Smack2k Posted September 1, 2012 Report Share Posted September 1, 2012 Couple Questions I had been wondering about: 1. What was the original ending of Sin 2001 if Sid doesnt get hurt? Do they all turn on Sid and help Steiner, creating the Magnificent 7 at that show? That would make sense due to what happens the next night, but I was curious if anyone knew for sure.. 2. What was Eric Bischoff's plan if he had bought WCW in March? Was he gonna bring back Nash / Sting / Booker (he was back) / DDP / Goldberg / ?? to take on the Magnificent 7? If done right with good writers and a fresh take on it, could have worked..just curious of the original plan! 3. Was there a plan with the names of the PPV's in 2001 to lead to something? Sin / Revenge / Greed already happened...always wondered where they were going.. They looked to have MAYBE stopped all the crap that had been piling up with bad writing as 2001 began as more matches had less run-ins and the such... 2000 - 2001 WCW is a guilty pleasure of mine... Thanks guys! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ricky Jackson Posted September 1, 2012 Report Share Posted September 1, 2012 I think the plan by Bischoff was to shut everything down and start over with this planned show: I think the plan was to use RVD as the new top star. Not sure what the role of the other guys was going to be. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ricky Jackson Posted September 1, 2012 Report Share Posted September 1, 2012 double post Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ricky Jackson Posted September 1, 2012 Report Share Posted September 1, 2012 triple post. sorry. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cox Posted September 1, 2012 Report Share Posted September 1, 2012 I think Meltzer had said in various Observers around that period was that Bischoff planned to bring back all the stars that he had taken off TV around the same time, and bring in RVD, Steve Corino, and Joey Styles from ECW, and give a big push to Jason Jett/EZ Money. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Johnny Guitar Posted September 1, 2012 Report Share Posted September 1, 2012 Along with what Cox said. They were also planning to build to Steiner/Goldberg at Starrcade 2001. Sean O' Haire was also in line for a big push as well. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Smack2k Posted September 1, 2012 Author Report Share Posted September 1, 2012 I love the idea of bringing them back and building to Starrcade 2001 with Steiner vs. Goldberg.. Would Steiner have had a year plus WCW Title reign? That would be good to get serious credibility back to the belt as well.. Plus, if Steiner and Goldberg could have another Fall Brawl 2000 type 15-17 minute match (minus the Russo crap mixed in) it could have been great. So much potential if it would have happened. And seeing how pro wrestling has been since then (until Punk and Danielson's arrival in the big time), the competition would have been nice. There is the other side though where no one underneath moves up and Hogan ends up on top again....you know, like TNA!! So maybe the thought of it is way better.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Loss Posted September 1, 2012 Report Share Posted September 1, 2012 The cruiserweight division would have a completely separate booker. Apparently Eric Bischoff liked the idea of wrestlers just trying to have a great match, but not winning. Judges would determine (as a shoot) the winner by declaring the person who gave the best performance in the match. Uh, yeah. Anyway, time has shown Eric Bischoff to be such an overwhelming idiot who got lucky once that I don't think the new WCW had a chance, even if some of the ideas sounded promising on paper. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Johnny Guitar Posted September 1, 2012 Report Share Posted September 1, 2012 I love the idea of bringing them back and building to Starrcade 2001 with Steiner vs. Goldberg.. Would Steiner have had a year plus WCW Title reign? That would be good to get serious credibility back to the belt as well.. Plus, if Steiner and Goldberg could have another Fall Brawl 2000 type 15-17 minute match (minus the Russo crap mixed in) it could have been great. So much potential if it would have happened. And seeing how pro wrestling has been since then (until Punk and Danielson's arrival in the big time), the competition would have been nice. There is the other side though where no one underneath moves up and Hogan ends up on top again....you know, like TNA!! So maybe the thought of it is way better.... Hogan wasn't under contract to anyone at this point and although there were rumors that he'd come back for the relaunch, he was negoiating with Vince for Wrestlemania 17. It's hard to say what sort of contract Fusient would have offered Hogan. They weren't going to take everyone who was under a Time Warner contract, but those they did they were going to honour. Which would have probably crippled them from the start. Unless Fusient offered him at least the same sort of contract he was on. Which was unlikely, but not out of the question. I think Hogan would have gone back to the WWF. He wanted to go back and there was big money on the table with Austin and Rock if he did. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Johnny Guitar Posted September 1, 2012 Report Share Posted September 1, 2012 The cruiserweight division would have a completely separate booker. Apparently Eric Bischoff liked the idea of wrestlers just trying to have a great match, but not winning. Judges would determine (as a shoot) the winner by declaring the person who gave the best performance in the match. Uh, yeah. Anyway, time has shown Eric Bischoff to be such an overwhelming idiot who got lucky once that I don't think the new WCW had a chance, even if some of the ideas sounded promising on paper. Bischoff was going to be head of creative. Which begs the question. How on the ball were Fusient management? Would they have a clue and override his more stupid descisions? I like to think that they would have seen through Eric pretty quickly and shown him the door. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cm funk Posted September 1, 2012 Report Share Posted September 1, 2012 So why didn't Hogan come in until 2002? I've always thought he was sitting out on a Turner contract like Nash, Goldberg, Flair etc. The Invasion would have been an entirely different ballgame if they'd had Hogan and Flair leading it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mad Dog Posted September 2, 2012 Report Share Posted September 2, 2012 The idea was to bring Nash, Sting, Booker T, etc. back for when the show relaunched. I know they had Joey Styles and Cyrus lined up as their new announce team. I vaguely remember that Rob Van Dam was going to get a huge push and there were rumors that D'Lo Brown was going to jump ship. I believe Jerry Lynn, Steve Corino and a lot of the ECW guys seemed like they were going to head to WCW as well. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Boondocks Kernoodle Posted September 2, 2012 Report Share Posted September 2, 2012 The cruiserweight division would have a completely separate booker. Apparently Eric Bischoff liked the idea of wrestlers just trying to have a great match, but not winning. Judges would determine (as a shoot) the winner by declaring the person who gave the best performance in the match. Uh, yeah. I think what you're describing here is the MatRats concept he got involved with in the summer of '01. The cruiserweight division would have been booked by Meltzer's friend John Muse, whoever that is, and they wanted to strike a talent exchange with Toryumon. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
flyonthewall2983 Posted September 2, 2012 Report Share Posted September 2, 2012 This just sounded destined for failure. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Smack2k Posted September 2, 2012 Author Report Share Posted September 2, 2012 Although I agree about it probably getting disappointing...I can see soo much possibility in this... I re-read through Bischoff's book, and basically a couple things came to mind: 1. I have heard from SO many different WCW people that they were hamstrung by Time Warner and then AOL Time Warner's standards and practices that didn't allow them to do some of the stuff they wanted..with that out of the way, Bischoff and Fusient could have done things different 2. Bischoff was going to handle the wrestling side while the Fusient guys (Brian) were going to do the business end. That could have helped as well 3. As I said before, they were slowing down the crash booking in the first few months of 2001..so with that and a reboot, bringing back the big names (Bischoff said he had all the big names ready to go) and building to Steiner / Goldberg at Starrcade 2001 while building up RVD / Corino / etc as well as having Nash / DDP / Sting / Booker T...I don't know, I know I am looking at this with rose colored glasses 11 years later, but it looked SOO good... The one thing Bischoff said that I was confused about was that he had spoken to Fox about taking one of the shows to them, they wanted Nitro, he was offering Thunder, with Nitro I assume staying on TNT. Always wondered why once Kellner from AOL TW took them off TV, Fox or another channel didn't jump at them. Mid 2's for ratings on cable (which is where they were when things were bad at the end) were really good (and still are), and the plan to have the shows TV from the roof of the Hard Rock and PPV's at another Vegas venue seemed to all make sense. They had the 67 million dollar deal ready....why wouldn't another cable channel want that? Oh well, I guess we will never truly know... Another note....if WWE got WCW for soo cheap, why didn't Bischoff and Fusient take one more shot at it for much less money? Just for the tape library..Fusient was the company that bought up tons of old sports footage, created the Classic Sports Channel, and then sold it to ESPN as ESPN Classic. Buying just the library and copyrights alone they could have made bank off of selling the videos. And from what WWE supposedly paid (next to nothing), why not Fusient? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
