Wcw was falling apart

 

Vince Russo happened.

 

Oh, well that could definitely explain it.

 

It was a goddamn shit show. I loved every second of it.

 

Too many wrestlers had creative control, and in some cases what we got were backup ideas on the fly.

 

The inmates took over the asylum.

 

Aside from their nonsensical booking and lack of any ideas worth a shit...their main talent all hit the perfect storm of getting really stale, really fast. Guys like Flair, Piper, DDP, Hogan, Nash, Sting, Savage, Bret, Goldberg had already hit their respective peaks and periods where they were at their hottest. Either during their initial runs ie: Bret, Goldberg, DDP, Nash. Or in their 2nd career peak runs ie: Piper, Hogan, Flair, Sting, Savage. There was nowhere for those guys to go and that made none of them very interesting. The only guys who really looked like they were really on the rise were Steiner and Booker, and that simply wasn't enough

The same thing pretty much happened to WWF/E in 2002 when all of their Attitude Era mainstays like Austin, Rock, Vince, HHH, Taker, Jericho were all pretty stale and boring. They're just lucky that WCW wasn't around anymore to scoop up the momentum

 

1999 WCW was just a masterclass in how to kill a wrestling company. They had effectively killed off Goldberg, NWO had run its course, the main event scene was stagnant and the same as 1998 with the exception of the addition of Sid. There was no real mobility, guys like Booker, Benoit, Jericho, and Raven couldn't advance beyond the upper midcard, etc. They had run through all of their matches and angles by that point, it was just a recycled poor mans version of 1996-1998 at that point.

The undercard work was still good, but how many times can you see the same midcard guys wrestle each other year in and out before you stop giving a fuck? With a 3 hour Nitro and 2 hours of Thunder, half the shows were just filler. They also had all of these long recap segments that killed viewers. The storylines were poor and barely made any sense. Then Russo came in at the end of the year and completely changed the format. Right or wrong, it was just too much of a drastic change for WCW audience, which was more different than you'd think than WWFs audience. It was an absolute disaster.

I think ultimately 3 hour Nitros and the addition of Thunder killed them. They didn't have good enough writing to write 5 hours of TV. WWF did a much better job with the 2nd show when they debuted Smackdown. Binging 1998-1999 WCW is a slog, WWF was much more viewer friendly, both in the moment and in hindsight.

 

i think Nash was trying to book then.

 

Forget the front end of wcw, It was falling apart at the top of the owners of wcw. So time warner and all of that. It just started there and ended up happening right through everything else in wcw.

 

It comes down to:

• Change 1: Bischoff essentially cedes creative control for two months to Kevin Nash in early March 1999. Nash uses the first hour of Nitro for interviews, Recaps, and Konnan music videos
• Change 2: Bischoff returns in May 1999 and his new Big Idea is Master P’s No Limit Soldiers. That flops and now WCW is struggling. There’s no direction and Bischoff turns Sting heel and Hogan goes back to the red and yellow
• Change 3: Bischoff sent home in September. Booking committee takes over
• Change 4: Russo and Ferrera assume control in November and relaunch creative direction
• Change 5: Russo departs; booking committee resumes control in Jan 2000 and changes direction - WCW becomes rehash of 1995

 

• Change 4: Russo and Ferrera assume control in November and relaunch creative direction

A minor nitpick: Russo and Ferrera came in the Monday prior to Halloween Havoc, in October.

 

They fucked up with the Flair Hogan double turn. Flair was white hot and there was no reason to flip him heel. Then Hogan a few months later goes red and yellow in a desperation move. Goldberg was floating around directionless. They tried to strap a rocket to Bagwell in the Summer and it was just..not happening. They paid Master P a fuck ton of money but it turned out more of the fans got into the West Texas ******** instead. Almost like way more lower middle class whites watch wrestling than young black kids. Duh. The belt floated between DDP, Nash, and a bloated up Savage when really they should have just put the fuckin shit back on Goldberg.

 

I seem to recall in 1999 there were lots of changes in who had the book in WCW

 

Chaos, retreads of the nwo that bombed, fingerpoke of Doom was frap and hurt Goldberg, Master p and his No Limit soldiers payed millions for crap, Sting as a heel so that Hulkamania can happen again in 1999, the Higher power story, Oklahoma humiliating and disrespecting good Ole JR real life health condition, piper making a story out of Owen death with Russo by saying Russo killed his cousin, David Flair, No Limit soldiers as the faces vs West Texas ******** as the heels even though the west Texas ******** were super over with the crowd, hot shooting the WCW title, Buff Bagwell push that bombed horribly, between Bischoff, Booking committee, Bischoff again, Booking committee again, then Russo and Ed Ferra - booking became a mess, and you start to question who the hell is in charge.

 

I seem to recall West Texas ******** got.over huge, but were supposed to be the heels.

This annoyed management as Master P was getting paid big money but weren't getting any pops.

 

Eh, I kinda like the Nash vs Savage/Sid feud. It wasn't that bad. And I also prefer the West Texas cowboys(?) too. Master P wasn't great at all. I don't know why they went with that, Konnan and Rey already didn't seem over with their street rap crap. Also, why is West Texas censored in the above posts?

 

Eh, I kinda like the Nash vs Savage/Sid feud. It wasn't that bad. And I also prefer the West Texas cowboys(?) too. Master P wasn't great at all. I don't know why they went with that, Konnan and Rey already didn't seem over with their street rap crap. Also, why is West Texas censored in the above posts?

