WCW Invasion

[Guest Nell Santucci]

WEEK 110 (February 12 to 14, 2001)

 

Awful angle of the week : Kevin Nash kidnaps and tortures David Flair (Nitro) Fuck Me. So we're back to this ? This product is rotten, I have no idea where the notion came from that WCW got good in 2001 before closing down. This is right off the worst Nash/Russo booking ideas, and it's been done a hundred times it seems in the last year or so.

 

Confusing booking of the week : Qualifying matches for a 6 men 4 corners cruiserweight first contender match at the PPV (Nitro/Thunder). So, cruiserweight have to fight in matches to qualify themselves for a 4-corner match involving 6 people to determine a first contender for the title ? What ? What ? And then the qualifying matches are either a 4 corner match, singles matches or even a classic tag-team match ? Seriously, who books this shit ? Well, at least it gives us the best match of the week with AJ Styles & Air Paris making their debut against Karagias & Knoble on Thunder, which was a nice spotty match with Styles already showing a lot of potential. And Kidman vs Elix Skipper on Nitro wasn't bad either, but this whole deal is just a big mess that makes no sense.

 

New Commisionner of the week : Lance Storm (Thunder) Yeah, he beat the Cat on Nitro in the match that should have happened at the PPV. So now we got yet another show with another heel authority figure putting matches together. Isn't this scary that this gimmick had overstayed its welcome in 2001 and that it's still the prevalent angle twelve years later ? Anyway, they'll have teh revenge match at the PPV, with the same stipulation. This is tired.

 

Honorable mention of the week : Chavo Guerrero Jr. & The Wall vs Rey Mysterio Jr. & Hugh Morrus (Thunder) Mostly Rey in the ring, so it was really crisp work against Chavo and some really impressive power spots with The Wall. This had a good dynamic with both of the opponents, and Morrus only had to show up to clean the ring at the end. Enjoyable match, and Chavo & Rey look like the two best worker in the company.

 

Worst look of the week : Dustin Rhodes in a plain black singlet (Nitro). Pretty terrible look for him. Coudn't he use the cool red and black cow-boy outfit he was wearing during his first run ? Anyway, he's finally reinstated after defeating Rick Steiner with the help of Shane Douglas and his infamous chain. Turning Douglas back babyface was a bad idea that could have turned out good depending on how he would have been booked (and since the babyface side badly needed some fresh blood) but since he was injured, he wasn't gonna show up on TV again (I guess) before the end so it doesn't matter.

 

The build to this PPV has really been flat at best, much like the TV. Crowbar and Terry Funk haven't appeared since Meng has left the house. The valets have gone. It seems like with each week the roster is getting thinner, despite the arrival of new young (but green) faces on the cruiserweight ranks, and it shows : everything looks more and more dry and samey. Rick Steiner is all over the TV, which really sucks, two weeks in a row working Thunder main events. DDP is working Jarrett at the PPV, with Kanyon on the corner. The NBT feud is extremely dull, and Sean Stasiak cutting promos is as interesting as watching paint dry. Then you have Kronik vs Totally Buffed, which will be bad. Now Nash is supposedly injured, so his status for the PPV is unsure. Way to build the match, especially when you've basically given up Nash vs Steiner two weeks in a row on free TV. So yeah, I have no idea why 2001 WCW has a good rep. Of course next to Russo's runs, it's much better, but in the grand scheme of things this is not good at all, and the last few weeks really have the feeling of a dying promotion.

This all makes me wonder how blown the invasion angle really was, i.e. how sustainable it was past the initial July pop. It's entirely possible that the public had in mind a 1998 WCW that no longer could exist and that any WCW of the 2000-01 variety was a lost cause as highlighted by the crowd shitting on Booker and Bagwell in Tacoma. Really, I think the bubble bursted with Austin's heel turn and that such false mental picture of WCW allowed the company to extend its credit line before the full impact was felt in 2002. Either way, WCW deserved to die, and Bischoff sure as hell lacked the necessary knowledge and imagination to revitalize the brand.

[s1rweeze]

This all makes me wonder how blown the invasion angle really was, i.e. how sustainable it was past the initial July pop.

