Jump to content
Pro Wrestling Only

Financial Screw UP's


Guest Kenta Batista

Recommended Posts

  • Replies 105
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

They have had a few matches on RAW since '05, which I thought was ridiculous at first, and then I realized they will just pretend it never happened and everyone will forget it did anyway.

They always (exaggeration) do Cena-Taker on every three hour RAW dont they?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Total suckage to a disrespectful degree in front of the new owners in their home arena.

"The people in this country including the media have really got behind this thing with support like I've NEVER EVER seen anywhere". :lol:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The problem with that comparison is that the Goldberg era was totally different from the Hogan era as far as the TV and PPV format. Hogan would wrestle on TV maybe 4 or 5 times a year at most on SNME against mid-level heels and just seeing a Hogan match on TV was a rare novelty (ignoring the televised house show stuff like MSG which was for local markets and wasn't a part of the TV universe continuity). As far as PPV he had 4 singles matches on PPV in the 80s and never wrestled on the weekly TV aside from a very rare exception, if ever. So he could have a long reign without having to kill off all the viable heels and was never overexposed in the ring. Whereas in the late 90s Goldberg would have been expected to wrestle on TV pretty much every week as well as 10+ PPVs a year and there's only so long he could have stayed squashing scrubs every week, and after becoming champion he couldn't continue going through Jerry Flynn level jobbers, he'd have to mix it up with the top guys every week and there's only a finite number of heels he could plough through.

 

Just seems that in the Monday Night Wars era, booking Goldberg's streak and championship reign for a significant length of time while keeping him undefeated would have been near impossible, hence the dilemma of how to end his streak and/or maintain that sense of vulnerability and credible opponents in an era of mass overexposure. Ofcourse WCW fucked it up by killing his aura, turning him heel and eventually he was teaming with Sgt Buddy Lee Parker on PPV but even with great booking it would be a hell of a challenge to keep the streak going.

The Goldberg/Regal match that got Regal fired is really the answer to everything. Actually, there are a bunch of answers - Goldberg/DDP and Goldberg/Steiner come to mind - but Goldberg/Regal I think is the best answer since...

 

1. It's a fairly competitive match that didn't hurt Goldberg's asskicker aura at all

2. It's a fairly competitive match that didn't hurt Goldberg's asskicker aura at all despite it being against someone slotted much lower on the totem pole than himself

3. It's a fairly competitive match that wasn't even supposed to be competitive - hence Regal's subsequent firing - yet Goldberg rolled with the punches and looked like a natural doing so

 

What gets glossed over far too often when talking about what went wrong with Goldberg is that just because he was a guy who got over by squashing people didn't mean he was a guy who needed to keep squashing people to stay over. He was a guy who could work competitive matches with other top stars and even competitivish matches with lower-ranked guys and still maintain his asskicker aura.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think that was always what intrigued me about Goldberg at the time.

 

Yes a lot of his matches were old WWF Superstars material, but when actually asked to do more during the initial run to the moon... it's not like any of that stuff would come within a county of landing in the "let's talk about bad matches in WCW" stuff.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...

EDIT: Actually on second thought, McMahon's millions giveaway last year probably beats out all the individual acts of WCW incompetence I mentioned.

Nah, they spend more than that every week on things we hardly even notice like pyro and rental cars.

 

 

When WWE wants to cut costs, they always look at the roster as one of the first places, when really, their bigger expenses seem to be in the executive salaries on the corporate side.

I thought about ways WWE wastes money while watching WrestleMania 26. How expensive is it to have jets flying over the WrestleMania stadium and taking over head camera shots, especially when it's barely even worth it. I mean its cool to have but if they didn't have them, no one would be sitting there going "Mania was a good show, but I wish they had a jet flying over head with an aerial cam." I thought about it again watching Monday's Raw when they utilized what had to be mighty expensive satellite time to show Cena, Orton and Sheamus via satellite... to basically say nothing. Its not like any of them had particularly strong, money promos they had to cut. They all did very generic plugs for the PPV that a talking head announcer could have just as easily said. To me it came off like a huge waste of cash.

