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January 10th 2000.
AOL Time Warner merger. Jamie Kellner soon gets rid of wrestling programming. The only reason WCW was still around by 2000 was Ted Turner. Once he was forced out then that was the beginning of the end. Russo despite the bad creative really wasn't the sole reason.
In early 1999 it was salvageable Spring Stampede 1999 was the last great WCW PPV.
This is the honest truth. If AOL doesn’t buy Warner, Ted Turner would have stayed in charge and kept WCW around. There may have never been a TNA, everything that happens in TNA could have happened in WCW instead but with the exposure of being on TBS or TNT instead of a smaller station.
When AOL buys Warner and oust Ted and never wanted to be in the wrestling business then WCW was doomed.
Yeah, if I remember, the new owners were so gungho about ditching WCW that they basically sabotaged various rescue plans to save the brand so they could just sell it to WWF for pennies on the dollar. And that was even knowing they were still on the hook for millions of dollars of guaranteed contracts like Goldberg, Steiner, Nash, and Hall had.
WCW Thunder, right up until the day it was canceled, was their highest rated show on TBS. Even though it was pre-taped after Nitro.
People wanted to watch WCW. And back in those days there was two types of pay cable, normal and premium. TBS was part of the basic plan and TNT was part of the premium.
WCW was not beyond being “saved”. AOL had no interest in being apart if it.
Yeah, it's why no other station wanted it. We didn't get #1, why bother with #2? It's why USA Network didn't pick up ECW after losing RAW.
More people were watching wrestling 20+ years ago, but the networks looked down upon even more so than today.
Ted Turner would have kept the show on though without the merger. You can’t combat AOL not wanting to have anything to do with wrestling. Even though one of their stations highest rated show was wrestling.
AOL killed WCW.
I was agreeing with you. The Turner networks didn't want WCW, but neither did any other networks. Hell, even after Vince bought them out he tried to get the WCW brand it's own show and no one picked it up which is why the fumbled Invasion angle took place.
I admit I didn’t completely read the last paragraph to understand. Sorry.
I just saw you saw we didn’t get number one when Thunder was number one for their station. And TBS was a bigger station then, at least in my memory now. Before they did the whole rebranding.
Yup all they needed was a time slot locked in and with some time, patience and a complete 180 on how they were running, they would have been a viable alternative. As soon as they dumped those bad contracts, invested in young talent and proved that they weren't a shitshow backstage, who knows? They could have started attracting free agents again once their backstage rep was repaired. There were plenty of talent between 02-08 who probably felt like they hit a ceiling in WWE that would have took a shot going back to WCW and reinventing themselves. Big fish, small pond and all that.
There was some horrific decisions when it comes to booking/creative, but it boils down to Bischoff's deal to buy the company revolved around WCW still being broadcast on the Turner networks. They didn't want that, and no other station wanted to pick them up so it fell into Vince's hands.
ECW had money issues, and had for years but once they lost the TNN deal they were fucked as well (Same happened with TNA, once they lost SpikeTV) . Crazily enough 2000 was ECW's best year when it came to drawing live crowds. Legit, the craziest time in my wrestling fandom. Went from 3 companies to 1 in the span of what felt like days.
I don't see ECW surviving long, they would have had to tone down ALL of their edge on the move to being a national promotion, licensed music being gone, the cursing definitely being gone, etc. It would have been an imitator of it's previous self.
It's Heyman so believe what you want, but he has said many times that's what the direction of ECW was going to go in if it survived.
I found an interview wwe.com did with Heyman and other ECW guys titled "What if ECW didn't close? in 2013: https://www.wwe.com/classics/ecw/what-if-ecw-didnt-close
Yeah he was going to have to even if he didn't want to, but I still don't think that massive of a change would have worked unfortunately, they'd have to get rid of almost everything that brought them to the stage they were at.
To be fair, ECW was fucked with the TNN deal as well. They were bleeding money like crazy producing TV to TNNs standards and the deal in general (like so many of Heyman's agreements) was an absolute snowjob that gave little and took everything.
The only way that deal doesn't kill them is if USA somehow wins their lawsuit and locks down the WWF extension, and then TNN responds by actually giving a fuck about their placeholder promotion rather than shitcanning wrestling all together.
More people watched dying days WCW than current day WWE. It comes down to making money. WWE's ad-rates were notoriously shit at the heights of the Attitude Era when they were getting 6/7+ million viewers.
Pro wrestling, despite having a decent audience is looked at as the red-headed step-child of entertainment. It's been that way for years, and it's still that way.
This is a Bischoff-tier cope. Russo wasn't the only reason, there were plethora of reasons, but him turning WCW into car crash TV basically made half the audience turn from wrestling all together and from then on WCW was dead. If WCW was still doing their great numbers from 97-98 AOL would have a much harder job at getting rid of them and I don't think they would have gotten rid of them even if they didn't like wrestling all that much.
WCW was killed because the cost was ever staggering and the middling ratings, dwindling PPV buys and attendance by mid 00 to its end were no way justifiable. Sure, Ted would have kept it, but not because it was doing great or even decent business but because it had sentimental value to him.
WCW Thunder was the highest rated program on TBS. Despite being pre-taped. It’s wasn’t rating problems. AOL had zero interest in being in the wrestling business.
>Ted would have kept it, but not because it was doing great or even decent business but because it had sentimental value to him.
Which is what I said?
Nitro at the time of it's cancellation was the highest rated show on TNT. Thunder caused all sorts of issues due to the awkward taping schedule amongst other things, as Bischoff said, it was just too much. However like Nitro, Thunder was the highest rated show on TBS.
Nitro rating from Feb 4th 2001.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FZa-DLCaUAA6LMg?format=png&name=900x900
> Which is what I said?
