Dark Side of the Ring

[The Thread Killer]

23 minutes ago, dawho5 said:

In a way I think that the whole 90s wrestling style (which I loved at the time and is absolutely aesthetically pleasing as wrestling, was a horrific experiment for the people involved. 

That’s exactly how I feel about 90’s AJPW. I absolutely loved that stuff when I first discovered it, now I feel guilty watching it because that style literally killed Misawa.

[dawho5]

I am the same way.  Loved watching it, but don't know how much I can go back.I feel like Misawa, Kawada and Kobashi especially were really into that DK style of working.  Between those guys, the NJ juniors and the WCW midcard that to me is what defined the style of wrestling that came after it.

As much as the action in the ring makes me want to say "for the better", I have to think that a whole generation of wrestlers is going to be paying within 10 years for not protecting their bodies.  Learn from the horror stories of the guys you are emulating.

[Dooley]

Back to "Who killed WCW?" , I mostly concur with TK and dawho. It's my POV that corporate decisions had way more to do with the company having the plug pulled than anything creative (even under Russo).

I think some others may be looking at it through a "wrestling lens". I listened to Cornette's review of episode 4, and it was borderline embarrassing how unable he was to see the forest for the trees.

The Disney tapings were a great idea not only from a financial perspective but it also gave WCW the chance to co-brand with Disney. House shows were hemorrhaging and it's not like the syndicated shows were being taped at some sort of hallowed grounds before that. Now, the scheduling...

On 6/30/2024 at 3:33 AM, NintendoLogic said:

The WWF couldn't get a deal for WCW because TNN had exclusive rights to all WWF cable programming. That was what killed Vince's first attempt to buy the company in 2000.

And TNN couldn't have found room for another WWF property ? At the time, WWF had a 2 hour block on Saturday night of velocity and confidential. There's no reason WWF couldn't have put a WCW show in that timeslot if they had been motivated to do so.

[JRH]

As for the claim that they cant get advertisers to buy time on wrestling, it might be interesting to find old episodes of Nitro or Thunder with the commercials intact (albiet, that's harder than you'd think) and see what advertisers they WERE able to get. I'm sure there would be at least some high-end stuff advertised.

[pmo]

22 hours ago, JRH said:

As for the claim that they cant get advertisers to buy time on wrestling, it might be interesting to find old episodes of Nitro or Thunder with the commercials intact (albiet, that's harder than you'd think) and see what advertisers they WERE able to get. I'm sure there would be at least some high-end stuff advertised.

From memory it was a lot of candy, zit cream, and 1-800-Collect type things.  Definitely not high brow.

[Al]

And government mandated anti-smoking advertisements.

[JRH]

Actually, here's a video with the commercial breaks from the 3/30/99 Nitro so we can look at what advertisers they were able to get:

 

[dawho5]

On 7/7/2024 at 8:10 AM, Dooley said:

And TNN couldn't have found room for another WWF property ? At the time, WWF had a 2 hour block on Saturday night of velocity and confidential. There's no reason WWF couldn't have put a WCW show in that timeslot if they had been motivated to do so.

Wasn't there some kind of copyright thing where other networks would not have been legally able to air Nitro?  I recall something along those lines.

To be fair to Cornette, he never looked at wrestling through the corporate lens.  Even when he was a part of it.  He recalled Bischoff being hailed as the "best wrestling booker" when it was specifically "best wrestling executive".  Given that Bischoff himself did not consider himself a booker I agree with that idea.  There are two headliners there, Eric Bischoff and Vince.  Everybody else kind of failed once it became a competitive business.

Cornette did bring up another great point, that some mistakes were glossed over.  And a lot of them were, on Bischoff's part, as well as a few others.  That being said, I have some mistakes of my own I don't voluntarily bring up.  Also, if I were to try to recall the exact circumstances of a thing that blew up in my face 20 years ago I'm 99.999999% certain that I would gloss over some things I did that contributed to the blowing up in my face part due to not remembering.  End of the day, he's a salesman who actually has learned a lot about the wrestling business through the years.

And Corny, for all his genius in the field of wrestling, made his share of mistakes over the years.  Not the same mistakes, but probably a similar percentage.  We all get in over our heads and make mistakes trying to cope.  To counter all of that, I truly love Cornette in all facets of what he does and will continue to follow him until he stops podcasting.  The man is entertaining, flawed and a genius.

All in all I think Bischoff has been vindicated over the years as others have tried to accomplish what he did.  He may not be the best ever booker or the most knowledgable wrestling guy out there, but he doesn't claim to be either.  He's a guy who likes the idea of producing a highly rated TV show.  And for 83 weeks, he did that very thing.

You can fault him for being a bit of a Hogan mark, sure.  Of course he loves Hulk Hogan.  When you put Hogan on TV, people watch.  Whether or not you like some of the things he (supposedly) did over the years or how he wrestled, he made the eyeballs show up to the arenas and the TV screen.  Isn't that kind of the whole reason wrestling actually existed post-1985?

I kind of hate that I feel that way.  1998 me would punch me in the mouth for all of it.  But there's more than my own personal taste out there.