A Couple Late WCW Questions from 2001

[blueminister]

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 don't think bleeding and hardcore matches were necessarily what the people making S&P complaints were thinking about. With the possible exception of Kevin Sullivan I think the moderate approach you're seem to be getting at in the first part of your statement was beyond the intellectual capacity of the people running late-era WCW. The second part of your statement ("risque") is exactly what I'm talking about, and the risque elements we did get in late-era WCW suggests that there were no brilliant envelope-pushing cultural experiments just beyond that locked door. Even the raunchy WWF stuff was disastrous in the long term and founded on a fundamental misunderstanding among the WWF higher-ups of what was making the boom.

[Guest Nell Santucci]

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 don't think bleeding and hardcore matches were necessarily what the people making S&P complaints were thinking about. With the possible exception of Kevin Sullivan I think the moderate approach you're seem to be getting at in the first part of your statement was beyond the intellectual capacity of the people running late-era WCW. The second part of your statement ("risque") is exactly what I'm talking about, and the risque elements we did get in late-era WCW suggests that there were no brilliant envelope-pushing cultural experiments just beyond that locked door. Even the raunchy WWF stuff was disastrous in the long term and founded on a fundamental misunderstanding among the WWF higher-ups of what was making the boom.

 

You got it. Frankly, I'm a tad disappointed in many posts in this thread if the expectation was that WCW would somehow make a profit under Eric Bischoff. Even under Fusient, I have little doubt the company was going to bleed red. Also, I suspect if WCW didn't turn out and churn a profit by, say, the end of 2001, it's entirely possible Bischoff would have panicked and made Hulk Hogan the center of the company again, knowing that WCW PPV buys were always highest when Hogan headlined and that WCW simply didn't sell well without Hogan.

 

People must keep in mind the general narrative Bischoff pushes - a narrative I disagree with to some extent (PPV buys and merchandise) and a narrative I agree with to some extent (ratings). In Bischoff's mind, Vince only started winning the Monday Night Wars when he took his wrestling product into the gutter. But that's an oversimplification for many years, and it's a charge I would expect a guy like Bischoff to make. First, WWF house show business started increasing with the rise of Steve Austin in 1997. This is a historical fact. Now, I don't think Bischoff is charging that Austin's only saving grace as a draw was his raunchiness (I think he's referring more to Val Venis, the Godfather, Sable, and possibly D-Generation X) - at least I wouldn't hope so - but Bischoff seems to have this conceptual misunderstanding right on the borderline on why the Monday Night Wars turned out the way they did. Frankly, Bischoff's autistic interest in ratings, that IIRC led to no serious revenue stream for the WCW brand (it all went to Time Warner) is largely was caused him to totally miss the point, along with his refusal to get over popular midcard acts, along with crappy booking (1-4-1999), along with Hogan's drawing power peaking post-Goldberg, along with his burial of Ric Flair, talent leaving for a company that paid less on the downside but gave more internal reward, and his insane spending habits that even Jim Cornette of all people knew about as early as late 1997 when WCW was still leading ahead in the ratings war show Bischoff for what he was: a charismatic salesman whose acquisition of Hulk Hogan and the nWo angle led to a boom since he forced McMahon to compete with him for ratings on Monday. But his argument that the WWF just took everything to the gutter and that doing so led them to win the ratings war is simply incorrect because there was way more to the WWF promotion and to the more general Monday Night Wars than a ratings race, contrary to Bischoff's perception; PPV buyrates reflect this as well, and heat is both the necessary and sufficient condition to get buys.

 

One aspect that gets overlooked is that the Monday Night Wars got so dirty that no cable company was willing to touch Monday Nitro with a ten foot pole after Vince McMahon bought it. Now, the Viacom deal was certainly sufficient in blocking any prospects of Vince getting Nitro on some arbitrary cable company, but it can't be overlooked for just how unsustainable the Attitude Era model really was, which is partly why I'm so critical of that era and almost bash my head against the wall when people think the solution to wrestling having another boom is by pulling more middle fingers, crotch chops, and bra and panties matches.

 

Imo, the counterfactual of Fusient going to Bischoff would have worked in one of two ways. I think the pressure would have been on him to pull ratings, and Bischoff was going to panic anyway like he always did, since he was a low-investment type individual regardless. Without big stars and his inability to create stars, either Fusient would have let him bleed the company red or they would have fired him. Now, had Fusient fired Bischoff, the question becomes whether Fusient would have had the foresight to try someone new to run the promotion. I would bet against that because the conservative nature of the wrestling industry works in such a way that they would have kept on harping back on old, burnt out bookers whose glory days brought on by their own creative juices had long surpassed them. Maybe Fusient could have pulled it off, but WCW was practically a dead brand by March of 2001.