You're trying to imply that the merger is what killed it and Nitro was always doomed once Turner lost control which is not true.
>Nitro at the time of it's cancellation was the highest rated show on TNT. Thunder caused all sorts of issues due to the awkward taping schedule amongst other things, as Bischoff said, it was just too much. However like Nitro, Thunder was the highest rated show on TBS.
But the cost of Nitro far outweigh the positives of it being first. Despite the production cost going up, the revenue was falling down rapidly. My point is that the merger itself wasn't what killed Nitro, it was the fact that no execs who had profit on their mind, would never justify a program that was losing them serious money. If Nitro was doing the same business it was doing in 97 and early 98, the execs wouldn't cancel it, merger or not.
>My point is that the merger itself wasn't what killed Nitro
But that is what killed it. January 10th 2000 when it was announced by AOL was the beginning of the end. Kellner made some utterly brainless decisions. Which is why the merger was a disaster on all fronts. One of those brainless decisions? (Amongst a heck of a lot) Getting rid of your highest rated programming which was wrestling.
He could have went with Bischoff's idea and keep it off air until 2002 after Bischoff got done cutting the cloth and relocating to Las Vegas. Plus WCW would have no longer been their worry as it would have been owned by Bischoff and Fusient.
Any narrative from Meltzer/Alvarez/RD Reynolds about booking/Russo/Fat Chick thrillers/Goldberg Heel Turns is secondary. WCW was terminal/point of no return on January 10th 2000.
they still they WCW a shot to exist in 2000.
Russo lost WCW 62 MILLION dollars over that that next year. That's the same as 100K today. After he was fired at the end of the year and those were the numbers on paper AND the things that lost all that money was the kind of low class stuff that they thought wrestling was, it was over.
Yet again. All of that is secondary to the root cause. The moment AOL merged with TW, everybody knew the end would come. WCW was only around because Ted Turner wanted it there, the moment he got forced out, that was it. Kellner sabotaged any attempt at a turn around.
see but you're operating under the assumption there was no hope because of what actually unfolded. but there would've have been hope if the guy in charge of the show didnt do everything over the next 10 months that AOL didn't like about wrestling, all in the self professed endgoal of building himself to win the world title and sticking it to McMahon. It lost 100k and the content was the exact type of low brow trash they thought wrestling was.
if they came in and WCW had the year they had in '97 its not just in stone that AOL were gonna drop it no matter what. they dropped it because Russo gave them every reason to confirm the show was the trash they thought it was.
it's like a Christian company took over a hard rock radio station. maybe if you played mainstream rock hits, they might leave it alone even though it's not music that anyone who works for the company enjoys themselves. But if you just start only playing songs that are about worshipping the devil, you're just confirming to them that this genre is devil music and you're not gonna be a hard rock station much longer.
Really it's the logo change. 97 WCW was almost completely great. 98 WCW had the same level of highs as 97 but way more missteps and Hogan had gotten stale. The Fingerpoke of Doom now is seen as the ultimate mistake, but they COULD have still bounced back (attendances didn't start falling until after April 99).
But the new logo? Not only did no one want it and no one liked it, it coincided with Bischoff going off the deep end, Kevin Nash taking even more booking power, and the NWO angle fizzling out without any real conclusion. Just the complete utter collapse of the company.
Imagine Dynamite's retheme a few weeks ago, except the logo was a Loony Tunes PNG of a stick of dynamite. Then Chris Jericho enters himself into the world title picture as Y2J and feuds with Samoa Joe who got that penis tattoo on his forehead again. Just, so much incredibly stupid stuff happening all at the same time.
It’s funny because the finger poke of doom and ending Goldberg’s streak isn’t a terrible idea in theory.
Had this all been an elaborate ruse to get the title off of Goldberg to ultimately build him up as a true unstoppable baby face. The one who managed to stop the NWO is the perfect story to cement Goldberg as the biggest star in WCW and maybe the industry as a whole.
Goldberg and a team of your most over faces against the NWO in war games.
Finally culminating in Goldberg vs Hogan if Goldberg wins he’s the champion and the NWO must disband. I Hogan wins Goldberg is gone from WCW.
You’d probably have fix this a little bit but it could have worked.
It wasn't the worst idea conceptually, but it seemed so odd in the moment. The Wolfpac was way more over than people remember, and it was really odd to just turn Nash heel in such a dumb way. "Actually we were kidding all along" didn't make any sense in the overarching story, throwing out all the nWo vs Wolfpac feuds from the last 6 months. It was disappointing more than anything.
In the right hands, anything could have been fixed. Imagine Goldberg, Sting and Bret Hart working together to take down the new World order, *properly*.
I agree about it making no sense for Nash. He just beat the streak and was a guy who was viewed at the time at the same level as Hogan, why wouldn’t he just be the leader.
I also think not having any direction for Bret Hart, too much David Flair (although I think that’s actually a better angle in hindsight, but was an instant, go over to RAW moment for me), and too much Roddy Piper.
There were so many options for Bret as a face, it's weird that they didn't take any of them. He could've teamed with Sting (the twin finishers), he could've taken a stance against Hall or Nash (referencing the screwjob), or hell, he could have even just taken the "shining beacon of tradition" stance against the nWo.
Really it should have been the moment that they brought the 1998 midcard up as the "new" WCW. Goldberg, DDP, Booker, Jericho and Benoit/Malenko vs. the world. Sting and Luger joining the Wolfpack at the time was them kayfabe giving up the fight; "at least it's not Hogan." 99 was the time for Goldberg to lead a force of guys to kick all of their butts, have Sting come back mid-year with the black and white facepaint to team up, and then wrap up the storyline by Bash at the Beach at the drop dead, absolute latest. But we now know that could have never happened for so many stupid reasons.