 

Lost $62 million in 2000 (would have been $80 million but they wouldn't let Russo blow up a Corvette every week on Nitro)

Is that some euphemism for wasting money or did Russo really have some reason for wanting to do this particular stunt multiple times? I have not heard this story.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

For another board I did something similar, in going through old issues of the Observer and seeing what WCW paid various people from around late 1997 to 2000. Here are some of the details:

 

*Michael Buffer paid $500,000 for his role in the film 'Ready to Rumble' and for the rights to use the phrase.

 

*KISS to receive $500,000 to perform to songs on the 8/23 Nitro.

 

*Karl Malone paid $900,000

 

*Jay Leno paid $1,000,000

 

*Dennis Rodman paid $2,250,000

 

*Hardcore Battle Royal at Bash at the Beach '99 which ended up with several of the roster injured cost over $100,000 to produce

 

*Master P getting $200,000 per Nitro appearance

 

*Swole (Master P's bodyguard) signed to a $400,000 a year contract. Master P also convinced WCW to sign both Chase Tatum and Teddy '4x4' Reade to deals although Meltzer doesn't mention how much they received.

 

*Tank Abbott $300,000 a year

 

*Wrath $350,000 a year

 

*Stevie Ray $750,000 a year

 

*Vampiro $350,000 a year

 

*Hak (The Sandman) $250,000 a year

 

*Scott Norton $800,000 a year

 

*Rick Rude in late '97, when the sole purpose for signing him was with to screw with Vince as he appeared on a taped Raw with beard and a live Nitro sans, signed a 3 year contract at $300,000 a year

 

*John Nord $150,000 a year

 

*Kevin Wacholz $150,000 a year (after his late '97 tryout, wrestled a grand total of two matches)

 

*Lanny Poffo $75,000 a year (for at least 3 years, and only managed to locate him wrestling on two occasions)

 

*Bam Bam Bigelow $450,000 a year

 

*Mike Awesome signed a 3 year deal for $300,000 a year. He also received a $250,000 signing bonus, and WCW had to pay ECW a further $250,000 after Paul Heyman went to court and got a restraining order against him showing up on Nitro

 

*Eric Bischoff Tonight Show set cost $70,000

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I didn't think Lanny ever wrestled for WCW, at least that's how he made it sound in his shoot on 57talk. That is probably the least ridiculous figure on this list though because as it was explained, Lanny's contract was a gift to Savage for getting them the Slim Jim sponsorship.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Norton's seems like one of the most ridiculous ones as they hardly ever did anything with him. Vicious and Delicious is the biggest push I can remember, and even that wasn't very long. I think they could have done a lot more with him though, he always did some kind of amazing feat of strength like picking up The Giant that made you notice him but then he'd just kinda disappear again for a while.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Norton's is just insane. The guy was just *there*. Stevie Ray's was insane too, but at least he had that B&W NWO angle that was... Well, ok, Stevie Ray's is totally insane too.

And Master P's bodyguard getting more than Vampiro, Hak, Mike Awesome and almost as much as Bigelow. Jeeez....

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Another vote for "Norton's salary jumped off the screen and tried to punch me in the face" here. Jesus. What on earth could possibly be their justification for paying him anywhere near that much? Boring wrestler, bad promos, no name value, and they never even tried to push him. Why even bother?

 

I've never really been clear on how exactly this happens. We're talking about over a $100 million swing inside of 2 years from the end of 1998 to 2000.

Someone else will need to refresh my memory on the details, but wasn't there some kind of obscure Turner accounting practice which artificially bumped WCW's net revenue up during the boom years? Something like crediting them with being paid money from some other branch of Turner which technically wasn't income, but was counted as such anyway. That's one reason why the 96-98 years were such vastly better financial statements than all the others.

 

I don't know how much more they could have got from Goldberg. Yeah, it was stupid to beat him so cheaply like the did, but if that didn't happen what else would they do with him? It always seemed to me that once he beat Hogan, there wasn't anything left for him to do.

