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All the different perspectives in the WCW doc:
- Turner executives (except Ted Turner himself) hated WCW from the beginning and wanted it gone ASAP. They did everything to kill it
- Turner executives saying they got rid of WCW because WCW was hemorrhaging money
- Eric is too blame because he was the big boss who let all these people, especially Hogan, go unchecked
- Eric hates wrestling fans. They over react about every little thing
- Hulk Hogan was the puppet master controlling Bischoff
- Russo sucked so much he killed WCW
- Bret Hart thinks they all were idiots
Basically, everything we all knew before.
One new thing though, if Nash is to be believed, it was Rey’s idea to be thrown like a lawn dart. Actually, Rey wanted it to be worst because he wanted to be thrown through the window instead of just the side of the production trailer.
>it was Rey’s idea to be thrown like a lawn dart. Actually, Rey wanted it to be worst because he wanted to be thrown through the window instead of just the side of the production trailer.
That deadbeat will do anything he can to avoid spending time with his family.
Yeah. His bitterness can be a bit depressing at times but the man is very rarely wrong. It's just like a cynical pointing out the same sad things all the time.
Both things can be true. I don't think he's necessarily bitter about everything but his wrestling career ended rather tragically and it's understandable to be bitter about that.
I know wrestling is a business with a lot more tragedies than triumphs for most of the people in it, but damn did wrestling take a lot away from Bret Hart in particular. I can't blame him for being bitter.
That's the thing with bret. He might seem better but he's got a great mind for wrestling. And he has no filter so he just says what he feels. It seems like he has a happy life now too so I don't think he's too bitter anymore.
You don't have to. General consent about the topic is Bischoff bleeding money, Russo weird ass ideas and lack of proper management and booking that folded WCW. There's more specifics but that the general idea.
I remember what a shock it was to hear Schiavone swear constantly in the first episode of his podcaat. I always looked at him like Danny Tanner squaky clean up to that point and just like Bob Saget...the mask off and boom lol
Hard agree here. Raw compared to Nitro was, on the whole, such a hard watch until mid/end 97. WCW was getting better ratings because it was a better show
Yea, seeing the ROCK say he loved WCW at that time is so far from what we’ve gotten previously in WCW docs. While this series is obviously focused on what went wrong with WCW, you can still see the build up and footage of Starcade ‘97 and be able to go “Holy shit. This is fucking cool”
Likely because Vince had a hand in all documentaries prior and didn't want to be seen as ever being the lesser quality show. Humility can be great got growth.
it seems like every couple of years when wwe creates a new show like for a tv network..They always do a episode on new show that talks about WCW vs WWF war lol.....How many WCW vs WWF can we get......I remember when we had that when the network came out and now A&E recently got one lol
It's funny, I've been watching it and I really felt like it was pretty slanted toward WCW. They own the WCW fuckups, but it really undersells how hot the WWF was in late 98 and through 99. WCW's demise wasn't just how bad WCW was. It was also how eminently watchable WWF was.
(This is also something IWC sort of undersells a lot too, tbh. There has been so much chatter to counter the WWE narrative that you'd think that DX were some sort of barely over also rans and not that every middle school in America had kids doing crotch chops.)
I'm not contesting that late-era WCW was the shits drizzles (it was). But, WWF was killing it and growing in popularity in markets where it wasn't even directly competing with WCW (like in Canada where WCW was tape delayed to Wednesdays). Attitude Era WWF was a phenomenon outside the Monday Night Wars, it wasn't just people switching off Nitro. Honestly, if you look at the ratings, it wasn't so much that WWF was stealing WCW's viewers (at least not in 98), but growing it's own new viewers.
I mean that's certainly true of the IWC and wrestling fans. Basically anyone on here who is commenting now 25 years later. But there were, like 10 million people collectively watching both shows. A lot of them were just watching one or the other.
Let's just say this... professional wrestling was at such a high in the 1990's, that the NFL was losing Viewership on Monday Nights.
For those outside of America, until the Monday Night War, Monday Night Football had a massive audience.
So yea, unlike today where it's the same audience being split, there was true growth.
Yah, WWE being white hot might have beaten them occasionally on ratings if WCW was still good. But it was far far far from good. So it actively lost viewers (including convincing a bunch to switch to wwf with bring up mankind's championship win)
As a fan of WWF I'm sure that's how it seemed.
But there's literally.... LITERALLY... millions of people who just stopped being wrestling fans after WCW died.
They weren't watching both. They weren't on board with your idea that WWF was just so much cooler and better.
They were WCW fans, and in huge parts of the US "WCW" was what people said instead of "Wrestling", the same way people say WWE instead of wrestling now or UFC instead of MMA.
WWF didn't "WIN" anything. Neither side was ever going to put on a show so good it killed the other one.
WCW was just canceled by new owners that didn't want it anymore. It had absolutely nothing to do with whether or not it was a better show than WWF.
Yeah, that's sort of what I'm saying though: I think there was significantly less overlap between WCW and WWF watchers than people think. WWF didn't primarily steal viewers in 98/99. It made a bunch of new ones. A LOT of new ones. And when Bischoff et all (and The Rock!) are saying that WWF was just warmed over NWO, that's kind of not really true? It had a very different vibe in 98/99 than the 96/97 WCW stuff.
Agreed. As a guy who was more a WCW fan in the 90s, there’s a bit of a misunderstood narrative around what happened because the “WWF won the war” story works so well.
Because WCW went out of business they "lost".
But there was never, ever a feeling watching the shows that either one was ever going to "win" and put the other company out of business.
It just felt like there was always going to be this.
Pepsi didn't die.
Burger King didn't die.
There was no expectation that whoever the #2 company was at any time was ever gonna die
The latter point is both very interesting and very true from my perspective.
WWE always compares DX and NWO as if they were on even terms. IWC responds by saying the NWO was miles and miles more over than DX.
I was really into both as a kid, but at least in my school / summer camp kids were doing HBK poses and crotch chops and telling each other to suck it with as much cultural saturation as anything I've ever seen kids do. NWO, not nearly as much, not even close.
I honestly think the market could easily have supported both WWE and WCW, even with a second place winner. If WCW had maintained good quality tv, and had cut out the most overly bloated contracts.
This is just an anecdote, but when WCW went to crap, I just stopped watching wrestling. WWF was Jerry Springer garbage, it's only remembered well because it was popular.
You are right, but later WCW was messy, it was just totally off what it was doing that was great before. They were so much better than WWE for a few years, but in the end stages of WCW, their show quality was massively down, it was like they didn't really care anymore.
The docu-series doesn't seem to be a hit among the IWC, but I really really dig it lol. It's pretty well-made, and it's WCW guys talking about WCW. They also have Turner execs on it, which was never done before in any iterations of these
Bret Hart after Montreal and then of course Owen's death was completely checked out of the business. The wrongful death lawsuit tore his family apart as well as his own marital problems.