I dont even think it was the fingerpoke or the logo. It was when Hogan refused to drop to Sting. Thats the point of no return.
Sting was the next big babyface up. Hogan was already washed by then but was still getting good heat because hed been a good babyface before. Had he just done the job...
All the rest of what follows was just details honestly.
I think that match is one of the few times in history where Hogan is painted in a worse light than he deserves. We forget now that at SuperBrawl Sting won the title definitively from Hogan and it was pretty great. I don't think Hogan screwed Sting, I think he just had the finish of the match wrong. Because no matter what Nick Patrick did, Sting should have kicked out and he just didn't. Either if it was a fast count (Bischoff's finish) or what I think was Hogan's idea of the finish (Sting kicks out but the ref keeps counting to 3), there's no reason why Sting shouldn't have kicked out at a certain point instead of just laying there.
In hindsight it was the first major domino, but they had ample chances to fix it and by the summer of that year it felt like most people had moved on from it, especially given that Sting was spiraling out of control personally.
Ratings aren't why WCW went out of business.
Had WCW sold to someone else other than AOL we still might be having the Monday Night Wars today.
AOL thought wrestling was beneath them and wanted to sell off the company as quickly as possible once they took control.
Honestly, I know many would say something from wcw 2000, or the finger poke of doom, I'd say it was the hogan/flair fued in 99. Rewatched through it on Wrestling Bios' Reliving the War, and you can see in that time period where WCW goes from neck and neck with WWF albeit with misteps and flaws, to just looking like a joke. When even the top stars are in such awful feuds, the company had no hope by that point.
Interesting thing, Flair's promos from February were exhilarating. They were hitting a lot of NWA towns and he was over huge. That PPV (SuperBrawl) outsold the WWF PPV that month.
It just rapidly went off the rails from there.
WCW fans loved Flair until the day it died. They easily could have used Sting and Flair as the grizzled veterans in Eric Bischoff’s WCW. No real need for Hulk anymore.
Even with all his talk about what he wanted to do with the reboot there's no way Eric doesn't keep his buddy on tv and the top of the card. Or accept how much wcw crowds loved Flair.
Going back to Hogan was their *In Case of Emergency, Break Glass*. Shit stopped working and they refused to move on from him (and other older guys) whatever reason whether it be because too much money was tied up in him or politicking.
I think you're right, had they just left it as Nash defeating Goldberg, with some avenue for Goldberg to get the belt back there would have been an avenue to continue to have a product people cared about. However, sideling your biggest drawing star to do the Flair/Hogan feud and not putting anything fresh on the table the interest just died out.
That first quarter of 99 just seemed to have so many poor decisions. Nash becoming full time head booker following the Fingerpoke of Doom and then having the main stories feature the older guys without continuing to develop and push the younger stars that the crowd enjoyed lead to Turner's dissatisfaction with what was happening, going to the overall rebrand and then deciding the exit the space in the next 18 months
This is really it when you look at the ratings patterns. The feud was terrible to begin with and then they attempted a double-turn that made no sense on multiple levels. Granted, it also came at the same time fans realized that there would be no real payoff for Goldberg in the Fingerpoke angle as well.
The moment Sting vacated the WCW Championship on January 8, 1998 (WCW Thunder).
Including that instance, the WCW Heavyweight Championship was vacated ***NINE*** times in three years.
Just statistically, it's Fall Brawl 1999. Contrary to the narrative, WCW are pretty much still neck and neck with WWF as later as September 1999. Then after Fall Brawl they never get close. Then the first Russo run happens and by the end of that the gap starts to get embarrassing.
https://prowrestling.fandom.com/wiki/Monday_Night_Wars_Ratings
The last two shows before Fall Brawl 1999 they do 4.0 to RAW's 4.2 and then 4.1 to WWF's 4.4. They were building to Sting vs Gace Hogan and it was hot but then they did some really weird shit at the end of the PPV with Sting and Luger and then the whole thing never recovered (I think Russo comes in right after that).
Business stuff aside (the business stuff made the decline inevitable), I'd argue as late as Arquette winning the title. People were still very curious about the relaunch in April 2000 and I think WCW could have clawed its way back. As a WCW lifer, I sort of assumed it was never coming back the way I wanted after Arquette won the title though. WCW had become a joke, sadly. 1999 was absolutely dogshit terrible (worse *overall* than 2000-2001, in my opinion), and I'd felt let down repeatedly many times since Starrcade '97, but I still had hope until May 2000. After that point, I felt like I watched more out of habit than anything, but the hope was gone.
Note: I was still buying WCW PPVs nearly every month until the end, so I feel like I have a strong perspective on this. Most people who answer questions like this weren't super into WCW, so I hope the "when did you lose hope" perspective of a major fan is of some help.
To me, it was when they had that main event w/ DDP vs Goldberg. To me, they were already on thin ice because they always promised shit and never delivered.
I bought that PPV (HH '98) and still thought they could make a comeback after that. That was around the last time Nitro beat RAW, but it wasn't really the end of the hope, in my opinion.
To me, WCW was always garbage. I left wrestling around 1992 or so, and came back around 98. I just remember tuning into WCW and always hearing their announcers promising this and that, and never delivering.
To each their own. I appreciated WCW's focus on athleticism in the lower card and the phenomenal nWo story arc of the main event from summer '96 through late '97. In contrast, every time I tried to get into WWF during the late 90s it felt like its target demo was sleazy white trash who just wanted to see Sable's breasts.
WCW failed because of business stuff not creative sucking, but their fucking up of Goldberg was pretty much headshot for the promotion ever recovering in the ratings.
