I did

 

I did, but I knew that they were being sold (newsletter subscriber at the time). Also found the storylines pretty blah…everything was in a holding pattern. If you look back on it however you can see WCW was getting its act together and laying the foundation for a new generation. I think that they were at least 18 months from closing the gap however; they had found themselves in the same position as WWF did in 1996.

 

Russo pretty much killed the entire roster. He made all the top drawing stars look bad and didn't get a single person truly over that was part of the shitty new roster that had. In that group they had a couple of great guys but WCW and Russo didn't really do them any favors.

 

Watched a bit of it, it was improving on the crap they had shown before that but the damage had been done.

If they had gotten a 6-12 month extension, who knows they may have turned the corner.

 

Some interesting what-ifs in the Fusient buys, company stays on Turner:

• ECW talent becomes available. Tommy Dreamer, Rob Van Dam, Sabu are all going to be in play
• Jerry Lawler is a free agent
• The Roaddog is a free agent
• Scott Hall is a free agent
• A very young AJ Styles is under contract and would be in his first year in the company
• Kevin Nash, Dallas Page, Sting, and Goldberg are under contract but were being deliberately held out in the final months in expectation for the relaunch

 

Considering I wasn't born when WCW was around, I am going to say no, no I didn't.

 

Yes worldwide as Sky Digital didn't have TNT

 

Nitro was on Bravo though (I didn’t have Sky/cable so I watched Worldwide on Channel 5 & bought VHS tapes from WoolWorths of the PPVs).

 

I stayed with WCW till the end. I even bought the New Blood Rising PPV.

 

I tried to but it got to the point where it was pretty damn hard to watch.

 

Was worldwide the show where they used batman style censoring?

 

Yeah, that was super lame. You have to blame the Time Warner executives for that though. Even Ted Turner started to become powerless at that point.

 

Yes. I miss changing the channel back and forth to watch Nitro and Raw is War.

 

The TV in 2001 was still VERY meh (Dusty's "ass", Jarrett vs. Fake Dusty, Kanyon/Ms. Jones hospital skit, and Stacy with a stroller full of Stasiak pics were all really bad segments), though it does feel better than 2000 (rock bottom was probably the David/Stacy wedding, Russo winning the title, Arquette winning the title, the Nash gauntlet where he didn’t have to cover anyone, or the 49ers and Viagra on a Pole matches, the former main evented one Nitro). I can't see them overcoming the early 2001 WWF product with those shows (late 2001 is another story though, especially when the Invasion story became tired, even mid 2001 had heel Austin, which was better than heel Sting, Goldberg, and Rikishi despite still being a bad move). Nitro and Thunder in 2001 were nothing to brag about, regardless of the PPV quality and real cruiserweight matches again (better than 1999 and 2000, though still inferior to 1998, on par with late 1998 before the wheels fell off after the fingerpoke).

 

I think the WWE would’ve inevitably had that fall though, which could’ve given
WCW a chance to catch up again.

 

I did a bit. It certainly was improving, but it was too little too late in the eyes of many, and its parent company didn't want wrestling programming on their network anymore. WCW was operating at a loss, I think, but had its parent network not shot it, and allowed it proper time to find a new network then I think it could still be around today, just not on Monday. I think there's more to the story than we will ever know because a couple of other major networks didn't want WCW programming.

When WWF bought WCW at the time, the rumoured plan was to have a revived WCW take over SmackDown's slot, but UPN/Paramount Network vetoed that idea.

In late 2000, and early 2001, WCW Nitro had around 2 million viewers which imo was not bad.

 

I did but I was just a kid and wrestling was wrestling didn't think too much about it

 

I don't like Johnny Ace. WCW was still a good show.

 

Vince initially wanted to run it as it’s own entity but the TV deal he had meant he understandably couldn’t run a different wrestling show on a rival network.

His Plan B was therefore going to give Raw to WCW but the bad fan reaction to the Booker T vs Buff Bagwell match allegedly scrapped this plan which was a huge shame. He tried to rush everything which was a big mistake- with patience there could’ve been a scenario where he was getting double PPV money a month.

