World Wrestling Network

[J.J.]

Anybody that's familar with anything Paul Heyman has done over the years or Jim Crockett, Jr. after he sold Mid-Atlantic Wrestling to Ted Turner may remember the short lived World Wrestling Network. It was supposed to be Jim Crockett's attempt at running a promotion again and an attempt at rebuilding the NWA brand.

Paul Heyman had recently before that been fired by WCW and these chain of events with WWN was before he took on duties in ECW. Heyman was doing the booking and while at the time he was a consultant for ECW. Tod Gordon, Heyman and Crockett collaborated with the use of talent. WWN relied on borrowed talent from ECW, guys let go by WWE and WCW to round out their roster.

Production wise, WWN was ahead of it's time as it had an innovative plan of recording in HD and broadcasting over the Internet. Which was quite ahead of it's time considering we're talking 1993. Mind you I don't think HD broadcast became available until the latter part of the 90s.

WWN held it's first show in Texas amongst 2,000+ faithful. Not huge, not bad but moderately well for a promotion just starting out. Positive signs. The next show was in the old Hammerstein Ballroom in New York half a year later . It turned out to be less favorable unfortunately. This also proved to be the last recorded show of this magnitude.

Paul Heyman and Crockett were not on the same page. Crockett was old school and Heyman wanted to be more with the times with his booking and storylines. So Heyman depatured and he went on to ECW and helped lead them away from the NWA. Eddie Gilbert left ECW and came to WWN in the booking role that was previously held by Heyman. This led to maybe a couple smaller shows in the Texas area that were not recorded.

NWA had a fear that with WWN being their flagship territory that Crockett would make the NWA champ exclusive to their promotion like he did with MACW, which created issues. Ultimately ECW infamously screwed over the NWA when they announced their departure from the NWA by throwing the NWA world heavyweight title down.

WWN was no more. Eddie Gilbert later passed away, Heyman found success with ECW until the turn of the century and Jim Crockett permenantely got out of the wrestling business altogether. Do you all think WWN stood a chance?

 

[Mustang Sally]

It seems the black marble in what you're describing is Paul Heyman. In every promotion with which he's associated, doesn't it seem the other people at the top can't work with him.....yet the company can't work without him?

He apparently wants to have total control over whatever section of operations he's running, yet always butts horns with other people in authority who aren't secure enough....smart enough....or maybe dumb enough.....to let him have his way. As a result, there's internal strife from the moment they start out, and Paul is eventually dismissed, as he was with WCW and this WWN you're writing about.

In ECW, he had the total control he always wanted.....and that organization didn't make it.

If he's going to work for someone else, it seems the only way to do it is the way Vince McMahon and his daughter and son-in-law have handled it; lay down the law at the outset of his employment......tell him what he can (and can't) do, and keep tight control of him. They've done that with the Brock Lesnar phase of his career, and it seems to be working.

Years earlier, when he was given some control in WWE, Paul and Stephanie clashed constantly and his public denigration of her led to his dismissal once again. It's the same old story.

So, that was the deal with WWN, I would think. Heyman's booking practices were modern and effective, and if he could have meshed with the owners, it might have worked.

Since he couldn't, it didn't.

 

[Jack-Hammer]

Eh, there are so many "what ifs" to consider that it's difficult to say but I'm leaning more towards no as Heyman and Crockett were of two completely different mind sets. Crockett himself was probably too old school to be effective and Heyman just wasn't a cohesive businessman.

As far as Heyman goes, I'm a fan of the guy, I like him on the mic and he did have some quite unique concepts in ECW. However, I've never really seen him as this untouchable genius that some say that he is and whenever something has gotten screwed up, hardcore Heyman marks often do their best to lay the lame on someone else; you know, kind of like the way Vince tries to assign blame to everyone with the exception of himself.