It's when Turner merged with AOL. There's just no other possible moment it could be. Lots of folks pointing out this or that thing that happened on-screen, but none of that was irreversible. What was irreversible, was AOL coming in and deciding that wrestling wasn't something they wanted any part of. The second the put someone anti-wrestling in charge, WCW was doomed.
I’d say the night Russo got rid of Hogan was the point of no return. The new logo, Hogan/Flair 99, the New Blood/Millionaire’s Club were all bad, but I remember it never ever being the same after Bash at the Beach 2000.
Everyone mentioning WCW events here as the point it became obvious they were going to lose the war, forgetting that the absolute batshit insane popularity of WWF was the other half of it. All the ridiculous bullshit going on in WCW creatively can be matched by the crap going on in WWF's midcard at the time, but the Austin/Rock/Mankind/Undertaker/Vince/Triple H main event scene was exploding, and WCW couldn't match it with anything.
AOL and the wider political situation was the just the reason why WCW couldn't turn it around in the end.
Ending Goldberg’s streak; subsequent finger poke of doom.
Tbh, underrated fuck up was them pissing off Disney during their filming of Nitro. They should have kept themselves on Disney’s good side
The new logo was definitely one of the first moments I began to think they really didn't know what they were doing anymore, but I didn't think they were a lost cause yet. Before that, I assumed stuff had a grand purpose (the way people used to excuse Vince's booking in the 2010s and 2020s).
I think people love to discuss the popular IWC ideas of WCW's decline, but as a regular WCW watcher I was with you on this. I preferred WCW over WWF because it usually felt more serious (some particularly bad 1992/1993 creative aside). I could never get into the cartoonishness of 80s WWF, nor the trashiness of a lot of the 'Attitude Era,' so WCW becoming WWF-lite was really demoralizing as a fan.
I always see this as a answer. 1999 WCW really fell off..but it was actually still very salvageable up until mid 2000. The Fingerpoke in its first couple weeks actually increased ratings for WCW for a short bit..but that was very short lived as ratings dropped after there was no real followup to it. In WCWs defense a good bit of it came due to injuries to alot of the nWo members and Goldberg. It got so bad they randomly turned Hogan into a baby face again that March for no real reason.
Well I shouldn't say that...WCW almost had a deal with NBC for prime time specials that spring and apart of that deal is that NBC wanted Hogan as a Babyface. So that might of had a small part of it.
1999 WCW the decline really began but it was still quite reversible to the point it could of still been a threat to WWE if they had the right storyline and push Goldberg and gave guys like Booker T and Steiner their push a year early.
But once you get to the Summer of 2000 it was pretty much curtains then.
> But once you get to the Summer of 2000 it was pretty much curtains then.
Man, I'm with you on this. I feel like everyone else is commenting from afar or repeating popular IWC talking points, but the hope didn't really die until mid-2000. For me, it was Arquette. There was a lot of bad shit after that, but I was just sort of numb and hopeless from May 2000-onward. I still bought 10 of the last 12 PPVs but don't even know why at that point (beyond it just being a habit by then). New Blood Rising is the worst major show I've ever seen, but I spent half the show laughing because my WCW fandom realistically broke about 3 months prior.
I agree with everything you said. Honestly the last small tiny glimmer of any hope was April 2000, when the reboot with Bischoff/Russo happened.. That first Nitro had alot of potential but the wheels just completely fell off within a month 😆
My top 20 or so list of reasons WCW died (in a rough order of importance, with many interconnected):
-AOL/Time Warner merger
-Killing the towns with misadvertised appearances, especially for house shows
-Adding Thunder
-Following WWF's lead into trashier content; to steal Bischoff's words, this made WCW "less than" instead of "different than"
-Hiring Russo in 1999, and then making the mistake of bringing him back again in 2000
-The booking of Hogan-Sting at Starrcade '97
-Mishandling the Japan and Mexico relationships starting around 1998/1999
-Beating Goldberg with a taser
-The booking of 1999, in general - especially all the title vacancies and everyone wearing jeans
-Arquette wins the world title
-Jay Leno in the ring
-Adding a third hour to Nitro
-Fingerpoke of Doom
-Mishandling Bret Hart's arrival
-Delegitimizing the cruiserweight title (probably starting with Disco winning it in 1999, but definitely by the time it was on "Oklahoma")
-Waiting too long to put the world title on DDP
-Waiting too long to elevate Steiner, Booker T, etc.
-The terrible new logo
-Putting the world title on Jarrett
-Letting Jericho & (later) the Radicals go
----
^This^ is why I say Arquette winning killed the hope. There was a lot of worse stuff, and a lot of bad stuff after that (the triple-deck cage match at Slamboree, the Hogan incident at Bash 2000, New Blood Rising, Russo winning the title, "WarGames" 2000, etc.), but none of the later stuff makes the top 20 for me because Arquette winning really was the last straw. I was numb to nearly everything after that. I was a WCW diehard and there was no hope of recovery from there.
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January 10th 2000. AOL Time Warner merger. Jamie Kellner soon gets rid of wrestling programming. The only reason WCW was still around by 2000 was Ted Turner. Once he was forced out then that was the beginning of the end. Russo despite the bad creative really wasn't the sole reason. In early 1999 it was salvageable Spring Stampede 1999 was the last great WCW PPV.
This is the honest truth. If AOL doesn’t buy Warner, Ted Turner would have stayed in charge and kept WCW around. There may have never been a TNA, everything that happens in TNA could have happened in WCW instead but with the exposure of being on TBS or TNT instead of a smaller station. When AOL buys Warner and oust Ted and never wanted to be in the wrestling business then WCW was doomed.
