[cmiller4642]

The story writes itself

Goldberg beats EVERYONE from top to bottom from late 97 to late 98

he wins WW3

he challenges Hogan at Starrcade 98 (booked in the Georgia Dome) and wins the title clean from Hogan with a jackhammer

Goldberg won the title on free TV on July 6, 1998. Nitro drew a 4.8 rating to Raw's rating of a 4.0. All's good right? Well Raw drew higher ratings for the next 4 weeks afterward.

While Goldberg won the title on Nitro, the WWF was starting their Summerslam build by having The Undertaker win the #1 contendership to Stone Cold's title over Mankind in the main event.

 

[Kratosx23]

Re: Goldberg winning the WCW title on Nitro is one of the biggest mistakes Bischoff m

And Goldberg only found out by watching Thunder on the weekend. :lmao They had a 3 day build. They could've had a million buys on PPV at a Starrcade but they had to get a moderately higher rating for one week.

It's symptomatic of the way WCW was run. They just blew their load the first chance they got, everything was about now. I want it now, give me it now. They never built stars outside of Goldberg, they weren't concerned with doing anything other than getting a higher rating than Vince that week, it was all done on a basis of the immediate victory with no long term gain plan. WWE has always been very forward thinking, even to this day, with the things they're doing with Roman Reigns, the performance center, the WWE Network, etc. That's why they're still around, one of many reasons.

 

[cmiller4642]

Re: Goldberg winning the WCW title on Nitro is one of the biggest mistakes Bischoff m

And Goldberg only found out by watching Thunder on the weekend. :lmao They had a 3 day build. They could've had a million buys on PPV at a Starrcade but they had to get a moderately higher rating for one week.

It's symptomatic of the way WCW was run. They just blew their load the first chance they got, everything was about now. I want it now, give me it now. They never built stars outside of Goldberg, they weren't concerned with doing anything other than getting a higher rating than Vince that week, it was all done on a basis of the immediate victory with no long term gain plan. WWE has always been very forward thinking, even to this day, with the things they're doing with Roman Reigns, the performance center, the WWE Network, etc.

Not to mention the millions of buys they wasted on the PPV's between July and Starrcade 98. Imagine Sting vs Goldberg, Goldberg vs Nash, Goldberg vs Flair, etc...

 

[Mr Shadow]

Re: Goldberg winning the WCW title on Nitro is one of the biggest mistakes Bischoff m

In the end it did.Altho it made for awesome tv...Wish Pro wrestling was as popular now

 

[Jupiter Jack Daniels]

Re: Goldberg winning the WCW title on Nitro is one of the biggest mistakes Bischoff m

I'm with you 100%, OP.

Prime example of Hogan's bullshit right there. Cared more about getting a nice chunk of that 40,000 gate than help really establishing Goldberg as the future of the business by letting it build until Starrcade, which would mark the end of the nWo.

 

[MANTI TEO]

Re: Goldberg winning the WCW title on Nitro is one of the biggest mistakes Bischoff m

UMMMMMMMM.... I would have put the match on PPV but your really can't say they were wrong without doing a Cost Benefit Analysis.

First WCW was owned by a TV Company
Second WCW was not designed to make money
Third WCW didn't get PPV dollars Turner Home Movies Did (Watch WWE Legends Roundtable - Outdoors)

So the question is what brought in more money to Turner.

If the PPV cost $40 and they got a 700,000 buys (they never got more then 650,000) = $13 Million after you split the costs with the cable companies

The real question is how did WCW/TBS monitize the price per commerical for the show and the boost in ratings. So if the price for a commerical for Nitro at a 4.0 was 100,000.00 and now WCW was able to sell a commerical for a show that hit a 4.8 for $120,000.00. Thats an increase of $20,000K per commerical. Lets say NITRO has 12 commericals per hour X 3 hour show and WCW keeps these inflated prices for 20 weeks your looking at $14.4 Million. Not to mention your still gonna have the PPV buys.

So we'll cut our PPV's in half from earlier and now you're looking at $20.9 Million for giving the match away v. $13 Million for keeping it on PPV.

 

[OldschoolHero]

Re: Goldberg winning the WCW title on Nitro is one of the biggest mistakes Bischoff m

I still argue it was the right thing todo.

1.It was Goldbergs home town. It would be like wwe going to Seattle this year and trying to build the show around anyone but Daniel Bryan. That crowd only wanted to see Goldberg.

2.Hogan was getting tiresome with the strap-Hogan knew it to. Plus he was set for feuds with Leno and Warrior for the next 4 months so it would have given him a break from the belt.

3. Probably the biggest reason-Turner execs were there. They wanted to know why the should keep investing in this product. This was during the AOL thing and there was a fight for power. Giving them Hogan vs Goldberg with that crowd and that tv rating got them off Bishoffs back for awhile.

Yes they lost out on money with a huge pay per view build, but it was a different time then. People forget we got Austin/Rock on tv before they met at Mania.

