Bill Watts interview

[Loss]

I thought this was a fascinating interview, and I also thought it was relevant considering the WCW Head Bookers thread.

 

***

 

Clark: First, could you please tell me about your education earlier in your life and how you got started in the wrestling business?

 

Watts: I wrestled in high school and I played football. I was the first All-American high school football player in Putnam City, to the best of my knowledge, and I was in the Jim Thorpe High School Football Hall of Fame here in Oklahoma. I was recruited to Oklahoma University by Bud Wilkinson on a football scholarship, and I wrestled in the off season. Then, I think it must have been my sophomore year, I was in a car-train wreck and I was unconscious for a couple of weeks. I came out of the hospital under 200 pounds, I weighed about 245 normally. Of course, Oklahoma University believed in small and quick at that time, they had Wahoo McDaniel down to 188 pounds. They had me down to 215 or 229 pounds, I was the biggest man on the team. They just didn't realize that kids were starting to grow. I got on weight training after the car wreck, it took me like six months to even be able to get back to where I could do a simple somersault and come up in a hitting position. My ribs were crushed and I had a whole lot of internal injuries. It was amazing that I was alive.

 

But, a friend of mine got me on weight training by accident. You've got to realize, back then weight training was tabooed for athletes because coaches had no knowledge of it. They saw the typical guy that got into weight training was the timid, non athletic guy that wanted to build up his body. When he did that, he had no natural coordination or no athletic coordination. So the coaches saw this guy build up his body and then they'd watch him be totally uncoordinated, and they would then surmise that the weight training made him uncoordinated. So they said, "Don't lift weights." I had gotten back to my normal body weight of about 245. We started out on weight training and worked really, really hard, and seven months later I weighed 315 pounds. I gained 70 pounds in seven months. I never took a steroid in my life, I was just at the perfect growth age and worked so hard at it It just transformed me into a superman. So, I was way too big for Oklahoma football, but they wanted me to stay on a wrestling scholarship. But I signed pro with the Houston Oilers in the old American Football League in the second year of the league. Then I got released there, I had an altercation with the head coach. I thought Bud Wilkinson should have had a different philosophy than curse or demean people. Back then a lot of pro football coaches treated you like a slave.

 

In the off season there, I came back home and Jack Brisco was wrestling at Oklahoma State University, Wahoo McDaniel had gotten into pro wrestling, and Dale Louis, a heavyweight at Oklahoma University, had gotten into pro wrestling. And Jack had always been trying to talk me into going into pro wrestling, but the pro wrestling in Oklahoma was junior heavyweight wrestling and very far behind the times. The only athlete that we considered a head was Danny Hodge, he was so head and shoulders above everybody. But, you didn't really respect pro wrestling when you we're an amateur. Wahoo and I were out imbibing in a few brews one evening and he had to cash a check. I asked him what he got it for and he said for wrestling. I said, "How long? For a month?" He said no. I said, "A week?" He said, "No, for one match." I said, "My gosh." Because you've got to realize, back in the late 50s when you were in college, they told you that if you worked hard and got to where you were making $25,000 a year, you were financially secure and successful. And Wahoo had, it seemed like the check was for $1,500, $1,000, $500, I don't know. But I said, "My gosh, who do I have to kill to get that?"

 

I went to see Leroy McGuirk but they had junior heavyweights and they didn't want me. They had me work out with Sputnik Monroe, who was a great old hand. The old tradition was they stretched you first. I don't think Sputnik could stretch anybody, but he sure couldn't stretch me. I guzzled him pretty good. The next day they had a work out set up with everybody there and none of them decided that they could handle the situation. So they just told me that they just didn't have anything for me. So Wahoo helped me get started, he sent me up to a guy named Bawk Eskison in Indianapolis. When I got there, Wahoo was getting, ready to go back and go play pro ball again. Bawk Eskison wasn't really paying much attention to business, of course I didn't realize that then. Jim Barnette owned it and he wouldn't use me. There was a professional football league there, Continental Football League, and a friend of mine was the defensive line coach and he asked me to stay there and play ball. I did, and Dale Louis started wrestling there. Dale talked to Bawk Eskison again and so finally I broke into wrestling and had my first match in Portsmouth, Ohio in 1962.

 

Bill Miller was a big help to me, as were Mark Starr, George & Sandy Scott, The Von Brauners, Karl Gotch, Art Nelson and people like that. As a matter of fact, it was Art Nelson who called me and said, "Take your bag when you go down to Portsmouth tonight and ride down with Dale because I'm not going to show up. He'll have to use you." Stan Nelson, his partner, called me five minutes later with the same story, so I rode down, and that's how I got my first match. My second match was with Joe Blanchard and my third match was with Don Leo Jonathan. What a phenomenal athlete Don Leo was, it was just mind-boggling. He was 6'8", 308, he could do nip-ups. I mean, unbelievable balance. A natural athlete. That was my third match and I had met Barnette, he had come back to a big show in Indianapolis, and I was hoping he would discover me. But I think that's when he was in the middle of the most torrid part of his affair with Rockettes, so I don't think he had wrestling on the mind! And that's where I saw Dick the Bruiser wrestle.

 

I had about ten matches and then I came home on the Christmas holiday and got into an altercation in a bar where several guys jumped on me and broke my fist. So, LeRoy made me a special referee with a cast on. I created so much excitement as a special referee that when my cast came off, a couple of his guys that were top-half said everything was stale there then. They said, "Man, book him against us." We started drawing a lot of money which created a lot of jealousy among the junior heavyweights. So LeRoy said, "Man, you're out-drawing my junior heavyweights, you've got to get out of here." He sent me to Texas for Morris Seigel. The first night in I won the Texas Championship. That's a whole another story, it really wasn't supposed to be that way, but that's what happened. I stayed there for a while.

 

After that, I went up to play ball. Verne Gagne called me and Norm Van Brocklin wanted me to come play with the Minnesota Vikings. I went up and worked out with the Vikings. I met Verne, met The Crusher, met Larry Hennig. They wanted me to stay up there and be on the taxi squad, work out and get my timing and everything back. I said, "Fine, as long as you'll let me wrestle professionally." Jim Finks was the general manager at that time and he never let anybody from the Vikings wrestle. I told them, "I'm sorry, but I can make a hell of a lot more money wrestling than playing football." You've got to remember back then a lineman made $8,000-$12,000 a year. So, I came home. From there, I think Lou Thesz took me to the west coast for a deal with Strongbow. Then I went to Vancouver, British Columbia for a few weeks. I was there when they shot John F. Kennedy. I started drawing money there against Kiniski and Jonathan, but I was getting paid real badly. Rob Fenton was the promoter and I jumped him about it, and he said, "Kid, as green as you are, you're lucky to get to be on the card." I said, "You're paying four or five guys more than I. And when I got here, there was nobody in the building, now that I'm here, we're drawing money. If you're going to screw me, I'm not going to stay." So, I went home.

 

LeRoy booked me and then I did some stuff for Dory Funk Sr. where I was driving from Springfield, Missouri on a Wednesday night all the way to Amarillo, Texas. I worked a "mark out of the crowd" deal where I was razzing all the guys on the card, and none of them knew who I was. I had them all pissed off- Fritz Von Erich, Killer Karl Cox, Mike DiBiase- Ted DiBiase's dad. Dory wanted me to jump in the ring on a certain deal and I said, "Are you going to tell anybody?" Dory said, "No, we want to really make it realistic." I said, "Well I've got news for you, if any of them come at me, I'm going to knock them out." So that's what I did. Then they all came running out of the dressing room, they thought I had jumped in on DiBiase. Killer Karl Cox realized that that wasn't it and gave me the old Hi sign. So that's how that started.

 

I met Wild Red Berry by accident, it seemed like he was home, Pittsburgh, Kansas, for the Christmas holiday. They brought him over to Joplin, Missouri and teamed him with me for a holiday show, and we had a little situation happen. The promoter was so damn dumb he wouldn't even have wrestling put on TV there, all he did was have a live interview on the Saturday night news. We were doing an interview and we got all excited, and it sold out. Well, Red Berry got so excited about it that he went back and told Vince McMahon Sr. about it. I was wrestling the next Thursday in Wichita Falls, Texas on a 4-H farm that didn't even have a telephone. All of a sudden, the police came and got me for an emergency call. I thought something had happened to my parents or something. Well, it was New York (WWWF) calling, their offices were in Washington, DC. Of course I was so naive, I said, "I don't know if I can come up there or not, you'll have to ask Mr. McGuirk, that's who I'm working for." They said, We'll take care of Mr. McGuirk." They called LeRoy and he realized that it was a big opportunity for me, but I didn't know anything back then.

 

I went to Washington, DC and got over real big in New York. I decided that Sammartino was making all the money, instead of being his partner I'd rather be against him. I turned against him. We sold out Madison Square Garden, it was the largest crowd that was ever in the old Garden for any event in its history. And of course, the reason for that, because we sold out more often than that, is because the fire marshal wasn't there that night and they filled the building. But, it did make the paper that it was the largest crowd there ever. I think it sold out at like 3 o'clock in the afternoon. They ran the Garden every three weeks back then and there was only one main event. I had quite a run there. We sold out the old arena in Washington, DC four times with Bobo Brazil who was a big star, and usually you only get to wrestle them one time. The match the established me in New York was going to a twenty minute broadway with Killer Kowalski in Washington, DC. It was so good that Vince Sr. was standing there and was just amazed by it. Killer Kowalski was a great performer at that time, he had become a vegetarian so he was not near as big as he used to be, but he had great endurance. There, the great ones there were Bruno Sammartino- who to me is one of the quality guys that's ever been in this business, Gene Kiniski, Waldo Von Erich, Dr. Bill Miller, Jerry Graham- by then he pretty much lost control of himself with his alcohol, Don McClarity, Pedro Morales, Gorilla Monsoon- he and I were the tag champions at one time there. So I already had ideas and I'd get to the people who'd influence the decision makers about my ideas. Although I didn't realize that I had this ability, it was just me trying to make a living.

 

I had a two year run there and than I went to California for Roy Shires, and I was going to work there a few weeks and then go to Japan. But I won the North American title there. The next week, he flipped out. Roy was the kind of promoter, he was a genius, but he never told you anything, you had no idea of what to expect. I got along with him real well, I just didn't understand him. We eventually became great friends and had a lot of respect for each other. I had been staying with him for about a year and a half and I was only wrestling about three nights a week, and everything was real close. I got to wrestle guys like Ray Stevens and Pat Patterson, they were probably the best team in the world at that time. Dominic DeNucci was out there, Joe Scarpa- Jay Strongbow- he was my partner for a while, Jim Haiti was my partner for a while. Then I got into a multi-level business and quit wrestling for a while. I always had wondered if I could make money if something happened to me in wrestling. Athletes have always got to figure if they get an injury or something, so I built a good multi-level business. I found out that I could be successful with another business.

 

Then in 1968 I went to Verne and stayed there until 1970. Up there, The Crusher was one of the all-time greats. Dick Beyer was up there as Dr. X, he was great. Larry Hennig and Harley Race was the best team in that era. Jack Lanza, Bobby Heenan, Billy Red Lyons, Red Bastien, it was a great crew. Of course, Verne Gagne was ahead of his time and he had a real feel for the business and he believed in the athletic type of it. LeRoy McGuirk and I stayed in touch by phone and he was having a lot of trouble by then. He asked me to come home to run his business for him. He still wasn't sure of me as a young guy so he made a partnership arrangement with Fritz Von Erich, Verne Gagne, myself, and gave Danny Hodge a small piece for Danny's long time loyalty to him. So that's how I started a promotion in 1970.

 

When I started in 1962, I'll never forger Art Nelson said, "Kid, you've got a college education, you're a smart kid, get out of this business and go home, the business is in terrible shape, you can't make over S25,000 a year." The key word to me was $25,000 a year, I'd been taught in college if you made $25,000 a year, you were rich. So I stayed in the business. The business was just starting to explode right around 70, it really started to get big. Verne's area got hot, Chicago, Winnipeg. So here I came back to Oklahoma and it was the shits. It was horrible. They had over-the-hill guys, never-was-beens, and LeRoy being blind, I had the stooge system there where he'd keep everybody fighting each other. That would keep him in power so to speak. I was his partner and had to put up with all his stooges. It took me a while to deal with it but I learned a tremendous amount from LeRoy. It was very frustrating. LeRoy was a great man in his day. And by that time, he drank pretty heavy and it started to affect him and he just had a lot of psychological problems. But I still learned a hell of a lot under him.

 

In 1973, Eddie Graham asked me to come to Atlanta. There was a trade between two stock holders, Lester Welch and Buddy Fuller. Lester had stock in Florida and Lenny had stock in Georgia, Buddy went to Florida and Lester came to Georgia. Ray Gunkel was alive then and decided that he didn't want to go for it so he was going to break away and form an opposition. The partnership was Ray Gunkel, Paul Jones, and Buddy Fuller. He was going to go against Paul and Buddy's tradee, Lester. So they took all the boys, only one guy didn't go, that guy was Bob Armstrong. When I got there, a bunch of us came in and put a show on with Paul in the old city auditorium. It was amazing, it had Jack Brisco, Dory Funk Jr., Hiro Matsuda, Fritz Von Erich, but nobody in Atlanta knew them. Back in the regionalized days, they didn't get the nation wide exposure. It was like, the crowd was in a vacuum and would just sit there and watch. I went out and they put me against Bob Armstrong. Because they knew Bob, we had a hell of a match and it got a good crowd reaction. Eddie Graham was getting interested in my career and asked me to come down and run it, although Lester was the general partner and Paul was the promoter, he knew they had to have someone strong to run it in booking. Eddie gave me some stock, he also gave Jack Brisco and Buddy Colt some stock. He gave them small pieces and gave me 10% of the ownership. I started running that and we did very, very well. The whole time, Anne Gunkel was setting up an anti-trust suit which we were all very naive about. We didn't know what the hell anti-trust was. Ray wrestled in Savannah, Georgia, had a heart attack and died. Anne, her booker was Tom Renesto- he and Jody Hamilton were the Assassins- and they went on with Ray's plans. We were competitive and did very, very well. Jim Barnette wanted to come back from Australia and Eddie brought Jim in, and Jim bought Lester Welsh out. Jim came in and things were more stable. And we had Jerry Jarrett come in as booker.

 

And I went to Florida in 1974, Eddie gave me ownership to come down there and book it. It was the hardest I ever worked in my life but it was the most rewarding. It was the largest bottom-line profit for the stockholders ever in the history of Florida. Eddie Graham was a genius, he had a lot of devils he fought-but we all do- but that period of time he was just such a supportive man and he stimulated my thought process and I learned so much. He used to say, "Why are you a college guy, come down here and work for me. I didn't even get to junior high." And I said, "I came to get my Ph.d." We used to laugh about it. Of course, that's where I made Dusty Rhodes the "American Dream" in 1974. We had Pak Song, we had Gary Hart- he was at his height, Buddy Colt, Mike Graham was a young babyface, Bobby Duncum, we brought in Dick Murdoch, Terry Funk, and we just literally tore Florida wide open. We really had it hot.

 

And then I went home in 1975 and LeRoy and I bought Verne and Fritz out. We were partners until 1979. LeRoy was impossible, so we split up. In 1979, I formed Mid South and I took Louisiana and Mississippi, and he took Oklahoma and whatever else we had- it was only part of Missouri and part of Texas. And then after a couple years, I came back up here and bought LeRoy out of the old company. In Louisiana, the largest they'd ever done back around 1970 was $400,000 gross. And I took it to over two million dollars a year in a fairly small state. It was real successful and everything was going great.