One thing that isn't mentioned much is that WCW had already plateaued before Goldberg ever got the belt. IIRC, wasn't the Goldberg/Hogan title match an impulsive response to Raw finally beating Nitro in the ratings the week before? That boat was already leaking. And as mentioned, always treating the world champion as of secondary importance to whatever Hogan was doing was a huge mistake. Goldberg only main evented a grand total of 2 PPVs during his six-month title reign, and he didn't even show up on two PPVs during that period.

 

Not on Starrcade 98: Hogan, Hart, Hall, Savage, Luger, Sting, Rick Steiner, Scott Steiner, Raven, Benoit, Malenko, Mysterio, Booker T.

Mysterio wrestled in the opener, but otherwise you're right. Also Sir Not Appearing In This Film: Hennig, Bigelow, Rick Steiner, Bagwell, Windham, Stevie Ray, Kanyon, and every single luchadore who wasn't in the opening match. Granted, some of those guys were shitty workers, but they all had one thing in common: they weren't Jerry Flynn.

 

They have had a few matches on RAW since '05, which I thought was ridiculous at first, and then I realized they will just pretend it never happened and everyone will forget it did anyway.

They always (exaggeration) do Cena-Taker on every three hour RAW dont they?
Yeah, and it always goes about 3 minutes, and Taker always comes out looking stronger.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest Slickster

IIRC Eric Bischoff got TBS and TNT to pay WCW rights fees for airing WCW programming, which grossly inflated their income.

 

Dave Meltzer pointed out that had they done this since 1990 or so WCW would have had extremely strong financial statements for a lot longer and wouldn't have appeared to have such a meteoric rise in revenues during the Monday Night Wars.

 

Also, big-name contracts like Hulk Hogan's were paid by Turner Home Entertainment so they weren't part of WCW's expenses.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I've never really been clear on how exactly this happens. We're talking about over a $100 million swing inside of 2 years from the end of 1998 to 2000.

Someone else will need to refresh my memory on the details, but wasn't there some kind of obscure Turner accounting practice which artificially bumped WCW's net revenue up during the boom years? Something like crediting them with being paid money from some other branch of Turner which technically wasn't income, but was counted as such anyway. That's one reason why the 96-98 years were such vastly better financial statements than all the others.
Two things changed:

1. Early in the Nitro era, Bischoff got TBS and TNT to pay rights fees to WCW for the TV shows. If this had been done before, WCW would have never had a year in the red.

2. Certain wrestlers were being paid by other divisions of Turner Broadcasting for creative accounting reasons, hence the relatively small amount of wrestler contracts that the WWF procured via buying WCW's assets.

 

EDIT: Slickster beat me to it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I've never really been clear on how exactly this happens. We're talking about over a $100 million swing inside of 2 years from the end of 1998 to 2000.

Someone else will need to refresh my memory on the details, but wasn't there some kind of obscure Turner accounting practice which artificially bumped WCW's net revenue up during the boom years? Something like crediting them with being paid money from some other branch of Turner which technically wasn't income, but was counted as such anyway. That's one reason why the 96-98 years were such vastly better financial statements than all the others.
Two things changed:

1. Early in the Nitro era, Bischoff got TBS and TNT to pay rights fees to WCW for the TV shows. If this had been done before, WCW would have never had a year in the red.

2. Certain wrestlers were being paid by other divisions of Turner Broadcasting for creative accounting reasons, hence the relatively small amount of wrestler contracts that the WWF procured via buying WCW's assets.

 

EDIT: Slickster beat me to it.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but surely these practices continued after 1998? It help explains the rapid rise to profitability of WCW under Bischoff, but it doesn't explain their even faster decline.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Also, I thought Wacholz rolled over from '93.

No, they re-signed him in the late 90s. I guess Bischoff must have been a mark for the "beat up Vince" story because I refuse to believe that he impressed in his tryout match.

 

Also in addition to the other tales of creative accounting I believe they also counted the revenue from Halloween Havoc '94 and Starrcade '94 (as well as the 1995 editions) in their '95 statements, thus turning a "profit" for the first time.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.


×
×
  • Create New...