Loss

TNA is eventually going to need a staff the size of WWE's corporate headquarters if they are to survive. WWE is a very lean company, and every person's job is crucial or they wouldn't have it. This is a great opportunity to learn from WCW's mistakes -- have a production TEAM instead of just Sahadi. Instead of having some guy who took a marketing class in high school, have a legitimate marketing department. It would also be a smart investment to pay stations to air a second show in syndication, just so they have even more exposure. Of course, this takes lots of time and lots of money.

TNA should hope Panda Energy never sells. They're the modern-day Ted Turner to wrestling.

Yes, and they brought in a hairstylist famous in style circles to do the cutting, unadvertised at that. No waste of money at all.

WCW was great for things like no DQ matches that ended in DQs. I miss the sheer ineptitude of it all.

Plus, Juvi travels with Bob Orton. That's the coolest news item we've heard all year out of WWE.

I'm sure it's some variation of a side slam.

No. That interview was after he left WCW. This was the interview that he did that got him in hot water with Turner management in the first place. It was a Torch Talk, and Mark Madden faxed some comments he made in the interview to Turner exec Hank Aaron, which caused a huge stir.

A few years ago, when Meltzer mentioned the names in the WON, Hogan was in the top ten.

Hogan is one of the top ten draws in the history of Japanese wrestling.

Like Meltzer said, who knew all this time that RAW was Vince McMahon's weekly therapy session?

Bad luck scenario after bad luck scenario is coming up. If Booker is going to be sidelined, that's unfortunate, especially since he's beaten Benoit so many times going out and the series may not be able to be completed after being hyped up so much. And how funny is it that Matt Hardy remains healthy and over and he's resented for it. I don't understand the thought process by putting Booker over Matt at this stage of the game, considering the future upside of both guys.

Daniels works all the time in ROH.

Kurt Angle Shawn Michaels AJ Styles Christopher Daniels Kenta Kobashi John Bradshaw Layfield Necro Butcher We've done some of these before, but I thought it would be fun to revisit them, and especially in the context of them all being the most debated wrestlers on the Internet these days.

Oh God. They went way too far with that angle. It should have ended in the ring. The parking lot did hurt things. The match was going to do amazing numbers regardless, but I think it would have been an even bigger success of a match had the angle ended in the ring.