 

Vince decided on his new game plan, which basically I did the same thing. I tried to convince a huge New York Stock Exchange firm called Kenny National Services to do a very similar operation, but Vince was in the media areas, he had New York already, California was on its ass because the promoter really didn't do a very good job for many, many years. So Vince all of a sudden had that and he had a million dollar war chest. I totally disagree with him philosophically about wrestling, but without a doubt, he's one of the smartest in marketing and he knows how to position himself and his talent better than anybody in the business. He just took the thing to a completely different deal. I think he's hurt himself because in his rise to power, which is very intoxicating, he crushed a lot of people. I think he killed off the independents. And to me, the independents were very important. I tried to tell him, "Leave everybody there, by golly." Then you've got a changeover in talent when you want. Give them a bone when you come into their area and co-promote it with them. You can still take all the damn money and you've got the big nationwide operation." It would have been much healthier to keep everybody going, but he didn't see it that way. Naturally, he was in a position to dictate so he changed the very fiber of this business. As I said, he's a genius. Hitler was too, he destroyed Germany. So, the only guy that can stop Vince is Vince. And he's been doing that pretty good for the last couple of years.

 

And the only person that can compete with him is Turner Broadcasting. But unfortunately, they haven't got a clue as to what the hell they're doing. And so they're no threat. And with their tremendous assets and their position in the media with their broadcast, they should just dictate wrestling worldwide. But they shoot themselves in the foot. They keep wanting to reduce wrestling to a business that's like producing widgets. They don't think it's unique. They think if they keep putting corporate people in charge that don't know what the hell they are doing. And they want to reduce it to their corporate understanding- it's got to walk like a corporation, talk like a corporation, and dress like a corporation. It will never work. So when they have no leadership like that... I mean, when I got there in May, they said, "Be sure to hold the losses this year below $1.8 million. That was the big buy word. Bill Shaw said, "We can't lose over a million eight because that's what I promised the board." We lost $421,000. Quite a difference from that to $1.8 million. I said, "I'd like a letter of commendation to everybody in WCW for the fine job we've done." Well hell, they wouldn't write it because that would have acknowledged what a fabulous job had been done. Irregardless of what everybody said, we'd come in and cut some costs and we'd done some things. They were scared to death they were going to lose over $1.8 million and that's still even with a bunch of funny bookkeeping that's not exactly kosher as far as showing a true operational picture. They were projecting a net operating loss in 1993 of $6 million. I turned in a budget that was going to make a quarter of a million dollars profit. But they want to sand bag it and they slowly, just slowly encroach upon everything you're doing. You have to justify why you're there or why you do something a certain way everyday, and they don't understand it anyway.

 

So Vince is the only one that can stop himself. One thing that's so key for Vince is that Vince is in the wrestling business and he understands the wrestling business. His problems are pretty easy to identify. Without a doubt, he understands marketing, he understands positioning, and he understands the wrestling business, so he's the only one that can stop himself.

 

Clark: What are a few of your greatest experiences during your life?

 

Watts: The birth of my children and to live vicariously in them. Oh, there's a lot of big experiences. The ones I think I relate to business wise was naturally to at such a young age go to New York City and be successful, to sell out the Garden like that. I think we sold it out like three or four times. Also to sell out the Cow Palace in San Francisco, the HIC in Honolulu. You start building a confidence that you knew what you were doing. Verne Gagne, we were both babyfaces, decided to book us against each other in Minneapolis at the big building there and it drew a huge gate. I thought it wouldn't draw with two babyface wrestlers against each other.

 

There's been so many exciting times. One of the most exciting times for me was when Dusty Rhodes truly started believing he was the "American Dream." I'll never forget it. It was at an interview session at the Sportatorium in Tampa, Florida. He cut an interview where I knew he was where I was trying to get him to be. Goose-bumps broke out on my arm, just went right down my arm. I knew I had created a superstar. But he had all of it, it was just a point of guiding him and encouraging him and congealing him. When I went to WCW, they wanted me to fire Dusty. I said, "Well wait a minute, I want to see where his head's at, he's one of the most creative men in the business. All he needs is some guidance to force him to follow through and to have some continuity." And we were getting all those systems in place because Dusty's a fabulous guy. He loves the business and he's very creative. But when you're under the gun like that, sometimes it gets so big and there was so much television. Gosh, if you had seen what we produced in October, November and December in television, pay-per-views, Clashes and extra television hours, its mind-boggling. The staff that writes Roseanne and all the top NBC shows couldn't do that, and we produced all that stuff. It's stupid, it is so stupid.

 

In one of my first two weeks there, I presented a game plan to succeed for WCW, and they rejected it because they were afraid to go that strong. To me it was simple, you took WCW and you put it head up with WWF, make it run aside. You run our Clash of the Champions the night they run their pay-per-views and you run our pay-per-views right up against the night they air their big cable deals. To give the people a choice. They were scared to death of that. Everything you'd come up with that would be a concept for them, they'd reject it.

 

Do you realize that I made the first black world's heavyweight champion in the history of the business with a major operation? And I know I've heard the guys say Iceman Parsons was for Dallas. Shit, Dallas was a regional thing just like mine was. There's never been a major worldwide organization like the NWA, WWF, or WCW that's had a black world champion. So I made Ron Simmons the world's champion, he's got all the credentials in the world. And we thought with Turner Broadcasting we ought to be able to get Simmons in Ted Turner's box at the Braves games which is picked up nationwide on TV every time they play a game. Shit, we couldn't do that. Would I be able to get him on the sideline of the Atlanta Falcons? Hell, they've got every country western singer and even a guy named Zeus who played some bit part in a movie, was down there with the Buffalo Bills playing. We couldn't do that. We thought we could get him with the Atlanta Hawks right in the good seats where the crowd would pick him up. We couldn't do that. We figured we could get him on Larry King Live. Vince was on there. We couldn't do that. Nothing on CNN.

 

Do you realize TBS just produced a big documentary on the history of Harley Davidsons? They had James Caan, they had the guy that played J.R. Ewing on Dallas, all these different stars talking about their Harley experiences. There's nobody that rides Harleys anymore than the wrestlers for WCW. Sting is a big Harley rider, Barry Windham is a big Harley rider. I am too. Not one wrestler in the show. So here you have all this stuff that could be put together to build wrestling and you can't get shit, you can't get any cooperation at all. The head of TBS Sports doesn't particularly care for wrestling, in my opinion. Ric Flair told me a story one time that when he was on the sidelines when Steve Spurior was the coach, because he's a friend of Spurior's, the TBS crew was shooting the game and the crew told him later that when they picked him up on the sidelines, that the head of TBS Sports said, "Don't pick him up. I don't want to show a wrestler on our broadcast." How stupid can you be? We couldn't get shit for Ron Simmons. Bobby Bowden did a nationwide uplink before our pay-per-view to help promote Ron Simmons. He took a day of his holiday and did it. They retired his number at Florida State. Bobby Bowden did everything for Ron Simmons but TBS didn't do shit for him.

 

Here's how stupid they are- you do a three hour pay-per-view, two hours and fifty minutes. When they produced it on cassette they want to cut it down to two hours. I said, "How dumb can you be?" Who would go buy a movie with a third of it gone? See what I mean, they're penny wise and dollar foolish. Vince doesn't do that and he's the best marketer in the world. I said, "You've got to copy Vince's strengths and you've got to ignore his weaknesses." But they wouldn't do it. Did you ever go to the top rental deals in Atlanta? None of WCW's shit is on the shelves, all of Vince's stuff is on the shelves. "It costs more to do a three hour tape. Well, they don't want three hour rentals." Well, they damn sure have all of Vince's three hour rentals. You see what I mean, it was inane. One hand doesn't know what the other one is doing. They've got a director of marketing there, the only thing that was brought to me to get me to pass it on the market was a game, with no specified advantage to it except some percentage of something. It was a very nefarious deal and they wanted me to make a wrestler "The Master of the Snapping Hold." What wrestler would want that laid on him? One hand doesn't know what the other is doing.

 

Who did they shit on when I resigned? Jim Ross, probably the most valuable guy at WCW. A guy, who to me is the best commentator in the business. A guy who during one pay-per-view passed a kidney stone and never left the booth. He busted his ass. He lives, eats, breathes it, contributes to the booking meetings. His 900 line did $500,000 a year, he wrote Missy did about $200,000 a year. And they take him off the air. And he's got a radio show on WSB that's clear-channeled, it reaches forty states or something that, it's the top sports show. Brother I'm telling you, the guy that made that decision, and I know who it is, you do too, but we won't call it, the guy wouldn't have enough brains to piss out of a boot if the directions were written on the heel. But he's a very, very powerful person at Turner Broadcasting, so that's what you get into.

 

It's just like when we met one time with the executives of TBS, they wanted more programming. And I said, "Let's pull some of the old, great matches out. We can't produce anymore with the number of guys we have. We've mixed it so many ways that nobody gives a shit anyway." Hell, when I got there every star we had had been a star in 1987. That's the same problem Vince has got, it's stale. People are crying for new talent. But it takes time to develop new talent when your system has been shut down. They said, "No, don't do it." I said, "We're going to do it anyway."

 

Ross and I pulled out a series on Ric Flair that rebuilt the NWA title. Because after the Chono-Rude match in Philly, it stunk the joint out. We wanted to rebuild the prestige. We pulled the one where Steamboat beat him and the one where he beat Steamboat and all that. It got such a rating that the TBS guys then said, "We want Ric Flair on every week." Really for me, it was a deal saying, "Hey Ric, we've got a place for you here. We'd like to see you come back." Because no matter what anybody says, I think Ric Flair because of his attitude always has the best match on the card. I think Ric Flair has two or three years of great performance left in the ring and then he can be a great broadcaster. That's one of the things that depressed Flair, because everybody else had put matches on there of of him getting killed. It caused such a rift with some of our talent that's never drawn any money, and they were mad because we put Flair on.

 

I mean, most of these guys talk about the money they've drawn... I got a kick out of one guy that's one of WCW's stars. "Well, I drew all this money for Vince and he didn't pay me right, so I quit." And I thought, "You did, huh?" When Vince McMahon was drawing money, anybody he put against Hogan drew money, anybody he put on the card drew money. It was his operation that was drawing the money. When a wrestler has never figured a program, an angle, or a finish comes and tells me he draws money, I look at him and think, "Boy, I don't know what shit you're smoking but it sure is making your head big."

 

It's just like when I got there, they wanted a clean program, so did the public. I instituted the steroid testing on November 11, because if you remember by the Havoc I had two guys that I lost to personal problems. So I wanted drug testing. We tested on November 11. We were supposed to have a drug program. We'd already met with a real good law firm who was drawing a real comprehensive, thorough drug program up. It was supposed to be ready by the test. You probably know of how many guys tested positive on it, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out who was on roids. You also know who refused to take the test. In February, there was still no written program. So then I really raised hell. They got the program written immediately because it was all ready, and we had to do was sign off on it. It was supposed to be in place February 15. Of course, I resigned on the tenth and they've never seen it. For me, if you were positive, we were going to get rid of you. You've either got to have a drug program or not. But see, some people say, "We have a no smoking program at Turner Broadcasting." Of course, that means, "Just don't smoke in front of me." To me, that's hypocritical. So here's the funny thing, the three things that all the sheets were addressing when I got there were the three things I acted on. The funny thing is, as soon as I'd signed Flair, they started knocking the fact that Flair couldn't even help us. They dropped the roid issue because we started complying, we faced it and we were addressing it. It's still a joke with the WWF. They all say how tough the policy is there. I guarantee it's selective.

 

It seemed like somebody said Paul E. Dangerously said I was anti-Semetic. I wasn't anti-Semetic. I didn't even know he was Jewish when I went there. I've never been anti-Semetic. I believe in God and I read the Bible. I'm profane and I'm a lot of bad things, but I do believe in God and I do believe in the Bible. It says if you curse a Jew that you are cursed of God, so I would never be anti-Semetic because it's against God's word. I'm not anti-Black. I have my opinions about a lot of things. And then there's people that denigrate and dilute and try to scare you into not having an opinion. And all of that stuff. I don't think that the people that make the decisions at Turner Broadcasting ever supported me philosophically, because they don't understand it. So, they didn't support it. Therefore, I think that I was the guy they were in so many ways told to hire. So they had to discredit me and the only way to do it was to sand bag me.

 

Nobody that I wanted to fire corporately at WCW could I fire. I went on record right off wanting to remove several people that were anti what we were doing. You couldn't fire them. Well, if you've got people that you want to get out of there and you know they're not doing anything and they know they're not, and they know you don't like them, what does that do? They turn against you. So then, they're crying and knocking you all the time so the guy that's up in the North Tower is listening to them, all my detractors. He said, "Well, you intimidate people." Yeah, I intimidate people when they're not doing their job. He said, "You've got a dressing room mentality." Who do you think I'm working with, rocket scientists? What do you think they're used to? Here you've got a bunch of people that hadn't been doing their job and then collecting all this damn money, and I'm trying to make them go to work.

 

I mean, the mess the syndication is in is so stupid. Why would you pay Turner Programming Services to syndicate your shows, you can't control what they do, and most of them don't like wrestling. And it's not the right image, they'd rather syndicate CNN or the Wonder Years or the movie packages or the cartoon network, not wrestling. They think all wrestling is wrestling, they don't even understand the difference and don't care to learn. They got paid $600,000 last year to syndicate our programs and then it goes to $1.2 million this year. And they've lost 30% of our network, we're under-delivering unbelievably. Here's what they say- "The ratings are down and we can't sell it." Shit, the ratings were down before I got there, the difference was, they also lost the key stations because they didn't maintain and service the relationship at the station. So WCW has to have its own syndicator, a very strong person that answers to WCW and that has wrestling as their only interest. It's a twelve million dollar income stream that's under-delivering. But, they don't want to do that. They want to do it their own way or they go hire some idiot who should never be hired or they go hire somebody that's been fired in the past or something like that. Not the right people. So you see what I mean, they say, "Well, you're running it, but we're going to tell you what you can and can't do, and we really don't like what you're doing. We don't believe in what you're doing." Let me tell you, no matter what Vince was doing promotionally, I would go in a different direction to give the viewing fan an alternative. Otherwise, you're just a copy of him. But certainly, the things he does well marketing wise and positioning wise, we should emulate. But we didn't and they don't.

 

And then they hire a guy to be in charge of television production who has never produced a show in his life, who was a fill-in for another wrestling promotion because their top announcer was hired by the WWF. And this guy sells them a bill of goods on what he's going to do for wrestling. Well, check their ratings since I've gone. Since October we didn't have below a 2.0 on WCW Saturday and it was averaging a 2.6 for eight weeks, and then I think it did a 2.8 and a 2.7 or something like that. Then it did a 3.1 the Saturday after the last pay-per-view because everybody knew Flair would be there. I'm just assuming and I'll guarantee you it's probably fallen since then.

 

Somebody told me the other day they had a production setup at Center Stage with no truck. That's all that finger pointing. We wanted to spend money ever since I went there to improve the graphics packages and change the sets on all the shows. We were told, "No, you've got to cut costs, you can't spend any of this money." Kip Frey spent more money on one set than we wanted to spend on all of them. But then they were going to go hire a television production guy and let him spend the money. And then they said we hadn't had any ideas. We've had all those ideas, everything I did there I documented my opinions on and everything else for whatever it's worth. But, it was ignored.