Heyman demands a level of control, complete control for that matter, over whatever area he's involved in and it's simply not a realistic way to do things. Several years ago when there was talk of Dixie Carter and Paul Heyman talking about Heyman coming in as head of creative, the demands that Heyman allegedly wanted were so outrageously unrealistic that I couldn't help but wonder if he'd made such demands because he wasn't really too interested. He wanted millions of dollars in payment and complete creative control, among other things, and nobody's gonna give him that because Heyman had complete control in ECW and it went tits up. Heyman has a creative mind or, rather, he had a creative mind that MIGHT not work in today's more PC society and he made ECW successful in a limited sense; it was completely different from WWF and WCW at the time, but Heyman had no idea how to really run it as a business or how to make it grow.

 

[Logisticalbooker86]

If If's and but's were cakes and nuts, what a Merry Christmas I would've had.

Ever notice how every failed promotion ever would've been a gigantic success if X, Y and Z had occurred? Also, not to bash the OP, but am I really suppose to believe that a dying wrestling brand was working to broadcast in HD in 1993, ten years before High Definition became well known in America? Yeah, not buying it. Broadcasting over the internet wasn't feasible in 1993. The internet was at least a decade away from becoming a common household appliance, and 56K modems were barely a thing. That's not even possible.

There's a reason why the NWA has not existed in major markets in 25 years, and it goes much further than Jim Crockett and Paul Heyman.

For the record, I love the south. I live in the bible belt part of the country but the NWA brand as a whole never had the mass appeal to go national.

 

[GhettoV1]

IMO the NWA is limited to south of the Washington DC area and beyond up the northeast it is a minor league compared to WWE.

 

[J.J.]

For the record, I love the south. I live in the bible belt part of the country but the NWA brand as a whole never had the mass appeal to go national.

You mean no territory other than WWE and Mid-Atlantic Wrestling had the appeal to go national. NWA is/was the governing body of the territories. Although they had their own brand of championship belts that were defended throughout the territories.

The NWA brand was known all over. There were territories all over the U.S. and there was territories in Japan, Canada and Mexico. The territories covered more smaller cities and towns which WWE doesn't really do today. I saw Ric Flair compete in a High School gym in 1983 for my first time. WWE's NWA withdrawl, rise and absorbing territories and rise in cable television led to killing the territories.

NWA was trying to get back on it's feet with NWA and since Crockett was a former NWA President and controlled the more popular territory there was hope that WWN would be the flagship promotion that would lead them back. With shows in the Texas and NY area I have no idea which region he was covering. He was from Charlotte originally but no shows were in Charlotte.

I personally thought the timing was right but I felt even had Crockett and Heyman meshed I didn't see this lasting too much longer than it originally did. The biggest mistake he made was starting in Texas and going to NY. He didn't offer a show in the area that was familar with his name and was making one of the critical mistakes he made while running JCP. Crockett was never a brilliant Wrestling mind and just had good people around him that knew the business; George Scott, Ole Anderson and Dusty Rhodes during different times when he operated MACW. This whole HD broadcasting didn't work well for TNA when they tried it a decade later.

 

[tvcolosi]

Heyman, pre-ECW with all those angles he had not used yet and Jimmy Crockett money... I think it had a shot but it would have meant no ECW as we know it..

Side note.. They held at least 2 nights of TV tapings for a pilot (ala Smokey Mountain and Global Force)..

Has anyone ever seen the footage? I'd love to get a glimpse of that could have been.

 

[J.J.]

Has anyone ever seen the footage? I'd love to get a glimpse of that could have been.

Good luck if you do find it. If there's any video footage it is extremely rare. But I wonder what what the show was too like.

 

[rmp0012002]

Heyman was the WWN booker but I think he was just making connections and really had no intention of doing anything under the NWA banner. Crockett was a NWA guy through and through and Paul used Crockett to help get the NWA tournament at ECW and then dumped on the NWA. This was also the time period where Heyman was working to get the ECW job away from Gilbert, which he did.

 

[THTRobtaylor]

Heyman gets a bad rep and sometimes quite justified... he pretty much fucked over Dennis Corraluzo (NOT Crockett) when Shane threw the NWA belt down and Tod Gordon eventually went the same way. In many ways the ends justified the means, but if you're on the receiving end of a Heyman Hustle, you're not likely to see it that way.