 

[666_The_Game_666]

Re: Goldberg winning the WCW title on Nitro is one of the biggest mistakes Bischoff m

WCW was much more interested in TV ratings and not buyrates. Bischof wanted to beat the WWF in the ratings game. By July 1998 the WCW stranglehold on the ratings war was gone and for the only time during the Monday night war it was a true back and forth affair. Putting Goldberg vs Hogan on free TV does look like a stupid move and in hindsight not doing a match that big on PPV was not good especially when WWF did its biggest Summerslam buy rate for Austin/Taker in August.

 

[SOR]

Re: Goldberg winning the WCW title on Nitro is one of the biggest mistakes Bischoff m

This thread came up a couple of weeks ago.

I'm personally not THAT against Goldberg/Hogan at the Georgia Dome. It was hyped as a big Nitro and without a big match it probably wasn't going to pull a huge number crowd wise. I could see 10-15 thousand tickets being sold as soon as word got out that Goldberg was going to take on Hogan to headline the show.

Can't screw these fans over either because it's your big heavily hyped episode of Nitro and you want repeat business from them because the Georgia Dome was basically WCW's equivalent of Madison Square Garden. So you've got your big main event signed, you sell 10-15 thousand tickets because hometown guy is taking the champ on and you follow through, you give the World Title to Goldberg and make a new star. Hogan can now go onto feuds with Warrior, Leno etc and of course the crowd packed the building the next time WCW came to town which of course was the infamous Fingerpoke.

WCW could have made money off this match and if they had built Goldberg up until Starrcade you'd have kept the man relatively fresh and he could have had his moment at Starrcade but that wouldn't have been as exciting. I could have seen WCW doing better than they did for Hogan/Sting if they had gone with it at Starrcade though.

The real issue with WCW was a couple months down the track where they threw matches like Bret/Hogan (First time ever), Bret/Sting (First time ever) Goldberg/Sting (First time ever) and countless other first time matches that really hurt them. None of those matches helped them win the ratings war (I believe the night they did Goldberg/Sting they won but Ric Flair also returned that night) and could have done huge business for them on PPV. Bret/Hogan could have been the Starrcade 1998 semi main and it would have totally fit in.

So at the end of the day, Goldberg winning created a feel good TV moment but the subsequent hot shotting of big first time matches probably hurt WCW in the long run.

 

[CM4]

Re: Goldberg winning the WCW title on Nitro is one of the biggest mistakes Bischoff m

Really WCW started falling apart w/ the 2 NWO factions, when Sting can turn NWO while still being a face you knew WCW had booking problems. In '97 you knew who was on which side and because Nitro was only 2 hours it was easier to keep up w/ the storylines.

 

[Issues_Sunshyne]

Re: Goldberg winning the WCW title on Nitro is one of the biggest mistakes Bischoff m

I wouldn't say it was the Wrong thing to do, because it was fantastic and was huge, but looking back (beautiful hindsight,) it can be looked at as a mistake in not making the buys from it.

Then again, they probably wanted to boost their TV, which it did on the night.

It's one of those things, though, that I think you can't do wrong as long as you do it properly.

 

[tducey]

Re: Goldberg winning the WCW title on Nitro is one of the biggest mistakes Bischoff m

I agree. Such a big moment should have happened on a big pay per view not a Monday nitro in the summer.

 

[Algernon]

Re: Goldberg winning the WCW title on Nitro is one of the biggest mistakes Bischoff m

It's THE BIGGEST MISTAKE Bischoff made. All we needed to see at the Georgia Dome was a Hogan/Goldberg staredown and then have the match at Bash at the Beach BUT they already had Rodman and Malone signed for BATB. Hell they couldve had the massive NWO beatdown on Goldberg that night at the Georgia Dome to some of the biggest heat ever and saved it for Fall Brawl and done some monster business. I think Starrcade wouldve been too late given the back and forth ratings war, which is why Bischoff foolishly hotshotted the match so quickly.

The fact that Goldberg found out he was facing Hogan just like any of us did that happen to be watching Thunder is just downright astounding. Even when they were winning this was a horribly run company. But they got by on having great talent, big stars and one great idea.

 

[CM4]

Re: Goldberg winning the WCW title on Nitro is one of the biggest mistakes Bischoff m

It's THE BIGGEST MISTAKE Bischoff made. All we needed to see at the Georgia Dome was a Hogan/Goldberg staredown and then have the match at Bash at the Beach BUT they already had Rodman and Malone signed for BATB. Hell they couldve had the massive NWO beatdown on Goldberg that night at the Georgia Dome to some of the biggest heat ever and saved it for Fall Brawl and done some monster business. I think Starrcade wouldve been too late given the back and forth ratings war, which is why Bischoff foolishly hotshotted the match so quickly.

The fact that Goldberg found out he was facing Hogan just like any of us did that happen to be watching Thunder is just downright astounding. Even when they were winning this was a horribly run company. But they got by on having great talent, big stars and one great idea.

