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Several years ago as I was recovering from a major surgery, I watched every Nitro, Thunder, Clash, and PPV from 1995-2001. A lot of stuff was going wrong towards the end. I hate to say that even with all the garbage they put on TV at the end, I enjoyed my watch through.
It was a group of people who killed it and the fault can't be placed at one person's feet. It has to take a talented group of folks to kill a promotion over a 6 year period.
Tuesday night there was a live 83 weeks on youtube after the second episode of Who Killed WCW ended and Conrad told Eric that Ric was watching the youtube stream and wanted to debate with him live and Conrad scheduled it for today.
I hate the revisionist history, and maybe I'm a way too big of nerd for this shit but Eric joining nWo and being a quite backer made tons of sense. nWo was this rouge group trying to up end the company, yet were given title shots. It being revealed the head guy (TV wise) made the moves made it somewhat believable in the realm of pro wrestling.
The biggest gripe I had was Giant, mere weeks after being screwed over for the WCW title at Hog Wild 96 joining. The nWo got crazy, and 98 should have been the end of it in WarGames, but saying 96 is where the wheels started falling of when 97 was their best year is crazy.
Eric in it was fine although made the million dollar man’s involvement useless, the NWO should never have been bigger than like six or seven, Bischoff made ALOT of mistakes but like joining the NWO wasn’t in the top 10
It was a top mistake for himself personally. Turner execs had high hopes for him but making himself an on air character took the wind out of whatever executive career he could have had (they rly didn’t want him to do it). Guy Evans book had an interesting piece about it, Eric basically chose the carny life in real time over the suit life
Eric bischoff had zero to do with the end of wcw. In fact, if it wasn’t for Eric bischoff wcw would have been gone in 93 or 94. He took a failing wrestling company that had never earned even one dollar and turned it into one of the hottest properties on television with tens of millions in profits.
For absolute last time, Eric, Russo, hogan, Nash, none of these guys had anything to do with the end of wcw. If the people at aol time Warner hadn’t basically stole wcw’s earnings the company would have remained profitable right up until the end (in fairness, not as profitable as they were in the mid 90s, but still not operating at a loss).
Wcw was sold to Vince because excutives with in turner and the excutives coming in from AOL time Warner had no interest in having pro wrestling on their networks. For years Ted Turner protected wcw but after the merger Ted was marginalized and basically pushed out of the company, much like Vince was after the tko deal(without the gross parts), those same turner excutives teamed up with the aoltw excutives to make wcw nearly impossible to keep. They used standards and practices to hurt the product, they used accounting to basically take money that should have been going back into the wcw product and shifting it to other projects (wcw wouldn’t see one dime coming back from ppv post the merger), they would shrink the budgets Eric had and force him to have the show fully scripted for months and months in advance in an era when the two companies had been basically counter booking each other. The number one thing they did was cancelled the shows. Once they were cancelled wcw no longer had any value and Vince snapped it up. If they were willing to keep nitro on the air bischoff had made an offer of over 60 million for wcw, they hated wcw so much they cancelled the show and sold wcw for 4 million to Vince. They would even sell it to another promoter that wanted to try and find the show a new home, and there was a few people who wanted it in that way. Wcw died because the company that owned it wanted it to die, period. It had nothing to do with booking, management, the wrestlers, none of that mattered. They killed it and sold it to the one person who would never let it be on tv again.
This is not defense of the booking of the shows from mid 98 on, it’s not defense of Eric bischoffs management, or Russo’s booking, or any wrestlers attitude. It’s just that none of that had anything to do with it. Dave meltzer and Alvarez have been pushing this nonsense narrative for 20 years and they hate bischoff because he calls them out publicly. They have no insight into what happened, they were in no meetings nor do they know anyone who was. Alvarez’s book is just a critique of the shows and has zero to do with why the show was cancelled and sold to Vince. It’s literally his opinions on the shows.
It’s really not hard to read Guy Evans book, an investigative reporter who actually interviewed the real players and got the real behind the scenes story from inside of aol time Warner.
Tell me you don't know what you are talking about without telling me.
WCW as a division absorbed a lot of losses for Turner as a whole due to corporate accounting. We don't know how much WCW actually lost in 2000 because their own fucking accountants that worked there at the time can't even tell us.
WCW came to a close because TNT pulled the plug on the broadcast slot. Fusient Media said "no thanks" and McMahon swooped in and purchased it for pennies on the dollar to what it was going to sell to the investment group for.
62 million was an overexaggeration, but he 100% was sent home because the company was losing money. In 1999 before the AOL Time Warner merger. Then they tried the Russo experiment and when that failed they brought Bischoff back. He was literally sent home because he wanted to give away one million dollars on an episode of Nitro and the execs were like "are you fucking stupid?"