His relationship with Vince is murkier in someways, Vince saw someone who could think outside of his own channels and was happy to support him to a point. He could see the potential in backing ECW and Heyman so he did and it worked to an extent. But he wouldn't 100% trust him and that therein is Heyman's biggest issue in the business...

Today, he may be different but around the time of ECW going under he was not known as the best businessman. People went unpaid and to someone like Vince, that would be abhorrent, especially where talent are concerned. You may not pay them what they are truly worth, but you pay them. Vince Sr. was the best "payer" of the territories and would never allow any delay in payments... so Vince would frown on someone who cut corners or played games with the comapny money.

With WWN, there were always going to be issues around Heyman's past with the NWA and how ECW ended. Jim Crockett would have had issues with the Shane incident and he himself had some bad rep from the latter days of the NWA pre-buyout by Turner. Ted got the company for a song in reality, cos Jim had already blown it.

Heyman is known as an innovative mind, who can motivate talent to run through walls and engage with fans unlike many others. But he isn't the guy you give the checkbook and keys to. Today he runs his own ventures and works to his strengths with talent. There are other guys Vince can call if he wants his company running. Shane O Mac was just as innovative as Heyman and pretty much authored how WWE does business today when he took over the website and set up Byte This...No one was using the web until WWE did and those concepts didn;t come from ECW or Heyman or TNA but a McMahon.

WWN needed a 3rd guy to be the "safe pair of hands", Jeff Jarrett was already on the way with TNA, but even he didn't have the rep then... it needed someone who was a good money man who could run a company... Cornette would never have worked with Heyman and Criockett long term, and he was already running some developmental for Vince... but he had a pretty good business record all told... so did Jerry Lawler... it needed someone like that to work with Heyman and Crockett to really make it work.

 

[justtxyank]

I'm not sure you know what WWN was THT.

WWN was Crockett's comeback attempt in the mid 90s. Shane McMahon had not innovated anything at that point, there was no TNA, ECW hadn't ended, etc.

Anyway, I don't buy the "broadcasting over the internet story." I think that is something that was made up on the internet and pasted into online articles and is now accepted as fact.

I've had conversations with people who were involved in it back then (online) and none of them have ever said anything like that. In fact, they've said there were TV deals sorted out and there were even some good opportunities to get on some good channels that Crockett just didn't follow through on.

The story I've heard is that Crockett essentially started this up and half assed it thinking his name and the NWA name combined would just make it work. It didn't and he just disappeared from it still owing people money.

Anyway, no, it never could have worked. Crockett wasn't a good wrestling promoter by himself and the territory days of bringing in random old school guys to wrestle random matches against each other in random towns was dead. TV changed everything.

 

[J.J.]

Broadcasting over the Internet was the long term goal. The first show was a television taping at the Manhattan Center. The idea they had was for it to be filmed on High Definition Television and to have major syndication behind it.

 

[justtxyank]

Broadcasting over the Internet was the long term goal. The first show was a television taping at the Manhattan Center. The idea they had was for it to be filmed on High Definition Television and to have major syndication behind it.

Like I said, I don't believe this.

Nothing in any of the interviews or articles from the time mention broadcasting over the internet. It would have been totally useless.

Heyman's own interviews at the time said he envisioned the tv show that was to be broadcast in Philly as an infomercial for the company, designed to get people to come to the arena shows live.

The HD stuff is misleading as well. They intended to sell broadcast rights overseas where HD was accepted because one of their partners had HD cameras, but it would not have been seen in the United States.


People are also mistaken when they say that Heyman just used this gig to help ECW or some version of that. He actually left ECW in early 1994 for a brief second because Gordon was done with the WWN relationship. Heyman picked WWN and then after a hiccup decided that the future wasn't solid and went back to ECW.

The original goal of Heyman was actually to use ECW to test some stuff he wanted to do as part of the WWN. He had visions of lasers and smoke and entrance videos and all this stuff that weren't common yet that would look good as part of his WWN "infomercial" type program. He referred to WWN as being an "MTV wrestling" program. He just lost faith quickly with Jim Crockett (as he should have) and went back to ECW.