Beating some of the guys? That was the problem, no one wanted to put Bret over. Nash, Hall, Hogan, all wanted to protect their spots and couldnt work like Bret so they definitely didnt want to be wrestling him let alone put him over.
You can put Nash and Hogan on that list, but Hall has never had an issue putting anyone over and if you actually watch how many people he did put over during WCW you probably would omit him from that statement.
You bring up a good point on the younger talent. I always thought the beginning of the end for WCW, was when they kicked the Giant out of the nWo the first time. They should have put the belt on him, he was not even at his peak yet, and he had done so much already. He was a good fit for the nWo, and they were so over. If anything push them as anti-heroes, and then if necessary change the brand name. Even though the ratings had Nitro as the better show, I had stopped watching after that. I knew that decision would come back to haunt them.
What I hate about WCW's demise is people/ wrestlers say someone should have controlled the talent. Or told Hogan to piss off and run the show a traditional way, with less budget. But when they tried that with Bill Watts (who was an authoritarian, slashed the budget, told the talent to go F themselves, i'm doing it the traditional way), AND everyone (including Eric Bischoff) went out of their way to remove him from the company. So yeah, that's all wishful thinking, still to this day.
I think it’s really about Bischoff as the guy running the show. He’s signing the contracts. He’s giving the creative freedom. He was looking at how to bear WWE. But he wasn’t looking how to stay there. Why? Probably didn’t think they were ever going to be number 1. It’s a great lesson. You can’t have just one plan. How do you stay there?
@@FightGameMedia Bischoff was crippled in a lot of ways. He didn't have merchandise like WWE so he had to offer bigger downsides to balance out contracts and he had bosses to answer to. He also took on talent like Hogan when he needed Hogan far more than Hogan needed him so he gave him what he wanted. Bischoff also stated he had to use Turner for a lot of things where he could have gotten things cheaper elsewhere and they raked them over the coals. Bischoff was definitely at fault though for not developing new talent and not knowing when to move past the nWo. The show was almost identical week to week for over a year during the war.
@@geneanthony3421 - I think some of that is fair. Some of it isn't. Bischoff likes to be the victim here and the reality is, he lost people a lot of money. I wish he'd own that. He was in a war and did what he had to do to take the lead, but didn't understand what to do to extend the lead. And I'm not saying he should've. The shit is hard. But he had no plan to sustain the business.
@@FightGameMedia I was never a big Bischoff supporter but after listening to his podcast for awhile now I understand his thought process a lot more than I did previously and I believe he was right to make some of the decisions he did. I still think Bischoff made a lot of mistakes but he has changed me on some things he did. On the other hand Russo has never convinced me of anything while listening to him. I agree Bischoff had no idea how to keep the lead. He's not a creative guy in my eyes though. His strength was knowing how to communicate with the office and had a vision for WCW. In my eyes, he probably should have focused on building up the foundation of WCW during its peak. I'm not talking about talent either. WCW had some real poor divisions compared to WWE (like merchandising) and building that up might have sustained the company long term better.
33:32 - 36:46 is the most interesting segment of the interview. In wrestling, often the very peak of business actually comes *after* the creative peak. This is because there's usually a runoff of people still hearing about the hot show and coming on and it takes a while for you to drive them off (if you drive them off)). At the time when Bischoff turned to the nWo, I thought it made sense storywise. It explained how they were getting away with so much and the fans wanted to hate Bischoff anyway. But there's no denying a certain "edge" of the show was taken out once he did that. The feeling of the faction being genuine outsiders began to dissipate. Then, as eludicated here, the company spent more time trying to emulate the merchandising aspect of the nWo (different colour-shirted factions, an lWo, etc.) rather than the edgier parts of what made the angle work. They became terrified of moving away from "xWo" and Bischoff wasn't devoting enough energy to producing the show because of his onscreen work.
He sounds like David cross big time lol. As for wacky stuff that goes nowhere, the anonymous raw gm was a long running story that went nowhere and it was change the channel type crap, along with heel Michael Cole.
