You know what killed WCW? Three words. Hot. Shot. Booking.

[It's...Baylariat!]

I've said this in a few of my posts now, but I've been reading a lot of JJ Dillon's book. He goes into great detail about the work and jobs he had in the old NWA, WWF, and WCW. What was intriguing to me is me and him had the same reasoning as to why WCW actually failed as a wrestling promotion.

Now, lets forget about the money issues. We know that the WCW brass couldn't manage money to save their lives. But the main issue with the core product is that the people in charge of WCW, Turner/Time Warner, believed in TV being the high priority. Basically saying that if we win the ratings, then it's fine. The PPV's didn't mean piss to them for the most part. To me, this seems to be a huge factor as to why the WCW failed. JJ Dillon also coined a phrase that I'm going to study more. "Hot Shot Booking." The term means putting shows that should be on PPV or in the older days, the major venues, and instead... putting them on Free TV or at smaller venues. A great example that JJ illustrated was putting Hulk Hogan against Bret Hart on NITRO, with very little build towards it.

How can you NOT build a 6 month story around two of the more influential wrestlers in the past 20 years? Easy. It's called being TV oriented. Time Warner wanted good ratings. Not PPV buys. And we all know revenue from PPV's make TONS more money than TV shares do. But in the end, the WCW's gone, and Vince's strategy of building toward PPV's worked out and ended up beating Nitro in the ratings.

So... what do you think of this, "Hot Shot Booking." idea that the WCW had? Do you agree this was a huge part of the downfall of WCW?

 

[klunderbunker]

While I'd say there were other issues that affected it more, I'd think at the same time that this is certainly one of the major things as well. There's a better example of this though: Goldberg vs. Hogan. They literally set this up on Thunder 4 days before the match. (I'll ignore the stupidity of them saying that that match sold out the Georgia Dome in four days, implying that no one had bought a ticket before that announcement and that no one wanted to see WCW other than before they gave away a Starrcade main event for free). Another example: Halloween Havoc 1999. Hogan lays down (again) and Sting beats him in a screwjob, then gets destroyed by Goldberg in 3 minutes to end the show with a non title win over the world champion in what was easily the Starrcade main event.

It was a major factor as no one was paying to see these matches and yet WCW kept pumping them out. As I've said before: what's better than the fans seeing a huge match? The fans paying to see a huge match.

 

[Kenny Powers]

I think so, you made some great points. Remember WCW giving away possibly the biggest match ever on free TV with Goldberg facing Hulk Hogan for the strap at a sold out Georgia Dome? They won the ratings that night, but that was the last time they ever would.

I think giving away the spoilers every night was another reason that killed WCW. People tuned off Nitro to see Foley win the championship. The difference between Foley winning and Goldberg winning is that there was no strong feud brewing between Foley and Triple H. I don't think at the time people would of paid to see Foley wrestle for the belt. People would of paid big money to see Hogan and the undefeated rising star Bill Goldberg.

I also think their problem was pissing their money away to all these celebrities like Jay Leno and Dennis Rodman. Not to mention Carl Malone too. They got some publicity, but spent way too much money for something that didn't generate that much buzz anyway. Also, they had to match what ever the celebrities got paid to Hogan, Hall, and Nash.

I just don't understand how WCW could debut Bret Hart as a special guest referee to an idiotic match at a PPV, and give away Hogan vs. Bret on free TV with no build whatsoever.

 

[SinCityBlitz]

What killed WCW was when Ted Turner merged with AOL/Time Warner. It didn't matter how good WCW did because it was doomed the moment that merger took place.

No matter how good the ratings were eventually they would have dropped and WCW would have been killed anyway. You can't keep pulling 7/8's because wrestling peeked and would have dipped. The higher ups at AOL/TW thought that wrestling fans were stupid to put it mildly.

If the merger doesn't happen WCW is still around today. Turner would have supported it to his death. Bad booking and all.

If we are talking product alone I would say Bischoff's infatuation with Vince is what did the most damage. It got so bad that this weeks ratings became more important over the future. He wanted Vince so bad that he screwed his own company long term for weekly success.

 

[marklouis]

Well, I was in the Georgia Dome for the Hogan/Goldberg match. While I agree that for financial purposes the match should have been on a PPV, I'm glad it was on a Nitro, because I was able to attend. It was one of the most electric events I've ever been to, in any sport or entertainment field. Yeah, it's selfish reasoning, but I can't help it.

Funny enough, the Nitro during which they gave away the Foley title win also took place in Atlanta, and I was in the building for that event as well! I don't know about it until a week later, when a friend told me what had been said. Back then I went to every Nitro in Atlanta. WWE never came here.

I think the biggest problem for WCW was just booking in general. They screwed up the NWO-it should've been kept as only ex WWE guys, but they seemed to add half the roster. Then you had some of the infamous title reigns, too many celebrities in matches, etc. It was just a poorly managed company near the end. WCW should still be going today, but they just threw it away.