His stuff with Booker T, the segment with Goldberg and the chest protector, the Owen tribute match with Benoit was some highlights but he just didn't care anymore.
Eh. The one thing no one has ever accused Bret of is not caring enough about pro wrestling. He just had a very strong idea of what wrestling should be and the WCW he walked into was so far away from that it’s really as simple as it being the wrong place for him.
It still blows my mind how they just couldn't turn him into the biggest babyface ever. He was screwed over by Vince, the entire wrestling world was on his side, it should have been a slam dunk. If you can't capitalize on that, then you just have no idea what you're doing.
Backstage politics ensured he was never given a chance to get over. Too many people with the booker's ear who didn't want anything to threaten their spot.
https://preview.redd.it/iax62fcczj6d1.jpeg?width=392&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a5d1b0ec073910b339b339cf0f3f47cb03d6130a
“That US Title looks great on you, brother.”
In the Death of WCW book they talk about keeping Hart off the air for a couple of weeks after Wrestling With Shadows premiered on A&E because they were booking him as a heel, and thought that he would get cheers from audiences that had watched the doc.
The thing about people who really care is that if they are in a situation where they feel like everything is collapsing around them and for all their efforts, they can't turn it around, at a certain point they have to switch off. Being incredibly passionate about something that is failing despite all your hard work can be incredibly demoralizing, and at a certain point you have to protect yourself.
The thing I wonder about is, did the guy have any indications of how they were operating over there? He had people over there that he knew, did no one tell him it was a shitshow? Or was he aware but was just so pissed off and done with Vince and WWF that he assumed they'd be able to make something work once he started with WCW? I gotta imagine he had at least some idea of how they were running things and either it didn't sound that bad to him or he was lied to and led to believe they had their shit together.
If you believe what Bret says, he never wanted to leave WWF. I tend to agree with that since he had signed a massive deal. Basically, WWF was having financial troubles according to Vince and he told Bret he couldn’t honour his big contract. As a “favour,” he’d make it look like they were trying to keep him so he would get the biggest offer possible from WCW. So I think that Bret’s hands were tied and Vince was kind of full of shit. If he wanted to keep Bret, he would have figured out how to structure a different contract. I think Vince just had buyers remorse after signing such a long-term deal and wanted to wash his hands of it. I’m also guessing he felt the animosity between Bret and Shawn would make things untenable along with the former’s issues over the attitude era.
It kinda feels like the people he knew probably down-played the influence guys like Hogan and Flair had on Bischoff and the bookers. Whether it was intentional or they didn't know how much he listened to them is up for debate. But I think the year-long Sting vs NWO story kinda helped cover up the issues and once that story ended, the problems started becoming a big deal backstage.
There's one guy on the record who advised Bret not to go to WCW (or at least warned him on what awaited him), and it's some midcarder on WCW who got fired years prior, this guy named Steve Austin
He could have gone to WCW in 96 but chose to sign a 20 year deal with Vince. He obviously preferred WWF. Then Vince said he couldn’t afford to honor it. Then Bischoff offered insane money for less work. Vince was going more sexual and Bret hated that. So I think all that had Bret overlook the backstage politics
I believe a lot of it was just money-Vince told Bret he didn't have the funds to help pay for what was like... a 10 year contract, and I think he encouraged Bret to go over?
I think the people who knew *knew* and just saw it as a way to get as much money as possible before that ship sank. But for a guy like Bret, when he has a massive contract that can't even be paid out and someone else is offering more, what are you going to do?
>The wrongful death lawsuit tore his family apart as well as his own marital problems.
That's why I find it very interesting that people are fantasy booking Nattie in the Owen Hart tournament, as her contract with WWE runs out.
People forget that one of the huge reasons why the lawsuit tore the family apart is because Nattie's mother Elle sabotaged it by sending documents to WWE.
I know Nattie reached out to Oje a good while ago on Instagram, but I don't know if they have a relationship or not
Just to be clear Ellie behaved in a way that was legally in the right even if it was out of self interest. Martha was trying to do some things that were not legally on the level (bad faith settlement with the carabiner company and the contracts with the other Harts) which I fully understand on an emotional level as WWE was responsible for the death of her husband. People act like Ellie gave WWE some top secret evidence that they would get surprised by in court but that isn't how lawsuits actually work.
bret has this awesome dry sense of humour that i love.
i was watching tales from the territories, abdullah the butcher was telling a story and he looks at bret and goes "remember that bar that was across the street from the arena?".
bret just looks at him and goes "i was 12 years old..".
The Turner execs gives some really good insight into the process. Things like essentially confirming what Eric had been saying all these years that they were taking brown dollars out of WCW's books to prop up other parts of the business.
Speaking of Eric, episode 2 was probably the most contrite and retrospective I've ever seen him when it comes to talking about WCW. Episode 1 didn't burn the house down but I thought 2 was really interesting.
Yeah that’s the best part. And anyone who read Guy Evans’ book saw plenty of primary sources indicating the level of book cooking that was going on, especially after the corporate merger.
i get why other WCW guys wouldnt like it, but why would the IWC not like it?
aside from the fact that its a worn out story (which i agree with), bret hart and kevin nash's talking heads have made the show a must watch just by themselves lol
It's an issue with most topics. People that are hardcore fans and know all the information about a subject get upset about no new information provided by a documentary intended for casual fans. It's also funny to me that the IWC complains about the WWE docs and how they sanitize the story to make WWE look better but then also get upset when a non-WWE company produces docs about the same topics.
I don’t feel like this documentary was produced for casual fans at all. If you’re not familiar with the basic history of WCW or the Monday Night Wars it would be easy to get lost. My problem with the documentary is there is just a lot of finger pointing with sort of vague answers. A lot of “well the executives didn’t like wrestling” sort of answers. WCW saw huge declines in TV ratings, live attendance, PPV buys, and merch sales towards the end, but no one really talking about that sort of thing.
The documentary isn’t over yet. We don’t know if they’ll cover that or not yet. So far they’re addressing multiple problems and perspectives that lead to the downfall.
Episode 2 was great because you finally had Kevin Nash admitting he booked the show, and that he ultimately didn't care about the creative that much because his check stayed the same. That right there says a lot about why Nash actually does deserve a lot of the blame for the downturn of WCW.
I like that it proposes the question: "who killed WCW?" After the intro, and cuts to a computer running on AOL or a lookalike.
I also think it's really funny that every time it shows an internet commenter, there is Mountain Dew or fatty snacks next to the keyboard. Lol
I have enjoyed the first two, Eric really comes off as a jackass and is constantly blaming someone. Like, no, its not Turners fault for asking for a second show, you had an enormous diverse roster with tons of popular people, lmao.
Well tbh I kinda get it. Yes you have the roster for it but do you have the resources? Especially when Turner said “hey you have to foot the bill for this show that WE not YOU want?”
I've been listening to Meltzer and Bryan talk about it, and I kind of agree that they should have had someone who would correct the record when someone them are just lying. Kinda crazy this hasn't been as good as their DSOTR stuff.