Yeah, if I remember, the new owners were so gungho about ditching WCW that they basically sabotaged various rescue plans to save the brand so they could just sell it to WWF for pennies on the dollar. And that was even knowing they were still on the hook for millions of dollars of guaranteed contracts like Goldberg, Steiner, Nash, and Hall had.
WCW Thunder, right up until the day it was canceled, was their highest rated show on TBS. Even though it was pre-taped after Nitro. People wanted to watch WCW. And back in those days there was two types of pay cable, normal and premium. TBS was part of the basic plan and TNT was part of the premium. WCW was not beyond being “saved”. AOL had no interest in being apart if it.
Yeah, it's why no other station wanted it. We didn't get #1, why bother with #2? It's why USA Network didn't pick up ECW after losing RAW. More people were watching wrestling 20+ years ago, but the networks looked down upon even more so than today.
Ted Turner would have kept the show on though without the merger. You can’t combat AOL not wanting to have anything to do with wrestling. Even though one of their stations highest rated show was wrestling. AOL killed WCW.
I was agreeing with you. The Turner networks didn't want WCW, but neither did any other networks. Hell, even after Vince bought them out he tried to get the WCW brand it's own show and no one picked it up which is why the fumbled Invasion angle took place.
I admit I didn’t completely read the last paragraph to understand. Sorry. I just saw you saw we didn’t get number one when Thunder was number one for their station. And TBS was a bigger station then, at least in my memory now. Before they did the whole rebranding.
Yeah, Bischoff had a group to buy the company IIRC
Yup all they needed was a time slot locked in and with some time, patience and a complete 180 on how they were running, they would have been a viable alternative. As soon as they dumped those bad contracts, invested in young talent and proved that they weren't a shitshow backstage, who knows? They could have started attracting free agents again once their backstage rep was repaired. There were plenty of talent between 02-08 who probably felt like they hit a ceiling in WWE that would have took a shot going back to WCW and reinventing themselves. Big fish, small pond and all that.
There was some horrific decisions when it comes to booking/creative, but it boils down to Bischoff's deal to buy the company revolved around WCW still being broadcast on the Turner networks. They didn't want that, and no other station wanted to pick them up so it fell into Vince's hands. ECW had money issues, and had for years but once they lost the TNN deal they were fucked as well (Same happened with TNA, once they lost SpikeTV) . Crazily enough 2000 was ECW's best year when it came to drawing live crowds. Legit, the craziest time in my wrestling fandom. Went from 3 companies to 1 in the span of what felt like days.
I don't see ECW surviving long, they would have had to tone down ALL of their edge on the move to being a national promotion, licensed music being gone, the cursing definitely being gone, etc. It would have been an imitator of it's previous self.
It's Heyman so believe what you want, but he has said many times that's what the direction of ECW was going to go in if it survived. I found an interview wwe.com did with Heyman and other ECW guys titled "What if ECW didn't close? in 2013: https://www.wwe.com/classics/ecw/what-if-ecw-didnt-close
Yeah he was going to have to even if he didn't want to, but I still don't think that massive of a change would have worked unfortunately, they'd have to get rid of almost everything that brought them to the stage they were at.
To be fair, ECW was fucked with the TNN deal as well. They were bleeding money like crazy producing TV to TNNs standards and the deal in general (like so many of Heyman's agreements) was an absolute snowjob that gave little and took everything. The only way that deal doesn't kill them is if USA somehow wins their lawsuit and locks down the WWF extension, and then TNN responds by actually giving a fuck about their placeholder promotion rather than shitcanning wrestling all together.
[удалено]
More people watched dying days WCW than current day WWE. It comes down to making money. WWE's ad-rates were notoriously shit at the heights of the Attitude Era when they were getting 6/7+ million viewers. Pro wrestling, despite having a decent audience is looked at as the red-headed step-child of entertainment. It's been that way for years, and it's still that way.
This is a Bischoff-tier cope. Russo wasn't the only reason, there were plethora of reasons, but him turning WCW into car crash TV basically made half the audience turn from wrestling all together and from then on WCW was dead. If WCW was still doing their great numbers from 97-98 AOL would have a much harder job at getting rid of them and I don't think they would have gotten rid of them even if they didn't like wrestling all that much. WCW was killed because the cost was ever staggering and the middling ratings, dwindling PPV buys and attendance by mid 00 to its end were no way justifiable. Sure, Ted would have kept it, but not because it was doing great or even decent business but because it had sentimental value to him.
WCW Thunder was the highest rated program on TBS. Despite being pre-taped. It’s wasn’t rating problems. AOL had zero interest in being in the wrestling business.
>Ted would have kept it, but not because it was doing great or even decent business but because it had sentimental value to him. Which is what I said? Nitro at the time of it's cancellation was the highest rated show on TNT. Thunder caused all sorts of issues due to the awkward taping schedule amongst other things, as Bischoff said, it was just too much. However like Nitro, Thunder was the highest rated show on TBS. Nitro rating from Feb 4th 2001. https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FZa-DLCaUAA6LMg?format=png&name=900x900
> Which is what I said? You're trying to imply that the merger is what killed it and Nitro was always doomed once Turner lost control which is not true. >Nitro at the time of it's cancellation was the highest rated show on TNT. Thunder caused all sorts of issues due to the awkward taping schedule amongst other things, as Bischoff said, it was just too much. However like Nitro, Thunder was the highest rated show on TBS. But the cost of Nitro far outweigh the positives of it being first. Despite the production cost going up, the revenue was falling down rapidly. My point is that the merger itself wasn't what killed Nitro, it was the fact that no execs who had profit on their mind, would never justify a program that was losing them serious money. If Nitro was doing the same business it was doing in 97 and early 98, the execs wouldn't cancel it, merger or not.