 

I think that WCW is positioned to fail. I think Ted Turner realizes the value of wrestling, he knows what wrestling has done for his station. It was what made it a superstation, it was the first program that had over 100,000 homes watching it, and he understands it. But he is so insulated and he's so busy with other things and it's so minor to him and he turns it over constantly to people who do not understand it and they're more concerned with how you dress and how you talk than what the hell you're doing.

 

Clark: Do you think that there's still good money to be earned in pro wrestling now or do you think it is just that bad?

 

Watts: I knew what the state of the business was and I knew where we had to go, and I figured it would take about three years. First of all, you have got to develop new talent. You had to develop your own farm system to where you could get them experienced, but you had to have new talent. And you had to have a concept of training them. You had to go back to getting some athletes, not just going to the gym and getting some guy and say, "He looks good and he looks like he's probably been on steroids and he's got a big body," and you give him a gimmick and he can't even really do the gimmick, so there's nothing legitimate in the whole thing, sign him to a big contract and start booking him.

 

The New Japan Pro Wrestling was in much the same thing four or five years ago. Their big superstars retired and they started building their young stars. They had a dojo system where they'd make them come in and scrub the floors, do the wash and cook the food. They wanted a guy that wanted to be in wrestling more than anything in the world. They didn't go out and pay guys with overinflated egos to come into wrestling. WCW does the opposite, they go buy you into wrestling. So, a guy that doesn't give a shit about wrestling, can't wrestle, doesn't know anything about it, all he wants is the money. That's the caliber of athletes you get.

 

I think the business has gone so far one way, it needs to go almost 180 degrees the other way. But they say, "Why are you trying to attract a hardcore audience because only four percent of the people in the United States believe wrestling's real anyway?" I said, "That's what you don't understand, I don't give a shit what they believe." Nobody ever believed it was real. If you talked to ten guys in the front row in the 60s or the 70s or the 80s, and said, "Do you think wrestling is 100% legitimate?" They'd practically all say no. But they'd say those two guys are mad at each other. I think you've got to have some mystery, some drama, some suspense and some unpredictability, and you've got to have some athletic ability. They've been trained since about '87 that it's a cartoon. It's not going to happen overnight that you're going to train people back that there's more to it than just being a cartoon. We could have at least got the company where the bleeding would stop, we were in the process of that. But, it's not going to be easy. The athletes that have been slopping at the trough of overpaid and overegoed are going to fight that. But pretty soon they'll conform or else they would be out of a job. And the attitude was already changing except for a few guys. We had a few test cases. And all you have to do is stand firm. Because let me tell you, if you lost all of them, what difference would it make? You couldn't have drawn any less money or any less ratings. So none of them were indispensable.

 

Sting would have stayed anyway, Sting is probably the least of the problems. He works hard, he's not on steroids he was your top babyface. Most of the guys that have been in the old days like Ricky Steamboat or Barry Windham, guys like that that understood the ethic, they would have been there. So you lost a few primadonnas, it didn't make any difference, you needed to lose them. But see, the corporate executives at TBS, they don't understand that. They think you're building a team to win a game like the Braves. Well hell, you're not, you're building box office attractions. So you need change, you don't need the same people year after year. They think they have to have them all. One TBS executive told me, "The reason the Braves had a turnaround was because John Schurholtz went in there and cleaned up the front office. He quit the vulgarity, they had to dress corporately, they even put guys in uniforms selling the concessions in the stands. And oh yeah, he made a few good trades." I like just fell out of my chair. For him to reduce what's happened to the Braves to that analysis, it proves to me he doesn't know what the hell he's talking about. But, he was running our company. If all you had to do was make it look corporate to make it a success, every sports franchise that has a corporate ownership should be successful. Again, we knew where we were going and from day one I went there, the people I work for would go ask other people, "Does Watts know what he's doing? This is a small industry." What kind of confidence did that give me or anybody working for me? So all the detractors said, "Just ignore him, he ain't going to be here long." That's what I fought everyday, it was a very brutal situation, to be under such a microscope just trying to do a job. Hell, I knew what the hell we were going to do and I knew where it needed to go, and that's still where it needs to go.

 

Until it goes there, there's only one company that's going to make it, and that's Vince McMahon. Because he has to make money, he doesn't have all these other companies to fund his losses. Now then, if you're going to talk about an independent making money, it's going to be very, very hard for one simple reason. People in television, people who buy programming, they're followers, they're not leaders. Their perception, because wrestling is in a slump, is that the public has lost interest in wrestling. They don't understand that they've had Hulk Hogan there for ten years, that they've had all these top stars -Randy Savage- all these great stars, that they've had them for five, eight, ten years. And I don't care that you're not going to eat chocolate cake every week for ten years, it's stale. It's been mishandled, the whole system has been broken down. Wrestling is in a slump but they perceive the public has lost interest in it. What it is, the industry did not give the paying public what they want to see.

 

Then, they (people in television) have already been spoiled because of the war between Crockett, WCW and WWF. They started paying stations huge amounts of compensation in order to be on the air. So all of a sudden, a station doesn't want to play your wrestling unless you compensate them. An independent can't afford to do that. The next thing is, television programmers, since they don't understand wrestling, they look at wrestling for production value, for graphics, for cameras, for lighting, and that's how they judge it. An independent can't afford to spend that much on production. Let me tell you, WCW doesn't even come close to spending on our production what Vince McMahon does. And yet, we outrated him on cable every week. And we had to produce more with less stars and with less costs. How can an independent do that? At least at Turner Broadcasting you get a special rate on the truck and a lot of inner-company help on that, but an independent can't afford to do that.

 

The third thing is, if you're an independent, as soon as you build a star that could draw you some money, WCW or WWF will pick up the phone and he's gone. That's why I was starting to work back with Jimmy Cornette and I guaranteed him we would not take any of his talent unless he was ready for us to. That's what you have to do to rebuild the independents. You've got to assure them that they're not getting in bed with a tiger that's going to eat them. But that's not corporate mentality, they don't understand. So again, they shoot themselves in the foot. Why is Jerry Jarrett still in business? He doesn't build anybody that's over 6' tall unless they're family. Hell, Vince and WCW doesn't want any of those little guys. So what you have is stagnation, no turnover, no new development, and how's a young promotion going to overcome compensating the stations, glitzy production and keeping the talent? Independents can't do it these days. But, they're going to finish killing it off. It'll come back in some form. It happened once out of Los Angeles, it happened once out of Chicago where they had a similar situation. Never like this, but it will probably survive. But right now it's a very tough, tough thing to do.

 

Clark: How successful do you see Vince being in the future?

 

Watts: Vince McMahon's future is up to him, he controls his future. I disagree with them philosophically, he calls his family entertainment and he doesn't even want hardcore wrestling. And I think he's hurt the business because he's taken the mystery out of it. As soon as you tell everybody that it's not real and it becomes public knowledge, most people don't want to see it, they'll take their kids to see it. Let me ask you, if there was a great movie out there, would you want to know the ending of it before you went to it? How many times did somebody start telling you about the movie and I'd say, "Wait a minute, don't tell me, I want to go see it myself."

 

Clark: Well there seemed to be a great secret to The Crying Game and there was a big deal about nobody telling anybody about the plot.

 

Watts: Right. If I had known what the Crying Game's punchline was, I wouldn't have gone. As Barnette says, I'm homophobic. I'm not homophobic, I don't like fags. But I mean, that's my personal opinion. I have a right to that opinion. Fags don't like straights. Otherwise, then why would they seduce them? But, that's just my personal opinion. But the bottom line is, and I tried to tell the TBS guys about this, in a John Wayne movie, everybody knew he didn't kill the Indians, but they didn't get up and shake hands and ride off in the sunset together. Without having a kayfabe policy, the wrestlers do now. They also didn't tell you the end of the movie before it started, which with Turner Broadcasting and all the leaks in it, you guys know what the hell's going to happen in the arenas or the pay-per-views before it happens. As a matter of fact, how many times I can remember we had some matches run where they had advertised title changes before they happened because somebody else is sticking an ad in that we had no control over. And that's how loose it was up there.

 

That's where Vince, with his difference in philosophy, he shoots himself in the foot. Because no matter, what there's got to be a mystery and an aura of danger. If everybody thought that there would never be a wreck in a car race, do you think they'd still have that many people there? Why the hell would all these people pay and go see over the hill boxers fight each other? Because they still think it's fairly on the up and up and somebody might get knocked out. Shit, the fans turned my cab over when I wrestled at Forbes Field and it took forty policemen to get me to the ring to wrestle Bobo Brazil in Washington, DC. You used to have to fight for your life. None of the modern day heels have ever been in a riot because the fans don't believe anything they're doing anyway. The closest we had to it was Vader. But I mean to tell you, these guys don't know what the hell a riot is. One thing Sting said to me, it was so funny, "Well Bill, you know how the business has changed." I said, "You're right Sting, we used to have to draw money." With WCW, you don't have to draw money because you have everything guaranteed. At least Vince still makes them draw money to get the money.

 

At least Vince knows how to promote. Again, the only thing philosophically he and I disagree on is that his perverted- to me it's perverted because it's not what I believe in- concept of how to present wrestling where it's all a farce. But brother, he's such a strong marketer and he makes so many ancillary ideas that feed his company that he still makes a hell of a lot of money. But he was more vulnerable this past year than he's ever been. I don't think Hogan can save it for him for two reasons. No matter what, Hogan's about sixty pounds or so smaller from what I understand. Number two, he's lost a lot of his credibility with the fans in that he was a part of the lie. Number three, I don't think he would ever dedicate himself with the intensity he had when he was becoming a star. He also was at a megatrend in time where he became bigger than the business. He was the first wrestler that became a big movie star and he was the first wrestler on all those big talk shows and all the big media things. He became bigger than the business. That's one thing Vince did extraordinarily well.

 

And shit, TBS wanted to go out and have a contest to find the next Hulk Hogan. I mean, what the hell are you going to do with all those idiots? That's how little they understand. "Well, let's just go copy that." Dusty was told one time he had two or three days to come up with seven new wrestlers and they all had to have a name because they had seven new dolls to sell. They marched in and had seven new guys outfitted. None of them could do a thing and never drew a quarter. But that was their concept. I guarantee you before it's over, TBS and WCW will hire Hollywood script writers to start writing the storylines for wrestling. So then how much suspense are you going to have, how much mystery are you going to have? They'll have that writer on the talk show, he's the one that will get on the talk show, and he'll be telling what's going to happen for the next three months. So you don't even need to watch, he's already told you what's going to happen. Vince McMahon has really shot himself in the foot. But I think he realizes it and I think he's trying to do some things. Hell, at least he's paying the bills, he doesn't have to lay it off on anybody else. He either makes it or breaks it on his ability. He understands wrestling and he damn sure understands marketing.

 

Clark: Are you sad to see what the sport has become or do you still even consider it a sport?

 

Watts: I'm sad to see what it's become and I'm ashamed to be in it, with the people's concept of what it is today. Again, I think that the camaraderie is gone, I think there's so many things that were in it that made it a great, great sport. It's all gone. With WCW, your position on the card was determined by your contract. If you had $8 million in contracts, how could you get a new star and fit him into that? If you've got a guy guaranteed to a half a million dollars a year whether he draws five cents or doesn't, he's going to be booked and he's going to be booked in the top matches. You're not going to have him in the openers doing jobs for half a million a year. Where's your incentive?

 

Clark: Do you feel that an organization in today's age can survive and make money with the main focus of their product being athletics?

 

Watts: The NWA back when they were focused towards the athletic aspect, they were doing good. I don't mean totally because wrestling has always had its show biz in it. They were beating Vince in Philly, in Baltimore, everywhere they ran with him. He came in with Roddy Piper and Hulk Hogan and everybody against me in Oklahoma City and I beat his ass. Beat his ass. He couldn't draw a dime anywhere I was running against him. I'm not trying to say that it can succeed just with athleticism, I think you've got to have it all. But you've got to have the element of danger and you've got to have the mystery. And there is no mystery and there is no danger in today's wrestling. The only danger is, is one of these clumsy sonofabitches who don't give a shit, breaking somebody's back, breaks a job guy's shoulder. That's the only mystery. There sure isn't any mystery about the outcome of the matches. There sure isn't mystery about much of anything.

 

Clark: Where do you think you were headed with WCW?

 

Watts: I think we were on the correct concept. I thought we were set to turn the first important corner. I don't think the winning corner, but we turned the first corner. We were getting a lot of new talent in. We were getting a better attitude in the dressing room. The funny thing about the dressing room attitude was, the guys on guaranteed contracts wanted to know how many days off they had a month and the guys on contracts that were based per event wanted to know how many times they were booked during the month. That's the kind of attitude you need. The young guys were all going to the gym the days off and working out in the ring. We were going to eventually have our own school, our own training camp, just like the Japanese did. WCW, they'd see somebody like Bruce Baumgarten who's an Olympic champion, and they'd say, "God, just get him here. Buy him." Well, Bruce Baumgarten has never wanted to be in pro wrestling. Bruce is a purist. He's an Olympian, he does not want to be in pro wrestling. And I respect him for that. But shit, my bosses wanted me to, "Get him down here. We'll give him anything to be in this thing." What the hell, why do you go get a guy who doesn't even want to be here? If you give him enough money, he'll come. What do you have? You've got a guy that doesn't want to be in it. I'll tell you what, Sting, if he wasn't making $800,000 a year, he wouldn't be in it. He's at the point in his life, he's a good businessman, he's got his gymnasiums going, he's at the point where he doesn't have to do it anymore. Same thing with Hulk. You've got to want to be in it and you've got to love it above everything in order to be in it. That's the kind of athletes you've got to get in it. Wrestling has gone so far overboard to show biz that it has no credibility.

 

But still, WCW, we were doing the right thing. We just couldn't get rid of the dead weight. We couldn't get rid of the people who didn't understand what we were doing and that just wanted to save their damn job. I'm telling you, the memo wars that go on there are mind-boggling. It's more important to feather your nest and suck up to somebody and try to get rid of somebody or put them down or zing them or stab them in the back. My back looked like a porcupine. I was glad to get back to see some of the kids that cared. The ones that cared and knew what I was doing, they supported it. Supported it 100%. The people that cared and supported it and understood where we were going saw the progress we were making. A lot of people didn't see it. The funny thing is, even the critics, we were making progress on almost everything they said. And they're so in such a critic mode that no matter what we did, they're going to criticize us. That's like Halloween Havoc, we do a 0.96 buy rate, we marketed that thing great, and then we walk out there and can't produce. Well shit, you think it didn't cut my guts out too that our preliminary matches were outperforming our main events? I can't go in the ring for them.

 

Clark: Why exactly did you come back and try with WCW?