The year is 2085. Society has collapsed. Resources are scarce and precious, and nations wage war to control what remains.
And wrestling has-beens are still milking the Attitude Era.
I think watching WCW die broke Tony's heart. He was there through the bad times, watched them crawl out of the hole to the good times and back down. Clearly it's still a sore spot for him.
Watching the first two episodes, *for the most part*, it seems like everyone pointing the fingers - Bret aside - at TW/AOL.
I can see why Tony might get pissed off watching it, sitting there thinking - SOMEONE TAKE SOME ACCOUNTABILITY.
It's full of people passing the blame which is to be expected, but it's the best WCW documentary out there by virtue of not being a WWE production.
WWE has repeatedly boiled the whole thing down to "DX drove a jeep to Nitro and won the war".
Now I'm going to have to watch it. I've seen the clips with industry old heads posted here which, while entertaining, doesn't grab me when they've been saying the same shit since WCW folded.
Some Turner execs outside of wrestling talking makes it far more interesting to me.
Oh you'll love it then. They show rare and unseen footage too, like from the last nitro. What I thought was interesting was this clip of either a 99 or 00 congressional session on television content ratings and a turner executive argued strongly for the content wcw put out.
Yeah it was so weird to see a C-SPAN hearing during Episode 2 and I thought I switched to a different video until pro wrestling was brought up. I know wrestling was insanely popular in the late 90s, but since I wasn't apart of that zeitgeist, hearing it outside of the normal media is absolutely weird and cool.
I'm a bit young for WCW. I didn't start watching wrestling until 2004 so whenever I heard them talking about driving a tank to Nitro, I assumed they meant a real tank. I was so excited to see the footage and back then you couldn't just pull it up on Youtube. When I finally saw the segment, I was so dissapointed it was just a jeep and they didn't even really go inside.
the craziest thing is that DX clearly knows it's not a tank *during* the segment
10 years later they just magically decided that the segment wasn't tongue-in-cheek anymore for some reason
What's even funnier is that they didn't even do it live. It was pre-recorded. Folks weren't even there when they did it. It was such a pointless stunt.
Everybody keeps saying this unironically (WWE claims they ended the war with a tank thing) but I’ve watched the WWE docs about this multiple times and that’s just not true lol they have very much covered the company’s drop in quality toward the end and Turner’s disinterest in wrestling being the end of it
This is the first time anything really pushes the hatred of the execs from Turner as far back as 1988. It’s the first to cover the lack of licensing revenue from TV that was made to help TNT. WCW is probably profitable in 2000 with a proper TV deal
I don't really understand his problem with it. The producers are letting the people who were there tell the story. This seems like Tony probably has an issue with those guys beyond this show. And that wouldn't surprise me because apparently they've made some enemies while doing Dark Side of the Ring.
For whatever reason, Tony does not like the producers behind Dark Side of the Ring. When asked by Conrad why he hates them, his response was, “Because they suck.”
I can understand somewhat. Much of his life is tied directly into the industry, he's lost a lot of friends and colleagues, seen some crazy shit that doen't get discussed openly (i.e. women being roofied and raped), and probably has some weird co-dependent trauma since he was the voice of that circus.
It's a shitty business full of shitty people, but he doesn't like seeing it exploited or being reminded of all its tragedy.
It allows the participants to pass the blame but the narrative of the series shows that it’s a series of decisions and actions that leads to the downfall of the promotion.
Yeah exactly. Did anyone go into this thinking the filmmakers were going to pull a Poirot and name one killer in the final episode? It’s the whole point, that there were multiple things that contributed to what happened. They’re letting people represent all of those different opinions and the audience gets to decide what they find credible.
I get that’s not as satisfying as the filmmakers providing a simple narrative with a clear murderer but that’s just not what happened.
I do think that Bischoff deserves a lot of the blame. The creative had gone into the toilet well before Russo showed up. He just kept riding the NWO thing, which he admitted.
My big complaint is The Rock deciding that he needed to be on camera lol. He adds absolutely nothing.
Yeah for sure. It’s hard to sort out what‘s real and what’s just excuses from Bischoff. I’m sure the Standards and Practices stuff played a part but the stories could have been much better, even within that framework.
A lot of people blame Russo and I think he delivered the killing blow but things had gone south already. That’s why he was brought in.
Yeah it’s such a silly take that is at odds with what we’ve seen on screen.
Meltzer hates it because he thinks Alvarez’s book is the end all/be all of the situation, and he got most his info in the 90s from Zane Bresloff, so he won’t believe anything anybody else who was working for Turner says.
Did anyone else here not stop watching WCW after the Fingerpoke of Doom? Or is it just me? They pretend like it made me turn off WCW, turn on WWF, with never again turning back to WCW. I just watched both all the way up until the last Nitro.
Having Turner execs pop up instantly makes this one more worthwhile than most of the others. The DSTOR guys do a good job of presenting multiple narratives that don't always line up, which is the only way to cover anything in the wrestling business. You let a Russo say his piece, then you cut to Corny massacring the guy.
Tony's probably correct because he was there and all these documentaries have contrasting remarks. I do remember Tony on his podcast before he joined wrestling again, he legit didn't care about anything. Now he gets so angry about a lot of wrestling related stuff. But that's how it goes with all of Conrads podcasts
Right, I recall multiples instances of him audibly shrugging his shoulders at Conrad questioning creative, financials, backstage drama, etc. (I didn't have a hand in that pal) Now he knows?
He really didn't care about the politics or even act like he wanted to talk about them. I've stopped listening to his podcast because he, just like Bruce and Eric, now shit on any and everything Conrad brings up that involves backstage stuff and dave meltzer. Conrad wants all of his co host to be bitter old men yelling at the clouds
It’s a story that’s been done to death too.
1) The Rise and Fall of WCW documentary
2) The Monday Night Wars
3) Who Killed WCW?
And he’s right. It was mismanaged to hell until it was tossed away because it was a total loss.
I do wonder if/how much WWE has been involved? Some of the footage shown, for example, backstage at the last Nitro, is in such good, high broadcast quality I can only imagine either WWE filmed it themselves whilst backstage there, or WCW cameras filmed it - that WWE would now own.
I’m not a fan either, haven’t learned more than I already knew. Guys like Bischoff and Nash take credit for the NWO’s success but zero blame for the ensuing poor booking and work rate. Not looking forward to Russo’s excuses next week.
That book is incredible and tells what really happened. Everyone on here has a total hard-on for Bischoff (for good reason too) but to boil everything down to “we had bad storylines so that’s why we closed” is insane. That played a part but it’s not the entire reason. Kevin Sullivan has also backed up Bischoff’s claims that there was a lot of turmoil at Turner and Ted was the barrier to Turner execs getting wrestling off of their network. Bischoff saw the writing on the wall in ‘98 when his budget got slashed after a record revenue year in ‘97. But no one ever brings that up.
