Jim Cornette on If Paul Heyman Booked WCW In 1999 Instead Of Vince Russo 

WCW would have died anyway. Hogan would say.. "put RVD over? that doesnt work for me brother." And all is in vain.

Not even Paul Heyman could have save WCW; the executives didn't want wrestling on their Network but A invasion angle (written by Paul Heyman) would have been interesting to see.

it's always great to hear Jim talk about Paul E. You can tell he loves Paul. He worked with him, he respects his mind for the business more or less, he LOVES his promos. Jim just didn't care much for ECW or what it was, but even back then he was willing to work with Paul and do an appearance because he likes Paul. Even to this day, his has more positive to say about Paul E than negative. It's just nice to hear. I'd love for them to do a sit down talk like that Table for 3 thing he did with Bischoff a few years ago.

After the AOL-Time Warner merger, they were looking for a way to end WCW. This was in 1998, when they were generating more revenue and higher ratings than they ever had, and it literally pissed the execs off that they were successful, because they couldn't justify pulling the plug. They HATED being involved with wrestling, and Ted had lost control of his own company without even realizing it. WCW was Ted's pet project & he loved it. Once Ted lost power, it was only a matter of time no matter how successful the company was.

McMahon's WWE missed a huge opportunity with the Invasion because he couldn't stand to book the WCW guys with any kind of respectability. At that point, Vince was still so emotionally wrapped up in the Monday Night Wars that he had to smash them publicly in every way. He would have had 3-5 years of programming practically written for him, with established stars at his disposal.

Having Raven get his win back against Tommy would have been so cool to see on WCW if this happened. The What Ifs in wrestling never ceases to amaze me.

I don't think the Justice League could have saved WCW at this point.

Either way, i really miss WCW

The biggest problem was the over spending on contracts and all the money disappearing. A TB Employee audited WCWs books and discovered they had contracts being paid out ot wrestlers who never stepped foot in the ring or showed up on TV. These contacts weren't high but paying a guy 100k+ to sit at home let alone a few dozen of them made no sense. They also had guys who were travelling on the companies dime but not to WCW Shows. The books were a mess and the auditor reportedly told his boss he wanted to be nowhere near WCW as he felt it was a matter of time before someone ended up in jail. Outside of financials Hogan had creative power over how he was used and most of the vets had been driven into the ground. To many guys like Hall and Nash were routinely burying opponents making midcarders look to weak. Turning it around without those guys willing to make others look good or a guarantee for stronger booking would of been near impossible.

I love these hypothetical/what if scenarios but i also hate them because sometimes it makes you yearn for something that never came to fruition.

Paul wouldn't have survived the Turner executives who just didn't want wrestling on their channels anymore, the most you could hope for if he had been in charge of WCW in '99 is that he'd just book better TV for the company's remaining time than Russo did. But who knows, perhaps it would have helped facilitate Bischoff's attempted buyout if the product still looked remotely competitive by mid-2001.

I kind of wish Vince McMahon kept WCW Nitro and did a proper invasion angle that lasted a couple of years.

I feel like Jesus could've taken the book and Hogan, Nash, Goldberg, Steiner would all still be problems.

The only way to save it was if the AOL/Time Warner merger didnt happen. Thats literally what killed it.

I would've been down for that WCW Nitro/ECW Thunder scenario.

My take: WWF was too hot, and WCW was losing too much money for Heyman to save the company. WCW in 99-00 would be much more fondly remembered, but the higher ups at Turner would have still cancelled it due to it bleeding money.

The Death of WCW and Nitro are the most definitive books on rise and fall of WCW. Both books are must haves for wrestling fans in my humble opinion. If Heyman was producing WCW, he would’ve phased out a lot of the older stars and revolve the shows around the younger talent.

Heyman would have refused to be WCW head booker. In a 1999 interview, Heyman said that even if WCW had had 15 consecutive great Nitros, they would still trail WWF because the WCW product had become so toxic BEFORE Russo joined the company.

WCW would be doomed anyway due to AOL Time Warner doing budget cuts

WCW still would’ve died but no one would’ve been paid.

Paul did an interview talking about booking Smackdown with Rey, Edge, Eddie & Chavo, Angle & Benoit, how he had 3 tag teams playing off each other AND individually. It was really interesting.

I agree with Last that cutting costs at WCW before the merger would have been helpful. But even with that WCW's future would have been uncertain after the merger, simply because the merged company not only wanted nothing to do with wresting, they wanted nothing to do with sports period. They unloaded the Atlanta Braves and Atlanta Hawks as fast as they could after the merger as well. It could have been interesting to see who would have lined up to buy WCW in alright financial shape though.

That was a pretty damn good question. Surprised nobody thought of it sooner.

The big problem with all of this hypothetical is how would Paul be able to book 10 hours of Television every single week? Kevin Nash is on record that Nitro going to three hours and the addition of Thunder to the mix made booking ten times more difficult because you had to book weeks in advance and if one slight thing goes wrong, the whole ten hours of TV goes to hell. Paul would get creative burn out from an environment like that. That's not even getting into the meddling from corporate management coming in and demanding that the product needed to go back to PG when WWF was going hard into TV-14 due to all of sex and violence Vince was pumping out with the attitude era. On top of that, according to the book Nitro, many executives from Turner at the time have since said that money assets were getting shuffled around post Time Warner merger to make all their properties look profitable. The place they stole money from the most to bolster the others was WCW.

