Who Killed WCW? A four part series on Vice

[King Kamala]

Capitalizing Every Word You Write Is Not Impeccable Grammar!

 

[Valeyard]

I like how the Iron Sheik's people semi-tweet from beyond the grave.

 

[cobainwasmurdered]

As far as the documentary itself, I really don't care about re-litigating WCW's demise yet again, even if it was going to have all the people needed to do it properly. It's been done to death and back. There's not going to be anything new or interesting said.

 

[JN News]

I think WCW was doomed from the very beginning. I know that Eric Bischoff did a good job of making WCW actual competition for Vince McMahon and the WWF with his take-no-prisoners attitude during the Monday Night War. But it couldn't last forever. The demise of WCW was still imminent, mainly because of all the backstage bullshit that ultimately still went on to ruin the product. It was still bound to happen.

 

[HarleyQuinn]

For all the knocks on Vince and the WWF, he also was at least astute enough to not pigeonhole his product at the expense of the talent/fans. With WCW you just inherently knew that guys like Chris Benoit, Booker T, Raven, or Rey Mysterio Jr were never really going to get legitimate shots at the top of the card.

Vince had his core group for years: Bret, HBK, Undertaker for most of the 90s but he also pushed Austin, The Rock, Mankind, Triple H, Jericho by the early 2000s, etc. into the main event scene. Some of that was due to names leaving the company so others took top spots by necessity but a lot of that talent were also risks: Benoit, Eddie, Kurt Angle, Rey Mysterio Jr, Edge, Randy Orton by the mid & late 2000s.

WCW really dug their own grave by botching Bret Hart so hard (that was such easy $$ just wasted) and I don't know that WCW (at least if Bischoff had stayed in power) wouldn't have screwed themselves by 2005 anyway by still trying to lean on the Flairs/Hogans/Stings/DDPS/Nashs/Lugers in the main event scene while the mid-level talent either jumped to WWF/E or went to the Indies/Mexico/Japan.

 

[Valeyard]

Without Flair or Sting, it's half-assed to do this project again.

Ted Turner is the only person we haven't heard from anyway and sadly we never will.

 

[BruiserBrody]

Yes, it is easy to say in hindsight, but the old guys on top was working like gangbusters...until they weren't.

The booking hurt more than the lack of mid card elevation. The combo of Goldberg finally losing and the Finger poke had to gut a lot of fans. They held on fine as the boom raged on until the summer of suck. Jericho and Eddy would have been the two guys who actually would/should have been elevated in 99. Eddy was full of demons though. Jericho was a legit whiff, although he was short and I can almost understand the reluctance to put him in with the old guys who would mostly tower over him and be a styles clash. (Kamala posts Hogan/Jericho from SD! to shut me up)
Benoit couldn't promo, so a little world title run would have been fine, but Flair was still ambulatory and a better promo and draw than his wrestling machine stablemate. Ditto Malenko. Rey was elevated in 99, but he was taken down with knee injuries and the size issue is still there.
In late 98 WCW hadn't even gotten around to properly elevating Scott Steiner, much less the vanilla midgets.

 

[Lazgistics Supervisor]

Reading @BruiserBrody's post made me think about an alternate timeline where Kellner doesn't cancel Nitro and the big names don't come back for the Fusient Big Bang show, and we somehow get Steiner/Mysterio by the end of 2001.

 

[Valeyard]

Booker/RVD, Steiner/Rey, DDP/Corino, and Styles/Kash/Jason Jett at Starrcade is what's up.

 

[BruiserBrody]

Groovy Greg is on the case.

Show opens with Gagne talking about Ring Rats! His show host is STILL mispronouncing Gagne's name. GAG-nee. WTF!