 

Watts: I think for the challenge and the fact that I know what's wrong with the business and I know how to fix it. What I didn't understand was, when they said they gave me total autonomy, I thought they would and they did not. And the next thing is, I didn't understand just how fucked up it was inner-company in Turner Broadcasting. That how many people are fucking with wrestling that don't know what the hell they're doing, and you have no control over them. We had no control on what promos TBS runs. If they promoted wrestling half as much as they promote the Braves, our ratings would be better than the Braves. If they promoted us as much as they promoted the Hawks, we'd beat the Hawks so bad that they'd look like a step-child in the ratings. They practically don't even promote us, and we still produce better than almost anything else. And they said, "Well gee, you're not doing 4.0s on the station." Well shit, they've got nothing on TBS that's doing 4.0s. Not only has wrestling downtrended, the whole cable TV audiences have downtrended. TBS' overall station averages downtrended. They can sit there and give me some statistics or some bullshit, but it just doesn't add up. It's like when they said the ratings have gone down. Well hell, the ratings were down already. I've got an announcer making half a million dollars a year that I can't tell him what to do. All he wants to make it is his show instead of what's going on. He talks right through what the hell's going on, makes fun at what's going on. Not a bad guy, but when he knows he's sitting in the driver's seat, why cooperate? I mean what the hell, he doesn't prepare before he gets there. So what, you can't fire him.

 

Clark: Do you feel that not having seen much wrestling in the five years you were out of the business before you returned had any effect on your performance at WCW?

 

Watts: No, I think wrestling stood still or went backwards. That's what everybody tried to lay off on me, that, "It's changed in the five years you were out of it." That's bullshit. The emotion that makes people buy tickets is the same damn emotion. The day we switched the title to Ron Simmons in Baltimore, there were people crying in the audience. My friend, that's the emotion like the old days. That's what everybody wants. Hell no, besides that, I was bringing the best brains in wrestling back together. I had Dusty, I was bringing in Greg Gagne- has a lot to offer to the business, he's grown up in it- Mike Graham, Bill Dundee, we were getting a lot of people into the wrestling aspect. It's just we were overloaded with the amount of production we were having to do, with facilities that can't handle it. If you see the facilities we had to do the production and post-production, and then compare it to Vince it's a joke. Vince's television is light years ahead of WCW's. The production facility that Keith Mitchell has to run, we don't have the equipment. WCW Saturday Night wasn't even edited in-house.

 

Clark: Was it being edited by non-wrestling people?

 

Watts: We were finally getting that addressed too. They had guys that had been in wrestling, but they had been on strictly the production side of wrestling. If you're late at night, you're tired, you'll let something slide. We had finally addressed that. We were going to put a wrestling guy in the booth that had control over the wrestling content with each editor. First, I put Ole doing that and Ole was trying to watch it, but it was too much for him to watch. But, he was making headway. And we finally had come up with a concept that, by gosh, we're going to have a wresting guy that's in control of the content of the final editing. And if he had anything that they had to referee then he would have brought it to me. We were delegating a lot of things out there and getting the right people to do it, but it takes time. It's been run like shit for three and a half years. You're not going to go turning it around in nine months, but we made a lot of progress. I left WCW in better shape than when I got there. I think most of it they've given back.

 

Clark: So overall, do you feel your reign as executive vice president of wrestling operations at WCW was a success?

 

Watts: I don't have to lose sleep over my effort there or the progress we made. We had nine major injuries, we had drug problems, we had a lot of things we had to address. But we were making progress. Anybody that knows wrestling knows we were making progress. Jerry Jarrett called me right after and said, "My God, Bill, you were making progress. You were giving everybody in the business hope again. If you can't do it, nobody can." Dory Jr. used to call, people like that Terry Funk's made a lot of comments, he's just lobbying for the job.

 

Clark: Did you succeed in meeting the goals you had set for yourself?

 

Watts: Well, you had to regroup your goals because there were too many things that you had to address on a daily basis that you didn't realize were going to be a problem. And you couldn't control the syndication, you couldn't control the editing, you couldn't control the promos, you couldn't control the leaks. I mean, it was a monster. So finally, I had to shut it down and I closed it down to three guys that knew what I doing. Then I started adding to the group, trying to keep it to where everybody didn't know what we were doing before we did it. And we caught some people. It was good. When Sting switched the title to Vader, nobody knew but Sting. Vader didn't even know until he got there that night. And Sting did a fabulous job. Sting, to me, showed just times of brilliance there. I know he and I sometimes are philosophically different, but I sure don't cry anything about his effort and especially when I understand what all he's been through before I got there. That's the thing too. So many guys have been through so much shit and lied to so many times before I got there, they didn't figure I'd last very long anyway. So, they didn't want to conform or give up anything. I can't blame them. If I was in Sting's position, nobody'd fuck with me. He's got them by the balls. So for being in that position, Sting's not a bad guy to deal with at all. He was sincere, he was easy to do business with, and be contributed.

 

Clark: Talking about your reign statistics-wise, do you...

 

Watts: My first goal was to get the Omni back healthy. When I got there, the show that was booked in there did $10,000. Well, we never did $10,000 again. We did as high as $70,000 (for Starrcade 92 PPV). So I think I got the Omni back on track. The next thing, I was trying to cut the pay-per-views and start building the pay-per-views and getting a price for them I think we were making headway. My next thing was to get WCW Saturday Night, was our flagship show, get a handle on it to where it was consistent. And we were building consistency and we were building a consistent rating. And that's all without getting to spend any money. So yeah, some of my goals I was able to meet. Some of them were very frustrating because I could not. By the time you get over there and you excite a bunch of people and you get them trying so hard, busting their ass so hard, you can't just leave them in the lurch. Until finally, you read the handwriting on the wall that no matter what you do, it ain't going to get done. They're not going to let you do it.

 

Clark: But didn't the pay-per-view buy rates drop...

 

Watts: Well, the first two were already booked when I got there. The first one that was mine was Halloween Havoc, that did a 0.96. We did a great job on it. The reason they dropped after that was because we had such a shitty performance. But God almighty, you figure if you can market something and get it there, you could at least perform. All the main events didn't perform. The match with The Steiners and Doc and Gordy was the shits, and Gordy didn't show up. Jake and Sting was the shits. We were scared Jake wouldn't even be at the show and didn't know that Gordy wasn't going to be there until the night before. The match with Rude and Chono was the shits. When Paul E. and Madusa can be the highlight of the show, you're hurting. That's what we were doing, we'd get something hot.

 

Do you realize we got Vader hot, and we lost him for months for knee surgery. How do you overcome that? He was the hottest thing we had. Then you get Jake hot, and you lose him. You can't lose the guys like that and maintain any momentum. You get Rude injured and then The Steiners get into their shit and they ride the injury clauses. So all of a sudden, you're without everything you had gotten built. We had the momentum two or three times there. When we lost Vader, we had to switch Rude into Simmons, there was no reason for Rude and Simmons. It wasn't built and it wasn't meant to be over, but we didn't have anybody to put against him. That tore down what we were building with Rude.

 

We were building the momentum again, it was showing in the WCW Saturday Night, in that the rating had stabilized and started growing. That's just life. Everything just does not work exactly the way you want it to, but you just go ahead and go. We had some good things, Maxx Payne was kind of different. Too Cold Scorpio added a little spark, he was green and not very smart but he was an exciting kid. We were at least trying things with other people. Benoit, a great athlete, look at how long it took us to get his contract worked out. Brian Pillman was a real breath of fresh air, that kid was just absorbing it like a sponge. We were coming along, but again, it takes time. I'd like to see them do it more faster but when you reorganize something that's screwed up for three and a half years, you have got to get down to the basics before you rebuild. I think we were on the right track.

 

I thought Ric Flair was the first bright spot. And Sid Vicious was wanting to come back under a very structured performance related type of contract and to reprove himself. He has that box office ability. I thought The British Bulldog was another piece of talent that could fit into our scheme of things. I thought we were really starting to get some exciting talent and the ratings were starting to show people were excited, never knew what the hell was going to happen, and they were pleased to see it. They were pleased to see some of the stuff we did with young Bagwell. We were doing a lot of fun things. I didn't ever feel that Turner Broadcasting would make the commitment necessary. I thought I could do it in a faster time but I just didn't realize how entrenched and how much sand bagging goes on.

 

Clark: So before you went in there you had a much different picture of what it would be like in that position?

 

Watts: Yeah, I didn't realize because I didn't know the inner-workings of Turner Broadcasting. If all you were doing was dealing with the wrestling it wouldn't have been quite as hard. It still would have been hard, but not quite as hard. But hell, you had to overcome Turner Broadcasting. I said many times, I felt my biggest thing, to overcome there was Turner Broadcasting. As a matter of fact, they had Bothan Allen do a study and one of their guys said, "I'm just amazed at the lack of cooperation between companies and the lack of communication within companies here at Turner Broadcasting."

 

Clark: Were there other things you did that you felt were positive?

 

Watts: We were excited. We had our direction set almost a year out. But, several times we just had to change it because things happened. With Flair, we actually could then look at planning pay-per-views a year or a year and a half ahead and know we were going to draw money and be on target because Flair gave us another ingredient. Hell, when I got there, it was either Sting and somebody or you didn't have anything. With Flair, it didn't take anything away from Sting. I thought we had really rebuilt Sting and he became our "Raider of the Lost Ark" type of guy. We put him in some real provocative danger scenes that were easy to market.

 

I was really excited about Barry Windham's attitude and the direction we were going to go with him, and his intensity and his excitement about it. He's always had all the ability, he's just always been taken to a certain point and dropped. So he never did really feel that anybody was ever going to do anything for him. So he always just did what he could to get by. Barry was really pumped and really busting his ass in the ring. He's one of the best workers in the business. He just needed to be motivated on a regular basis and have a goal, and he was starting to get that way. I was looking at all the positive aspects.

 

Clark: On the other side, do you feel there were some negative things that you did in there?

 

Watts: I'm sure. You know, when you get so caught up in getting shot down everyday, I think you get paranoid and you get caught up in paranoia. I think for damn sure there were some things. If I had to do again, there are a couple things I'd do different. I don't think anybody does anything exactly the way they want to or they're just lying about it. There were some things negative I did. I don't want to get into them, that's negative. I mean, hell, I made a lot of mistakes. There's no sense in going into those things. It's not going to do any good for anybody. Nobody's going to study this thing on how to do it anyway because nobody's going to get to do anything there. And if Ted sells TBS, where will WCW be?

 

Clark: What would you describe as your method to motivate the talent to work harder and take pride in their jobs? Having to do with contracts and then motivating them?

 

Watts: That's a hard thing having to deal with them contractually in one hand, in a business sense, and coaching them in the other sense. So that's a tough deal wearing both hats. But, it's necessary. It's like Mike Ditka said, "I'm used to dealing with self-motivating athletes. Now it's become where you're a babysitter." And Mike Ditka is a great coach. The people that hired me at TBS said, "Ditka, it's passed him by, he's a dinosaur." I said, "You all are crazy." How many guys can take somebody to the Superbowl? Let's stop and look at management for Ditka. What has management done for him? Name me one star that you could build a team with that management has signed for Ditka since he won the Superbowl. Then, let's name the Superbowl stars that management lost. Ditka's a hands on guy. He's a dressing room mentality guy. And they said, "See, he can't get a job." Can't get a job, he's getting paid $900,000 to lay out this year. He'll get a job. That's their understanding of this business. They just don't understand it. They told us in one of the meetings, they said, "This is no different than a widget business. We're tired of people telling us it's unique." Let me tell you, there are very few people in wrestling that ever really understood it anyway that were successful year after year after year. So, that's what you're battling there.

 

To motivate wrestlers, I'd tell them when they did good. I was constantly telling them when they did good. I would also tell them when they did bad, and tell them why they did bad. One of the greatest things that the young guys, the kids with their heads screwed on right, appreciated- we used to bring them right out of the ring and show them their match. Ole would sit there and go over their match right then on tape. You've got to realize, I came in when they used to do three balls shots in a match. Nobody got beat, nobody got hurt, they're hitting them in the nuts. And we're family entertainment. And I stopped that. They didn't like that. I started making them be on time. They didn't like that. I started making them show up. They didn't like that. I started making them stay when there was a championship match, until the end of the card. They didn't like that, they said, "Why should we watch the matches?" Why should you when you're getting paid no matter what? In the old days you'd watch the matches to see what the guy's doing so you could do it better. Who likes discipline? If you were out there playing football, would you want to run wind sprints? No.

 

So then, if you were the boss up there, you'd call up the guys and say, "Gee, what do you think about Bill making you run wind sprints?" They say, "We don't like it. We don't want to do that. We shouldn't have to do it." See, that's TBS' concept, they call down to the guys and they ask them if they like what I'm doing to make them have discipline. They've never been fined there for missing matches. Ron Simmons got fined three times. The last one was $5,000. Shit, he was the world's champion and missed three engagements. Scotty Steiner, I fined him $10,000 for missing his TV title. I said, "Ron, I gave you a better deal. You're world's champion and I only fined you half as much." Ron understood it. He didn't like it, but he understood it. I said, "Look at the opportunity I've given you, and you've missed three times."

 

Clark: You think most of the talent was motivated by your methods?

 

Watts: Why deal with most. You've got to understand, you don't deal with most. You'll never please everybody. There's no human alive that pleases everybody. Do you think Jimmy Johnson pleases everybody? No. You lay down the rules the way they need to be and you get the guys to conform. You don't ask them if they like what the hell you're doing. You've already got the tail wagging the dog, why would you go ask the tail what the hell it's doing. In the wrestling business, I've seen talent and they're never fully happy. I've never seen many of them lay down in the ring. I don't think the talent was laying down in the ring over a lack of motivation. I think they were trying. I think most of them don't know what they're doing.

 

Hell, we couldn't even lay out a finish. Our finishes had to be so simplistic, I couldn't believe it. I even laid out one myself one time and Mike Graham said, "Those guys can't do it." I said, "Mike, that's so simple anybody could do it." They screwed it up. The business has regressed because there was no challenge mentally. How can you challenge anybody mentally to do anything when they get paid the same no matter what they do. That's what people that have never been there don't understand, they don't understand that. They don't understand what it takes to go big time because they didn't have to. If you're getting paid guaranteed no matter what you do or whether you're sick or you're hurt or whatever, there's no edge. There's no edge. It came out in the Atlanta paper, funny thing, that there's about ten guaranteed contracts in the NFL and most of those are quarterbacks. Pierce Holt just got the new one with the Atlanta Falcons where they guaranteed, even if they cut him, put him on waivers, didn't play him, if he gets hurt, he gets paid. To me, that's dumber than naming shit.

 

Clark: Do you think some of guys didn't like your methods because you were coming in there and making major, major changes?

 

Watts: I think some of them got an attitude problem and I think some of them conformed. Some conformed and some got an attitude problem. But that happens with anybody in anything. So, it was no worse or no better. We would have eventually cleaned house and had guys that had the right attitude. But that takes time. It's nothing I haven't had to do before. Before that, since it was a wrestling company, I was supported. Here, they cried to the bosses and they would wring their hands and hold their hands, "Oh, we're sorry, Bill's just too hard on you, this, that and the other thing." I mean, it's fucking ridiculous. It's like a babysitting job, it's like Ditka said.

 

Clark: Did you find yourself having a hard time dealing with the office personnel on a day in and day out basis?

 

Watts: No, I ignored most of it. What the fuck, I don't have time to deal with the office personnel. That's what they would say, that I don't accept their input. Why would I make a "Master of the Snapping Hold." And I didn't have the time. Maybe in a year I'd have had time. You put people in charge and you delegate things, and you don't have time to listen to everybody. I mean, that's ludicrous. That's not even sane. Nobody does that, if you're running a company. I made Brenda Smith office manger, I thought she did a great job. Nobody else did, but I did. But, I listened to a lot of problems and I coped with a lot of problems. You're working eighteen to twenty hours a day, you didn't have time to listen to all the little nit-picking. You'd get so sidetracked doing that. What everybody wants to do, John, is they want to digress and they want to analyze the bacteria accountability and human kindness of my regime. So they want to pull it apart into little bitty pieces but none of them know what the hell the overall picture was anyway. So really, I could never explain to you the whole thing or justify it or anything else. I don't have to. But, I could never do it and make you understand it anyway unless you'd been there. If you hadn't been to the show, you don't understand what it is until you get there. You can only be an outsider looking in.