This is an interesting point, and I'd really like to hear El-P's thoughts on this based on all the crap he's sat through

[Ditch]

Think about the ungodly amount of talent WCW had on the shelf over most/much/all of the last year. That wasn't everything but it sure didn't help. The Invasion was hot at the start with next to no star power and could have been sustained for a lot longer if they'd bothered to bring in more of the top guys and make it a real war. That, in turn, would have gone a long way to bringing over the remaining WCW fans and some of the lapsed ones. But no, Vince couldn't stand to buy out contracts. Or push WCW as a threat. Or de-push his kids.

[Jimmy Redman]

Think about the ungodly amount of talent WCW had on the shelf over most/much/all of the last year. That wasn't everything but it sure didn't help. The Invasion was hot at the start with next to no star power and could have been sustained for a lot longer if they'd bothered to bring in more of the top guys and make it a real war. That, in turn, would have gone a long way to bringing over the remaining WCW fans and some of the lapsed ones. But no, Vince couldn't stand to buy out contracts. Or push WCW as a threat. Or de-push his kids.

Think about the fact that at the beginning of the Invasion WWE refused to bring in the big name WCW stars for the angle...and then as it turned out literally all of those big name WCW stars (minus Sting) were brought in within two years of the initial Invasion:

 

Flair: late 2001

Hogan, Nash, Hall: early 2002

Steiner: late 2002

Goldberg: post-Mania 2003

 

So like, with the benefit of hindsight of course, you can envision a scenario where maybe the Invasion is held off until towards the end of the year, at which point you can basically bring in WCW personnel in waves: first the ones they acquired in the beginning, and then Flair, and then the nWo, Bischoff as the next phase when they need reinforcements, and then Steiner and Goldberg, even if you have get them in a little earlier as the timing is appropriate. But if they had followed through with the separate brand idea and established the WCW as it's own entity within the company, with the ability to add guys with name value progressively as need be, you can wait to run the proper WWF vs WCW 'winner take all' war until you can get the major WCW names and really make it work.

 

What if, what if, of course.

[Guest Nell Santucci]

Think about the ungodly amount of talent WCW had on the shelf over most/much/all of the last year. That wasn't everything but it sure didn't help. The Invasion was hot at the start with next to no star power and could have been sustained for a lot longer if they'd bothered to bring in more of the top guys and make it a real war. That, in turn, would have gone a long way to bringing over the remaining WCW fans and some of the lapsed ones. But no, Vince couldn't stand to buy out contracts. Or push WCW as a threat. Or de-push his kids.

Think about the fact that at the beginning of the Invasion WWE refused to bring in the big name WCW stars for the angle...and then as it turned out literally all of those big name WCW stars (minus Sting) were brought in within two years of the initial Invasion:

 

Flair: late 2001

Hogan, Nash, Hall: early 2002

Steiner: late 2002

Goldberg: post-Mania 2003

 

So like, with the benefit of hindsight of course, you can envision a scenario where maybe the Invasion is held off until towards the end of the year, at which point you can basically bring in WCW personnel in waves: first the ones they acquired in the beginning, and then Flair, and then the nWo, Bischoff as the next phase when they need reinforcements, and then Steiner and Goldberg, even if you have get them in a little earlier as the timing is appropriate. But if they had followed through with the separate brand idea and established the WCW as it's own entity within the company, with the ability to add guys with name value progressively as need be, you can wait to run the proper WWF vs WCW 'winner take all' war until you can get the major WCW names and really make it work.

 

What if, what if, of course.

 

But that couldn't work because WCW at the time was such a shit brand that no one would touch it with someone else's dick, concerns from Viacom aside. No matter what WWE did, the fans would still be WWE fans not WCW fans out of brand loyalty. As such, I suspect it would have been a dead product in an era where Smackdown was still hot.

[Jimmy Redman]

Yeah, absolutely. There was definitely other problems, and to be honest I doubt that the Invasion could have ever worked. It's just funny to note in hindsight that, while the lack of big stars was such a stumbling block at the time, they ended up getting them all in soon after anyway, so they may as well have just tried to do it properly in the first place.