 

[Bowzer]

I don't think "Hot Shot Booking" killed WCW. It certainly didn't help it any, but there were so many things going wrong down there it's impossible to pin it on only one thing.

I think that every so often, you do have to have a PPV quality match on free tv. It keeps people interested. Think back. WAAAAAAY back. To the time of Superstars, Challenge, Prime Time Wrestling. 90% of the matches on tv then were a superstar and a no-name jobber. "Hey look. It's some guy with no entrance music who's already in the ring with the ref going against Jake the Snake. Hmmmm I wonder who's going to win?" But every so often along would come a "free PPV". Saturday Nights Main Event. Or in the WCW world, Clash of the Champions. Where superstars actually wrestled other superstars. Where Hogan actually wrestled. Where titles actually changed hands. Nowadays, SNME is just another episode of RAW, usually worse. Because with 13 PPV's a year, McMahon can't afford to waste any ideas on a "free PPV". But think of the ratings he might get if Cena were to wrestle the Undertaker for the title on SNME after a 2 or 3 month build up. Or if HHH and Shawn finally wrestle each other on SNME after months of tension tears DX apart.

Part of the problem is that there aren't that many opportunities for big marque matches like Hogan/Bret or Hogan/Goldberg anymore. Those were big matches because they were firsts. Mark my words. In how many matches that will occour in 2 months time at Wrestlemania will it be the first time those 2 wrestlers ever wrestled each other, be it singles or some tag match that main events RAW or Smackdown leading up to WM. The answer is 1. McMahon/Hart (if that match even happens) I guarantee that if the rumors are true and HHH goes against Sheamus, they will wrestle each other in a tag match before WM. Same goes for the rumored Orton/DiBiase match. Even Edge and Jericho have been in the ring against each other before in various tag or Elimination Chamber matches.

I don't think "hot shot booking" every week is a good thing. It was a definite part of the fall of WCW. But every now and then, it would be, as Mr. McMahon likes to say, "good for business".

 

[themegapowers]

I believe that Hot Shot Booking was one of reasons behind WCW's downfall, however I do have to agree with Kenny Powers, the celebrities were another, mainly putting the WCW title on David Arqutte.

This has to be single handedly the worst booking decision of all time IMO, how you can justify putting your World Heavyweight Title on a celebrity is beyond belief.

The other main two factors include the huge amounts top WCW stars were being paid and the management of the company.

 

[Dagger Dias]

The booking is definitely a part of what killed WCW. They gave away too many matches for free that could have made them so much money if they had been on PPV. Then you have disasters such as Nash ending Goldberg's streak, The Fingerpoke of Doom, or Arquette and Russo as World Champion.... No matter how much you laugh about it, many fans are still angry on the inside about things like that. It often makes me wonder how long WCW could have stuck around if they had just let Bischoff buy it, they discuss this in the DVD's and I think that it could have lasted for a bit longer. I guess we'll never know. There was just too much wrong to be able to save it though, and I agree with Lariat that the booking was a big part of what killed WCW because at some points the booking was absolutely terrible!

 

[ncwriter2908]

Alot of things help killed WCW it just wasnt one thing. Just like ECW wasnt killed by one thing. WcW didnt do a good job of pushing there younger stars. They had Eddie,Beniot,and Y2J all who became world champions in WWE. The NWO split was another thing with the wolfpac and nwo 2000. It was all to much, They could have killed the NWO and not split it up into different factions. AOL merger was terrible. Also they when WWE came on strong with the Austin/McMahon fued and then Bishoff tried to be a little to much like WWE. I guess that was Russo's fault too. It was WCW and it didnt work.

 

[The Incredible Mr. C]

I agree with many others that there were many more issues that killed WCW, but I do think a good part of it had to do with the hot shot booking that became so prevalent, especially in the days when Raw began making a run at Nitro in the ratings after being down for eighty something weeks.

Perhaps one of the best storylines, and definitely THE best executed, in the rise of WCW, was the Hogan-Sting feud. They actually held Sting out of the ring for nearly a full year, with him hanging around in the rafters and taking the old question, "Will he or won't he?" to the next level. If Eric Bischoff and company had shown the same patience with other storylines, especially Hogan-Goldberg, enough money MIGHT have been made to keep them afloat until another big idea came along.

Now, back to the hot shot booking, I think it all goes back to what the focus was for Bischoff. He was always consumed with beating WWE in the ratings. His focus was not on making money (it wasn't his), building new stars (probably learned to lean on the old guard from Verne Gagne), or preparing the business for the future. His sole purpose became to beat Vince McMahon and WWE in the ratings. The only way he could do that, as Vince was beginning to showcase fresh stars like the Rock, Mick Foley, and Steve Austin, was to throw things together, often as the event was happening. Many of us have heard in interviews about the fact that no one seemed to know what was going to happen on Nitro until it actually happened. This caused matches that could have been well promoted and sold on PPV to be given away at the expense of making any real money off of them.