 

That's why I always said that Meltzer and Keller ought to start their own wrestling promotion. Because they're experts on it, they'd have to be instant successes. But, I haven't seen anything start out yet in their name. The other thing is, thank God there's not been many statues or memorials erected to critics in the world. Because critics generally don't accomplish anything, they're just tearing down things. So no matter whether I did good or did bad, at least I was there. I know I did something good. I know I was in the right direction. I know I did some things bad but I know most of all I had no support. If I was there, Dusty Rhodes would still be where he is. I was bringing in a booking committee. They started saying that I had to have Sharon Sidello on my booking committee. For what? So then all of a sudden, I'm anti-women. I'm not anti-women, never have been. But, what the hell is she going to contribute to my booking committee?

 

Clark: What kind of communication did you have with your bosses on the job you were doing?

 

Watts: They knew exactly what I thought at all times, they just didn't agree. But they don't tell you that, they go behind your back. The guys that I thought were doing their job, I got along with great Dennis Brent, Tony Schiavone, I got along with them great. But you've got to understand it's a political game there. If they think you're in control, then they'd listen to you and to the things they're told to do. If they think you're not, they just nod and then they don't do a thing.

 

Clark: What was an average day at WCW like for you?

 

Watts: Generally, you'd start with meetings with your key department heads. The biggest thing you had there was producing television. It took precedent over everything because it's a television company. And we were producing so damn much with basically a minimum of expense for that type of thing. If you had compared our television production to the WWF's in budget and in equipment used and everything else, it would be like a Volkswagen compared to a Rolls Royce. Our production staff was overworked. A lot of the stuff that we had to do editing-wise, post production-wise, it had to be hired out because we just didn't have the capacity. It was just a constant grind, when you're doing that and the pay-per-views and the Clashes. You had so much production so you really spent a lot of time just trying to keep the television fed and keep up with the injuries and the talent and everything else. Actually, the house shows, which were already so disastrous, were the last and least important at WCW. Which basically is the way it should be with a television company and the potential of pay-per-view. You were dealing with the contracts, with all the legalities, and trying to work in through Turner Broadcasting legal to get the contracts done. It was generally a twelve to fifteen hour day of putting out fires.

 

Clark: It being a TV company, was it tough for you to produce that many hours of TV a week compared to when you only had one hour a week of TV with Mid South?

 

Watts: Your biggest thing is your quality control. We didn't have the time to look at every product as it was finished and as it aired. And the problem with WCW is so many people access the final product. If you were going to sit there and watch on the weekend all the products, you'd have to watch five to seven hours of product a weekend, you'd have been going crazy. What you thought was in the can is not necessarily what hit the screen. You had no control over the commercials that TBS put in on the stuff on TBS. And so, often times you'd have a commercial that you had built into your end of the product and they had a commercial on their end of the product, and the commercials, even though pointing to the same event, may be totally different in context and structure. One time we were promoing the title change before it changed on the television. So you just never knew what the product finally was when it got on the air. You knew what you had shot and knew how it looked in your mind. We had to start critiquing. And we started critiquing the WCW Saturday show each week, and that's when it started really coming together. But, that was a big problem. We were just starting to address how to setup quality control for everything else. Generally, the syndicated show, you had different people assigned to watching it, but we were going to be having a more hands-on approach in the actual post production.

 

Clark: How were you going about critiquing the shows? Did you have people from outside of the company involved in that?

 

Watts: Yeah, Steve Beverly was starting to write a weekly critique. I was going to make him actually be contracted to do that. We were starting to make assignments. We were going to assign two wrestling people to each show. Say, like a Michael Hayes and another guy to a certain show, Jim Ross and somebody to a show, Tony Schiavone and somebody to a show. Initially, Ole was trying to oversee them, and it just swamped him. They had no equipment up in the office where you could really sit and do a pre-post-edit where you take the raw footage and look at the time codes and pick out where you wanted to get in and get out of some stuff. That's the first thing we did with Ole and his office. With all that production going on, it was really on a shoe string type operation for a company that size.

 

The other aspect was, you were always fighting TBS to try to get them to promo it. If they'd promo it a third as much as they promo the Hawks' basketball and the Braves' baseball and their movie packages, it'd be getting a better rating no matter what. Their logic was, "Well, it gets a good rating without it." And I said, "I just can't understand how supposed intelligent people can make a decision like that." Because if it's getting a good rating when you're comparing it with the overall TBS station ratings averages, and it's getting a good rating anyway, it could even do better with promoting. Why then would you not say, "Take the Braves which were hot and going to the World Series and quit promoting them because they were getting a good rating anyway?" "Well, we wouldn't do that." Their logic was so illogical. It was constant in every aspect. You were fighting inner-company situations that you could not control. That was the illogical and the arrogant ignorance that you combatted on every level. Everybody had access to our product to stick stuff in or take stuff out that we had no control over. The quality control was the biggest problem with the television.

 

Clark: If you could turn back the clock, what might have you done differently while you were in there?

 

Watts: First of all, the people that hire you have to be confident that you know what you're doing. And they never believed in me at all and never believed in me philosophically. They don't understand the business. So from the time I was there, you had to justify everything you did. I have a lot more sympathy for the President of the United States after being through a corporate situation like Turner Broadcasting. Because Ted understands the value of wrestling. He knows what it did for his superstations. But he's so insulated and wrestling's not the biggest thing on his plate. So you couldn't sit down with him. Because he's the only person that could have cut through all the corporate bullshit and say, "Hey boys, we are going to cooperate with WCW." Because WCW could have been a tremendous cash cow for Turner Broadcasting if we'd have gotten all phases of it properly aligned. But, you couldn't do it. The people that are pulling the strings don't understand it. It's unbelievable that they could have so little cooperation to be effective. Vince McMahon told me himself, he said, "My gosh, Bill, aren't vou amazed? Turner Broadcasting should be dictating and running wrestling worldwide. If you could pull all the strings that were necessary, you could kick my butt, couldn't you." I said, "Yeah, we could kick your butt so easy. But, you're right. Your business is the wrestling business. They don't understand the wrestling business." So, the only person that's ever going to stop Vince is Vince himself. And he knows that, he knows the power of Turner Broadcasting.

 

Clark: Were you ever happy or comfortable in your position while you were working for WCW?

 

Watts: I always felt from the day I got there when I made the first couple of decisions about people that were department heads in WCW that I wanted to replace... Because they lectured, Bill Shaw and Bob Dhue would say, "We want a winning team here and if you're not going to be on the team, get out." And I'd say, "Here, this person is not on the team. They're against the team. We've got to get rid of them." Within the first three weeks you could see that wasn't going to happen. I knew then that the deck was stacked. But by then I had people committed and was bringing people in and had people excited because they knew that with me there - Dusty Rhodes, Ole Anderson, Jim Ross, Schiavone - all those people knew with me there that I could pull this thing off. But I couldn't because they sandbag you. So, no, it was a very, very nervous, very frustrating, and a very paranoid time because they're like babies, they'd laugh in your face and shit in your hand. And it was behind your back. And then the sheets are doing their tear down and the guys in the North Tower say, "Well, we don't read that." That's a crock of shit, not only do they read it, they supply information to it. So much of the information that was so classified in some ways that got out, had to be people in high positions getting it out. You're business was on the streets to be analyzed, half the time before the event happens.

 

I used to call WCW a "clusterfuck." That was my whole description for TBS and WCW. It was a classic example of how to take a great industry, wrestling, and totally fuckin' destroy it and make it a loser. When I got there the figure I was told by Bill Shaw, "Try to keep the losses this year below $1.8 million." Even the controller in November was memoing upstairs, "Oh my gosh, Watts is going to take it over, we're going to lose over $1.8 million." Shaw called a big meeting and he was going crazy about it. We came in at some $421,000 (loss). Now, they had some CRT money. There was an awful lot of bookkeeping entries that helped not really paint the true picture of WCW. Even without the CRT money, we still came in below the $1.8 million. But, I couldn't get a letter of commendation to everybody in WCW for the good job we did. All you ever got was the shit for what they didn't like. I take that back, we got good praise on one or two things.

 

But, here's the most critical factor. And then when I was talking to him, he said, "Ted's upset because his figure is $500,000 (loss)." That's when I said, "My God,there's no way then that I can't be made to look bad because if Ted's been told it's only going to lose $500,000 - they've been telling me for the first six months not to lose over $1.8 million - either way, I'm fucked. When you realize that, pretty soon you realize what you are. You've been brought in there as the expendable person. They hoped that you would kick it in gear, and then they'd get rid of your ass. So, they have to start building their file on you for all the little bitty chicken shit things they can do to prove that you're not a good "corporate person," you don't dress like a corporate person, you don't talk like a corporate person, you don't suck up like a corporate person. It's like you're a loose cannon. Since they don't understand what you're doing and where you're going, all the little nitpicking shit outweighs the positives you've started doing. The positives - to stop the bleeding. We were going to make this company successful. We had to fight and regain control of the contracts and the exorbitant amounts of money that were just totally wasted there.

 

Clark: About two months before you resigned, were you getting more uneasy at that point?

 

Watts: I was totally disenchanted and wanted out. To tell you the truth, my contract didn't specify that I would have gotten my moving expenses and anything severance-wise paid if I resigned. Or else, I would have resigned sooner because I was totally disenchanted. I knew my nuts were being cut and they were trying to play the old game and cut your nuts one step at a time. The longer I was there the more frustrated and worse it was. I was just wanting out - hell, I didn't make any money as it was to go over there - but I didn't want to eat the moving costs, because my moving costs were $20,000. You couldn't control Jesse Ventura, you couldn't control his contract, you had all these primadonnas with these huge contracts who got paid whether they worked or not. We were making headway. We were getting guys back out to the gym. Ole and Jody Hamilton were doing a hell of a job at the gym working out with the guys. But hell, the stars didn't have to go to the gym. "Why do I have to go? I get paid the same." I mean, you were really fighting the deal.

 

It would have taken eighteen months to three years to really do it right. We were making the right headway and we were going the right direction. The television ratings were stabilizing and growing. The syndication, it was just unbelievable that they get $600,000 in 1992 for syndicating our program and they lost 25% of our market. And the station list that they had was horrible. Our lead-ins were infomercials and you couldn't build a rating. They'd lay it off on, "Well, the ratings are down." The ratings were down when I got there. Let's talk about what really happened to these stations. That $600,000 was going to go to $1.2 million in 1993 for TPS (Turner Programming Services) to do the syndication. Why the hell if you lost 25% of our network should you get your money doubled? We could not do one damn thing because nobody in TPS had to answer to us. They had a very smart man that they put in charge of TBS named Grumbles and we had a meeting with him. He said, "Man, I identify your problem, I've heard these horror stories. But I can't help you for eighteen months, I've got so much on my plate. You need to get your own syndicator." I was elated. That was in November. Then the old sandbagging. We couldn't get a quality guy in there because it wasn't in our budget. The sandbag was that we could not take that $1.2 million out of TPS's budget next year. And I said, "What the hell are they doing to earn it?" We could build the best syndication in the business on probably 40% of that. A quality one. Because syndication in wrestling is simply building and maintaining relationships at the stations, which TPS was not doing. Those guys at TPS thought, in my opinion and everybody at WCW, that wrestling was beneath them. They didn't understand it. They thought all wrestling was the same, just like all Mexican food's the same, all Italian food's the same. They'd rather do The Wonder Years, CNN, and movie packages. Wrestling was not their cup of tea. We had no control. And it looked like we were going to get control but then here came the old joker in the deck, "Well, wait, you can't hire anybody that's any good because we don't have anybody to find them." And I'm saying, "Boys, you've got a $12 million income stream that's attached to our syndication, and we're underdelivering." They're panicking about the underdelivery. Then you've got to fix it. No matter what, you have to fix it. And you've got to fix it with a good syndicator.

 

I interviewed two guys and then they took me out of the loop. Then the next thing I know, they hire a guy, in my personal opinion, that's not good for the job or the company. I found out he'd even been fired from WCW some time ago for embezzling. In my personal opinion, Rob Garner is a nice guy, but he's not a high-powered syndicator, he's not a high-powered closer. We couldn't get him out from behind his desk and on the road. That was another change I wanted to make, and I couldn't make it. By that time I was just still trying to do the things we needed to do for the television. But, I was losing heart. Pretty soon, the paranoia and the backstabbing finally get to you and you know all the personal problems that are in there that you're trying to deal with and overcome, and you can't. Hell, you've got more people against you than for you. I mean, it's simple, when you go into a deal and take it over, you've either got to have people for you or you get rid of them. You can't have people that are behind your back telling all the reasons why it's not going to work. I don't care who you are. I've often characterized this thing, that if a young Ted Turner were working in this company under the same hierarchy or the same chain of command I was, he'd get fired because they wouldn't understand him. They wouldn't know what made him unique. They wouldn't know that what he did was unique. They've actually said, "We're tired of hearing that wrestling is unique. It's no different than any other business. It's just like you're making widgets." Boy, when I heard that, I just said, "Well, there's no sense in me trying to bust my ass here because that's ridiculous." How come there was so few successful people year after year in pro wrestling, anyway? If it's so simplistic and all that needs to be done is dressed up in corporate clothes to be successful. Everyone would be successful.

 

Clark: Do you think that because of that frustration and the paranoia that you were like a time bomb ready to explode?

 

Watts: Yeah, without a doubt. And it finally did, I finally blew my stack. Yeah, it got me, it finally got me. I was through, I was ready to go home.

 

Clark: Do you feel that might have caused a lot of the anger you showed when you were either in the dressing rooms or...

 

Watts: Oh, in the dressing room I've always been intense. The anger is overexaggerated. It's overblown. Mike Ditka was intense, and the media crucified him for it. Because the media is doing that now. But, Mike Ditka's intensity is what took the Chicago Bears to the Super Bowl. Lombardi was intense. Jimmy Johnson is so intense. Don Shula's intense. They don't handle their athletes with kid gloves. That's bullshit. When you're teaching athletes you're chewing ass. Go see Lou Holtz coach. They chew their asses out. You show me a guy that is not emotional and a guy that is not passioned, and you'll see a group of guys that don't give a shit either. So, that's been overblown. One of the things Shaw said, "We don't scream at David Justice, we scream at his agent. We don't scream at Deion Sanders, we scream at his agent. We want the athletes happy." How do you think it ever got so fucked up? Corporations started buying these companies and didn't have the testicles to stand up to the athletes. Do you think the agent goes and screams at his client? Hell no. So, the guy that's causing the problem never gets addressed. Well, me, I'm a hands-on guy. And they told me, "Well, look at Ditka, that's what got him fired." That's not what got Ditka fired, the owner didn't like him. The same thing like my boss didn't like me, didn't believe in me. Guys like Ditka will be back in the game if he wants in the game because you can't find that many intense guys that will run and drive a team. It takes a lot of energy.