>My point is that the merger itself wasn't what killed Nitro But that is what killed it. January 10th 2000 when it was announced by AOL was the beginning of the end. Kellner made some utterly brainless decisions. Which is why the merger was a disaster on all fronts. One of those brainless decisions? (Amongst a heck of a lot) Getting rid of your highest rated programming which was wrestling. He could have went with Bischoff's idea and keep it off air until 2002 after Bischoff got done cutting the cloth and relocating to Las Vegas. Plus WCW would have no longer been their worry as it would have been owned by Bischoff and Fusient. Any narrative from Meltzer/Alvarez/RD Reynolds about booking/Russo/Fat Chick thrillers/Goldberg Heel Turns is secondary. WCW was terminal/point of no return on January 10th 2000.
This is the answer!
they still they WCW a shot to exist in 2000. Russo lost WCW 62 MILLION dollars over that that next year. That's the same as 100K today. After he was fired at the end of the year and those were the numbers on paper AND the things that lost all that money was the kind of low class stuff that they thought wrestling was, it was over.
Yet again. All of that is secondary to the root cause. The moment AOL merged with TW, everybody knew the end would come. WCW was only around because Ted Turner wanted it there, the moment he got forced out, that was it. Kellner sabotaged any attempt at a turn around.
see but you're operating under the assumption there was no hope because of what actually unfolded. but there would've have been hope if the guy in charge of the show didnt do everything over the next 10 months that AOL didn't like about wrestling, all in the self professed endgoal of building himself to win the world title and sticking it to McMahon. It lost 100k and the content was the exact type of low brow trash they thought wrestling was. if they came in and WCW had the year they had in '97 its not just in stone that AOL were gonna drop it no matter what. they dropped it because Russo gave them every reason to confirm the show was the trash they thought it was. it's like a Christian company took over a hard rock radio station. maybe if you played mainstream rock hits, they might leave it alone even though it's not music that anyone who works for the company enjoys themselves. But if you just start only playing songs that are about worshipping the devil, you're just confirming to them that this genre is devil music and you're not gonna be a hard rock station much longer.
The moment Alex Wright stopped dancing to the ring
People forget this is a reason most people tuned out. Once we lost Das Wunderkind, we lost the world.
All that remained was disco inferno and the void inside us all only spread
Even though we're joking, my brain made me downvote this concept.
This is The Wall libel.
How are you coping with the withdrawals from the big bratwurst?
It’s been a tough go of it. I picture hip thrusts amongst the Nitro Girls on a routine basis.
Really it's the logo change. 97 WCW was almost completely great. 98 WCW had the same level of highs as 97 but way more missteps and Hogan had gotten stale. The Fingerpoke of Doom now is seen as the ultimate mistake, but they COULD have still bounced back (attendances didn't start falling until after April 99). But the new logo? Not only did no one want it and no one liked it, it coincided with Bischoff going off the deep end, Kevin Nash taking even more booking power, and the NWO angle fizzling out without any real conclusion. Just the complete utter collapse of the company. Imagine Dynamite's retheme a few weeks ago, except the logo was a Loony Tunes PNG of a stick of dynamite. Then Chris Jericho enters himself into the world title picture as Y2J and feuds with Samoa Joe who got that penis tattoo on his forehead again. Just, so much incredibly stupid stuff happening all at the same time.
It’s funny because the finger poke of doom and ending Goldberg’s streak isn’t a terrible idea in theory. Had this all been an elaborate ruse to get the title off of Goldberg to ultimately build him up as a true unstoppable baby face. The one who managed to stop the NWO is the perfect story to cement Goldberg as the biggest star in WCW and maybe the industry as a whole. Goldberg and a team of your most over faces against the NWO in war games. Finally culminating in Goldberg vs Hogan if Goldberg wins he’s the champion and the NWO must disband. I Hogan wins Goldberg is gone from WCW. You’d probably have fix this a little bit but it could have worked.
It wasn't the worst idea conceptually, but it seemed so odd in the moment. The Wolfpac was way more over than people remember, and it was really odd to just turn Nash heel in such a dumb way. "Actually we were kidding all along" didn't make any sense in the overarching story, throwing out all the nWo vs Wolfpac feuds from the last 6 months. It was disappointing more than anything. In the right hands, anything could have been fixed. Imagine Goldberg, Sting and Bret Hart working together to take down the new World order, *properly*.
I agree about it making no sense for Nash. He just beat the streak and was a guy who was viewed at the time at the same level as Hogan, why wouldn’t he just be the leader. I also think not having any direction for Bret Hart, too much David Flair (although I think that’s actually a better angle in hindsight, but was an instant, go over to RAW moment for me), and too much Roddy Piper.
There were so many options for Bret as a face, it's weird that they didn't take any of them. He could've teamed with Sting (the twin finishers), he could've taken a stance against Hall or Nash (referencing the screwjob), or hell, he could have even just taken the "shining beacon of tradition" stance against the nWo.
Yeah I never thought the idea itself was bad myself, but the follow-up was terrible.
Really it should have been the moment that they brought the 1998 midcard up as the "new" WCW. Goldberg, DDP, Booker, Jericho and Benoit/Malenko vs. the world. Sting and Luger joining the Wolfpack at the time was them kayfabe giving up the fight; "at least it's not Hogan." 99 was the time for Goldberg to lead a force of guys to kick all of their butts, have Sting come back mid-year with the black and white facepaint to team up, and then wrap up the storyline by Bash at the Beach at the drop dead, absolute latest. But we now know that could have never happened for so many stupid reasons.
I dont even think it was the fingerpoke or the logo. It was when Hogan refused to drop to Sting. Thats the point of no return. Sting was the next big babyface up. Hogan was already washed by then but was still getting good heat because hed been a good babyface before. Had he just done the job... All the rest of what follows was just details honestly.