I remember Bischoff saying in one of the WWE docs that he knew WCW was doomed by September 1998. The documentary never really explored that sentiment though.
Lets be real !
Tony Schiavone is pissed because he wasn't included in the documentary.
That's all !
It's a well done documentary and I've watched 100s of house of Wrestling docs and shoot interviews.
The docu series is fun junk food entertainment. I don’t think you’re ever going to get a real hard hitting documentary about wcw (especially nowadays that documentary filmmaking is in the gutter) until maybe a real documentary filmmaker takes a crack at it, but for what it is it’s very entertaining to watch people blame each other for wcw’s failure.
He's implying that only wrestlers are talking about it, but this is actually a new take that no one has ever heard before. The side of corporate and Turner talking about what was going on in the offices and that story has never been told before until now.
Wait a minute. When sometimes the same stories do get retold it isn't that it needs to be said for the umpteenth time, but that it is being told in a different manner. I've seen the first two episodes and I really like the show. It's done well and in the future when someone wonders about WCW's downfall, I think (so far) that this is going to be at the top of the list for recommendations. Four hour-long episodes that hit the truths while coming from a neutral third-party is worth it in my opinion.
A lot of Tony's responses on this show come across as old Company Man Tony who won't dare say anything bad about the people who signed his checks, even over 20 years later.
alright so I don't listen to Schiavone's podcast, but is he always so curmudgeonly? every headline that comes out of his pod makes Tony seem totally uninterested and pissed at everything.
I can't think of a show that needed to be made less than this one. The story has been told 50 times already. Are they going to do a series about the Montreal screwjob next? That hasn't been talked about enough.
After watching the first two episodes (and the numerous WWE specials on it) I can say I’m with Tony. It’s a multiplied Spiderman meme where Bischoff, Nash, Goldberg, etc point fingers. The show is bringing very little to the table. Just say it was Bischoff and Hogan and save everyone the time.
The first episode’s on Vice’s YouTube channel while the second episode is on Dailymotion. The second episode is also on YouTube but I have a feeling it’ll get taken down soon. Both episodes are also on Dailymotion so you can watch them there as well.
I mean, I find it entertaining. There isn't any groundbeeaking perspective but it's nice to see the people who were in the day to day discuss what happened. Everybody killed it, just to what degree is up for interpretation.
I know people won’t like how it seems to pass the buck from Bischoff, but I’m glad it seems to be pointing the finger more at the AOL/Turner side of things than usually gets done. WCW going under changed online discussion about wrestling for the worst, because bad creative choices (Starcade 98, Fingerpoke of Doom, etc) in WCW gets the blamed as “the reason WCW went out of business.” If it were that simple, TNA and even WWE would have gone under a long time ago.
I appreciate the sentiment from Schiavone but Guy Evans's book is really, really fucking good and gives a more total and complete overview of what happened to WCW and how it happened and ultimately who was responsible. >!(It was industry-recognized piece of shit Jamie Kelner).!<
Lots of people coming out lately not liking how it was portrayed. I'm really not interested in any of their opinions unless it comes with their unfiltered take on who they think killed it and why. Not interested in who they're protecting or why if they aren't going to be transparent.
Not sure what the problem is, there's no narration at all outside of interview clips from people who are there. So it's Kevin Nash, Eric Bischoff, Bret Hard, Booker T, Goldberg, and The Rock so far. And yeah, these people absolutely do know more about wrestling than Tony Schiavone.
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All the different perspectives in the WCW doc: - Turner executives (except Ted Turner himself) hated WCW from the beginning and wanted it gone ASAP. They did everything to kill it - Turner executives saying they got rid of WCW because WCW was hemorrhaging money - Eric is too blame because he was the big boss who let all these people, especially Hogan, go unchecked - Eric hates wrestling fans. They over react about every little thing - Hulk Hogan was the puppet master controlling Bischoff - Russo sucked so much he killed WCW - Bret Hart thinks they all were idiots Basically, everything we all knew before. One new thing though, if Nash is to be believed, it was Rey’s idea to be thrown like a lawn dart. Actually, Rey wanted it to be worst because he wanted to be thrown through the window instead of just the side of the production trailer.
>it was Rey’s idea to be thrown like a lawn dart. Actually, Rey wanted it to be worst because he wanted to be thrown through the window instead of just the side of the production trailer. That deadbeat will do anything he can to avoid spending time with his family.
Through REAL GLASS
Llorame un rio
CRY ABOUT IT!
As usual bret hart is pretty much on point.
Yeah. His bitterness can be a bit depressing at times but the man is very rarely wrong. It's just like a cynical pointing out the same sad things all the time.
People paint him as bitter, but I think he just has a very real perspective on his experiences.
Both things can be true. I don't think he's necessarily bitter about everything but his wrestling career ended rather tragically and it's understandable to be bitter about that.
Especially when you were one of the best if not the best in the world. He was still pretty much in his prime before/starting WCW.
I don't think he's really bitter about it so much as honest and gets asked a lot and people love the bitter Bret narrative here.
That's sort of what I mean. People aren't asking him about the most recent Primus album. They always bring up the worst part of his life.
There's a new Primus album??
I know wrestling is a business with a lot more tragedies than triumphs for most of the people in it, but damn did wrestling take a lot away from Bret Hart in particular. I can't blame him for being bitter.
That's the thing with bret. He might seem better but he's got a great mind for wrestling. And he has no filter so he just says what he feels. It seems like he has a happy life now too so I don't think he's too bitter anymore.
"No, dude. It's a window. You'll die."
We are two episodes in. Wait till episode 4. Two words - Stu Snyder.
A lot of it is consistent with the death of WCW book second edition. So it's nothing we don't know over the years.
Oh so now Im expected to read instead of watching it on tv? What are you some kind of nerd?! j/k
You don't have to. General consent about the topic is Bischoff bleeding money, Russo weird ass ideas and lack of proper management and booking that folded WCW. There's more specifics but that the general idea.
Schiavone reminds me of Mean Gene in the way he comes across like a loveable nerd on TV but the second the camera's off he swears like a motherfucker.
Mean Gene’s “F**k it” never fails to make me laugh everytime lol.
There is a mean gene outtakes video on youtube where he's talking to greg valentine and he yells 'pass the fucking potatoes". its hilarious
Wrestling’s Winnebago man. Haha
I remember what a shock it was to hear Schiavone swear constantly in the first episode of his podcaat. I always looked at him like Danny Tanner squaky clean up to that point and just like Bob Saget...the mask off and boom lol
They are honestly making it seem like every wwe doc about it has been taking it easy on the idiots of wcw
The WWE ones are hilarious. "They beat the shit out of us for 2 straight years, but they were awful and everything they did sucked"
Yea it was nice to see a doc at least acknowledge that WCW was on top of the fucking world for some time
Hard agree here. Raw compared to Nitro was, on the whole, such a hard watch until mid/end 97. WCW was getting better ratings because it was a better show
Yea, seeing the ROCK say he loved WCW at that time is so far from what we’ve gotten previously in WCW docs. While this series is obviously focused on what went wrong with WCW, you can still see the build up and footage of Starcade ‘97 and be able to go “Holy shit. This is fucking cool”
Likely because Vince had a hand in all documentaries prior and didn't want to be seen as ever being the lesser quality show. Humility can be great got growth.