[cowboy hats]

how much in bought-out contracts would that have cost? and what that alone have dwarfed what they paid for the rights to the company?

[The Chief]

I may be alone in thinking this, but I don't think they needed to do an invasion at all. I would be fine with them just filtering in talent over time. If Vince purchased them in 1999, that's a different story.

[Jimmy Redman]

how much in bought-out contracts would that have cost? and what that alone have dwarfed what they paid for the rights to the company?

Nothing.

 

I'm saying you could have brought them in at the exact same time Vince brought them in in reality, which is, I assume, when their contracts expired. Everyone but Steiner and Goldberg signed with Vince by mid-2002.

 

Since I considered getting those two earlier to fit the timeline, maybe you'd try and eat those contracts, but they wouldn't have broken the bank by that point.

[goc]

If they HAD bought out all the Time Warner contracts for the big names like Hogan, Nash, Goldberg etc it DEFINITELY would have cost more than the WCW sale. I think that was only like $3 million. Buying out the contracts would have been somewhere between $10-20 million I would guess.

[Guest Nell Santucci]

If they HAD bought out all the Time Warner contracts for the big names like Hogan, Nash, Goldberg etc it DEFINITELY would have cost more than the WCW sale. I think that was only like $3 million. Buying out the contracts would have been somewhere between $10-20 million I would guess.

And with so many defects already, the complications in doing face-heel dynamics in large, undefined stables like Team WWE and Team WCW, 8 two-hour shows between each monthly PPV, short of holding off the angle, you have to wonder how soon WWE would have reverted to normal business after 3 PPVs. With such a huge overhead, it probably wasn't a great business move actuarially.

 

Hogan and Flair were huge stars, but Austin, Rock, HHH, Undertaker were all much bigger stars by that point. DDP hadn't been a draw since 1999. Were people going to pay money to see Hall and Nash when they hadn't been significant draws before? Sting was the face of WCW and he'd never sign on, which hurts the legitimacy of it being a real WCW, even with Flair. Jeff Jarrett wasn't going to get signed, Luger was broken down, and Scott Steiner could have worked well until he was exposed. Mysterio was obviously a great hand, but he was never seen as a top WCW guy but instead in the same way as the Radicalz, a workhorse of midcard status. Goldberg was significant though.

 

So of all the guys who really mattered as being inherent draws or who had potential mobility such that he was booked as more than a midcarder, I only see Flair, Hogan, Goldberg, and Steiner. Hogan could draw but I think only for special attractions and not as a guy who had the stability to be on top long-term because he's Hogan. Flair is in the same mold. Steiner really got a bad rep after a few matches given how much he slowed down. Goldberg is the only guy who had real value beyond being special attraction, and we're talking about a guy whose drawing power started dipping 3 years before and who had been buried ever since.

 

This is going on all the while pulling the trigger for WCW would have come at the expense of any younger guy like Jericho or Angle who WWE had already spent a year pushing.

 

I think WWE made the right move by not taking the bait and by introducing valuable acts in increments without putting their midcard on the altar. There is no evidence any of them had long-term drawing potential besides Goldberg, and even his case is shaky. A $10-20 million overhead could not be justified in added PPV revenue for a bunch of guys whose drawing power had ddissipated while in WCW.

 

People look through the potential with rose-colored lenses. For every talent acquisition WWE got in that era also came with the stigma of a company that only created one star and whose booking incompetence even hurt Hogan, Flair, and Goldberg, their only draws. It's almost as if some critics want to put a blanket over the head and pretend Vince bought 1998 WCW and not a company who three years thereafter was so dysfunctional that WCW PPVs couldn't even get 100 000 buys in a hot period where WWE could do 5x that on a B-show.

 

In other words, Vince inherited WCW's booking incompetence, a company who by 2001 showed all the signs of a company that waited too long to build to the future.

[Slasher]

Bringing the big names in would have messed up the WWE's salary structure. It made sense to either offer reduced contracts that was in line with the push or lack thereof they were going to get and sit on the bigger contracts til expiration. The big names just simply wanted to get paid by Time Warner and sit at home. Once their contracts ended, they came to Vince with lower contractual demands.