blueminister Posted September 2, 2012 Report Share Posted September 2, 2012 1. I have heard from SO many different WCW people that they were hamstrung by Time Warner and then AOL Time Warner's standards and practices that didn't allow them to do some of the stuff they wanted..with that out of the way, Bischoff and Fusient could have done things different turner S&P never seemed to be a barrier to them doing lots of stupid and tasteless shit (well, not enough of a barrier) and if you think that stuff ever attracted a meaningful number of people to pro wrestling you're being worked Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mad Dog Posted September 2, 2012 Report Share Posted September 2, 2012 I think he meant things like bleeding. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bix Posted September 2, 2012 Report Share Posted September 2, 2012 Jamie Kellner cancelling all of Turner Broadcasting's wrestling programming made pro wrestling a toxic TV product immediately, and the effect lasted for several years. Besides already being seen as low-brow and getting about half of the ad money it should have for its audience, it was now being thrown off the networks it helped build. This is why the XWF went completely nowhere even with Hogan in the mix, why TNA came up with their crazy weekly PPV idea, etc. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Smack2k Posted September 2, 2012 Author Report Share Posted September 2, 2012 I think he meant things like bleeding. Yeah, I meant bleeding and some of the more hardcore (not ECW Hardcore, but still more "brutal") style as well as getting more risqué, which was really taking over in the late 90's (see WWF 98 - 2001). Things like DDP and Raven's feud...I think with the same freedom WWF had at the time, things like this could have gotten really "ugly" and more "believable" I hope you understand what I am saying, cause I am having a hell of a time explaining it! Also, I am still very curious why a company that bought up all the sports footage and sold it to ESPN wouldn't see cash in the old WCW library, which would have included a bunch of old territories as well.....with the internet getting really big, sales could have been good. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sek69 Posted September 3, 2012 Report Share Posted September 3, 2012 Wasn't the Bischoff deal with Fusient based on WCW still having their TV slots? I seem to recall the reason Vince was able to swoop in and get everything cheap was that losing the TV slots killed any chance Eric had, and like Loss stated it made it toxic for anyone else to buy it with zero TV time. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Smack2k Posted September 3, 2012 Author Report Share Posted September 3, 2012 Wasn't the Bischoff deal with Fusient based on WCW still having their TV slots? I seem to recall the reason Vince was able to swoop in and get everything cheap was that losing the TV slots killed any chance Eric had, and like Loss stated it made it toxic for anyone else to buy it with zero TV time. Yeah, without TV the current product was dead....but for the small amount WWF apparently paid, and the type of stuff Fusient had done already, acquiring the library at least seemed to make sense, whether the company was still going to be active or not. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cox Posted September 3, 2012 Report Share Posted September 3, 2012 I think WWF's ability to not only buy the library, but a lot of the contracts WCW had on the books made them a more attractive selling partner. I don't think Turner wanted to piece out the assets of WCW, they wanted one sale that got rid of everything, and only WWF could reasonably do that in March 2001. Plus, I suspect most folks didn't realize the value of the JCP/WCW library at that point. Now, if TNA or ROH were to go bankrupt, both companies might get a good offer from somebody for the tape libraries alone, but that simply wasn't happening in 2001. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Smack2k Posted September 3, 2012 Author Report Share Posted September 3, 2012 That makes some sense in terms of value of the library, especially if you had to 67 million for it.. But WWF didn't buy out most of the expensive WCW contracts as they were with Time Warner and not WCW, so Time Warner still had to pay them. That is why so many of the big stars sat home for a while collecting checks for nothing (Nash / Sullivan / others). WWF acquired WCW, their rights, trademarks, video library, and other assets (some contracts I assume), but not the big ones... Seeing how classic sports videos were doing and knowing about tape trading (I know it wasn't a HUGE thing, but with the internet burgeoning, and they type of company Fusient was), Its strange they didn't see that... Plus, why would they continue to make the Bischoff / Fusient group pay 67 million for it, but then allow Vince to swoop in and take it for nothing, unless something else inside was going on? Vince was finally able to buy it once Viacom learned that the TV wasn't going to be on anymore on a competitive channel (WWF tried to buy it in Fall 2000 but Viacomm said no). Again, strange that Kellner and AOL TW would still charge Fusient the same price, yet allow WWF to take it for next to nothing (a few million is what I read a couple places...) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ricky Jackson Posted September 3, 2012 Report Share Posted September 3, 2012 I'm pretty sure the 67 million you quote was the pre-canceling of TV shows price, and that Fusient backed out once the shows were cancelled. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mad Dog Posted September 4, 2012 Report Share Posted September 4, 2012 Vince got the whole thing for only a couple of million dollars. I think WWF New York probably lost more money operating in 2001 than was spent on WCW. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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