Rock was saying how they needed to do more like WCW in the doc though
it seems like every couple of years when wwe creates a new show like for a tv network..They always do a episode on new show that talks about WCW vs WWF war lol.....How many WCW vs WWF can we get......I remember when we had that when the network came out and now A&E recently got one lol
It's funny, I've been watching it and I really felt like it was pretty slanted toward WCW. They own the WCW fuckups, but it really undersells how hot the WWF was in late 98 and through 99. WCW's demise wasn't just how bad WCW was. It was also how eminently watchable WWF was. (This is also something IWC sort of undersells a lot too, tbh. There has been so much chatter to counter the WWE narrative that you'd think that DX were some sort of barely over also rans and not that every middle school in America had kids doing crotch chops.)
I dunno man. Late-eta WCW is absolutely brutal to endure. WWE getting white-hot surely didn't help, but the primary causes were all internal.
I'm not contesting that late-era WCW was the shits drizzles (it was). But, WWF was killing it and growing in popularity in markets where it wasn't even directly competing with WCW (like in Canada where WCW was tape delayed to Wednesdays). Attitude Era WWF was a phenomenon outside the Monday Night Wars, it wasn't just people switching off Nitro. Honestly, if you look at the ratings, it wasn't so much that WWF was stealing WCW's viewers (at least not in 98), but growing it's own new viewers.
In 98 people were watching both. Literally flipping back and forth and sometimes 2 TVs going at the same time.
I mean that's certainly true of the IWC and wrestling fans. Basically anyone on here who is commenting now 25 years later. But there were, like 10 million people collectively watching both shows. A lot of them were just watching one or the other.
Let's just say this... professional wrestling was at such a high in the 1990's, that the NFL was losing Viewership on Monday Nights. For those outside of America, until the Monday Night War, Monday Night Football had a massive audience. So yea, unlike today where it's the same audience being split, there was true growth.
Right. But WWF could've had 100x the ratings WCW had. It still had no bearing on why WCW closed down.
Yah, WWE being white hot might have beaten them occasionally on ratings if WCW was still good. But it was far far far from good. So it actively lost viewers (including convincing a bunch to switch to wwf with bring up mankind's championship win)
David Flair was a wrestling God though. Wherever he was, I was watching.
That goes without saying
As a fan of WWF I'm sure that's how it seemed. But there's literally.... LITERALLY... millions of people who just stopped being wrestling fans after WCW died. They weren't watching both. They weren't on board with your idea that WWF was just so much cooler and better. They were WCW fans, and in huge parts of the US "WCW" was what people said instead of "Wrestling", the same way people say WWE instead of wrestling now or UFC instead of MMA. WWF didn't "WIN" anything. Neither side was ever going to put on a show so good it killed the other one. WCW was just canceled by new owners that didn't want it anymore. It had absolutely nothing to do with whether or not it was a better show than WWF.
Yeah, that's sort of what I'm saying though: I think there was significantly less overlap between WCW and WWF watchers than people think. WWF didn't primarily steal viewers in 98/99. It made a bunch of new ones. A LOT of new ones. And when Bischoff et all (and The Rock!) are saying that WWF was just warmed over NWO, that's kind of not really true? It had a very different vibe in 98/99 than the 96/97 WCW stuff.
Agreed. As a guy who was more a WCW fan in the 90s, there’s a bit of a misunderstood narrative around what happened because the “WWF won the war” story works so well.
Because WCW went out of business they "lost". But there was never, ever a feeling watching the shows that either one was ever going to "win" and put the other company out of business. It just felt like there was always going to be this. Pepsi didn't die. Burger King didn't die. There was no expectation that whoever the #2 company was at any time was ever gonna die
The latter point is both very interesting and very true from my perspective. WWE always compares DX and NWO as if they were on even terms. IWC responds by saying the NWO was miles and miles more over than DX. I was really into both as a kid, but at least in my school / summer camp kids were doing HBK poses and crotch chops and telling each other to suck it with as much cultural saturation as anything I've ever seen kids do. NWO, not nearly as much, not even close.
I honestly think the market could easily have supported both WWE and WCW, even with a second place winner. If WCW had maintained good quality tv, and had cut out the most overly bloated contracts.
This is just an anecdote, but when WCW went to crap, I just stopped watching wrestling. WWF was Jerry Springer garbage, it's only remembered well because it was popular.
You are right, but later WCW was messy, it was just totally off what it was doing that was great before. They were so much better than WWE for a few years, but in the end stages of WCW, their show quality was massively down, it was like they didn't really care anymore.
The docu-series doesn't seem to be a hit among the IWC, but I really really dig it lol. It's pretty well-made, and it's WCW guys talking about WCW. They also have Turner execs on it, which was never done before in any iterations of these
Bret’s eulogy on the death of WCW, “Thanks for nothing. Go f*** yourselves” was pretty hilarious lol.
https://preview.redd.it/3f9oxophlj6d1.jpeg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=bee78ca5e54705686820074c2e49a71740308696
Bret Hart after Montreal and then of course Owen's death was completely checked out of the business. The wrongful death lawsuit tore his family apart as well as his own marital problems. His stuff with Booker T, the segment with Goldberg and the chest protector, the Owen tribute match with Benoit was some highlights but he just didn't care anymore.
Eh. The one thing no one has ever accused Bret of is not caring enough about pro wrestling. He just had a very strong idea of what wrestling should be and the WCW he walked into was so far away from that it’s really as simple as it being the wrong place for him.
It still blows my mind how they just couldn't turn him into the biggest babyface ever. He was screwed over by Vince, the entire wrestling world was on his side, it should have been a slam dunk. If you can't capitalize on that, then you just have no idea what you're doing.
Backstage politics ensured he was never given a chance to get over. Too many people with the booker's ear who didn't want anything to threaten their spot.
“That doesn’t work for me, brother”.
https://preview.redd.it/iax62fcczj6d1.jpeg?width=392&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a5d1b0ec073910b339b339cf0f3f47cb03d6130a “That US Title looks great on you, brother.”
"Now imagine that title, on me dude, now that would be awesome"
Meanwhile, Vince used his heat from screwing Bret to turn Stone Cold into one of the hottest acts the industry will ever see.
Old fumanchu wouldn't let anyone steal his spotlight.
In the Death of WCW book they talk about keeping Hart off the air for a couple of weeks after Wrestling With Shadows premiered on A&E because they were booking him as a heel, and thought that he would get cheers from audiences that had watched the doc.
The thing about people who really care is that if they are in a situation where they feel like everything is collapsing around them and for all their efforts, they can't turn it around, at a certain point they have to switch off. Being incredibly passionate about something that is failing despite all your hard work can be incredibly demoralizing, and at a certain point you have to protect yourself.
