It just keeps getting more ridiculous, lol. I'm just about at Road Wild 99 and suddenly Hogan doesn't seem to care about nWo anymore. Doesn't mention it and being buddy with Sting and Goldberg. And everyone likes him now like Tony Schiavone, who used to say Hogan can go to hell and other things like that. And Nash suddenly hates Hogan for the finger poke and is feuding with him. And Sid Vicious just switches from Savage to partnering up with Nash, who's "known him for 9 years". Sid was just involved in driving a humvee into Nash's limo and jumping him with Savage.

It's just weird what they did back then.

 

Hogan's ego killed WCW, a face Flair was supposed to win the belt off of Hogan at Super Brawl which Nash booked but Hogan vetoed and went over and only lost next month via a double turn which made no sense and hurt Flair. Also the WCW changed hands at the next 4 PPV'S and the frequent title changes plus the poor booking of Flair and Goldberg killed WCW. The Bret/Goldberg angle was their best and hottest program starting in May but once Owen died that program was postponed.

 

I'm on 92 WCW Simmons is the world champion and Jake Roberts has made his debut. As for WWF I'm on 1993 where Hogan won the world title from Yokozuna. Started 93 ECW honestly Sandman as a weird super lame babyface.

 

The Death of WCW and Nitro books go into this fairly well.

Two previous years of bad booking caught up to WCW and they did not have a fresh, catchy new idea to overcome the growing reservoire of bad will that had been generated.

 

The Death of WCW and Nitro books go into this fairly well.

Two previous years of bad booking caught up to WCW and they did not have a fresh, catchy new idea to overcome the growing reservoire of bad will that had been generated.

The 'Death of WCW' was perceived as good at one point as it was the only book of its kind for a long time but thanks to the emergence of podcasts and other books I think it's more of guide as to how bad the creative was as there's been too many factors that have since come to light that Bryan Alvarez wouldn't have known about when he wrote the book.

This for example was an interview with Eric Bischoff last week where he brushes on a couple of issues in 1998 that Bryan Alvarez did not know about that went on to affect the creative.

 

dying

 

@Rockymin If youre interested in why WCW went to shit read the book 'Nitro'. It interviews over 120 people from WCW and TBS and is written in a historical context as to why WCW capitulated in the manner it did.

 

Thanks, I will.

 

It should also be noted that a lot of the stuff Syxx was carrying on with at the time (crotch-chopping, yelling out "suck my dick, motherfucker!") landed WCW in some hot water.

 

Okay, so what were they thinking with Berlyn? It was painfully obvious that he was Alex Wright, a wrestler we've been watching for years but you got Tony and Bobby acting like he's someone brand new to WCW and they've never seen him before.

This gimmick was a failure from the start.

 

Okay, so what were they thinking with Berlyn? It was painfully obvious that he was Alex Wright, a wrestler we've been watching for years but you got Tony and Bobby acting like he's someone brand new to WCW and they've never seen him before.

To be fair, many wrestlers have had a variety of personas that have failed, only to be successful later on. The most obvious example is Glen Jacobs with Kane. A sadistic dentist and a fake Diesel failed miserably. Sometimes characters work, and sometimes they do not. I always though Alex Wright had the wrestling ability to pull it off. We can just look at Steven Regal as an example of a technical wrestler, giving multiple gimmicks throughout his career, before finally finding success as "William Regal"

 

The issue with Bischoff was he relied on Hogan way too much and gave him final say on all main event programs. Hogan refused to lose clean to Sting at Starracde 1997, refused to work with Bret in late 1998 and was so paranoid about Bret's great match with Flair at Souled out 98 that he got the feud stopped and Bret taken off tv. When Hogan turned on Nash at Uncensored 1998 Nash and Hall were suppsoed to lead NWO Wolfpack while Hogan and Savage led NWO Hollywood but Hogan changed it and had Hall on his team. He also got Waltman fired which caused Nash and Hall to want to quit. Hall gave up on WCW after that and he became a train wreck the rest of his time. Nash fought Hogan until the end of 1998 and was actually a top 3 babyface along with Goldberg and DDP. The Hogan vs Nash match on Jan 4 1999 was suppsoed to be the blow off instead they swerved the audience. Hogan was then told to drop the title to a face Flair by Nash at Superbrawl 99 and he refused and only agreed to lose at Uncensored due to a double turn which killed Flair and pissed off the audience.

 

The issue with Bischoff was he relied on Hogan way too much and gave him final say on all main event programs.

Bischoff didn't really have a choice. He wasn't Hogan's boss and Hogan was literally earning more than he was.