 

So, my dressing room thing was chewing ass and correcting. But, it was positive. The kids that were growing and open-minded really loved it because nobody had ever told them what they did wrong, nobody ever gave a shit, and nobody ever knew. We all of a sudden had a system where we could take your tape right then and put it into a monitor and Ole Anderson started correcting you right then. We didn't have a lot of dressing room problems. It was overblown by the sheets, too. When I got there, Dusty Rhodes said in a year he had not had one single card that had everybody show up. Well, we cut the no-show rate and the late rate way, way down. Because brother, if you were late, I didn't give a damn what the excuse was, you got fined. If you no-showed, no matter what the excuse was, unless you were hospitalized, you got fined. Before that, they'd get fined and then they'd go up to the bosses and the bosses would give them their money back. So, there was no discipline. The inmates ran the asylum.

 

I've been in every major territory in the United States as a wrestler, before I was a promoter, and I never saw the wrestlers happy. They always had something to bitch about. I've never seen athletes anywhere that were always happy, they were always bitching. That's the nature of the beast. You have to be dissatisfied to drive yourself and to go harder and harder and harder. So, that stuff is overblown by people that don't know shit from shinola about it. My dressing room demeanor, I wouldn't have changed that much at all. It was making headway. There was guys that really and truly appreciated it, and they'd tell me that on the side. Even some of the guys who were trying to raise hell in front of everybody, on the side were telling me how much they appreciated it.

 

Clark: With Mid South, just in the wrestling aspect, you always believed in an unpredictable and exciting style of wrestling. Was that hard to do at WCW because of all the different channels you had to go through before things could be carried out?

 

Watts: It was initially, number one. Number two, because of the ability of the athletes. The athletes have lost the ability to do their trade. Very few of them could actually execute and carry out anything that was very difficult. Dusty told me, Ole told me, Mike Graham even one time came in and said, "My God, Bill, those guys can't do that." I said, "Anybody can do that." After it was over, he said, "Didn't I tell you?" I said, "You're right." It was very frustrating. So you had to go back to real basic things. We got the surprise and the unpredictability back in certain instances. We had a lot of major injuries. We lost The Steiners. We lost, due to personal problems, Gordy and Jake the Snake. I mean, you didn't have a lot of great leaders that could really execute things.

 

That's why I was so excited about getting Ric Flair back. Because Flair, no matter what, has tremendous personal pride in having the best match on the card. Whereas, a lot of the guys just sat out there, they didn't give a damn. When I started telling them they had to stay and watch the matches they all got mad. In the old days where you were competing for the top spot and your income was based upon what the company was drawing, you watched the main events so you could outdo them. And here's these pompous asses telling me, "Well, you know, we can't find a place in the buildings where we can really watch a match without the crowd hassling us." When we're not even drawing 25% of the building full, these prima donnas can't find a place to watch so they can learn and compete. When I was active in the business, when the buildings were selling out, I could always find a place to watch what my competition was doing because I was motivated. It's like Sting told me one time, "Well, Bill, the business has changed since you were out of wrestling." And I said, "You're right, we used to have to draw money. " None of these guys have ever drawn any money. They all tell you how much money they've drawn but they haven't drawn any money. That's what TBS couldn't understand. I said, "If you clean house and get rid of all of them, we're not any worse off. We could start over, because nobody's drawing anything anyway. " So at least we were going out and trying to give young guys a chance and trying to get some guys with some athletic background instead of some guy that had gotten his muscles out of a bottle and his attitude out of a chemical, that they thought looked neat so they made him a wrestler.

 

Clark: Was there control from TBS about what was shown on WCW's television, like violence or blood?

 

Watts: Not only that, but the leaks to the cable companies, the leaks to the sheets, and everything else. That's why I started limiting who was in my inner circle to three people, to try to shut down the leaks. When the sheets were getting our booking sheets, you could look at the deal at Halloween Havoc and realize that if Harley and Vader were going to show up when they weren't booked, you knew something was going to happen. It was just that the access to everything we did was so public that it was hard to have surprises for everybody. But we started getting a lot of unpredictability. We shocked some of the athletes. The thing as Jake Roberts returned in Baltimore, that was well done. Even the boys didn't know. When Vader beat Sting for the first time with the world's title, nobody knew. Bagwell, in one town where they had him go over Brian Pillman in about thirty seconds, he could not believe it. Neither could Brian Pillman. Pillman saw the reaction he got. Pillman is one of the kids that really developed an open mind and was really willing to try stuff, and it was exciting to watch him develop. Steve Austin was starting to get that way. And these were kids that we had problems with when we first went there because the guys would get these kids to carry the flag for shit that they wanted to stir up. They would influence these kids the wrong way because they don't know any better.

 

Clark: After dealing with Dusty Rhodes at WCW, did your opinion of him change at all?

 

Watts: The first thing I had to do when I got there was to see where Dusty's head was about me coming there, otherwise I'd have had to fire him that day. There was no problem, Dusty just wanted a job. Dusty's one of the most creative guys in wrestling, both as a wrestler and as a booker, and as a television mind, and a pay-per-view mind. Dusty's problem was, with all the stuff he had to produce, his follow-through was lacking. In other words, he would not maintain continuity. Continuity has always been his problem. And when you put him in a situation where you're producing so much more, continuity is even a bigger problem then. Dusty was just doing what was required of him. A lot of people don't understand, the booker is the visible guy, so he gets all the blame. But if Jim Herd walked in and said, "I want seven new guys next week because we've got seven new dolls," Dusty had to go get them.

 

Dusty is a creative, creative guy. He loves this business. We were building a staff around him to stop the mistakes and to support the continuity. And with the people we were bringing into the booking meeting, we were getting the ideas, the ideas were starting to flow real good. We were out often times a year ahead on what we were going to do. And then you'd have a guy get injured or something, gets screwed up, and you'd have to revamp it. We weren't just booking day to day, we had plenty of plans. We had nine guys out from one period of time or another that were top guys in nine months. That's pretty hard to overcome.

 

Clark: From your position as a promoter, how tough is it to find real friends in the business that won't backstab you to further themselves?

 

Watts: That's always been in the wrestling business. That's in any business, unfortunately. Loyalty is an old-fashioned trait that is not really and truly respected or believed in today. I don't have a problem with the guys I was working with as far as what they were doing. If Bill Shaw called Dusty up, he's going to cover Dusty. But basically speaking, Dusty gave me everything he had. Jim Ross gave me everything he had. If he got the chance he's going to put Jim Ross over. Ole Anderson begged me for a job, and I gave him the job. I'm disappointed in him because he went behind my back, and he knew what I was doing was the right thing, but he wanted the money more. And he saw he had an inside door. It probably wouldn't change what I was going to do because I was looking to get out of there anyway. I just don't like the way he did it or the fact that he hasn't returned my calls. I called him twice to congratulate him on taking my position, and he wouldn't return my call. Would I trust Ole again? No.

 

Clark: Are you upset that he was the man to take over your position?

 

Watts: No, somebody had to be there. I could care less, I was gone. I don't like the way he did it, behind my back. The last two weeks I was there I couldn't find him. When all of a sudden your television directors are making independent edit decisions, overruling you, you realize pretty quick that they've been told and they've seen no matter what that I couldn't control them either. That's the game Bill Shaw plays. He'd break the departments up and say, "I'll put this guy under this guy." That's the same thing with Bob Dhue. Bob Dhue is no longer in charge of everything up there. He's there to be sacrificed and mobbed, in my opinion, also at this point. So Shaw's always going to insulate himself That's the corporate game.

 

Clark: How did being at WCW change or effect the relationship that you had built with Jim Ross over the years?

 

Watts: I don't think anything happened. I was overruled on Jim Ross, that's one of the reasons I quit. Bill Shaw took him off the air. That's to me the stupidest move they ever did. Jim Ross' 900 number was doing $500,000 a year, and he was writing Missy Hyatt's number that did $200,000 a year. And they haven't even touched that with anybody's production sense. They tried to get Flair to pick it up, but even Flair coming back couldn't pick up what Jim Ross' productivity was there. Jim Ross was one of the most productive guys there. Jim Ross was not only always well prepared as an announcer, he sat in on the booking, he helped maintain continuity. I mean, this kid is a complete kid. He was just all of a sudden axed. He was Vice President of Television. The next thing he knew, he was, as an after thought, told to report to Rob Garner, who he'd been trying to fire because he wouldn't go to work. Jim was fucked.

 

The way they play the corporate game, they still pay you your money while they're fucking you. But then Jim just finally said, "Hey, I'd better see what my options are," because he recognized the handwriting on the wall, too. So he called Vince McMahon, and Vince McMahon said, "Boy, I'm glad to see you're free. You're damn right, come to me." Jim's called me three or four times. He called me during the whole process that he was going through. At times (my position in the company caused our friendship to suffer). At times I had to chew his ass when he'd screw up and get in a rut. But hell, I'd done that all his life in the business, anyway. At times there was strain, but Jim's really resourceful and doesn't stay down. That just motivates Jim. He'll go to work and come in with ten different new ideas. That doesn't keep Jim Ross down. Nothing's going to keep Jim Ross down. And I told Vince McMahon when I talked to him, I said, "You've really got a good man in Jim Ross." If Ted Turner woke up to what was happening and said, "Gee, we've got to get this straightened out," one of things for me to take a look at is the fact that I don't have Jim Ross. Because Jim and Dusty were the two most important people I had there.

 

Clark: In early February, about a week before your resignation, some of your power was diluted...

 

Watts: Oh yeah, but they'd been doing that all along, anyway. So then Bill Shaw came with his new chain of command, and I thought his new chain of command was fine. But I had already read the handwriting on the wall. I wasn't going to stay. What their plans for me would have been, I don't know. With them you could probably stay there as long as you wanted to, as long as you kept your nose clean and said yes to the right people, you could collect your check. But I never went over there to find a job, I went over there to do a mission because I love the business. I think that's where everybody loses it. I didn't apply for this job, they called me, and I said, "No, I don't want to even come talk to those idiots over there until they've convinced me new people were involved that would give me autonomy." That's what I was promised. The first three weeks I was there I wrote a game plan on how to compete with Vince McMahon, and they rejected that. And then they rejected every department head change I wanted to make in WCW. All they wanted me to do was fire Dusty. And I didn't see any reason to fire him until you had somebody better than he was. I wanted to reach out and get everybody who had ability in wrestling and bring them in. I was putting most of my money in the booking department.

 

Clark: Was your resignation mostly your decision or was it mostly forced upon you because of the situation with Hank Aaron?

 

Watts: It wasn't forced on me at all. When Bill Shaw called me and Bob to come over and talk about the Hank Aaron deal, Bob Dhue and I were sitting in my office and I was telling Bob I was leaving. And Bob was about to cry. Because even though he and I had had our problems, he realized that I had never lied to him and that I knew what I was doing. And he was really sad about it. But I said, "Bob, they're going to get you, and I'm going on. I don't want to sit around and watch it. And then Bill Shaw says, "What about the Hank Aaron deal?" I said, "Well, Bill, first of all, that's bullshit and you know it." And he said, "Yeah, I really know it, but it's kind of a corporate liability right now because of Hank's position with Marge Schott." I said, "Well, it isn't a corporate liability." He said, "Why?" I said, "Because I just told Bob I'm going on." And he said, "Well, are you sure that's what you want to do?" And I said, "Yeah, if you all take care of me." He said, "Well, what do you want?" I told him, and they gave it to me.

 

Clark: How did you feel when you found out that Mark Madden (Pro Wrestling Torch newsletter columnist and Pittsburgh Post Gazette sportswriter) had faxed the interview in question to Hank Aaron?

 

Watts: Oh, well, it's something that if you were trying to sit and figure out what some scumbag would do, then you could figure out that that's something a scumbag would do. My record in pro wrestling has never been racist towards blacks. I have been more pro-Black than any promoter/owner in the business. Mark Madden knows that as does everybody in the sheets. He thinks he's a power broker. I think, to tell you the truth, that Hank Aaron got way out on a limb on that whole situation and that that was a manipulation by TBS and for baseball. I tell you, in this country when you don't have the right to think what you want to think or say what you believe, you've got a lot of problems in this country. If you think TBS is not racist, you're naive, in my opinion. Do you think racial comments aren't made by TBS executives behind closed doors? The difference is that Marge Schott got brought to the front.

 

Clark: Do you feel Mark Madden basically did that out of spite?

 

Watts: What does he not do out of vindictiveness. I think he's a little bit intoxicated about himself I think he thinks he's a lot more important than he is. Here's a guy that wouldn't have the balls to say anything like some of the things he said about Bruno Sammartino to his face. If he wasn't hiding behind the production of suing Sammartino, Sammartino would backhand him. To me Mark Madden, in my personal opinion, if he was in the men's bathroom he'd be singing "Stranger in Paradise." I mean, he's not what I call a real man. He's one of these people that hide behind this power of the press to slander and to viciously attack people. I have no personal respect for him at all. I don't even know the guy. I've read enough of his articles to see that he just writes whatever he thinks will get the reaction he wants, without any, any consideration of how truthful it is. I was asked about that article (that contained comments by Watts that were viewed by some as racial) when I was being interviewed to be at WCW. And Bill Shaw said that. That was part of his file that he had to build because Bill Shaw never believed in what I was doing. He didn't understand it. He thinks it's a widget business.

 

Clark: What have you been doing since you resigned?

 

Watts: I haven't been doing much of anything. I've been to the Grand Caymans with a couple of my kids to go diving. I've been enjoying my wife and family, and seeing friends in Tulsa. I'm just starting to get bored enough now to start looking at several projects, but I haven't picked out anything that I'm really going to devote all my time to.

 

Clark: Has anyone you worked with at WCW contacted you since you left there?

 

Watts: Yeah, but we better not say much about that because they'd get in trouble. They're scared. They are scared. It's almost like when you fall out of favor at TBS, you've got the plague. Guys, that if you scratched your ass, you're liable to scratch your eyes, all of a sudden you can't find them. The people that count that are still there are still my friends and still believe in what I was doing. Every decision I made there wasn't the best decision. You could always go back and probably do something a different way, but the overall direction we were going in was the best thing for wrestling and would have been the best thing for TBS. It would have given it stability. So, I don't lose any sleep over that. I am glad I experienced "corporate America" and the frustration. I think it gives me much more empathy for our President of the United States who goes in with probably a lot of things he thinks he can accomplish and then he finds that there's so many people with their own agendas and hidden agendas that are fighting him tooth and nail behind his back, that he can't really affect anything. I think that Ted has gotten so big that there's a lot of people with their own agendas up there that certainly aren't doing the things that are in the best interest of TBS. And that's without a doubt.

 

Clark: Do you feel that you might have a problem working for a boss?

 

Watts: I've never had a problem working for a boss. See, that's another one of those knocks. One of the most productive times of my life was with Eddie Graham. He was a pleasure to work under. I got along great with Roy Shires. I got along with Verne Gagne. He and I had great arguments, but I had a deep respect for him and he had a deep respect for me. I knew he was boss, I still would argue and fight with him, and I think he appreciated it. He didn't want a "yes man." "Yes men" really don't add a lot to your life. I'm not saying I wouldn't work for somebody. I'm just saying I'm an entrepreneur. It's real frustrating to see what needs to be done, and you can't do it.

 

Clark: Are you a much more happier and calmer person now?

 

Watts: God, yeah. Everything I said to you, that WCW was like a nine month nightmare. That's what I told Bob Dhue, I said, "You know, Bob, the business that you're in has to be fun. And how much fun are we having? We haven't had any fun." Once or twice we'd go out and get drunk after a show or something, but basically it's just been a fuckin' nose-to-the-wall grindstone with everybody shooting at your back. I had nine months of hell over there because I knew what I needed to do and couldn't do it.