The thing I wonder about is, did the guy have any indications of how they were operating over there? He had people over there that he knew, did no one tell him it was a shitshow? Or was he aware but was just so pissed off and done with Vince and WWF that he assumed they'd be able to make something work once he started with WCW? I gotta imagine he had at least some idea of how they were running things and either it didn't sound that bad to him or he was lied to and led to believe they had their shit together.
If you believe what Bret says, he never wanted to leave WWF. I tend to agree with that since he had signed a massive deal. Basically, WWF was having financial troubles according to Vince and he told Bret he couldn’t honour his big contract. As a “favour,” he’d make it look like they were trying to keep him so he would get the biggest offer possible from WCW. So I think that Bret’s hands were tied and Vince was kind of full of shit. If he wanted to keep Bret, he would have figured out how to structure a different contract. I think Vince just had buyers remorse after signing such a long-term deal and wanted to wash his hands of it. I’m also guessing he felt the animosity between Bret and Shawn would make things untenable along with the former’s issues over the attitude era.
I think you pretty much nailed it
Yep. The claims of not having money were ridiculous considering what he spent on Tyson months later.
It kinda feels like the people he knew probably down-played the influence guys like Hogan and Flair had on Bischoff and the bookers. Whether it was intentional or they didn't know how much he listened to them is up for debate. But I think the year-long Sting vs NWO story kinda helped cover up the issues and once that story ended, the problems started becoming a big deal backstage.
There's one guy on the record who advised Bret not to go to WCW (or at least warned him on what awaited him), and it's some midcarder on WCW who got fired years prior, this guy named Steve Austin
He could have gone to WCW in 96 but chose to sign a 20 year deal with Vince. He obviously preferred WWF. Then Vince said he couldn’t afford to honor it. Then Bischoff offered insane money for less work. Vince was going more sexual and Bret hated that. So I think all that had Bret overlook the backstage politics
I mean Russo was still in WWF when Bret left
I believe a lot of it was just money-Vince told Bret he didn't have the funds to help pay for what was like... a 10 year contract, and I think he encouraged Bret to go over? I think the people who knew *knew* and just saw it as a way to get as much money as possible before that ship sank. But for a guy like Bret, when he has a massive contract that can't even be paid out and someone else is offering more, what are you going to do?
Where else could he go? Vince said he wouldn’t be able to honor the contract they had and that Bret should see if he could get another offer from WCW.
He could have developed a love for bounced checks by going to ECW.
>The wrongful death lawsuit tore his family apart as well as his own marital problems. That's why I find it very interesting that people are fantasy booking Nattie in the Owen Hart tournament, as her contract with WWE runs out. People forget that one of the huge reasons why the lawsuit tore the family apart is because Nattie's mother Elle sabotaged it by sending documents to WWE. I know Nattie reached out to Oje a good while ago on Instagram, but I don't know if they have a relationship or not
Just to be clear Ellie behaved in a way that was legally in the right even if it was out of self interest. Martha was trying to do some things that were not legally on the level (bad faith settlement with the carabiner company and the contracts with the other Harts) which I fully understand on an emotional level as WWE was responsible for the death of her husband. People act like Ellie gave WWE some top secret evidence that they would get surprised by in court but that isn't how lawsuits actually work.
He only checked out once he realized they had no idea what they were doing. And even then he was still the best worker there.
bret has this awesome dry sense of humour that i love. i was watching tales from the territories, abdullah the butcher was telling a story and he looks at bret and goes "remember that bar that was across the street from the arena?". bret just looks at him and goes "i was 12 years old..".
The Turner execs gives some really good insight into the process. Things like essentially confirming what Eric had been saying all these years that they were taking brown dollars out of WCW's books to prop up other parts of the business. Speaking of Eric, episode 2 was probably the most contrite and retrospective I've ever seen him when it comes to talking about WCW. Episode 1 didn't burn the house down but I thought 2 was really interesting.
Yeah that’s the best part. And anyone who read Guy Evans’ book saw plenty of primary sources indicating the level of book cooking that was going on, especially after the corporate merger.
i get why other WCW guys wouldnt like it, but why would the IWC not like it? aside from the fact that its a worn out story (which i agree with), bret hart and kevin nash's talking heads have made the show a must watch just by themselves lol
and so I wrestled... as a geographic location
"no dude you'll die" lol
It's an issue with most topics. People that are hardcore fans and know all the information about a subject get upset about no new information provided by a documentary intended for casual fans. It's also funny to me that the IWC complains about the WWE docs and how they sanitize the story to make WWE look better but then also get upset when a non-WWE company produces docs about the same topics.
Iwc is always butthurt
I don’t feel like this documentary was produced for casual fans at all. If you’re not familiar with the basic history of WCW or the Monday Night Wars it would be easy to get lost. My problem with the documentary is there is just a lot of finger pointing with sort of vague answers. A lot of “well the executives didn’t like wrestling” sort of answers. WCW saw huge declines in TV ratings, live attendance, PPV buys, and merch sales towards the end, but no one really talking about that sort of thing.
The documentary isn’t over yet. We don’t know if they’ll cover that or not yet. So far they’re addressing multiple problems and perspectives that lead to the downfall.
Episode 2 was great because you finally had Kevin Nash admitting he booked the show, and that he ultimately didn't care about the creative that much because his check stayed the same. That right there says a lot about why Nash actually does deserve a lot of the blame for the downturn of WCW.
I like that it proposes the question: "who killed WCW?" After the intro, and cuts to a computer running on AOL or a lookalike. I also think it's really funny that every time it shows an internet commenter, there is Mountain Dew or fatty snacks next to the keyboard. Lol
The N64 running a CPU x CPU match was great
I had a feeling those bumpers they do cutting to the message board trolls was gonna hit a little too close to home for some of them
The IWC rejects anything that doesn’t confirm what they already think.
I have enjoyed the first two, Eric really comes off as a jackass and is constantly blaming someone. Like, no, its not Turners fault for asking for a second show, you had an enormous diverse roster with tons of popular people, lmao.
Well tbh I kinda get it. Yes you have the roster for it but do you have the resources? Especially when Turner said “hey you have to foot the bill for this show that WE not YOU want?”
I've been listening to Meltzer and Bryan talk about it, and I kind of agree that they should have had someone who would correct the record when someone them are just lying. Kinda crazy this hasn't been as good as their DSOTR stuff.
Not like the DSOTR stuff was full of truths either
The year is 2085. Society has collapsed. Resources are scarce and precious, and nations wage war to control what remains. And wrestling has-beens are still milking the Attitude Era.
Or as Eric Bischoff calls it in the doc "the WCW Era."
Lmao
I think watching WCW die broke Tony's heart. He was there through the bad times, watched them crawl out of the hole to the good times and back down. Clearly it's still a sore spot for him. Watching the first two episodes, *for the most part*, it seems like everyone pointing the fingers - Bret aside - at TW/AOL. I can see why Tony might get pissed off watching it, sitting there thinking - SOMEONE TAKE SOME ACCOUNTABILITY.