Again, I want to reiterate that this was definitely not the only problem in WCW leading to its death (too many world orders, celebs, performers with too much power backstage, ONE legit new star in 5 years), but was a major issue in controlling revenue streams. Revenue which could have made even AOL/Time Warner think twice about killing off a money maker, no matter how "low brow" they found it to be.

 

[LascoX]

Though I think Hot Shot Booking was certainly a contributing factor to the problem the biggest factor can be summed up with one word "EGOS". I think the egos of Hogan , Nash and Russo drove that company into the ground in the final days. The finger point of doom when Hogan layed down at Starcade to get his full paycheck really pissed me off. I didn't pay the price of a ppv to watch Hogan pout and not turn in a good performance just becuse he didnt like the scheduled finish. Nash had a reputation of keeping the younger up and comers down to hold his top spot and Russo did stupid stuff like wearing the belt himself and letting Arquette wear it. I think Hogans ego also kept him and Hart from having a good run together. That match up could have been an epic rivalry but I really think Hogan's ego wouldn't allow him to let Hart go over on him as would be nessasary for it to work. There was obviously a lot of factors at work, but I think egos is what hurt it the most.

 

[miroa12004]

The finger point of doom when Hogan layed down at Starcade to get his full paycheck really pissed me off. I didn't pay the price of a ppv to watch Hogan pout and not turn in a good performance just becuse he didnt like the scheduled finish.

I think you are a little bit confused here, the Fingerpoke of doom was on free tv on Nitro when on the same episode they announced Foley's title win, as RAW was pre taped, Hogan actually layed down twice, first at Havoc '99, when he layed to Sting in a worked shoot that was obvious to everyone, second in the now infamous Bash in the Beach '00, which I think you were referring to, and to this day it is unknown yet whether this thing was a complete shoot or a worked shoot turned to a shoot.

Back on topic, I think you can't say that there was one thing that killed WCW, from guarnteed contracts where Egos collided, to booking that made no sense whatsoever, to Bischoff's obsession with beating WWF in the ratings that he gave away PPV caliber matches on free TV, making the company lose too much money that would've been generated from PPV revenue, to Russo coming, to disorganization as evident in Nitro being booked while the show was still going, to trying to get celeberties for some publicity stunts and failing most of the time while paying them huge cheques and putting them in mainevent storylines when your talent aren't getting any TV time, to failing to creat any legit stars aside from Goldberg in a time interval of 5 years, but I can say that the AOL/Time Warner merger is what really put the plug on the trigger and killed the show, WCW might have been doing poorly it might have come back even if it took them 10 freaking years to do so but once the merger, you'd bet that they won't keep a company that is losing money on their agenda anymore and it happened.

 

[Tastycles]

I often think that people point the finger at AOL Time Warner without really knowing why that merger killed WCW. The reason it was a problem is because you had the same company owning the wrestling product and the channel it was on. When Ted Turner was in charge, that was fine because he understood thenuances of wrestling, when it was a faceless corporate board, that's a big problem.

The television ratings WCW was then focussed on getting was providing the parent company with advertising revenue, so they probably weren't losing out too much, especially when Nitro went to three hours. The problem then of course was the PPV buyrates went down the toilet, and so it looked like WCW wasn't making any money - the balance sheet would see the money coming in from TNT. So while WCW could have been a profitable enterprise, it ceased to be one, for no other reason than this hot shot booking. Blame Russo and Bischoff if you want, but they were being asked to give WCW as many TV fairweather fans as possible, which is why shit like Arquette and Master P happened.

 

[Mustang Sally]

If we are talking product alone I would say Bischoff's infatuation with Vince is what did the most damage. It got so bad that this weeks ratings became more important over the future. He wanted Vince so bad that he screwed his own company long term for weekly success.

I agree with this....and when you combine it with the good points made above, it seems laughable that many people look at Eric Bischoff as the savior of TNA. His goal was to knock WWE out of business.....and he spent so much more money than the company was taking in that the Wall St. Journal (of all sources) said that the WCW division of Time-Warner was losing over $60 million dollars a year.

The money Bischoff spent was atrocious: Going live every week on their Monday flagship program cost so much money, it was obscene. Why did they do it? Because WWE was taped, that's why. Then, when WWE expanded RAW to two hours in response to WCW's two-hour show...... WCW went to three hours, for crying out loud.

Then, there is the money they spent hiring away WWE's top talent. I would give a lot to know what some of those guys were earning. And with the "personal services" contracts that many of them seemed to have, they didn't even have to perform in a wrestling ring to get paid. Ask Kevin Nash.