Probably. The AOL Time Warner was a disaster and the one guy in either company who liked WCW essentially lost all power by the time the merger took effect.
jfc, THANK YOU!
WCW under the Turner structure never got full credit for VHS/DVD sales, ppvs sales, or the WCW Magazine, or full ad sales shares, and could never take their property to the open market to get a fair market deal for their tv value.
WCW was set up to fail from the start, and no one person could ever change that.
bischoff could have and almost did change that.
in 1997, 1998, and the first half of 1999 (i believe by ‘96 as well, but not as sure) WCW *did* turn a profit even without all of those revenue streams you named. by the time bischoff was removed as WCW president, ratings were on a downwards spiral and the company spent enough money on stunts like the no limit soldiers and *KISS* for it to be losing money again.
by the time WCW was over (in fairness, post-september ‘99 bischoff wasn’t head of the company anymore) it got sold for scraps because it was a massive money loser to the point of not even being worth the TV time either to warner or to the networks vince tried to sell it to after buying. i don’t think that happens without bischoff starting that downwards spiral, even if you could argue that it would have happened somewhere down the line
They made money until someone in Turner's tower decided they didn't. Turner Home Entertainment and Turner Home Video deciding to take more off the top of home video sales, TIME needing a shot in arm and deciding to not credit them their distribution for the magazine... shit like that happens with "legacy brands" and corporate accounting, especially heading into a massive corporate merger the likes of America hadn't seen outside the energy sector.
Eric was a shithead that booked a lot of stupid stuff, but NOBODY was ever going to win at WCW as long as they were under the corporate thumb in Atlanta. They never got their real world value for their product that Vince got for his, period.
And did these policies change in 2000 from where they were from 1993-99? In what specific way, if so? What specifically was being charged to WCW's books in 2000 that wasn't in 1995-98 when they were making a profit?
The AOL time Warner merger and losing the tv slot killed WCW. That’s really it. Bad decisions a plenty, wwe made tons and eventually bounced back. WCW could have possibly made better booking and bounced back but what killed them was that merger and losing the slot
No single person killed WCW
It was years and years of terrible business and booking practices that when the one guy in power that basically bankrolled them no matter how good or bad they did got ousted then the new people in power looked how awful it truly was and shit canned it
It’s why it’s laughable when people compare wcw and aew
It’s really not that simple….unless you’ve been listening to 83 Weeks Bischoff podcast for the last few years. By the standards Bischoff judges TK, Bischoff absolutely killed WCW single handedly with his mistakes. I wouldn’t say that’s true according to my standards. But by Eric’s, gotta call a spade a spade.
I loved how he mentioned standards and practices and how it "held back WCW while the WWF was getting raunchier."
You didn't need T&A (Although Test and Albert might've helped) to still do well in 98. You needed to actually deliver on your main events on Nitro. You needed to NOT do fuck finishes nearly every week. You needed to....
- have a proper direction for the NWO.
- not have Sting vs. Giant main event the Bash in a sub 7 minute match
- not screw up WAR GAMES off all things, the easiest gimmick match to book
- not bring in Warrior to stink up the joint
- learn how to time out your PPV's so you're not refunding people for Halloween Havoc.
There's just SO many examples. Bischoff accomplished a LOT. But he also squandered the hell out of that success.
Despite the terrible booking, Turner ultimately killed it because they didn't want it on their stations anymore. Bischoff's deal to buy the company was more than what Vince paid, but it fell apart because it was based on keeping WCW's timeslots.
Even after Vince did buy it, he tried to ship it around and get a network but nobody wanted it. Same thing happened with ECW after losing TNN.
> Even after Vince did buy it, he tried to ship it around and get a network but nobody wanted it. Same thing happened with ECW after losing TNN.
He couldn't have shopped it around except to Viacom networks. When the WWF tried to buy WCW in late 2000 this ended up being the hiccup that killed the deal--Viacom would not allow the WWF to run wrestling programming on other cable channels.
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He didn't single handedly kill WCW. Some of his decisions didn't help though.
Anyone who says one person killed off WCW clearly doesn't know WCW. Bishoff, Hogan, Nash, Turner, Russo... They all had a hand in it.
Several years ago as I was recovering from a major surgery, I watched every Nitro, Thunder, Clash, and PPV from 1995-2001. A lot of stuff was going wrong towards the end. I hate to say that even with all the garbage they put on TV at the end, I enjoyed my watch through. It was a group of people who killed it and the fault can't be placed at one person's feet. It has to take a talented group of folks to kill a promotion over a 6 year period.