 

As a general disclaimer, I do want to point out that the death of WCW wasn't good for the business, and I'm not contending that WCW's death was good for business. But I do think WCW's dysfunctional nature would have carried over into Fusient, and the company would have been bleeding red well into 2002 unless they acquired some talent like Stone Cold Steve Austin or kept Hulk Hogan as a full-time guy.

[Victator]

Was there something preventing the WWF from setting up a separate corporation to buy WCW and keep it on the Turner stations?

 

I remember reading that was an initial plan with WWECW.

[cm funk]

Turner S&P always sounded like a Russo bullshit excuse to explain away his failings as a booker. I know Bischoff has mentioned it too, but they had no problem putting out a fairly edgy product during the peak years. The excuse of, "we couldn't push the envelope as far as WWE and that's why we lost" doesn't hold any weight. The company failed due to mismanagement and bad booking, plain and simple.

[Guest Nell Santucci]

Turner S&P always sounded like a Russo bullshit excuse to explain away his failings as a booker. I know Bischoff has mentioned it too, but they had no problem putting out a fairly edgy product during the peak years. The excuse of, "we couldn't push the envelope as far as WWE and that's why we lost" doesn't hold any weight. The company failed due to mismanagement and bad booking, plain and simple.

Exactly, and Bischoff's autistic-like fetish for "name superstars" to the extent that he refused to push popular midcarders and experiment with them in the main event. I'm not sure, for example, Chris Benoit was a guy meant to hold the world title as he existed in WCW (on the contrary, in the WWE, he was very over in 2003-2004), but there was no excuse not to have him in the main event scene by 1999. Even Benoit with the gimmick of a psychopathic submission machine would have drawn good money against Goldberg imo, with the story being that Goldberg's limitations in submission wrestling might make him prone to the ruthless, crippling submission machine Benoit. Bischoff was and still is an incompetent clown.

 

I'm enjoying the 1995 Observers because it goes over WCW's development at that stage and Bischoff's role in it all. I'm working on a research project right now that I want to keep confidential, but a corollary that might result from my research project is how the Monday Night Wars made plenty of sense to do business wise.

[Victator]

You can look at World War 3 98. Goldberg did not even work that show and Chris Jericho had a TV Title defense against Bobby Duncum.

 

They could have done a Jericho/Goldberg match easily. Even if Jericho was killed in six minutes, it would have been a nice experiment.

[blueminister]

Bischoff was and still is an incompetent clown.

In Bischoff's defense he had like 2-3 years of bold leadership, shrewd decision-making and mostly clever promotional schemes before it was discovered that he was a complete mark whose personality was incompatible with success. There was a weird transition circa 1999 where he went from being a corporatist clown by the standards of bitter sheet-readers to being a corporatist clown by actual real world standards. WCW immediately pre-nWo is underappreciated.

[blueminister]

WCW immediately pre-nWo is underappreciated.

Or maybe it just looks better in an era where Brian Pillman is dead, there's no real tag teams and half of the midcard wrestlers have losing streak gimmicks, whatever.

[Ricky Jackson]

I have no love for Bischoff, but Nitro coming along in 1995 did revitalize what was a totally comatose, stuck in the past North American wrestling scene (outside of ECW) and arguably got the ball rolling towards what is often considered the hottest period ever for the business. I'm not sure how much credit Bischoff deserves for this, though. And considering the wrestling most of us love more or less ceased to exist after 1997, replaced by high spots, scripts, and the chase for high ratings, maybe he should be damned to hell.

[Loss]

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.

 

Dave once confirmed in a message board post that this was also an idea he had for WCW during this time. I'll try to dig up the post.

 

Also, regarding S & P, they did force them to drop/tame down the Lenny & Lodi gay gimmick in '99, and apparently Russo threw a fit because they wouldn't let Piper make fat jokes about Rhonda Singh. You know, because if Roddy Piper could have made fat jokes, WCW would have been a rousing success during that time.

[Tim Cooke]

I'd love to see that post from Meltzer, Loss. I have never seen that anywhere and it would be cool to have it sourced.