Continuing with this, let's talk about 1996 WCW, at least from June-September, because in retrospect, it was pretty amazing in pretty much every aspect. Great American Bash -- One of WCW's two or three biggest angles in history occured, with Kevin Nash powerbombing Eric Bischoff off of the stage. Rey Misterio Jr debuts in a great match against Dean Malenko. Chris Benoit has a highly memorable brawl against Kevin Sullivan. The Horsemen are portrayed as strong heels and made a complete unit again, putting the Dungeon of Doom shit behind them, if only briefly. Steve McMichael is turned heel in what was a very gutsy booking risk that paid off. 06/10/96-07/01/96 Nitros -- Nash makes his very first appearance on Nitro after Scott Hall paves the way. Hall and Nash show up in the crowd and raise Hell with baseball bats and armed security surrounds the announce team as Kevin Nash screams "ATTICA! ATTICA!" while they're being arrested. The show expands to two hours and features some great wrestling from all the new fresh faces in the cruiserweight division. Bash at the Beach -- Hulk Hogan turns heel in what was the most shocking moment in wrestling up until that point. Hall and Nash are pushed as KILLERS, decimating Sting, Luger and Savage in a handicap match. Rey Misterio Jr and Psicosis tear the house down in the opener. Hogan gives the most memorable interview of his entire career. More great undercard matches. 07/08/96-08/05/96 Nitros -- Probably my favorite five consecutive episodes of any wrestling-related TV show ever, at least from a storyline point of view. 7/8 sees Misterio and Malenko have a match that tops their Bash match in June, culminating in Rey winning the title. Eddy Guerrero and Psicosis also have a good match. Sting and Arn Anderson have a pretty solid main event as well, with Hall and Nash again getting ejected from the arena for raising Hell at ringside. Sting gives a terrific interview with Savage at his side, as Luger still sells the injury from the Outsiders and is off the show. Hogan does not appear, further creating the anticipation for his initial appearance on Nitro in his new persona. 7/15 sees Luger return for a main event, but there's a problem -- he's the only top guy at the show that night, as everyone else is in Japan. The NWO take the opportunity to destroy him, and Hogan closes the show with another memorable interview, his first appearance after the formation of the NWO, who covered the WCW letters with their own earlier in the evening. 7/22 sees all the top guys return, only for Flair's allegiances to be questioned because he no-shows the main event he's scheduled to appear in. A limo appears at ringside before the main event and Arn looks in, shakes his head and continues going to the ring. We'd later find out it was the NWO in the limo, and Flair's whereabouts remain unknown. 7/29 sees the NWO make their first overly aggressive move, hospitalizing about a half-dozen guys backstage while the Horsemen, Sting, Luger and Savage are all in the ring having a match. Rey Misterio Jr gets thrown into the trailer backstage like a lawn dart in a very famous spot. Rey starts screaming in Spanish that he saw four guys. Flair and Sting, mortal enemies for 10 years, are forced to ride side-by-side in an ambulance while their friends Arn Anderson and Marcus Bagwell are rushed to the hospital. Woman is hysterical and Chris Benoit is nearly in tears seeing Arn Anderson in the shape he's in. Bobby Heenan takes a hike, citing his neck problems and fearing for his own safety. Randy Savage ends up jumping on top of the NWO limo, which takes off while he's hanging from the top of it and disappears out of sight. Best storyline TV show of all time, IMO. 8/5 sees the NWO send flowers stating "our condolences on the death of WCW". Flair beats the everloving shit out of Brutus Beefcake, stating that if Hogan is going to hospitalize his best friend, he's going to hospitalize Hogan's best friend. Steiners v Nastys headline and all the big stars in the company surround the ring and help the Steiners win, since the Nastys are longtime friends of Hogan. Hog Wild -- The unthinkable happens, as Hulk Hogan wins the WCW World title and spraypaints the letters N-W-O on the belt. Hall and Nash defeat Sting and Luger with an (accidental?) assist from WCW ref Nick Patrick. Benoit v Malenko and Rey v Ultimo steal the show on the undercard, even if the non-wrestling crowd doesn't take to an otherwise great wrestling match in Benoit v Malenko. Beefcake comes out as the fourth member while presenting a birthday cake to Hulk Hogan, only to get destroyed for his efforts. 08/12/96-09/09/96 -- These five shows were almost as good as the five between BATB and Road Wild. Lots of great undercard matches featuring all sorts of fresh faces such as Chris Jericho and Juventud Guerrera. 8/12 sees Hogan assist Flair in defeating Randy Savage, which raises even more questions about Flair's allegiances, which is erased a few days later when the NWO pummels Ric Flair at the live Clash of the Champions when he almost beats Hogan for the title. Nick Patrick makes yet another questionable call in the Sting/Luger v Hall/Nash main event, Hall and Nash's first televised match, a full TWO MONTHS after debuting, showing just how patient and slow-building this angle really was. 8/19 sees Flair, Sting, Luger and Arn all agreeing to put aside their differences and fight for survival, a huge deal considering how long they had hated each other. Arn does a great promo hyping War Games as something huge. 8/26 sees the NWO attack both the Horsemen and Sting and Luger, spraypainting NWO on all of them for the first time ever. Ted DiBiase appears in the crowd and holds up four fingers, promising next week there would be five members. No one knows if he's talking about the Horsemen or the NWO. 9/2 sees some incredible storytelling, with Sting and Luger getting distracted by what they think is a limo containing the entire NWO. Sting throws a brick through the window and they hi-jack a police car and chase them out of town. They never really left though, as they use the opportunity to attack the Horsemen and the Dungeon of Doom in a huge mess later that evening. Flair tries to fight back and they spraypaint his hair black. The Giant makes the save, supposedly, before chokeslamming his fellow WCW guys and joining the NWO himself. The ring is pelted with trash. Savage comes out of nowhere and tries to kill them all with chairs, but gets attacked again as Hogan spraypaints a yellow streak down his back and they take turns doing their finishers on him multiple times. 9/9 sees the greatest swerve of all, with "Sting" turning on Lex Luger and joining the NWO outside in a dark, rainy parking lot. The show immediately becomes somber and Flair and Arn do some outstanding mic work. Luger disappears in shock. Fall Brawl -- It's revealed that Sting never actually turned, but it was an NWO impostor pretending to be Sting. However, Sting was shocked that his best friend and home company would believe he would turn on them and disappears into the rafters for months, slowly going into a dark metamorphosis and changing into a totally different Sting. He speaks with his back to the camera the following night on Nitro and declares himself a free agent. He leaves the ring after evening the odds, and the NWO destroys Flair, Luger and Arn. Benoit/Jericho, Chavo/DDP, Rey/Calo and Konnan/Juvi all impress on the undercard. Sean Waltman debuts the following night on Nitro, joining the NWO and naming himself Syxx. The Horsemen beat the shit out of Luger for submitting the night before at War Games and no one comes to his rescue. This makes me sad now, because wrestling may never be this good again.