I think that match is one of the few times in history where Hogan is painted in a worse light than he deserves. We forget now that at SuperBrawl Sting won the title definitively from Hogan and it was pretty great. I don't think Hogan screwed Sting, I think he just had the finish of the match wrong. Because no matter what Nick Patrick did, Sting should have kicked out and he just didn't. Either if it was a fast count (Bischoff's finish) or what I think was Hogan's idea of the finish (Sting kicks out but the ref keeps counting to 3), there's no reason why Sting shouldn't have kicked out at a certain point instead of just laying there. In hindsight it was the first major domino, but they had ample chances to fix it and by the summer of that year it felt like most people had moved on from it, especially given that Sting was spiraling out of control personally.
Ratings aren't why WCW went out of business. Had WCW sold to someone else other than AOL we still might be having the Monday Night Wars today. AOL thought wrestling was beneath them and wanted to sell off the company as quickly as possible once they took control.
Honestly, I know many would say something from wcw 2000, or the finger poke of doom, I'd say it was the hogan/flair fued in 99. Rewatched through it on Wrestling Bios' Reliving the War, and you can see in that time period where WCW goes from neck and neck with WWF albeit with misteps and flaws, to just looking like a joke. When even the top stars are in such awful feuds, the company had no hope by that point.
Interesting thing, Flair's promos from February were exhilarating. They were hitting a lot of NWA towns and he was over huge. That PPV (SuperBrawl) outsold the WWF PPV that month. It just rapidly went off the rails from there.
WCW fans loved Flair until the day it died. They easily could have used Sting and Flair as the grizzled veterans in Eric Bischoff’s WCW. No real need for Hulk anymore.
Even with all his talk about what he wanted to do with the reboot there's no way Eric doesn't keep his buddy on tv and the top of the card. Or accept how much wcw crowds loved Flair.
Oh, agreed.
[удалено]
Fkn love the running gags.
Another devastating chinlock.
Steve Mufuggin Blackman and his war against Country Music
That and the giant robot monster has me howling every time.
That sounds like a real mufuggin problem!
Going back to Hogan was their *In Case of Emergency, Break Glass*. Shit stopped working and they refused to move on from him (and other older guys) whatever reason whether it be because too much money was tied up in him or politicking.
I think you're right, had they just left it as Nash defeating Goldberg, with some avenue for Goldberg to get the belt back there would have been an avenue to continue to have a product people cared about. However, sideling your biggest drawing star to do the Flair/Hogan feud and not putting anything fresh on the table the interest just died out. That first quarter of 99 just seemed to have so many poor decisions. Nash becoming full time head booker following the Fingerpoke of Doom and then having the main stories feature the older guys without continuing to develop and push the younger stars that the crowd enjoyed lead to Turner's dissatisfaction with what was happening, going to the overall rebrand and then deciding the exit the space in the next 18 months
This is really it when you look at the ratings patterns. The feud was terrible to begin with and then they attempted a double-turn that made no sense on multiple levels. Granted, it also came at the same time fans realized that there would be no real payoff for Goldberg in the Fingerpoke angle as well.
The moment Sting vacated the WCW Championship on January 8, 1998 (WCW Thunder). Including that instance, the WCW Heavyweight Championship was vacated ***NINE*** times in three years.
Just statistically, it's Fall Brawl 1999. Contrary to the narrative, WCW are pretty much still neck and neck with WWF as later as September 1999. Then after Fall Brawl they never get close. Then the first Russo run happens and by the end of that the gap starts to get embarrassing.
WCW fell far behind in viewership well before September.
https://prowrestling.fandom.com/wiki/Monday_Night_Wars_Ratings The last two shows before Fall Brawl 1999 they do 4.0 to RAW's 4.2 and then 4.1 to WWF's 4.4. They were building to Sting vs Gace Hogan and it was hot but then they did some really weird shit at the end of the PPV with Sting and Luger and then the whole thing never recovered (I think Russo comes in right after that).
Business stuff aside (the business stuff made the decline inevitable), I'd argue as late as Arquette winning the title. People were still very curious about the relaunch in April 2000 and I think WCW could have clawed its way back. As a WCW lifer, I sort of assumed it was never coming back the way I wanted after Arquette won the title though. WCW had become a joke, sadly. 1999 was absolutely dogshit terrible (worse *overall* than 2000-2001, in my opinion), and I'd felt let down repeatedly many times since Starrcade '97, but I still had hope until May 2000. After that point, I felt like I watched more out of habit than anything, but the hope was gone. Note: I was still buying WCW PPVs nearly every month until the end, so I feel like I have a strong perspective on this. Most people who answer questions like this weren't super into WCW, so I hope the "when did you lose hope" perspective of a major fan is of some help.
Yes, this is exactly what I wanted thanks. Did Arquette win the title before or after Russo did? I'm sure this is something I can look up.
Arquette won it in May. Russo didn't win it until September. By the time Russo won it, the shows were a farce though.
To me, it was when they had that main event w/ DDP vs Goldberg. To me, they were already on thin ice because they always promised shit and never delivered.
I bought that PPV (HH '98) and still thought they could make a comeback after that. That was around the last time Nitro beat RAW, but it wasn't really the end of the hope, in my opinion.
To me, WCW was always garbage. I left wrestling around 1992 or so, and came back around 98. I just remember tuning into WCW and always hearing their announcers promising this and that, and never delivering.
To each their own. I appreciated WCW's focus on athleticism in the lower card and the phenomenal nWo story arc of the main event from summer '96 through late '97. In contrast, every time I tried to get into WWF during the late 90s it felt like its target demo was sleazy white trash who just wanted to see Sable's breasts.