[Dooley]

If they HAD bought out all the Time Warner contracts for the big names like Hogan, Nash, Goldberg etc it DEFINITELY would have cost more than the WCW sale. I think that was only like $3 million. Buying out the contracts would have been somewhere between $10-20 million I would guess.

And with so many defects already, the complications in doing face-heel dynamics in large, undefined stables like Team WWE and Team WCW, 8 two-hour shows between each monthly PPV, short of holding off the angle, you have to wonder how soon WWE would have reverted to normal business after 3 PPVs. With such a huge overhead, it probably wasn't a great business move actuarially.

 

Hogan and Flair were huge stars, but Austin, Rock, HHH, Undertaker were all much bigger stars by that point. DDP hadn't been a draw since 1999. Were people going to pay money to see Hall and Nash when they hadn't been significant draws before? Sting was the face of WCW and he'd never sign on, which hurts the legitimacy of it being a real WCW, even with Flair. Jeff Jarrett wasn't going to get signed, Luger was broken down, and Scott Steiner could have worked well until he was exposed. Mysterio was obviously a great hand, but he was never seen as a top WCW guy but instead in the same way as the Radicalz, a workhorse of midcard status. Goldberg was significant though.

 

So of all the guys who really mattered as being inherent draws or who had potential mobility such that he was booked as more than a midcarder, I only see Flair, Hogan, Goldberg, and Steiner. Hogan could draw but I think only for special attractions and not as a guy who had the stability to be on top long-term because he's Hogan. Flair is in the same mold. Steiner really got a bad rep after a few matches given how much he slowed down. Goldberg is the only guy who had real value beyond being special attraction, and we're talking about a guy whose drawing power started dipping 3 years before and who had been buried ever since.

 

This is going on all the while pulling the trigger for WCW would have come at the expense of any younger guy like Jericho or Angle who WWE had already spent a year pushing.

 

I think WWE made the right move by not taking the bait and by introducing valuable acts in increments without putting their midcard on the altar. There is no evidence any of them had long-term drawing potential besides Goldberg, and even his case is shaky. A $10-20 million overhead could not be justified in added PPV revenue for a bunch of guys whose drawing power had ddissipated while in WCW.

 

People look through the potential with rose-colored lenses. For every talent acquisition WWE got in that era also came with the stigma of a company that only created one star and whose booking incompetence even hurt Hogan, Flair, and Goldberg, their only draws. It's almost as if some critics want to put a blanket over the head and pretend Vince bought 1998 WCW and not a company who three years thereafter was so dysfunctional that WCW PPVs couldn't even get 100 000 buys in a hot period where WWE could do 5x that on a B-show.

 

In other words, Vince inherited WCW's booking incompetence, a company who by 2001 showed all the signs of a company that waited too long to build to the future.

 

 

You pretty much hit all the smark talking points in one fell swoop. Kudos.

 

There's literally no point in doing a WCW "invasion" if you're not going to bring in the names most associated with WCW to begin with. If that means you have to delay the invasion by a year to get the top guys on WWF deals, so be it. It beats WCW making its debut by Lance Storm and Mike Awesome doing meaningless run-ins.

 

Saying no one cared about WCW in 2001 misses the point. By that point any casual fans were watching WWF anyway. They didn't stick around for the downfall. They still remembered WCW's heyday roster of Hogan, Flair, Goldberg, The Outsiders, Sting, etc. That's why people gave the Invasion a shot to begin with. But when it was clear that it was just Team WWF stomping a bunch of guys they'd barely heard of, they tuned out. One could argue they've never really come back.

[Loss]

I'll take this in a slightly different direction and say while I do think Eric Bischoff had a productive run on WWE TV, they could have really done so much more with him than they did, even after the Invasion was played out. The guy was automatically hated by the fan base, a feud with Vince where he tried to steal the company was a given, and so on. But instead of putting as much heat on him as possible, they just made him a generic heel figurehead. A really good generic heel figurehead, but a generic heel figurehead nonetheless. That may be the bigger missed opportunity.

[Jimmy Redman]

The buyrate that the Invasion PPV got even with the WCW dweeb crew is indication enough that people were absolutely into the idea initially.