Two immediately spring to mind: WCW Fall Brawl '96 -- The NWO win War Games and then proceed to beat up WCW guys for approximately 15-20 minutes, with Savage taking about 8 or 9 chokeslams from The Giant. WCW Monday Nitro 02/15/99 -- The NWO, donning ski masks, attack Ric Flair in a field in an excruciating skit that's among the worst angles ever.

Reading The Death of WCW over Christmas break has been an eye-opening experience. While it's true that most of what is covered here isn't new, this is the first time anyone has really recapped the history of the promotion in one format with added thought and analysis. Dave Meltzer's quote in the foreword may be what stuck with me most. He said that there have been far more cases since 2001 of companies attempting to repeat WCW's failures than there have been of companies attempting to repeat WCW's successes. The NWO, quite frankly, is probably the greatest and most successful storyline in the history of American wrestling. Most will say Austin/McMahon or Austin/Rock, and both have probably drawn more money, but the road to the WWF's big boom was paved by WCW making wrestling cool again with the NWO. It's sad that because wrestling is constantly based on looking to the next show and hoping for it to be a success instead of looking at the last show and seeing what worked and what didn't, promoters are so prone to repeatedly make the same mistakes. WCW's downfall was caused by pushing talent that was over at one time but incredibly stale eventually for far too long a period of time, not properly blowing off angles, going against the wishes of the fans, putting less care into the pay-per-view lineups resulting in bad show after bad show, burying their top stars in markets where they remain strong because certain people in management have it out for them, making huge continuity errors in storylines, trying to repeat the same ideas over and over to less effect, promising to deliver certain things to their audience and coming up short, advertising matches that end up not happening, focusing too much on ratings and too little on house show attendance and PPV buys, letting top stars work schedules where they rarely - if ever - appear on house shows, cutting the legs off of midcarders who start to stand out, raising prices for remaining fans during a business downswing, running angles with bad timing in bad taste and sacrificing the credibility of their lead announcers on a regular basis. You tell me ... am I talking about the dying days of WCW? Or am I talking about the past few years of WWE?

This day also had Starrcade '88 for the NWA, one of my all-time favorite shows, top to bottom. Fantastics v Doc & Sullivan, Windham v Bigelow, Midnights v Midnights, Sting & Dusty v Road Warriors, Steiner v Rotunda and Flair v Luger were all at worst fun and at best great.

Absolutely agree. No one else was as close to being as popular. Hogan was a huge international draw before he even entered the company, so you can't really argue that it was the WWF push that made him so over either.

Fine, let's put the discussion back on Mid South. I do think Missy Hyatt is the best blonde spoiled bitch character ever, with only Sunny/Tammy coming close. I'll just leave it at that. Mid South was really smart about how they used valets. One thing I read recently that wowed me because it's true and I never thought about it was the metatextual race-related nature of the Dick Slater/Butch Reed feud in 1986.

I lay the blame for that on WWE. The problem with the Rumble is that the WM title shot stipulation makes it incredibly obvious who's taking the whole thing. If they did away with that, it would have much more suspense, even if the same guys were put over in the end.

I think Stephanie's at that stage now, yes, but it is true that for whatever reason, the McMahons are all major ratings draws, and Stephanie was a successful TV character at one time.

Luger/Windham v Arn/Tully should get more love. It tends to get it a lot from people who have seen it, but it often surprises me how few people have seen it. GH, I know you've seen lots of Flair against Nikita/Luger/Sting/Dusty matches. Watching this match live was great, and watching it now, I still do like some aspects of it, but there have been so many Flair matches exactly like this that it does sort of lose its charm, no doubt.