Was any of WCW's success based on the undercard?

[goodhelmet]

I was reading this topic earlier and was having a hard time coming to grips with the question because of the subject material.

 

To me, WCW is a hard topic to discuss because of my history with the company. I stopped watching wrestling around 1989-1990 when McMahon's cartoon circus was in full-effect and NWA had killed my interest with the Dusty booking and lack of payoffs (shortly before 1989 is when I stopped watching NWA).

 

In late 1996, I was working at a nightclub as a bartender and a couple of my barbacks were wrestling fans. Turns out, a few doormen were also fans. I had worked there for two years and had no clue. Wrestling was in my past. Well, one night I go over to my sister's house (probably Dec. 1996) and my nephew is watching WCW. I hadn;t watched wrestling in years. The last program I can remember seeing before this was the RAW where 123 Kid upset Razor Ramon. I also vaguely remember Evad Sullivan being picked on while flipping through the channels. The NWO v. WCW storyline intrigued the hell out of me. Fans throwing trash at the ring. The Outsiders questioning the very company they worked for... or against. The constant questions of who would turn from each side. I was hooked back on wrestling.

 

Pretty soon, the guys from work would meet every Monday night and watch Nitro and Raw. Even though the awesome Hart Foundation story was unfolding, we were dedicated to Nitro and the nWo. This was long before I became smart to the biz or was on the internet... a good two 1/2 years before I had known there was this wrestling subculture that existed. Having said that, it wasn't long before the nWo story became stale (although I watched every PPV from nWo Souled 97 until Satrrcade 98) and we needed new reasons to watch wrestling. I remember those days and remember what it was like to be a wrestling fan and actually wearing an nWo shirt and not being scoffed at in public.

 

By early 1998, I found myself watching wrestling with fewer and fewer people but a change had occurred before this. I wasn't watching to see Nash and the Giant. I was watching to see my new favorite guys on the roster... Benoit and Malenko. I was watching Rey Mysterio Jr. matches since I had never seen lucha before and thought the guy was different than anything I had seen before. I saw the transformation of Jericho from smiling babyface to the top interview... a guy who's segments I loved watching. When I went to my first Nitro in '97, I was cheering Sting in the rafters. In '98, I was loving every minute of the Jericho-Malenko match where I first saw Malenko do the top-rope DDT.

 

By the time of Starrcade '98, I had sworn off WCW for good and focused on WWF. It was easy to do because there was never any resolution to the angles and stories in WCW. The show no longer had the edge. I kept wondering why they didn't push Konnan and Scott Hall (the two most charismatic, or at least over guys) oblivious to the fact that these guys were locker room cancers. IN WWF, I found people still watching the product who I was able to talk wrestling with. I didn't just resent WCW, I despised it because I had invested time and money into the product and it never paid off... ever.

 

The whole point is that I could have been labeled as your typical nWo mark in its heyday but it wasn't the nWo that always held my interest. I would look forward to a Benoit match just as much as I would an Outsiders match. I would scream up and down that Benoit and Malenko should form a team and become tag champs, completely unaware that they had teamed in ECW (which I didn't see until it came on TNN) and had travelled together. This was happening while my friends would point out the painfully obvious position of the marks... they were too small. If the nWo was the selling point, it was the undercard that maintained its fanbase.

 

By the time Jericho had arrived in the WWF, I hadn't watched WCW in months. When Benoit and company jumped, I had already been on the internet and knew the stories behind the scenes. I was happy that they jumped. Fuck WCW and the shitty product. Kudos to my two new favorite wrestlers for going to New York. They had magic in Atlanta for a short while and they pissed it away, alienating its fanbase (i.e. ME!) in the meantime. Like Cooke, I miss the WCW but I miss them from 96-97, not for the actual wrestling product, but for the feeling I felt when I rediscovered wrestling. Now, I am bitter and jaded but not without hope. I am constantly rediscovering matches and promotions that I missed out on and the past has become my future for wrestling.

[Guest Some Guy]

nWo carried the load while the Cruisers and the Vanilla Midgets held the show together. Raw had a great ME scene in 97 with Bret, Austin, and HBK (when he showed up), but their undercard sucked for the most part. WCW had a ton of big names on top and a ton of good workers on the bottom and in the middle. WCW had the proper mix at that time, by the time 98 came around WWF realized that they didn't have the workers to entertain with ringwork so virtually everybody got a character that was at least marginally entertaining, like Val and Godfather. WCW had a great in ring product until the ME guys started going, while WWF had a great ME match and cahracters in the undercard. Two ways to do it and both worked, but ultimately both companies were driven by star power at the top.