 

Clark: What other business ventures are you involved in?

 

Watts: I've got a little nutrition business that I like and just some odds and ends. Omnitrition (nutrition company) is a really good company, it did $125 million its third year. Our little distributorship, even in the nine months we didn't actively work, it has grown. I've given my wife the company, we started it together. She's making good money out if it. I'm proud of her. I don't know what I'm going to do yet. It's time where I'm getting bored, so we'll see.

 

Clark: Looking back; on your reign at WCW, do you think it was a mistake ever going there?

 

Watts: Yeah, it probably was. I probably would have been a lot better off to have never gone, because I wouldn't have had nine months of that frustration. If I would have been given true autonomy, and I knew it would be a battle, it could have proven real good for the business and for TBS. But, that's neither here nor there. They've got their side of the story and I've got mine, and they're the ones that call the shots. But, a lot of those guys have been corporate guys all their life. They just became power brokers. But, I don't know if they've ever really done anything on their own. They're spending Ted's money.

 

Clark: Now that you're starting to look for things to do again, have you or would you think about starting up a territory again?

 

Watts: Oh, I don't. think so right now. It's getting closer to a time you could with certain things, but it would be awfully expensive. I don't know. I got to thinking if there was somebody with a lot of money out there that wanted to do it and do it right, that I would probably consider running a small one. But I haven't delved into it that much. I've got another concept for wrestling, and I think if the time is really right for it... But, I wouldn't do it on my own. It takes somebody with a lot of vision to be a part of it with.

 

Clark: Do you want to discuss this new concept you have?

 

Watts: Not now, no. It would be very controversial, but it sure would be awesome.

 

Clark: This is just a hypothetical question to see where you stand with the wrestling business. If the WWF were to call you to come and work for them, and they gave you the things you wanted, would you?

 

Watts: Well, Vince McMahon and I are at opposite poles in many ways on our philosophy of the business. But, I've always had the greatest respect for him as a marketer and a positioner, and he's got the balls. I mean, he put his money where his mouth was and he went. He and I talked several times when I was still in business, and he told me when he almost went down the tubes, but he finally hit it and he made it. I've got nothing but a lot of respect for him and I think there is a certain respect on his part for me. He said that every time we've talked. He's reminded me how when he used to come in against me in the Mid South area how I used to kick his ass. He's never forgotten that. So, there is a mutual respect there. Now the next thing would be, what would he need me to do? And if there's something that he could decide that he needed me to do that was challenging to me, again, I have no problem in calling him boss. He knows he's boss. He's comfortable in that. I would be comfortable in that. At least one thing I would know is he knows wrestling. Wrestling is his business. I just don't know when his philosophy is so... It's not that far off, I guess. I just don't know. It would be interesting to explore. I thought there was only two guys in the world that could grasp my other idea for wrestling. I thought one would be Ted Turner, and I could never get Ted to sit down. And the other would be Vince. So, that would be interesting. Again, I don't know, I may be way off on a tangent, too. Everybody says that when you get a little older you become a dinosaur or something. I don't think I am. I think we proved with the emotion we developed in Baltimore, proved with Halloween Havoc in marketing it, we proved several things there. That we were still on top of creativity and continuity and everything else. Our problem was getting the athletes to execute it. We could market it, we couldn't get them to execute up to the potential of what we marketed it.

 

Clark: Have you watched any wrestling since you left WCW?

 

Watts: No. And I don't think that's important, either. Hell, it doesn't change that much. God, I wish it did. I didn't watch it when I was out of it. When you've done what I've done, if you sat and watched it, you would only get yourself frustrated because you'd be thinking how you would do it. And there's no sense in frustrating yourself. I don't go shop for cars unless I'm ready to buy a car. In other words, I don't go shop for clothes unless I want to buy clothes.

 

Clark: Yeah, but the wrestling business is a lot different from that.

 

Watts: It is, but it isn't. It depends on what level you've been in it. And the level I've been in it, you know, it was a business to me, and I loved the creativity. So, some of the creativity I loved, but it's not something I sit and spectate. (I don't plan on following it in the future) on a regular basis. I enjoyed renewing some old acquaintances and found out that a lot of people that I was not even close to in my career, it was nice to be around even them. I buried some old animosities. That part was good. Some of the people that hadn't changed, they'd give you their assurance and their word in one breath, and break it in the next.

 

Clark: In your personal opinion, what do you see in WCW's future under the direction of Ole Anderson?

 

Watts: Well, good golly, I don't see much of a future. I don't think he plays a very big part in it now. I think he's just a figurehead.

 

Clark: Do you see, because of the money that WCW loses each year for TBS, Turner dropping WCW or making adjustments in the future?

 

Watts: Well, I think that a lot of people on Turner's board do not want wrestling. I think that they're afraid to tell Ted. I think Ted understands wrestling and understands its value. I don't think anybody on his board really does. I think they pay lip service to him because they know it's one of his personal projects. I don't think that they truly support it. I don't think it's supported one iota. I think it's like a bastard child that they'd love to get rid of. Now, the only way that would happen is if Ted sells TBS. Then you might have who ever bought it spin off a lot of the companies. Who the hell would keep it? On it's present structure, and especially with the money they've enhanced people's contracts with since I've left. They went just about the opposite way again.

 

Clark: What contact, if any, did you have with Ted Turner?

 

Watts: I saw him three or four times and tried to get his attention, but couldn't. You've got to realize, the guy that I ultimately reported to was on the board. How do you go around him to Ted? I'd say, "Ted, I want to sit down with you, I've got an idea or two." He said, "Well, tell Bill (Shaw)." Well, what am I going to tell Bill? That would be like saying, "Gee, Bill, I've got to tell Ted about that you don't know what the hell you're doing." So, that certainly wasn't encouraged.

 

Clark: Just from your nine months at WCW, who do you feel will be future stars, or guys who you thought were great talent?

 

Watts: Vader's a good piece of talent. He has an injury problem, but he's definitely a good piece of talent. (pauses) It's hard for me to be objective right at this point. Just like my son being there, everybody's found out that, hey, he's not a bad kid after all. That's what I kept saying to everybody, "Why doesn't everybody quit worrying about him being my son and just judge him on his own merits." But, look at the strut and the insecurity to him. He doesn't know from one day or the next if he's not going to get stepped on just because somebody upstairs doesn't like me. So, I think that without a doubt he's got everything it takes to be a superstar of the future. Bagwell is great on the card, he's just too small. Attitude-wise, Pillman is great. There's a lot of good talent. Again, most of the talent is getting a little long on the tooth. And you're not building a team like in football to win a contest. You're building people that develop ratings and excitement, so you've got to change. You can't have the same stars over and over again. The biggest problem they've got to combat is staleness and the lack of turnover, and the fact that even if a guys not with WCW, then if he's with WWF, he's still being exposed every week on TV. So, they've got a lot of problems. There was a lot of things I wanted to address about working with the independents and stuff to where you could have controlled some of that. But, again, it's not going to be done. That's the reason I was starting to work with Cornette's group. I think Jim Cornette is a talented and creative guy.

 

Clark: Where do you see his organization going in the future?

 

Watts: I see it being a struggle. I think that's what Jimmy wants to do. It will struggle along. I don't know if it will ever get big. The problem you've always got is you've got two tiger sharks sitting there that could kill you off anytime they want. I don't think Vince would do it intentionally anymore. I think he realizes he doesn't need to do that. But, I'm not sure that that has ever sunk in to WCW. When they see someone, it's just, "How can we get his talent?" Well, good gosh, what would you do with it if you had it? That's like them going to The (Man Formerly Known as the) Ultimate Warrior. Why in the hell would anybody want to touch him with a ten foot pole? If he's drug-free he's going to be a shrimp. He's proved that he's been totally trained in his entire career to walk out on wrestling promotions, to be an emotional problem, and to be a person whose word's no good as far as living up to his business commitments. Well, if that's his track record, why would you want to mess with a guy like that? WCW knows his track record. They've got to have somebody that's got the balls to tell them. And that is what they don't have. Because when you've got the balls to tell them, you're not dressing and talking and acting like a corporate person. Therefore, you're at risk. The thing to do there is be as unobtrusive as possible. That's why Dusty gets all the flack, because he's the booker. That's visible.

 

Clark: Looking down the road, maybe five to ten years in the future, where do you see wrestling at or in what state do you see it in?

 

Watts: I'd hate to predict it. It's always survived. I don't know how. To me the things that I think are the biggest problems are the staleness and the lack of mystery. There's no mystery about wrestling anymore. They've taken the mystery out of it. There's no sport in it. It's been so exposed that there's no belief. I think that in order to create danger and excitement, there has to be mystery. There has to be danger. There has to be excitement. There has to be somebody taking a chance. It's all just choreographed. Unless they do some serious, serious restructuring, which takes time, (the downtrending of wrestling will continue). And most of them don't have the vision to follow through on a game plan for a protractive period of time. They all want to have something that turns it around in three to six months, and if s not going to do it. And there's not going to be another Hulk Hogan. There will be somebody else at some point, but it's going to be harder to break him out of the pack. The WWF's top stars, look how old they're getting.

 

Clark: About a year ago, you said about promoting, that, "You can also go through trends in your own mind when you get intoxicated with yourself, and you lose and forget what you've got there." Did that ever happen with you while you were with WCW?

 

Watts: No, not at WCW. It happened to me a lot younger in life. No, I wasn't intoxicated with myself at WCW. I knew I was expendable and I knew that they weren't going to let me do it. I was emotionally elated initially because of what I was going to try to attempt to do and I had worked out the plans to do it. But when I'd see some little jerk just say, "You can't do this. We can't do this," give you all the reasons why you couldn't do it, I knew that I was just passing through, hoping to be a little effective a little more before I left. But, I wasn't intoxicated with myself. I've always been the same way as far as my personality, how I treated people there. I'm brusk, I'm opinionated, I'm arrogant, whatever anybody wants to say. But, that's the way I've always been. So, I didn't change. Hell no.

 

Clark: Could you tell me about your children and your family?

 

Watts: No, let's keep my family out of this. Like Erik says, every time I open my mouth he gets in trouble. My family's doing alright - my kids by my previous marriage and by my current marriage. I've got no complaints. I'm proud of all of them. Any of them don't have to do anything to impress me. I want them to be happy, I want them first of all to be happy with themselves. Every kid is not a world-beater. They don't have to go out and set a record or anything else to be my kid. If they're happy in life, that's enough for me. It's the same thing with me, they just have to accept me as Dad. It all goes with me, my good points and my bad points, it's all one package. They're comfortable with me, I'm comfortable with them. If they're not comfortable with me, they don't have to be around me. The proof of the pudding is that I just got back from spending time with them. Erik and I were close in Atlanta. We enjoyed that. I think Erik is a very creative, intelligent kid. I think he's very frustrated, as any intelligent, creative person would be, in a situation like that. But, that's a good, healthy sign. If he was happy and complacent there, I'd worry about him. I'd think maybe he's succumbed to becoming an inmate.

 

Clark: Do you think he was in a very tough situation while you were there as he was wrestling under your reign as WCW Vice President?

 

Watts: Hell yes, because of all the jealousy and everything else. But, he was handling it great. Erik handled it fine. The people around him didn't, but he did great. Dusty and Ole and everybody else, they saw his talent. I kept trying to hold him back more, and Dusty and them wanted to go harder with him. I said, "No, you can't right now. It just politically won't be accepted."

 

Clark: Did you want the same success you had in wrestling for Erik?

 

Watts: I think that I just want him to be happy with himself. I would rather see him eclipse anything. If my kids wanted to go in the direction I wanted to go, I'd hope they'd all be better. I think that's how they learn. In other words, my children have to pick up my good points and work those things in, but they also had to fight my bad points, and not pick up those traits. If they pick up my bad points and those become their strong points, they're in for a hell of a rough life. I think the kids that have studied somebody can generally go further than that person, if they're so motivated. I think Erik will be a successful businessman. I think he's just in his neophyte stage. When you come out of college, you've just finally come out into the real world. It's quite a shock for the first two or three years. Because in college, you damn sure aren't in the real world. So, Erik is just not experienced. He just got married, he's got a new business, and everything else. He's got a lot to learn yet, a hell of a lot.

 

Clark: You've said before that one of your best concepts when you were promoting Mid South was that you took yourself out of the ring and pushed other stars. Some people would say that you broke that policy by pushing your son, Erik, in...

 

Watts: I think that's so fuckin' stupid. First of all, again, as I have said many times, that if you were to go out and get somebody for wrestling, what are you going to go get? Some asshole that got his body out of a bottle and is on drugs, that's in front of a mirror in gym, and can't walk and chew gum at the same time. One of the guys we had under a guaranteed contract, Dusty keeps trying to do something with him over there, I've seen the guy walk down the apron and fall off the apron. My son, Erik, has a wrestling background, an athletic background, and an educational background. I watched Dory Funk Jr, and I watched Terry Funk, and I've watched different guys in wrestling, and they were pushed if their dad was in the business. Some of them lived up and exceeded it, and some of them didn't But, it was a damn good gamble because they have grown up in the business. Greg Valentine was a great hand in his day. Dory Jr. was a great, great hand. Terry Funk was a great hand. Mike Graham was small but he certainly was a good hand. You could just go down the list of the guys. Barry Windham, when he's motivated and challenged, can do anything. Vince McMahon, what if his dad hadn't made him a promoter? We'd probably all still be in the business! (laughs) Seriously, Donald Trump, what if his father hadn't brought him into the construction business? I think it's small people just trying again to make much-to-do about nothing. Erik, if I had been doing Mid South, I'd have pushed Erik because he is a sincere kid. A lot of the top hands at WCW told me, not only when I was there but after I left, that Erik was further ahead than some guys that have been in the business for two or three years. We didn't push Erik as much as people think we pushed him. We shot one angle with him, and that was him and Arn Anderson. And it was Arn's idea. It was Arn Anderson's idea. That's the only thing we did. We tried to do a deal with him and Rude, but Rude has a little bit different concept of himself than I do. When I saw Rude's true value, in my opinion, it was the match he had with Chono in Philadelphia. It changed my opinion of Rick Rude.

 

Clark: From your knowledge and your experiences in the wrestling business, would you rather see Erik in a different field?

 

Watts: Well, yeah. I would rather see him in a different field because he may or may not be so frustrated. But again, I don't try to talk my kids out of their own dreams. They have to experience it themselves. So when they have a dream, I try to support them. Then they have a chance of making it or not making it. But otherwise, what if I talk them out of it? They'll always hold that against me. So, I just support them and love them. That's what I'rve always done. Erik wanted to be a quarterback. I never thought he should be a quarterback. He could have played any position, but he wanted to be a quarterback. So, I supported him being a quarterback, and he was a quarterback. He was a third string quarterback in his junior year of eligibility and his senior year he was the number two quarterback. In the first game, the number one guy got his leg broken. And he led the team for the rest of the year. No matter what, Erik became the starter. And Erik threw on national TV for over 300 yards against Ohio State.

 

Clark: How would you respond to the argument that Erik was unfairly given a push upon his arrival in WCW, when he hadn't wrestled anywhere else before?