.

I did a bit. It certainly was improving, but it was too little too late in the eyes of many, and its parent company didn't want wrestling programming on their network anymore. WCW was operating at a loss, I think, but had its parent network not shot it, and allowed it proper time to find a new network then I think it could still be around today, just not on Monday. I think there's more to the story than we will ever know because a couple of other major networks didn't want WCW programming.

When WWF bought WCW at the time, the rumoured plan was to have a revived WCW take over SmackDown's slot, but UPN/Paramount Network vetoed that idea.

In late 2000, and early 2001, WCW Nitro had around 2 million viewers which imo was not bad.

Vince initially wanted to run it as it’s own entity but the TV deal he had meant he understandably couldn’t run a different wrestling show on a rival network.

His Plan B was therefore going to give Raw to WCW but the bad fan reaction to the Booker T vs Buff Bagwell match allegedly scrapped this plan which was a huge shame. He tried to rush everything which was a big mistake- with patience there could’ve been a scenario where he was getting double PPV money a month.

 

I liked Sting, Booker T, Scott Steiner, Jeff Jarrett, DDP and Bill Goldberg being in the main event. Ric Flair was the perfect guy to be the WCW Commissioner.

Bret Hart and Chris Benoit had some great matches. Kevin Nash with the NBT guys was ok. They also still had a great cruiserweight division.

 

I checked out around the time of the finger poke, I was getting sick of Hogan and that finished me with WCW

 

I used to watch WCW worldwide up until the end. I was 11 when wwe bought WCW and I remember being sad when the buyout happened, as I liked Steiner, vampiro, sting, Goldberg, la parka and they didn’t turn up in the invasion.

 

La Parka is cool.

 

I did off and on.

99 was REALLY bad and by 00, it just felt like a corpse being paraded around Weekend at Bernies style.

In early 01, it took a "back to basics" approach that was better but by then, the damage was already done.

 

WCW was always about Hulk Hogan since 1994. I like Hulk Hogan but they had the opportunity to create new superstars besides Bill Goldberg.

 

Kinda/sorta. By the time it got to 1999, I was barely changing the channel from Raw to Nitro because Nitro was so bad in that time period. But during a Raw commercial break, I would switch to Nitro.

 

To me it really looked like WCW would challenge the WWE again but it was too little too late. Let me know what you thought of that period though.

They were never going to get it back. They had great talent but talent only does so much. They built a brand that was hugely popular. You turned on the show in 2001, nearly all the popular names and faces associated with that brand were all gone. The same thing happened with WWF for those years following Hogan leaving. Had they dug in like McMahon and worked hard through those struggling times, they maybe could have bounced back but WWF was Vince's livelihood, WCW was just a small part of a bigger corporate entity so they just cut the fat and moved on.

 

I was 15. I watched it all three promotions and absolutely loved it. Part of the magic of being a kid at that time.

 

Yes I still watched because I thought Scott Steiner and Booker carried the show. There was still some young talent there that I thought increased the quality of the show. Jeff Jarret was really horrible though and whenever they showed him on screen I turned to raw right away. other than that WCW in its dying days was absolute trash.

 

Jarrett was rightfully demoted as an upper midcarder when Russo was gone and good riddance. He shouldn’t have been near the main event.

I thought the later stuff with Storm/Awesome/The Natural Born Thrillers & the cruiser weights were great in 2001 too.

 

I watched it, and enjoyed it. Even though, now, it's looked at as a failure /joke/something for Meltzer and Bischoff to argue about - it was fun to watch because it was Still so different from WWE.. but fun to watch doesn't mean it was "quality".

Actually, my parents were old school (or "frugal") so I didn't have cable. I would get the TAPE from a friend of mind every week..for that and Thunder. I skipped through alot.

 

It was certainly on an upswing but I don’t think anything could’ve saved it
Wrestling as a whole was cooling off