[El-P]

I think this whole Invasion discussion deserves its own thread (plus it's a part of WWF history, not WCW).

[cheapshot]

The buyrate that the Invasion PPV got even with the WCW dweeb crew is indication enough that people were absolutely into the idea initially.

770,000 Buys is just an insane amount, especially when it was only domestic buys.

[khawk20]

I think this whole Invasion discussion deserves its own thread (plus it's a part of WWF history, not WCW).

Your next project, perhaps?

[Grimmas]

About the invasion. It didn't need stars it needed competent booking. You can ran an invasion with the guys they brought in if they looked like threats.

[Ditch]

I don't think the WCW side had enough talent to maintain a hot feud, at least initially.

[Sidebottom]

I think this whole Invasion discussion deserves its own thread (plus it's a part of WWF history, not WCW).

Agreed. Would like to see this, somebody do i!

[Stiva]

I think this whole Invasion discussion deserves its own thread (plus it's a part of WWF history, not WCW).

Agreed. Would like to see this, somebody do i!

 

I'd gladly give it a go if we can establish when to begin watching from. Booker T at KOTR or earlier?

[jm29195]

Would it include the Heat/Velocity stuff as well, as El-P did in this thread with Saturday Night etc earlier. Living in the UK, the only terrestrial TV exposure we had was Heat, and I recall some pretty random matches with WCW guys against low card WWF people through the summer of 2001 - they would be fun to revisit...

[Migs]

I've watched a lot of the Invasion stuff pretty recently (partway through the No Mercy PPV at this point). There were a few key mistakes:

 

1) Shane was booked as a massive babyface right up until the actual invasion started. I suppose this was to build goodwill for the WCW brand if they were going to launch a separate show. But the turn really stalled the momentum of the angle from the start, with Vince functionally turning face over the course of a night. (This supports the idea of waiting a bit - Shane's heel turn could have been slower and might have been more effective.)

 

2) They absolutely had something with ECW as a separate group, and they ran through a whole angle literally in a night. The pop when Heyman formed that group is massive, and with him as a figure head cutting promos, the ECW guys feuding with the WWF or WCW had some legs - especially since RVD rapidly became the only star of the "Alliance" besides Austin. Even if you wanted to bring Stephanie into the angle, her running ECW with Heyman was probably comedic gold. (While watching, I immediately got the itch to fantasy book a world in which ECW gets to take over Sunday Night Heat and have its own show. 18-year old Chris would have freaked out for an ECW show.)

 

3) No stakes. If this was invasion, there needed to be an energy that these guys were not supposed to be here, that if the WWF lost a title to them, it might be lost for good. Instead, it was just (dueling) commissioners booking straight matches that meant nothing. If the Alliance got hold of a WWF title... a WWF guy would get a shot the next night. So what was the impact of the title change?

 

I'm sure people have made these points before. Relevant to the specific discussion we're having here: none of these issues had anything to do with the guys they were able to bring in. Even if you don't get Hogan, Flair, the Outsiders, etc. - the booking of the angle could have been significantly better. There were ways to make at least a few of these guys bigger stars - Booker and RVD for sure, but they could have taken a shot with a couple of other guys they liked.

[Johnny Guitar]

I'll take this in a slightly different direction and say while I do think Eric Bischoff had a productive run on WWE TV, they could have really done so much more with him than they did, even after the Invasion was played out. The guy was automatically hated by the fan base, a feud with Vince where he tried to steal the company was a given, and so on. But instead of putting as much heat on him as possible, they just made him a generic heel figurehead. A really good generic heel figurehead, but a generic heel figurehead nonetheless. That may be the bigger missed opportunity.

I agree with this. There was some really big money on the table with Bischoff, with a couple of different directions they could have gone in. It's a given that the hardcore WWF and ECW fans wanted him dead, but Eric was could enough as the slimey heel everyone wanted to see him take a beating.

 

 

The buyrate that the Invasion PPV got even with the WCW dweeb crew is indication enough that people were absolutely into the idea initially.

Even without the big contracts (Goldberg, Sting etc). Jericho, Raven and The Radicalz were less than 2 years removed from WCW that you could have spun them as sleeper agents