoping for a full-value buyout down the road. Sting, Flair and Goldberg chose to take the buyout from WCW, signing new WCW contracts. The new owner met with them each directly, and convinced them to buy into his new WCW vision. They were joined by the likes of DDP, Booker T, Scott Steiner, and Lex Luger as forming the new core of WCW major talents. Some of the biggest names, including Hulk Hogan, Curt Hennig, Sid Vicious, Jeff Jarrett, Kevin Nash, and Scott Hall, either chose to remain on the sideline and sit out their remaining contracts, or were not approached in the first place.
As World Championship Wrestling began looking outside for some new talent as well, rumors were constant of WCW stealing talent from the WWF. It seemed that nearly every day of the shutdown, some new rumor from someone with supposed inside knowledge would circulate across the internet wrestling community - usually about how some big WWF name was going to jump ship. The rumors turned out to be baseless, for the most part, with the exception of those that focused on ECW talents defecting. A few ECW wrestlers would later on accept contracts from World Championship Wrestling, rumored to have been let go by Paul Heyman in exchange for large cash infusions for his promotion.
But for the most part, WCW looked to the independent scene for new talent. Established talent tended to be expensive. Inexperienced workers with no name value could be signed for very small amounts. AJ Styles, Christopher Daniels, Nick Dinsmore and Sonny Siaki were such exciting young talents signed, while several others were signed and sent to the Power Plant to continue working on their skills.
An immense amount of uncertainty and confusion surrounded WCW during the purchase and shutdown period. Particular management elements – mostly Bischoff - had a history of "working the boys" in the past, so there was a large degree of suspicion inherent amongst the roster over what was happening, and a lot of it was directed at the new owner. Practically unknown in the wrestling world with little to no information on the man’s finances made public, some wrestlers thought it was just another worked shoot by Bischoff or Russo with AOL Time Warner executive support.
But it was fact that World Championship Wrestling had a new owner and that the many problems of the WCW being slowly ironed out. But the question is, how long can this new ownership keep the WCW going, with the WWF circling them like sharks in the water, the loss of several main event draws and wide-spread dissatisfaction in the locker room leftover from previous regimes?
I guess you’ll just have to keep reading to find out…