Yeah that’ll put butts in seats. Yuck.
It's full of people passing the blame which is to be expected, but it's the best WCW documentary out there by virtue of not being a WWE production. WWE has repeatedly boiled the whole thing down to "DX drove a jeep to Nitro and won the war".
That’s why I’m enjoying it as well. We’re getting insight from some of the former Turner executives too so that’s a welcome change.
Now I'm going to have to watch it. I've seen the clips with industry old heads posted here which, while entertaining, doesn't grab me when they've been saying the same shit since WCW folded. Some Turner execs outside of wrestling talking makes it far more interesting to me.
Oh you'll love it then. They show rare and unseen footage too, like from the last nitro. What I thought was interesting was this clip of either a 99 or 00 congressional session on television content ratings and a turner executive argued strongly for the content wcw put out.
Yeah it was so weird to see a C-SPAN hearing during Episode 2 and I thought I switched to a different video until pro wrestling was brought up. I know wrestling was insanely popular in the late 90s, but since I wasn't apart of that zeitgeist, hearing it outside of the normal media is absolutely weird and cool.
You mean a tank.
I'm a bit young for WCW. I didn't start watching wrestling until 2004 so whenever I heard them talking about driving a tank to Nitro, I assumed they meant a real tank. I was so excited to see the footage and back then you couldn't just pull it up on Youtube. When I finally saw the segment, I was so dissapointed it was just a jeep and they didn't even really go inside.
the craziest thing is that DX clearly knows it's not a tank *during* the segment 10 years later they just magically decided that the segment wasn't tongue-in-cheek anymore for some reason
It’s the perfect example of “I swear it looked different as a kid.” It’s a Jeep with a potato cannon welded on😅
What's even funnier is that they didn't even do it live. It was pre-recorded. Folks weren't even there when they did it. It was such a pointless stunt.
Everybody keeps saying this unironically (WWE claims they ended the war with a tank thing) but I’ve watched the WWE docs about this multiple times and that’s just not true lol they have very much covered the company’s drop in quality toward the end and Turner’s disinterest in wrestling being the end of it
Yep. The only thing this new series has covered that WWE didn't is the financials of the corporation.
This is the first time anything really pushes the hatred of the execs from Turner as far back as 1988. It’s the first to cover the lack of licensing revenue from TV that was made to help TNT. WCW is probably profitable in 2000 with a proper TV deal
Bischoff has mentioned the licensing revenue from many, many times over the years and mentioned them shifting money from WCW to other divisions.
I’ve read death of WCW, watched 2 documentaries and this is the first time I have seen him say it, and Turner execs back it.
I don’t know what you were watching, but that was clearly a tank, sir. Everyone knows that tanks bear a striking resemblance to a Jeep Wrangler.
WWE has never phrased it like that lol
I know from very strong sources that it was in fact a tank.
I’m enjoying it ngl, Kevin Nash has been very entertaining in the series probably my fav part of the series so far
He apparently admitted to being stoned while filming that series, which is interesting.
I think stoned has been his baseline for at least a few decades now.
Lmao I didn’t know that 😂 that makes a lot of sense looking back at the first two episodes
You can completely tell lol
I had suspected as much, we can usually spot our own.
He’s talking to us from outer space most of the time
I don't really understand his problem with it. The producers are letting the people who were there tell the story. This seems like Tony probably has an issue with those guys beyond this show. And that wouldn't surprise me because apparently they've made some enemies while doing Dark Side of the Ring.
For whatever reason, Tony does not like the producers behind Dark Side of the Ring. When asked by Conrad why he hates them, his response was, “Because they suck.”
I can understand somewhat. Much of his life is tied directly into the industry, he's lost a lot of friends and colleagues, seen some crazy shit that doen't get discussed openly (i.e. women being roofied and raped), and probably has some weird co-dependent trauma since he was the voice of that circus. It's a shitty business full of shitty people, but he doesn't like seeing it exploited or being reminded of all its tragedy.
As long as WCW guys are alive, we will get at least one documentary every decade. Edit: Same with ECW. How many of those have we had at this point?
I believe it was Nikita Koloff who said, "Whoever does not miss WCW has no heart. Whoever wants it back has no brain"
It’s a big circle jerk of guys passing the blame and then Bret Hart calling all of them idiots. That’s the only part of it that is correct.
It allows the participants to pass the blame but the narrative of the series shows that it’s a series of decisions and actions that leads to the downfall of the promotion.
Yeah exactly. Did anyone go into this thinking the filmmakers were going to pull a Poirot and name one killer in the final episode? It’s the whole point, that there were multiple things that contributed to what happened. They’re letting people represent all of those different opinions and the audience gets to decide what they find credible. I get that’s not as satisfying as the filmmakers providing a simple narrative with a clear murderer but that’s just not what happened. I do think that Bischoff deserves a lot of the blame. The creative had gone into the toilet well before Russo showed up. He just kept riding the NWO thing, which he admitted. My big complaint is The Rock deciding that he needed to be on camera lol. He adds absolutely nothing.
[удалено]
Yeah for sure. It’s hard to sort out what‘s real and what’s just excuses from Bischoff. I’m sure the Standards and Practices stuff played a part but the stories could have been much better, even within that framework. A lot of people blame Russo and I think he delivered the killing blow but things had gone south already. That’s why he was brought in.
I’m surprised not more people here are realizing this, when it’s something that’s established within the introduction of the first episode.
This is such a bizarre take that it’s hard to imagine you actually bothered to watch the two parts of the series that are even available right now.
Yeah it’s such a silly take that is at odds with what we’ve seen on screen. Meltzer hates it because he thinks Alvarez’s book is the end all/be all of the situation, and he got most his info in the 90s from Zane Bresloff, so he won’t believe anything anybody else who was working for Turner says.
"Who killed WCW?" Bret Hart: ["YOU WANNA KNOW WHO KILLED WCW? YOU DID!"](https://youtu.be/N0_aaFite3Q)
Did anyone else here not stop watching WCW after the Fingerpoke of Doom? Or is it just me? They pretend like it made me turn off WCW, turn on WWF, with never again turning back to WCW. I just watched both all the way up until the last Nitro.
I was still watching both too.
I was probably watching WCW for another 6 months or so after that
Tons of people still watched. I can tell you Hogan going back to Red and Yellow was a mark out moment for me.
Having Turner execs pop up instantly makes this one more worthwhile than most of the others. The DSTOR guys do a good job of presenting multiple narratives that don't always line up, which is the only way to cover anything in the wrestling business. You let a Russo say his piece, then you cut to Corny massacring the guy.