Of course, if they had succeeded in driving WWE out of business, I wonder what would have happened then. My guess is they thought that all the fans who had followed WWE would come to them. But, even if they did, would it have been enough to overcome those outrageous losses being suffered by the company?

We'll never know, but if Business Marketing classes in college want to display a model on how not to run a modern business, they can hold up WCW as a prime example.

 

[SHAYAN_CENA_Y2J]

I think they also had a problem with their young talents.Can you name any young talent who had been built by WCW?

I was watching WW3 which i don't remember the year but I easily saw some people like Mysterio , Jericho , Eddie and Benoit who all became main-eventers in WWF/E. I really don't think they would become what became at WWF/E.

They also were too obsessed with competing with Vince.

 

[Via Armbar]

Everyone knows that it was a puzzle of things that put WCW out of business. Bad booking, bad management, the merger and etcetera. I definatly agree thought hat this ''hot shot booking'' as it's called is definatly one of the bigger nails in the coffin for WCW.

Eric's obsession with beating Vince took over and the most important thing that given week was the ratings for Nitro. It was instant gratification. Nothing else mattered to them, they had more people watching on monday night, the same night their biggest competition aired their program.

The television ratings WCW was then focussed on getting was providing the parent company with advertising revenue, so they probably weren't losing out too much, especially when Nitro went to three hours. The problem then of course was the PPV buyrates went down the toilet, and so it looked like WCW wasn't making any money - the balance sheet would see the money coming in from TNT. So while WCW could have been a profitable enterprise, it ceased to be one, for no other reason than this hot shot booking. Blame Russo and Bischoff if you want, but they were being asked to give WCW as many TV fairweather fans as possible, which is why shit like Arquette and Master P happened.

This sums it up really well. With all of the advertising that went into a three hour program, the majority of revenue was coming from the show on TNT. All the celebrities and hokey appearances and gimmicks they provided show
pretty blatantly what their man focus was and that as long as they can provide a show next monday that the fans want to see it would continue that way. When you have the company owned by the same entity that owns the chanel its aired on, your at a disadvantage.

Vince realised the power of pay per view many years ago. So yeah, ''hot shot booking'' was surely one of the biggest problems within WCW. It was a huge step in the wrong direction and once the merger was in place it was too late.

 

[ashe draven]

Hot Shot Booking? Yeah that was 1 of of many factors that sent WCW spiraling into the Abyss. Another was granting wrestlers obscene contracts w/ creative control. This guy could change this, this guy could change that. Thats a cocktail for a clusterf**k waiting to happen. To boot they never built up & pushed anyone but Goldberg till it was too late (Benoit). The merger was the nail in the coffin. With WCW failing fast at that point the writing was on the wall that a company board w/ no experience overseeing such a product wasn't gonna allow it to run its course & die.

 

[Agent_of_Anarchy]

Hot shot booking? Finger Poke of Doom? Arquette as Champ? Russo? I got three letters that killed WCW.........W W F ! ! !

Everyone seems to get so caught up trying to point to finger of blame on one or many problems within WCW, but fail to mention just how hot WWF was at that time. Steve Austin had taken the world by storm. Goldberg was huge aswell, but he was no where near as compelling week to week as Stone Cold rebelling against the big boss Vince. Combine that with Rocky, Foley, Taker, Kane, Hunter, Shane, Edge & Christian, The Hardy Boyz, The Dudley Boyz, 24/7 Hardcore title and Sable. On paper WCW had the better roster, but in reality WWF was far superior. None on the WCW roster, not Eddy or Benoit or Jericho or Mysterio, could have made it in WCW even if given the chance. It was the best of the WWF that made all of those guys what they are today.

Had WWF never managed to tap into the raw talent of guys like Austin or The Rock than we would all still be watching WCW, reguardless of which shitty b-grade hollywood actor has the title or what finger was used to defeat an opponent.















Or maybe it was Russo that really killed WCW afterall....

 

[dettigers10]

I do agree to an extent on just about all of the reasons but like it has been said before the company ultimately folded because of the aol/time warner merge bad booking didnt help and other stupid decision such as an nwo overkill to be honest the nwo should have been disbanded after starrcade 97 or in a wargames type of match but it really would have been irrelevant because I think without the merge the company would still be around today.

 

[SpecialReferee]

Eric Bischoff was obsessed with winning ratings he hot shot alot of stuff. Russo is guilty of the same thing, because WCW was way to far behind by the time he got there.

Hot shot booking, wrestlers control of their characters, and the time warner/AOL merger is what killed WCW. The booking didn't help but at the end of the day, the merger killed the company. Turner loved WCW and would've kept it going for a long time, by the time 2000 they were bleeding money in the WCW division.

Once Turner lost control of his own company, WCW was doomed. However, again, their were several things that didn't help them in terms of booking and contracts.