Except WCW wasn't really "winning" by this time. '98 was WCW's most successful year but after Raw broke Nitro's streak Nitro only won head to head 7 more times after that. WCW definitely had better long term planning in '97, if you look at their top 2 storylines that year (Hogan/Sting and DDP/Savage) they didn't give them away on TV, they both had long buildup and were on PPV like they should've been, even the big matches they did have on Nitro like Hogan/DDP had a purpose because it was the part of the WCW vs. NWO feud and there was a story to it (Hogan attacking DDP at Halloween Havoc the previous night). Like I said the NWO split was when they jumped the shark.

 

[666_The_Game_666]

Re: Goldberg winning the WCW title on Nitro is one of the biggest mistakes Bischoff m

Except WCW wasn't really "winning" by this time. '98 was WCW's most successful year but after Raw broke Nitro's streak Nitro only won head to head 7 more times after that. WCW definitely had better long term planning in '97, if you look at their top 2 storylines that year (Hogan/Sting and DDP/Savage) they didn't give them away on TV, they both had long buildup and were on PPV like they should've been, even the big matches they did have on Nitro like Hogan/DDP had a purpose because it was the part of the WCW vs. NWO feud and there was a story to it (Hogan attacking DDP at Halloween Havoc the previous night). Like I said the NWO split was when they jumped the shark.

Bischof was freaking out by this point. WWF was starting to take the lead in the war and the momentum had already began to swing to Vinces direction and by Summerslam its safe to say WWF had pulled ahead of WCW despite WCW not really faltering big time until Spring of 1999. Giving away Goldberg vs Hogan on Nitro was Bischof attempting to combat the WWF clearly. As you said they never gave away DDP/Savage in 1997 when they were killing the WWF on a weekly basis. One year later they give away easily the biggest match they have on a free TV because the other company finally caught up and the worrying and mayhem was already taking place in WCW.

 

[mikehayman]

Re: Goldberg winning the WCW title on Nitro is one of the biggest mistakes Bischoff m

I feel like I watched something on Legends of Wrestling or something on WWE Network recently where this was addressed and Bischoff admitted it was a huge mistake.

 

[MEMS]

Re: Goldberg winning the WCW title on Nitro is one of the biggest mistakes Bischoff m

Maybe not a mistake, but I think the big BIG mistake was that once they put the strap on Goldberg, he still was treated like the match before the main event. He wasn't put in interesting or cool storylines for the title until the Nash feud at the end of the year.

 

[Jupiter Jack Daniels]

Re: Goldberg winning the WCW title on Nitro is one of the biggest mistakes Bischoff m

Maybe not a mistake, but I think the big BIG mistake was that once they put the strap on Goldberg, he still was treated like the match before the main event. He wasn't put in interesting or cool storylines for the title until the Nash feud at the end of the year.

I remember Kevin Sullivan saying that his plan for Goldberg was to have him only work the big 4 after winning the title (Superbrawl, Great American Bash, Halloween Havoc, Starrcade) because that would give them 2-3 months to build each match and put over Goldberg as being so big, that you have to pay to see him.


Well, that didn't happen and for the better part of his reign, Goldberg would defend the belt on Nitro & Thunder against guys who weren't promoted as title contenders, like Curt Hennig, Bryan Adams, Meng, Raven, Kanyon and the ultimate jobbers of WCW '98: Scott Putski, Al Greene and Rick Fuller.

They were just putting him in random matches every week, which furthers my theory on why they put the belt on him in the first place on Nitro.

 

[Steve-a-maniac]

Re: Goldberg winning the WCW title on Nitro is one of the biggest mistakes Bischoff m

The whole thing was essentially a Hogan vanity project. As Elipses pointed out, Hogan's contract stipulated that he got a percentage of the gate for every show that he worked, and he damn sure wasn't going to miss out on that 40,000 person gate. In addition to the paycheck, it was also a great opportunity for him to show off to all of the Turner execs in attendance and prove what a big draw he still was. It's also been pointed out that Hogan knew that he was going to be spending the next few months involved in high-profile celebrity feuds that were going to take top billing no matter what, so he didn't really need the title at the time. Meanwhile, Goldberg's gets his momentum massively cooled off by being taken out of the main event and being booked to defend the title against jobbers and midcarders, thereby removing him as a true threat to Hogan's top spot. So Hogan has no problem dropping the title to Goldberg under those circumstances. Make no mistake, he definitely benefited the most from this whole thing by a.) getting to collect a fat paycheck, b.) making himself look good for the Turner execs, and c.) ensuring that Goldberg was no longer a threat to his top spot all at the same time.

 

[Rick_James]

Re: Goldberg winning the WCW title on Nitro is one of the biggest mistakes Bischoff m

From the stand point of just getting higher ratings and thrusting Nitro back into the spotlight, it was a good move, WCW missed out on a lot of money with this match, but money really wasn't the goal for them at the time - it was beating the WWF. That being said, the title change still looked a whole lot less legit then if it were to be done on a big PPV.... I was 50/50 on this one but even if they didn't have this on a Nitro, but just teased the match up, to lead to it being on a PPV, it could've drawn in big ratings, so I gotta lean towards WCW fucked up here.

The weird part is, the WWE still does hot shotting like this from time to time, long after the last of their competition has died.