The West Texas Redn*cks were the best thing to come out of a chaotic WCW in 1999. I heard stories that by the summer of 99, they were getting some of the loudest pops at house shows. Their song "Rap is Crap." was beginning to get airplay all over the US on Country Music stations. In true WCW fashion, they killed off the group at the height of their popularity, and did nothing with the members of the group later on.

 

Yeah, I really liked the WTR. They had something with them, which is more than a lot of things in Spring 99 onwards WCW.

 

1. No direction from WCW management.

2. Too much power for old wrestlers who needed to make way for younger wrestlers.

 

The big problem with WCW is that once they started losing the war, all of the aging vets only cared about themselves and their paychecks and didn't have the team mentality to try to right the ship. It was simply "how much more money can I milk out of this before the bottom drops out?"

 

Best not to ask about anything WCW post-1998

 

First of all people need to face facts about Bischoff. He had two things that worked - creatively the NWO and personally hitching his wagon to Hulk Hogan. He struck gold with the NWO but had literally nothing else to him. If Hogan hadn't have actually joined in the end it would've killed the angle after 2 months as well.

Once the NWO was bastardised in 1998 with the Wolfpac containing fucking Sting of all people vs Jobber Black and White that sounded the death knell that didn't haemmorage money straight away but set the wheels in motion. When they screwed Goldberg at the end of 98 and tried again with the NWO with Hogan AGAIN with the title, people didn't want it, they wanted Goldberg. Goldberg never recovered, and he was the only chance they had of stopping the sinking ship.

Even the brainless executives realised Easy E had absolutely nothing else good that didn't involve Hogan they removed him and rightly so.

 

Hot take: nWo was a one trick pony that worked in 1996-1997. WCW was mostly empty of ideas and actual storylines of meaning in 1998. How they milked it for so long and managed to float on air to 2001 is still a mystery to me.

 

If you read Jericho's first book, it provides great insight into how much of a gong show WCW was at the time.

 

Here’s a secondary factor. 1999 was also the first time in Bischoff’s tenure that they really did not have much in the way of a WWE influx of established stars to bolster their roster. WCW was now reliant on producing their own superstars by way of the Power Plant - almost everyone was locked up.

WWE signees in 1999:
Jeff Jarrett
Sid Vicious
Dustin Rhodes
The Public Enemy (brief return)
Steve Regal
Disciples of Apocalypse

Of these, only Jarrett was a prominent player in WWE and only at the IC level. Sid had been out of action for nearly two years (aside from his recent ECW comeback). Dustin could not bring his Goldust gimmick with him.

 

Here’s a secondary factor. 1999 was also the first time in Bischoff’s tenure that they really did not have much in the way of a WWE influx of established stars to bolster their roster. WCW was now reliant on producing their own superstars by way of the Power Plant - almost everyone was locked up.

WWE signees in 1999:
Sid Vicious
Dustin Rhodes
The Public Enemy (brief return)
Steve Regal
Disciples of Apocalypse

I agree. I almost posted something like this. They didn't have anyone else besides dorks like Jarrett who were willing to come over from the red-hot WWF. They were making too much money on those shows and merch for the good talent to want to make the jump

 

DP

 

Tbf Wwf in 1999 creative wise wasent any better. They were just fortunate they had a very hot product at the time. And they had Rock and Austin.

 

From everything that I heard and read (especially at the time), the locker room atmosphere was day and night, when compared to WCW. I had heard the morale was high, and the people behind the scenes were highly motivated to do their best for the product. WWE was also very structured. With record profits, ratings, and merchandise sales, morale was at an all-time high, and when employees see this, they tend to put in the extra effort to keep things running smoothly.

In 1999, morale was apparently at an all time low in WCW. Wrestlers like Scott Steiner, Scott Hall, Kevin Nash, and others were going out on live TV and saying whatever they felt like saying, regardless if it was relevant to the storylines or angles that they were in. Behind the scenes, things were just as chaotic. Over half of the roster were counting down the days until their contracts ended, so they could hope to jump ship to WWE, or go back to ECW, Mexico, or Japan. Employees working behind the scene were said to have a "doing a 9 to 5 job" attitude, and were apathetic. On top of that, there clearly was no power to answer to, as the inmates were in full control of the asylum.

 

Hogan politics killed WCW. In early 99 Goldberg and Flair were hot and Hogan wouldnt work with Goldberg again and was supposed to lose the WCW title at the Super Brawl PPV in Feb to Flair per Nash but Hogan nixed it and only lost next month via a double heel turn which made no sense and killed Flair. Hall's problems got worse in 99 and both Nash and Hall quit fighting Hogan and the awful payoff to the 1998 NWO civil war was the finger poke of doom.

 

Hogan politics killed WCW. In early 99 Goldberg and Flair were hot and Hogan wouldnt work with Goldberg again and was supposed to lose the WCW title at the Super Brawl PPV in Feb to Flair per Nash but Hogan nixed it and only lost next month via a double heel turn which made no sense and killed Flair. Hall's problems got worse in 99 and both Nash and Hall quit fighting Hogan and the awful payoff to the 1998 NWO civil war was the finger poke of doom.

What killed WCW, was the absence of an authority figure, who could/would control the locker room, and discipline any wrestler for poor behaviour. As bad as Russo was on the writing side, at least he had the guts to stand up to Hogan, and drive him from the company. But by then it was too late.

 

slow death