 

Watts: Where would you start somebody? Did Don Shula have his kid go play little league football somewhere, or did he start him with the Miami Dolphins? Did DeBartolo have his kid get experience with the 49ers or not? So, that argument is so stupid. If you were going to make sure your kid was in a system where you thought the basics were going to be properly learned, you'd start him in the system that you had the most control of. Just like every other promoter started their own son in this business. They didn't send him to some place else to get started. The next thing is, where the fuck could you send him in this business where he could make a living? What are you going to do? Bring your kid into the business and then try to kill him off? He doesn't have a great contract by WCW standards, that's for damn sure. So the bottom line, that's another argument that is so bullshit. Where's he going to get more work, at WCW or some outlaw promotion or some independent promotion that runs twice a week? If you had your own son who you thought had ability, what would you do, would you try to put him in the best environment or the worst?

 

Don't you recall at the time I was also starting developmental towns for all our young talent, which I fought like hell to get at WCW. Johnny B. Badd had his first twenty minute match in one of them. He was amazed. The kids love those developmental towns. They got to work and got to learn their trade. The deal to teaching a wrestler how to wrestle, it's just like when I took "Dr. Death," who was a legitimate four time all-American in amateur wrestling, I booked him where he was booked seven nights a week. He wrestled every day. That's what you don't have today. So, where do you learn your trade? You've got a bunch of guys that go out and they'd go short matches or they'd do the same old routines over and over and over again in our business, where it's predictable. If you've seen one of these routine workers' matches, you've seen them all. They do the same highspots, the same false finishes. Then they think they're great workers. I think that that is a biased accusation. It doesn't have any merit whatsoever. I wanted independents because once you've got a guy broken in and past the basics, you could send him out for six months to a year of seasoning, and that's what made the business strong. You can't do that anymore. Because a guy can't go to Jerry Jarrett and make $25 a night or you can't go to Texas where everybody gets in free and you don't even know if you're going to work one night a week. Where in the hell do you send a kid that's serious about learning his trade?

 

Clark: What are your personal feelings about the Von Erich family tragedy and what it all means?

 

Watts: The Von Erich situation is a very, very tragic family situation. Probably one of the greatest tragedies ever in our business. It's not for me to criticize it because, God almighty, that could happen to anybody. None of them were forced into wrestling. Now, whether or not they believed or thought that they could live up to what the others did, if you're talking about Mike, but Mike wasn't forced to go into wrestling. The bottom line is, when you take your own life, it's your decision, isn't it? So, everybody wants to put that blame on something else. But, you just really can't do that. The Von Erich situation is just one of those horrible, horrible tragedies. I think the biggest problem is that, as a family, they never could come to grasp with the fact that all those kids were drug addicts. I mean, every one of them. And it's the worst thing I've ever seen happen. Everybody tries to make so much out of that instead of the fact that it was just a horrible tragedy. I know Jack and I know Doris, and it's horrible. I knew those kids since they were young kids. Three of them became big stars in the business.

 

Clark: But, like in Kerry's case, his success came really quick and then it kind of dwindled off as he got...

 

Watts: It dwindled off because he became a drug addict. But, name me a sport that it doesn't dwindle off if you become such a complete addict. Kerry's success, the wrestling era was hot, the Dallas territory was hot, they had a lot of great talent, and Kerry became the biggest star of all of them as far as box office. He was the third kid in line so they were waiting for him, and he had that certain charisma. That's like Erik says, when you say, "You need to pay your dues in the business." Has Sting ever put the ring up and down? Has Sting ever sold t-shirts at the business? Has Sting ever had to act as a security guard at the business? Has he sold tickets at the business? Has he had to clean up the dressing rooms? And certainly, has he ever had to go stretch anybody? Well then, what is paying your dues? Because you took steroids and you luckily got in a fabulous position to get probably one of the best guaranteed contracts in the business? And I'm not knocking Sting. I really like him, I truly do. But, let's talk about putting your dues in. Where the hell did he do all these dues? Erik has put the ring up and down. He's sold t-shirts. He's been a security guard. He's worked the doors. He's sold tickets. My kids had to go work at the matches because I believed in them earning something.

 

Clark: Do you think there's any correlation at all between some of the other fathers who pushed their sons and the Von Erichs, or do you just feel it's a tragedy in itself that can't be compared to anything like that?

 

Watts: Well, again, I was there when Dory Funk Jr. was breaking in and I was there when Terry broke in. Dory got pushed much stronger than I pushed my own son, and so did Terry. It worked because they became great performers in this business. I'm sure their daddy would turn over in his grave when, in the heyday of the wrestling business, he died, and it (his promotion) was left with them, and in less than a year they lost it. But, their ability in the ring was great. Kerry had an ability in the ring. Kerry's drawback in the ring was the drugs. David had a great charisma and ability in the ring. David was the kid that had the greatest feel for it. Kevin was a great athlete. All three of those kids were great athletes. Mike Graham got pushed. But, Mike also paid his dues. He did it all. Greg Gagne, I know Verne, when you broke in under Verne, you paid a price. I was there when Barry Windham's dad broke in under Verne. He put the ring up and down. When you broke in for Verne Gagne, you had to do it all. You paid the price. You wanted to be in the business. Nothing was given to you. Verne broke them in right. That's what WCW needs to go back to. Instead of buying guys into the business, they need to make guys pay the price to get in. That's what they do in Japan.

 

Clark: But, you never thought about the Von Erich situation when you were pushing your son, Erik?

 

Watts: Shit no, because I never pushed Erik like the Von Erichs. The Von Erichs were never beaten. My kid got beat by every top hand that he went against, right on TV. My kid didn't beat any top hand, except Arn Anderson when he was finishing up on his contract. But, we were setting up an angle. Bobby Eaton had been beaten by everybody and was never a big single person, anyway. So it didn't hurt Bobby Eaton anymore than where he was already at, to be beat. So who the hell did Erik beat that was so great? He beat a bunch of job guys. When Dory Funk Jr. was first in the business, he went broadway with the world's champions, which was unheard of back in the days of the NWA, but especially for a kid in his first year in the business. I shot an angle in a town one time and he came in and beat Ted DiBiase's dad after I shot the angle with him, in the same night. I don't think you can sit there and correlate them (the Von Erich deaths) all. Every one of them is a separate set of circumstances. And who the shit gives a shit, anyway? If you could produce life down to a checklist of do's and don'ts, it would be so simple, wouldn't it? But, there's no way you can do that. Again, Erik certainly had the background and the ability and the charisma and the smarts. He's a damn good investment. If I was doing it all over, I'd probably get him a better contract than he's got. He had it hard. He had to be at the gym every day. He still goes every day on out to the gym to workout. Plus, he had all the guys on his ass that were just a bunch of jealous pricks.

 

Clark: Did the Bill Watts that everybody knew change at all in the five years that you were out of the business?

 

Watts: Fuck no. I'm probably more mello than I used to be. I'm still a passionate, hard-driven person. If I love to do something, I work at it hard and I put my energy in it. But, no, I didn't change. It was just that I was under more scrutiny because whatever you're doing today in the business, you're scrutinized by everybody. It's like doing it in a fishbowl, where everybody is taking a side over everything you do.

 

Clark: When you were coming into WCW, because of all of your past accomplishments and your reputation and success in the business, I think everyone like wrestlers, fans, and everyone else was very excited and enthusiastic about you being able to turn things around...

 

Watts: Yeah, so was I, until I got over there and found out what all I had inherited. And it was impossible to restructure it because they weren't going to let you.

 

Clark: But, from talking to a lot of those people, from what happened with the situation, those people were kind of disappointed with...

 

Watts: I'm just saying, unless they could walk in my shoes, they don't know what I went through. But, without a doubt, I understand the wrestling business and I know the wrestling business. And had I been given the autonomy I was promised, I could have done a hell of a lot more. But it'd been downtrending for three and a half years. Nobody's going to turn it around overnight. Actually, that's just at WCW. It had been downtrending since about '86, except for one promoter. Crockett, from '86 on down, was downtrending, was going broke.

 

Clark: Those people were also saying that if anyone could turn the business around. it was Bill Watts.

 

Watts: Well, I could. Without a doubt, I could. But, you can't do it if your hands are tied behind you. I'll tell you what, you're an eighteen year old kid, and if we were in a streetfight with my hands tied behind me and you had a baseball bat, you're going to beat my head in. That's exactly the same thing in "corporate America." Without a doubt, I could have done the job. I was doing the job, in spite of them. But, I had no support.

 

Clark: But, because of what happened at WCW, do you think that your reputation in the wrestling business has been damaged?

 

Watts: Well, I'm sure it has, to some people. The people that don't know what the fuck they're talking about, anyway. My reputation hasn't been damaged with anybody that I care about. And I know what I did or didn't do. Basically speaking, they had to damage my reputation to make me expendable. They could damage anybody's reputation they want. In a real, seemingly, wonderful way. That's the corporate way. They're like babies, they laugh in your face and shit in your hand.

[JerryvonKramer]

Thanks for posting this Loss, will give it a print out and a read through now.

[JerryvonKramer]

This is one of the best wrestling-related interviews I've ever read.

 

The stuff about the struggle with Turner Broadcasting is really interesting, especially his blocked efforts to get Simmons seen at key sports events and the fact that he was fighting them over the edited tapes. It doesn't explain some of the questions I still have over the booking (e.g. why Simmons was buried in the middle of the card), but it does make me view Watts's time in charge with a little more sympathy for what he was having to put up with there. You'd think being owned by the TV station would give a wrestling promotion a competitive advantage, but in practice they weren't letting him leverage that.

 

Other really interesting stuff:

 

- "I guarantee you before it's over, TBS will hire Hollywood script writers to start writing the storylines for wrestling" -- heh

- putting Ole and other "wrestling people" in charge of editing

- focusing on the Omni: thought this was an interesting "back to basics / core market" idea that we talked about a bit in this thread

- That the first PPV booked under Watts's control, according to him, was Halloween Havoc ... this is a headscratcher. How can the PPVs be "already booked"? Beach Blash I get, I always pegged that as a Kip Frey show in my mind, but GAB 92? That was locked in stone? By whom? Why? It was the NWA title tournament with Watts's big boys on top and going over. I don't believe that he had nothing to do with the booking of it.

- The injuries are fair cop, very unfortunate for his plans. I'd love to know what his plans were going in before he knew the internal problems. Still doesn't quite explain how we ended up with the Coal-miner's glove travesty though.

- Sting being rebuilt as a "Raider of the Lost Ark type guy" is something he really did well, for which he deserves credit.

- The ability of workers to go over the boss's head in WCW was a real problem -- all of the later problems you can see coming as early as this.

- I laughed out loud at the idea of Watts being told that he'd have to have Shaorn Sidello on his booking committee

- The disconnect and lack of cooperation between WCW and TBS is palpably frustrating, I almost feel frustrated on behalf of '93 Watts.

- The idea of weekly critiques is great, I'd love to see what sort of notes Hayes, Ross, Tony or Ole were making. I love the idea of Ole taking a young 2 Cold Scopio through some footage of his last match and talking him through it.

- His galiant efforts to stop leaks were interesting to read.

- I like that Watts had a very clear sense of Dusty's strengths and weaknesses and how to work with them.

- Ole took Watts's position?! There's no talk of Biscoff here yet. This needs some tweaking. Seems like Ole worked directly under Shaw.

[W2BTD]

This was great, thanks for posting it. Watts is always a fascinating interview subject.

[Loss]

I just reformatted this so it's a little easier on the eyes. I also fixed some of the typos in the previous version I copied/pasted. Would love to hear more thoughts from people on this. PETE, I think this is a nice yearbook companion after you get to Superbrawl III or so.

[PeteF3]

This is a lot to digest, and I may develop some thoughts of substance later. But the first thing that jumps out at me was Watts going from talking about Vince taking the magic out of the business to I DON'T LIKE FAGS, FAGS DON'T LIKE STRAIGHTS, THAT'S JUST MY OPINION. I know the interviewer brought up The Crying Game first but that was LOL-worthy.

 

I want to know who the specific wrestler was who talked to Watts about how he drew money in the WWF. It can't be anyone else but Rick Rude, can it?

[Loss]

Yes, Bill Watts comes closest to anyone ever of executing my perfect vision of what wrestling should be, but he also hates my kind. I get conflicted on that sometimes myself. And yeah, it has to be Rude, especially since Rude left the WWF over pay.

[gingears]

I thought his comment about Jerry Jarrett only pushing talent that didn't fit the WWF mold was kind of interesting, especially since (assuming I have the timeline correct) Lawler had just joined WWF at this point. Still, I think he was right about Memphis' survival depending on not losing top babyface stars at the rate other territories did. I don't think it was as simple as keeping the pay-offs low as I have a hard time believing that was a unique strategy at the time.

 

When looking at what's going on in WWE today, it makes all the "wrestling never changes" lines he tosses out all the more frustrating. Lots of valid criticism about the corporate structure, but a pretty sore lack of personal accountability too. It wasn't an unwinnable game.

[DR Ackermann]

Yes, Bill Watts comes closest to anyone ever of executing my perfect vision of what wrestling should be, but he also hates my kind. I get conflicted on that sometimes myself. And yeah, it has to be Rude, especially since Rude left the WWF over pay.

It always blows my mind how intelligent, logical and understanding Watts comes off in interviews and then you run into a wall of stupidity with some of his personal views and religious beliefs. I couldn't get through his autobiography because he kept repeating the same stuff about his religious beliefs page after page and using it as a crutch to excuse anything he had done wrong in life.

 

Anyway it's a great interview. Thanks for posting it.

[Loss]

This is one of the best wrestling-related interviews I've ever read.

 

The stuff about the struggle with Turner Broadcasting is really interesting, especially his blocked efforts to get Simmons seen at key sports events and the fact that he was fighting them over the edited tapes. It doesn't explain some of the questions I still have over the booking (e.g. why Simmons was buried in the middle of the card), but it does make me view Watts's time in charge with a little more sympathy for what he was having to put up with there. You'd think being owned by the TV station would give a wrestling promotion a competitive advantage, but in practice they weren't letting him leverage that.

Do you mean after he lost the title? I think it was that Simmons was really unreliable in the top spot. He actually no-showed the house show where he was originally scheduled to drop the title back to Vader, so they had to reschedule it for the next night. It has been said in kind of a read-between-the-lines way through the years that Simmons was battling a drug problem at the time.

 

- That the first PPV booked under Watts's control, according to him, was Halloween Havoc ... this is a headscratcher. How can the PPVs be "already booked"? Beach Blash I get, I always pegged that as a Kip Frey show in my mind, but GAB 92? That was locked in stone? By whom? Why? It was the NWA title tournament with Watts's big boys on top and going over. I don't believe that he had nothing to do with the booking of it.

I think his point is that part of the build to the show had already taken place before he got there. So Havoc was the first show he was willing to take credit/blame for, because it was the first one that was entirely his creation. Sting was injured by Vader in April to set up the Bash match. Doc and Gordy were actually signed by Kip Frey. So was Jake Roberts for that matter, but let's not go ruining Watts's excuse making.

 

- Ole took Watts's position?! There's no talk of Biscoff here yet. This needs some tweaking. Seems like Ole worked directly under Shaw.

Ole was involved somehow, but I don't think he took the VP title that Watts/Herd had. Bill Shaw and Bob Dhue of Turner Sports were still the ones overseeing WCW in name for most of '93. Eric Bischoff gained power as the year went on and he got the official title at some point early in '94. To show how dysfunctional this promotion was -- if this interview doesn't make that clear already -- during 1993, a lot of people really didn't even know who was in charge. Dave would ask various people and get various answers.