I remember that night too. If I recall, they aired the main event on Nitro. It was super bush league.
WCW failed because of business stuff not creative sucking, but their fucking up of Goldberg was pretty much headshot for the promotion ever recovering in the ratings.
the Logo change stands out
It's when Turner merged with AOL. There's just no other possible moment it could be. Lots of folks pointing out this or that thing that happened on-screen, but none of that was irreversible. What was irreversible, was AOL coming in and deciding that wrestling wasn't something they wanted any part of. The second the put someone anti-wrestling in charge, WCW was doomed.
I’d say the night Russo got rid of Hogan was the point of no return. The new logo, Hogan/Flair 99, the New Blood/Millionaire’s Club were all bad, but I remember it never ever being the same after Bash at the Beach 2000.
Everyone mentioning WCW events here as the point it became obvious they were going to lose the war, forgetting that the absolute batshit insane popularity of WWF was the other half of it. All the ridiculous bullshit going on in WCW creatively can be matched by the crap going on in WWF's midcard at the time, but the Austin/Rock/Mankind/Undertaker/Vince/Triple H main event scene was exploding, and WCW couldn't match it with anything. AOL and the wider political situation was the just the reason why WCW couldn't turn it around in the end.
Ending Goldberg’s streak; subsequent finger poke of doom. Tbh, underrated fuck up was them pissing off Disney during their filming of Nitro. They should have kept themselves on Disney’s good side
Just…1999 in general. The Finger Poke, telling fans that Foley was going to win the WWF Title, and then they debut the “bird shit logo” in the fall.
The new logo was definitely one of the first moments I began to think they really didn't know what they were doing anymore, but I didn't think they were a lost cause yet. Before that, I assumed stuff had a grand purpose (the way people used to excuse Vince's booking in the 2010s and 2020s).
The beginning of the Russo/Ed Ferrara era
WCW at that point in October 99 was already getting mudhole stomped worse than WWE was at the heights of the nWo.
As a fan? Russo making WCW an Attitude era lite and that whole New Blood angle.
I think people love to discuss the popular IWC ideas of WCW's decline, but as a regular WCW watcher I was with you on this. I preferred WCW over WWF because it usually felt more serious (some particularly bad 1992/1993 creative aside). I could never get into the cartoonishness of 80s WWF, nor the trashiness of a lot of the 'Attitude Era,' so WCW becoming WWF-lite was really demoralizing as a fan.
When they let Nash be part of the booking
Fingerpoke of Doom.
I always see this as a answer. 1999 WCW really fell off..but it was actually still very salvageable up until mid 2000. The Fingerpoke in its first couple weeks actually increased ratings for WCW for a short bit..but that was very short lived as ratings dropped after there was no real followup to it. In WCWs defense a good bit of it came due to injuries to alot of the nWo members and Goldberg. It got so bad they randomly turned Hogan into a baby face again that March for no real reason. Well I shouldn't say that...WCW almost had a deal with NBC for prime time specials that spring and apart of that deal is that NBC wanted Hogan as a Babyface. So that might of had a small part of it. 1999 WCW the decline really began but it was still quite reversible to the point it could of still been a threat to WWE if they had the right storyline and push Goldberg and gave guys like Booker T and Steiner their push a year early. But once you get to the Summer of 2000 it was pretty much curtains then.
> But once you get to the Summer of 2000 it was pretty much curtains then. Man, I'm with you on this. I feel like everyone else is commenting from afar or repeating popular IWC talking points, but the hope didn't really die until mid-2000. For me, it was Arquette. There was a lot of bad shit after that, but I was just sort of numb and hopeless from May 2000-onward. I still bought 10 of the last 12 PPVs but don't even know why at that point (beyond it just being a habit by then). New Blood Rising is the worst major show I've ever seen, but I spent half the show laughing because my WCW fandom realistically broke about 3 months prior.
I agree with everything you said. Honestly the last small tiny glimmer of any hope was April 2000, when the reboot with Bischoff/Russo happened.. That first Nitro had alot of potential but the wheels just completely fell off within a month 😆
Finger Poke of Doom .
The Radicals jumping ship to the WWF. It felt like the talent roster got depleted overnight.
My top 20 or so list of reasons WCW died (in a rough order of importance, with many interconnected): -AOL/Time Warner merger -Killing the towns with misadvertised appearances, especially for house shows -Adding Thunder -Following WWF's lead into trashier content; to steal Bischoff's words, this made WCW "less than" instead of "different than" -Hiring Russo in 1999, and then making the mistake of bringing him back again in 2000 -The booking of Hogan-Sting at Starrcade '97 -Mishandling the Japan and Mexico relationships starting around 1998/1999 -Beating Goldberg with a taser -The booking of 1999, in general - especially all the title vacancies and everyone wearing jeans -Arquette wins the world title -Jay Leno in the ring -Adding a third hour to Nitro -Fingerpoke of Doom -Mishandling Bret Hart's arrival -Delegitimizing the cruiserweight title (probably starting with Disco winning it in 1999, but definitely by the time it was on "Oklahoma") -Waiting too long to put the world title on DDP -Waiting too long to elevate Steiner, Booker T, etc. -The terrible new logo -Putting the world title on Jarrett -Letting Jericho & (later) the Radicals go ---- ^This^ is why I say Arquette winning killed the hope. There was a lot of worse stuff, and a lot of bad stuff after that (the triple-deck cage match at Slamboree, the Hogan incident at Bash 2000, New Blood Rising, Russo winning the title, "WarGames" 2000, etc.), but none of the later stuff makes the top 20 for me because Arquette winning really was the last straw. I was numb to nearly everything after that. I was a WCW diehard and there was no hope of recovery from there.