Obviously not, have you seen the guys HHH and Tony Khan try to push, besides reigns and lesnar who got over on Vince’s booking there isn’t a single wrestler in wwe or aew who is remotely talked about outside the wrestling bubble
I dont understand why you ppl follow this third source book when guy evans book was better and had actual facts from actual ppl that worked in the business of wcw. Bischoff debunked all of Bryans book and plus Bryan is a wimp he didnt want to argue about the book with Eric and have a debate like a man because he backed out which tells you alot right there on him and even meltzer these guys talk so much BS they cant even defend it when faced by the horses mouth.
@@FightGameMedia ATM Eric lol so you are easily following that BS narrative he wasnt the guy making the checks that was Turner. Based on your comment alone you would take a word from a person who gets quoted from third party ppl instead of oh idk getting the actual fact from the person who was the President of the company ?
@@ec5018 - I trust reporting. I don’t trust a guy trying to change the narrative. Eric is an entertaining guy, but if I was part of killing WCW, I’d probably lie too.
So much of what Brian talks about Bret Hart around 20 minutes into this video 'is all bulshit. All those times Bret Hart got pulled off TV , he was supposedly injured. They basically let him do whatever he wanted to do while he was there. Bret talks now like he wanted to do the 1997 canada storyline in WCW.
Having checked out on watching wrestling by necessity for a few months, it's nice to hear AEW continues to be making good calls (I wrote this early in the video, around the 15 minute mark).
For all of you “the established stars wouldn’t put the young guys over” Meltzer Marks, please show me the old guard that’s keeping AEW youngsters from getting over and getting those spectacular ratings? Show me the old stars not putting over the young guys in WWE that’s keeping them from the great ratings? The simple easy truth is that the company that owned WCW DIDN’T WANT TO OWN WCW. They didn’t want WCW on their TV. They sold it for a couple of million when the Tape library they owned was worth far more than that. They turned down at least 60 million or what Fusient was gonna pay to get 4!million or whatever that WWE paid just because they didn’t want wrestling on their network. I know it’s easier to blame Hogan and Bischoff because Meltzer said so but think about it with at least 2 brain cells and you’ll see that it was AOL TIme Warner that killed WCW.
I think that's too easy of a statement to make, which has always been the issue with placing blame. AOL Time Warner didn't cause the popularity of that show to drop. AOL Time Warner didn't book them into the ground. A lot of blame to go around, but it's not as simple as just putting it on one person or thing. Not sure exactly what AEW has to do with this argument, except Jon Moxley was doing nothing in WWE and he'd be one of their top 3 stars there right now had they kept him.
Tony Kahn has made plenty of mistakes, it's just that he's the only real alternative to a soulless program and people were desperate for alternatives. Cornette logically destroys AEW's booking on a routine basis just from a quality control standpoint.
I think there are a lot of things Cornette says that fundamentally make sense. But Cornette's style of wrestling doesn't work at a mainstream level, unfortunately. I wish it did. It's my favorite style. He's had his shot. And now he's a critic, which is a good business for him. Love Corny.
@@FightGameMedia I'm not even really talking about Corny's booking style as much as how good he is at seeing the holes in a lot of things. I don't think I heard any criticism of AEW that's he's made that I can disagree with, in almost all scenarios it would be a better way to book things. I'd also say he was a huge fan of MJF until he did the musical and MJF is the hottest young star out there because he's so good. My only issue with Cornette is he wants wrestling to be more real and I can appreciate it, but if you want real now you might as well watch UFC. Wrestling skits can work well if done right.
Jim cornette talks about AEW for views he didn’t watch wrestling for years but then he found out hey I can talk shit about AEW get the AEW fans all riled up and then have the AEW haters jizz in their pants cause he calls out everything they do...
@@Jrh-rp7np - It's not a bad business plan for Corny though right? He literally just has to talk to his fanbase and they buy his stuff. Not that I agree with everything he says, but it's his living.
@@FightGameMedia Very good business plan jim is no fool he kinda became the go to guy for oh man what do u think cornette is gonna say about this or cornette is gonna flip his lid... he’s basically kept himself over and the guy everyone thinks about when something wacky happens...Like” le dinner Debonair “which I loved