The company was pretty much contractually obligated to give Hogan what he wanted. That contract was cancer. Bischoff definitely could have pushed back more but pretty sure that would have ended badly regardless when Hogan starts making calls to Turner execs.

 

WCW's standards and practices and desire to keep things family friendly was a very real thing backed up by multiple sources but he is likely spinning things a bit suggesting that they wanted to go back to the cartoon era. It's likely more that they wanted to keep the status quo which was frustrating to him as WWF was all in on adult content.

It's a lot to create stars when talent can come out flipping everyone off and drinking beer. I just kicked your butt while drinking a root beer isn't going to go as far.

 

Yeah unfortunately at that time, you had more adult orientated TV shows which were hugely popular and a fuck you culture. WWE played it perfectly.

With that being said though, WCW could have done a lot more.

Why did it take them nearly 2 years to put the world title on Bret.

Why didn't they exploit the Canadian market, having Bret, Benoit and Jericho on the roster.

Why didn't they exploit the Mexican and Hispanic markets with having the depth of talent they had.

Why did Ric Flair win the world title 4 times from 1999.

Why did they allow Raven to walk out.

Why didn't they do more to keep guys like Jericho, Big Show, Benoit, Malenko, Saturn etc

Why did they persist with the NWO.

Why didn't they do a brand split.

None of this had anything to do with putting out more PG content.

 

But forget about ratings, the real issue is the other numbers. Are people buying tickets to the shows? Are they buying merchandise? What are the PPV buyrates? That's where the money is made. Last week's Nitro sold 4,500 tickets. Thunder sold 1,700. Those are embarrassing numbers. Merch-sales-per-head hit an all-time low for the modern era in WCW last week. Even the people who do go to the shows aren't buying shit. Next week's Nitro is in the Houston Astrodome, which holds more than 60,000 people, and they've sold less than 6,000 tickets as of press time. And Russo has been in charge long enough now that he can't keep blaming the stagnant business on the people who ran the show before him. TV ratings take time to grow, but historically, house show business is quick to turn around at the first sign of a good angle. In 1996, before the NWO angle, business was pretty bad but the Flair/Savage angle at the time immediately sparked a 37% increase in house show business within a month. So will this new NWO angle be the one that turns things around? Maybe but Dave doesn't seem optimistic. At this point, WCW seems to be at rock bottom and Dave thinks ECW could probably give them a run for their money in most markets as far as drawing fans goes.

And that is why Time Warner cancelled and sold WCW.

 

WCW was a mess behind the scenes. Who was in charge changed. Too many wrestlers had creative control, Russo came in and brought unfiltered chaos with him, etc.

 

Its just horrendous. The only things worth watching the entire year are :

Scotty Steiner being ace
Bret has some good matches
Spring Stampede is a good ppv
Disco trying to sing Konnan's music video
West Texas ********

Thats it for the full year. The rest is either terrible, made no sense or was genuinely insulting.

 

Its just horrendous. The only things worth watching the entire year are :

Scotty Steiner being ace
Bret has some good matches
Spring Stampede is a good ppv
Disco trying to sing Konnan's music video
West Texas ****

Thats it for the full year. The rest is either terrible, made no sense or was genuinely insulting.

Benoit/Bret
Benoit/Jarrett
Benoit/DDP

The continuing rise of Booker T

Bam Bam Bigelow

Ravens Flock.

Kidman and the cruiserweights

 

Benoit Jarrett was pointless as they did the reverse finish the Nitro after Starrcade
Booker was stuck back in Harlem Heat for half the year
Bam Bam was decent but never got a decent shove
the flock was done by this point
The cruisers were treated as afterthoughts and their peak was long gone

 

It's a testament to how ridiculous Russo's time in WCW was. In the midst of a racism lawsuit, Russo goes on public radio/internet, and declares that he is an American, and has no use for Japanese or Mexican wrestlers. Coincidentally, he phases out the whole cruiserweight division- one of the only things WCW had going for in 1999.

 

They also seemed to keep shuffling people in and out in 1999. I'm up to the end of September and I noticed that there had been no sign of Savage on the TV shows since BATB that July where he fought Rodman. And Mona and Medusa have pretty much disappeared as well. It was really crazy.

 

So I just finished Halloween Havoc '99 and am watching the Nitro that was on the night after. Boy, what a mess! Were the guys like Hogan and Bagwell really hating Russo and doing shoots? Or was that all a work still?

 

With Hogan, it was probably a shoot, as he saw the writing on the wall. Bischoff was his best friend, and he was demoted the prior month. It was also known that Russo was no fan of Hogan, and wanted to take the company in a new direction.

 

I'm a big fan of Russo's WWF work, but he went completely off the rails with the worked shoot shit in WCW. Took it way too far to the point that it was comical.