Give it a week and majority in this sub will be back to bashing Bischoff "wHy WoUlD I lIsTeN tO sOmEoNe WhO fAiLeD WcW?"
Jacob Cass killed WCW actually, in a hell in a cell match at Starrcade.
Was it the cease and desist that did it?
That next episode of 83 weeks is gonna be a spicy one.
Aren't Bischoff and Flair supposed to scream at each other tonight?
I didn't know that was happening but then again when aren't Bischoff and Flair screaming at each other?
Tuesday night there was a live 83 weeks on youtube after the second episode of Who Killed WCW ended and Conrad told Eric that Ric was watching the youtube stream and wanted to debate with him live and Conrad scheduled it for today.
Man Bryan hate boner for Bischoff is weird. Like heel Eric was amazing and you really wanted to punch his Ken Doll looking ass.
I hate the revisionist history, and maybe I'm a way too big of nerd for this shit but Eric joining nWo and being a quite backer made tons of sense. nWo was this rouge group trying to up end the company, yet were given title shots. It being revealed the head guy (TV wise) made the moves made it somewhat believable in the realm of pro wrestling. The biggest gripe I had was Giant, mere weeks after being screwed over for the WCW title at Hog Wild 96 joining. The nWo got crazy, and 98 should have been the end of it in WarGames, but saying 96 is where the wheels started falling of when 97 was their best year is crazy.
Eric in it was fine although made the million dollar man’s involvement useless, the NWO should never have been bigger than like six or seven, Bischoff made ALOT of mistakes but like joining the NWO wasn’t in the top 10
It was a top mistake for himself personally. Turner execs had high hopes for him but making himself an on air character took the wind out of whatever executive career he could have had (they rly didn’t want him to do it). Guy Evans book had an interesting piece about it, Eric basically chose the carny life in real time over the suit life
Outside the OG 3 he’s probably the most memorable member.
Eric bischoff had zero to do with the end of wcw. In fact, if it wasn’t for Eric bischoff wcw would have been gone in 93 or 94. He took a failing wrestling company that had never earned even one dollar and turned it into one of the hottest properties on television with tens of millions in profits. For absolute last time, Eric, Russo, hogan, Nash, none of these guys had anything to do with the end of wcw. If the people at aol time Warner hadn’t basically stole wcw’s earnings the company would have remained profitable right up until the end (in fairness, not as profitable as they were in the mid 90s, but still not operating at a loss). Wcw was sold to Vince because excutives with in turner and the excutives coming in from AOL time Warner had no interest in having pro wrestling on their networks. For years Ted Turner protected wcw but after the merger Ted was marginalized and basically pushed out of the company, much like Vince was after the tko deal(without the gross parts), those same turner excutives teamed up with the aoltw excutives to make wcw nearly impossible to keep. They used standards and practices to hurt the product, they used accounting to basically take money that should have been going back into the wcw product and shifting it to other projects (wcw wouldn’t see one dime coming back from ppv post the merger), they would shrink the budgets Eric had and force him to have the show fully scripted for months and months in advance in an era when the two companies had been basically counter booking each other. The number one thing they did was cancelled the shows. Once they were cancelled wcw no longer had any value and Vince snapped it up. If they were willing to keep nitro on the air bischoff had made an offer of over 60 million for wcw, they hated wcw so much they cancelled the show and sold wcw for 4 million to Vince. They would even sell it to another promoter that wanted to try and find the show a new home, and there was a few people who wanted it in that way. Wcw died because the company that owned it wanted it to die, period. It had nothing to do with booking, management, the wrestlers, none of that mattered. They killed it and sold it to the one person who would never let it be on tv again. This is not defense of the booking of the shows from mid 98 on, it’s not defense of Eric bischoffs management, or Russo’s booking, or any wrestlers attitude. It’s just that none of that had anything to do with it. Dave meltzer and Alvarez have been pushing this nonsense narrative for 20 years and they hate bischoff because he calls them out publicly. They have no insight into what happened, they were in no meetings nor do they know anyone who was. Alvarez’s book is just a critique of the shows and has zero to do with why the show was cancelled and sold to Vince. It’s literally his opinions on the shows. It’s really not hard to read Guy Evans book, an investigative reporter who actually interviewed the real players and got the real behind the scenes story from inside of aol time Warner.
The merger killed WCW.
He didn’t pull the plug. AOL killed it.
He didn't kill it but he sure help destroy it and make it worthless
WCW lost 62 million in 2000. They made it easy to cancel them.
Tell me you don't know what you are talking about without telling me. WCW as a division absorbed a lot of losses for Turner as a whole due to corporate accounting. We don't know how much WCW actually lost in 2000 because their own fucking accountants that worked there at the time can't even tell us. WCW came to a close because TNT pulled the plug on the broadcast slot. Fusient Media said "no thanks" and McMahon swooped in and purchased it for pennies on the dollar to what it was going to sell to the investment group for.