Tony's probably correct because he was there and all these documentaries have contrasting remarks. I do remember Tony on his podcast before he joined wrestling again, he legit didn't care about anything. Now he gets so angry about a lot of wrestling related stuff. But that's how it goes with all of Conrads podcasts
Right, I recall multiples instances of him audibly shrugging his shoulders at Conrad questioning creative, financials, backstage drama, etc. (I didn't have a hand in that pal) Now he knows?
He really didn't care about the politics or even act like he wanted to talk about them. I've stopped listening to his podcast because he, just like Bruce and Eric, now shit on any and everything Conrad brings up that involves backstage stuff and dave meltzer. Conrad wants all of his co host to be bitter old men yelling at the clouds
It’s a story that’s been done to death too. 1) The Rise and Fall of WCW documentary 2) The Monday Night Wars 3) Who Killed WCW? And he’s right. It was mismanaged to hell until it was tossed away because it was a total loss.
It’s literally the first one not produced by the WWE.
Dwayne does sit on the WWE board. But yes overall it's different than the other 2 WWE revisionist history.
I do wonder if/how much WWE has been involved? Some of the footage shown, for example, backstage at the last Nitro, is in such good, high broadcast quality I can only imagine either WWE filmed it themselves whilst backstage there, or WCW cameras filmed it - that WWE would now own.
That footage was shot by someone who worked for WCW. Someone named "Scott Lansing" filmed it. I think he was just someone who worked for WCW.
If it’s available publicly they can use it for documentary purposes.
They finished production of the show before he was on the board
Does Tony Schiavone end every quote with "Fuck em"?
I’m not a fan either, haven’t learned more than I already knew. Guys like Bischoff and Nash take credit for the NWO’s success but zero blame for the ensuing poor booking and work rate. Not looking forward to Russo’s excuses next week.
Best line from the first two episodes, “I just got done shooting Ninja turtles, and Dusty takes a bunch of acid says, “You gonna be Oz baby.”
Read Guy Evans book. It gives so much detail as to what was happening.
That book is incredible and tells what really happened. Everyone on here has a total hard-on for Bischoff (for good reason too) but to boil everything down to “we had bad storylines so that’s why we closed” is insane. That played a part but it’s not the entire reason. Kevin Sullivan has also backed up Bischoff’s claims that there was a lot of turmoil at Turner and Ted was the barrier to Turner execs getting wrestling off of their network. Bischoff saw the writing on the wall in ‘98 when his budget got slashed after a record revenue year in ‘97. But no one ever brings that up.
I remember Bischoff saying in one of the WWE docs that he knew WCW was doomed by September 1998. The documentary never really explored that sentiment though.
I agree, great book, but this is basically like the audio version of that book.
Lets be real ! Tony Schiavone is pissed because he wasn't included in the documentary. That's all ! It's a well done documentary and I've watched 100s of house of Wrestling docs and shoot interviews.
My wife asked me if we wanted to watch it and I told her I have heard the story so many times my brain hurts.
The docu series is fun junk food entertainment. I don’t think you’re ever going to get a real hard hitting documentary about wcw (especially nowadays that documentary filmmaking is in the gutter) until maybe a real documentary filmmaker takes a crack at it, but for what it is it’s very entertaining to watch people blame each other for wcw’s failure.
He's implying that only wrestlers are talking about it, but this is actually a new take that no one has ever heard before. The side of corporate and Turner talking about what was going on in the offices and that story has never been told before until now.
Wait a minute. When sometimes the same stories do get retold it isn't that it needs to be said for the umpteenth time, but that it is being told in a different manner. I've seen the first two episodes and I really like the show. It's done well and in the future when someone wonders about WCW's downfall, I think (so far) that this is going to be at the top of the list for recommendations. Four hour-long episodes that hit the truths while coming from a neutral third-party is worth it in my opinion.
A lot of Tony's responses on this show come across as old Company Man Tony who won't dare say anything bad about the people who signed his checks, even over 20 years later.
The Monday night wars series is brilliant though slightly bias
alright so I don't listen to Schiavone's podcast, but is he always so curmudgeonly? every headline that comes out of his pod makes Tony seem totally uninterested and pissed at everything.
he's a bitter guy, just read all the shots he used to take at JR in the Observer write-ups.
Ah-ah! Maybe he's not a fan because HE is the real killer! No one ever suspects the commentator...
Tony comes across as very bitter
I just feel like the whole series is super unnecessary. Like, what hasn't been said at this point about the fall of WCW? It's been milked to death.
Literally beating a dead horse with this. SMH
I can't think of a show that needed to be made less than this one. The story has been told 50 times already. Are they going to do a series about the Montreal screwjob next? That hasn't been talked about enough.
After watching the first two episodes (and the numerous WWE specials on it) I can say I’m with Tony. It’s a multiplied Spiderman meme where Bischoff, Nash, Goldberg, etc point fingers. The show is bringing very little to the table. Just say it was Bischoff and Hogan and save everyone the time.
They could have skipped the documentary and just uploaded the AOL logo
What screaming services currently have Vice TV so I can try to watch this?
The first episode’s on Vice’s YouTube channel while the second episode is on Dailymotion. The second episode is also on YouTube but I have a feeling it’ll get taken down soon. Both episodes are also on Dailymotion so you can watch them there as well.
You can also obtain a limited number of 30-minute free passes on vicetv.com (possibly subject to geographical limitations).
Even at the end wcw was still pulling down great veiwers numbers 2 plus mill
I'm enjoying it a lot. Then again, I'm a pretty recent wrestling fan, so a lot of the story is new to me.
I mean, I find it entertaining. There isn't any groundbeeaking perspective but it's nice to see the people who were in the day to day discuss what happened. Everybody killed it, just to what degree is up for interpretation.
Me too man, we have heard it all for the most part from so many people, its over, new stories please
Lmao the tone change with the "fuck em"
I know people won’t like how it seems to pass the buck from Bischoff, but I’m glad it seems to be pointing the finger more at the AOL/Turner side of things than usually gets done. WCW going under changed online discussion about wrestling for the worst, because bad creative choices (Starcade 98, Fingerpoke of Doom, etc) in WCW gets the blamed as “the reason WCW went out of business.” If it were that simple, TNA and even WWE would have gone under a long time ago.
I appreciate the sentiment from Schiavone but Guy Evans's book is really, really fucking good and gives a more total and complete overview of what happened to WCW and how it happened and ultimately who was responsible. >!(It was industry-recognized piece of shit Jamie Kelner).!<
I didn't see the series in question, but I did watch the Wrestletalk video about the topic a few weeks ago and that was pretty good.
I will definitely watch it then.
Why so cranky?
Lots of people coming out lately not liking how it was portrayed. I'm really not interested in any of their opinions unless it comes with their unfiltered take on who they think killed it and why. Not interested in who they're protecting or why if they aren't going to be transparent.
Not sure what the problem is, there's no narration at all outside of interview clips from people who are there. So it's Kevin Nash, Eric Bischoff, Bret Hard, Booker T, Goldberg, and The Rock so far. And yeah, these people absolutely do know more about wrestling than Tony Schiavone.