[Loss]

Holy shit, Goodhelmet, that was an awesome post. WCW is a little bit of a touchy subject for me as well, because while I loved the company, I hate the people in charge just as much for allowing it to become what it became, for waiting too long to make the changes they needed to make all along, for letting all of their most promising talents slip out the back door and not even caring about it, for giving us this ultra-boring monopoly era where Monday nights just aren't fun anymore. They had the world by the balls, and they had an incredibly loyal fanbase mixed with mainstream acceptance. Could they have maintained the mainstream appeal forever? No, but they could have stayed respectable. Transitioning from the Hogans and Nashes to the Goldbergs and Bookers might have been a rough ride, but had they done it when they should have, they'd still be in business. The irony in them having their most profitable year ever in 1998 while making decisions all year long that would kill them is crushing, as is the irony that on the same night that they drew the biggest gate in company history, they committed suicide at the top of the card by switching the title on a fingerpoke. I miss WCW, and it makes me angry that it all played out the way it did, because everyone involved really did deserve a happier ending.

[goodhelmet]

With my purchase of the Observer, I was able to choose 2 free issues. One was last year's Wrestlemania issue that had a couple of lists and poll results (I'll post thse in a separate post). It also had a great write-up on the Monday Night Wars DVD. The other free issue I chose was the 2001 issue that chronicled the life and death of WCW. If I get some spare time this weekend, I'll type up some key points in the article I think are worth sharing.

[goodhelmet]

As a follow-up, here are some of the things Meltzer mentions on the Nitro era of WCW from the March 26, 2001 Observer. As I get free time, I'll continue posting parts of the story...

 

Nitro the signing of Kevin Nash and Scott hall, and the creation of the NWO led WCW to its glory period. There are both realities and myths of this period.

 

The myth is that the NWO turned around the TV ratings. Surely, they led to the 83-week win streak, but Nitro debuted on September 4, 1995 at the Mall of America in Minnesota, going unopposed (Raw was pre-empted for the U.S. Open) and drew a 2.9 rating. On the very first head-to-head show, Nitro won by a 2.5 to 2.2 margin, which shows just how much the TV popularity of wrestling grew in a short time. In comparing television ratings for WWF and WCW throughout the 90s, the fact is, WCW dres almost identitcal ratings in 1992, significantly stronger ratings in 1993, the same year they couldn;t fraw flies at the box office, and 1994, well before there was such a thing as Nitro. Nobody knows this because, until the Monday Night Wars began n late 1995, nobody cared about ratings because ratings did not correlate to revenue, and making money was, and still is, the real name of business.

 

Even though it was the low period of the company, particularly 1994 and 1995 at the gate, WWF was easily outdrawing WCW during the same period, although Hogan was the king of PPV and Hogan;s big shows were outdrawing most of the WWF shows. By 1996-97, WCW dominated ratings and PPV, but WWF was still just as strong on live events, because they sent all their stars on the road, while WCW's wrestlers were taught to believe house shows didn;t matter, and a star should only have to work Nitro and PPV. When the wrestlers appearing didn' care, fans quickly figured out they don't need to care either. When the wrestlers on TV came across like they don't care, the TV audience figures it out as well.

 

In late 1995 and early 1996, both sides were dueling equally in the Monday Night ratings, which became the most real fight most wrestling fans were aware of in following the game, for a few months. As a company, WCW was clearly gaining momentum as it had its eyes opened and was scouring the world signing up the best undiscovered talent, and stealing concepts that Paul Heyman both created in ECW, or took from other companies abroad. Bischoff made the next big move, to increase NItro from one hour to two, which coincided with the debut of Hall and Nash, and WCW started winning by a sizeable margin every week. Hogan's heel turn at a time when it appeared his career was over, as people were expressly tired of his act, suggested by Bischoff, saw the company catch on fire, and they did several monster buy rates, including through the usage of basketball superstar Dennis Rodman, in particular a tag match with Karl Malone which was the media peak of the WCW empire.

 

Without question, the greatest angle for business came in 1997, when WCW spent much of the year keeping Sting in the rafters and he never wrestled, and he didn't appear on every Nitro, as the mystery crow gimmic, to lead to a title match at Starrcade with Hulk Hogan. The show ended up drawing a 1.9 buyrate, about 640,000 buys, which included an appearance by Bret Hart, at the time the hottest wrestler in the business stemming from the Montreal match. WCW was so far ahead, it had all the talent, the war seemed over. In comparison, Wrestlemania that year, headlined by Undertaker vs. Sid Vicious and Hart vs. Steve Austin in their now legendary I Quit match, drew 237,000 buys That was also the beginning of the other end of the faustuan bargain.