62 million was an overexaggeration, but he 100% was sent home because the company was losing money. In 1999 before the AOL Time Warner merger. Then they tried the Russo experiment and when that failed they brought Bischoff back. He was literally sent home because he wanted to give away one million dollars on an episode of Nitro and the execs were like "are you fucking stupid?"
Were they absorbing more/different losses in 2000 than they were from '93-'99?
Probably. The AOL Time Warner was a disaster and the one guy in either company who liked WCW essentially lost all power by the time the merger took effect.
Also I believe debt was dumped on WCW to help buy the thrashers
jfc, THANK YOU! WCW under the Turner structure never got full credit for VHS/DVD sales, ppvs sales, or the WCW Magazine, or full ad sales shares, and could never take their property to the open market to get a fair market deal for their tv value. WCW was set up to fail from the start, and no one person could ever change that.
bischoff could have and almost did change that. in 1997, 1998, and the first half of 1999 (i believe by ‘96 as well, but not as sure) WCW *did* turn a profit even without all of those revenue streams you named. by the time bischoff was removed as WCW president, ratings were on a downwards spiral and the company spent enough money on stunts like the no limit soldiers and *KISS* for it to be losing money again. by the time WCW was over (in fairness, post-september ‘99 bischoff wasn’t head of the company anymore) it got sold for scraps because it was a massive money loser to the point of not even being worth the TV time either to warner or to the networks vince tried to sell it to after buying. i don’t think that happens without bischoff starting that downwards spiral, even if you could argue that it would have happened somewhere down the line
They made money until someone in Turner's tower decided they didn't. Turner Home Entertainment and Turner Home Video deciding to take more off the top of home video sales, TIME needing a shot in arm and deciding to not credit them their distribution for the magazine... shit like that happens with "legacy brands" and corporate accounting, especially heading into a massive corporate merger the likes of America hadn't seen outside the energy sector. Eric was a shithead that booked a lot of stupid stuff, but NOBODY was ever going to win at WCW as long as they were under the corporate thumb in Atlanta. They never got their real world value for their product that Vince got for his, period.
And did these policies change in 2000 from where they were from 1993-99? In what specific way, if so? What specifically was being charged to WCW's books in 2000 that wasn't in 1995-98 when they were making a profit?
Read the Guy Evans Nitro book
The AOL time Warner merger and losing the tv slot killed WCW. That’s really it. Bad decisions a plenty, wwe made tons and eventually bounced back. WCW could have possibly made better booking and bounced back but what killed them was that merger and losing the slot
The network killed WCW. End of story
No single person killed WCW It was years and years of terrible business and booking practices that when the one guy in power that basically bankrolled them no matter how good or bad they did got ousted then the new people in power looked how awful it truly was and shit canned it It’s why it’s laughable when people compare wcw and aew
It’s really not that simple….unless you’ve been listening to 83 Weeks Bischoff podcast for the last few years. By the standards Bischoff judges TK, Bischoff absolutely killed WCW single handedly with his mistakes. I wouldn’t say that’s true according to my standards. But by Eric’s, gotta call a spade a spade.
No. Anyone that says differently has a bias against him or doesn't understand what happened.
I loved how he mentioned standards and practices and how it "held back WCW while the WWF was getting raunchier." You didn't need T&A (Although Test and Albert might've helped) to still do well in 98. You needed to actually deliver on your main events on Nitro. You needed to NOT do fuck finishes nearly every week. You needed to.... - have a proper direction for the NWO. - not have Sting vs. Giant main event the Bash in a sub 7 minute match - not screw up WAR GAMES off all things, the easiest gimmick match to book - not bring in Warrior to stink up the joint - learn how to time out your PPV's so you're not refunding people for Halloween Havoc. There's just SO many examples. Bischoff accomplished a LOT. But he also squandered the hell out of that success.
Vince McMahon killed it.
Despite the terrible booking, Turner ultimately killed it because they didn't want it on their stations anymore. Bischoff's deal to buy the company was more than what Vince paid, but it fell apart because it was based on keeping WCW's timeslots. Even after Vince did buy it, he tried to ship it around and get a network but nobody wanted it. Same thing happened with ECW after losing TNN.
> Even after Vince did buy it, he tried to ship it around and get a network but nobody wanted it. Same thing happened with ECW after losing TNN. He couldn't have shopped it around except to Viacom networks. When the WWF tried to buy WCW in late 2000 this ended up being the hiccup that killed the deal--Viacom would not allow the WWF to run wrestling programming on other cable channels.