The obvious solution to save WCW at that point was to end the Monday night war by changing times slots. WCW starts after WWF finishes or ends when WWF Starts. I don't see why it had to be a fight to the death.

Eric was also under the impression that the budget deal he got approved the year prior to the merger was still in effect only to find out the budget got cut in half along with after Turner got removed from power it was basically over for WCW because only Ted wanted wrestling on Turner Broadcasting but also when Eric came back he wasn't in a corporate role let alone in charge of creative

If Paul Heyman started booking WCW in 1999 Nitro and Thunder would’ve been a 1,000 times better. The product would’ve been in direct competition with the Attitude Era. But, with so much damage done financially and the merger of Time Warner,Inc. and Turner Broadcasting Heyman as Creative Director could’ve probably been too little too late unfortunately.

By 1999, it was clear that WCW had hit the iceberg (long before Russo came in and made it worse) so Heyman being the head writer wouldn’t save the company.

DOUBLE J JEFF JARRET REF BUMP GUITAR SHOT STROKE

The smartest thing Piper ever did was not lay down for hogan

People don't realize that, in a large sense, WCW and WWF audiences were totally different. That's why WCW's audience went away after 2001. They wouldn't have cared about Taz or Mike Awesome or the Blue Meanie. Plus, the death of WCW was really because the executives didn't want it around.

I think Paul would've definitely made the TV more interesting in the short run. He would've done well with the WCW midcard and elevate some guys while keeping the top stars relevant. Even if WCW was still going under in 2001, I think Paul would've made 2000 better than what it was and the company may have had a higher value that Vince may not have been able to purchase.

He'd still have been stuck with Hogan. You can say he was still a big draw but his refusal to ever put anyone over was already screwing everything up. A heel that _never_ loses makes good booking impossible.

He would’ve asked for 30% ownership of the WCW brand like he did to Dixie

I don’t watch wrestling anymore, not for about a decade but I’ll listen to this

I don't think in 1999 anyone would've thought of a roster split or having 2 brands. That was a Vince idea. I'd imagine they'd just shut down ECW and let go of the under card guys and keep the upper card guys.

Not even Paul heyman could've saved WCW lol

Time/Warner AOL couldn't wait to get wrestling off their networks.Between that and some of the talent had creative control which would doom WCW no matter who ran it.

I can see Raven beating up all members of the flock except Saturn. Raven fires all the other members and says there is a new darkness in the horizon and each week brings out a new member which ends up being the ECW roster but pushed very strong like how the NWO started.

According to Bryan Alvarez, there were more than 300 people on contract for WCW in 1998 and 1999... you just didn't see them all on TV.

As fun as it is to think about Paul booking WCW, that doesn't stop the AOL/Time Warner merger

You guys have great artists on your roster! What a great picture here! Keep up the good work!

It is kind of weird how Russo tends to get all the blame for the collapse of WCW when in reality Bischoff had already spent the company into a point of no return. Did Russo's booking suck? Yes. Would anyone else have been able to come in and book a wrestling program with ratings high enough to justify the budget that Bischoff had created? Doubtful. I get that Russo wasn't helping to right the ship, but he also wasn't the one who put it on a crash course with an iceberg either. I think Jim is 100% correct. Without some higher level exec stepping in, and getting the budget under control no amount of booking would have saved the company.

Can you imagine Paul with a billion dollar check book? If he made a presentable show with just his dad’s check book he would’ve done wonders with Ted Turner’s money.

Honestly that would be good to have ECW as a developmental promotion like NXT also PH could have transformed the power plant Into a real pro wrestling school or dojo.

People still think that WCW went out of business because of quality. AOL/TimeWarner didn't want wrestling despite WCW was the highest-rated programming on TNT and TBS.

The main issue always at TBS was, the suits there didn't want Wraslin' on the network to begin with. Turner kept it going while he was in charge but once he lost his power, and the abuse of all the money by WCW top guys didn't help to make things better either, time for Wraslin' on TNT was over.

The artwork for this is absolutely hilarious great question too

Alot of WCW fans didn't watch ecw because a lot of us didn't have access to it. So idk. Would have been cool to see as a what if.

I don’t think an invasion really works considering most of the mid 90s was spent on the nWo invasion angle.

I love stories like these!

Heyman hated WCW management, they hated Heyman! There's no way 😂

Mate, that's not why he was called ATM Eric...

The joke inside the WCW office for years: jobs were safe as long as Ted Turner was around to cut the checks. In the end....it was always a correct assessment of the company.

With Paul's ability to make people most of the main eventers would have hated him more than they did Russo

I really hope Jim gets a chance to have a public conversation with Paul Heyman before he retires from podcasting. That would be so damn fascinating to hear.

I would have loved to seen Mike Awesome be his ECW version in WCW.

Would have been wild. Heyman was on the first wrestling ppv I ever got (Havoc 91)

I remember they did the "Millionaire's Club" angle in WCW towards the end where you had Hulk Hogan and Ric Flair and Macho Man Randy Savage and some other old hand legends of the wrestling business going up against the young lions of the wrestling business to see who would rule WCW. That angle stunk because, for the most part, the young lions were guys that nobody gave a shit about and the "Millionaire's Club" was full of guys people more or less thought of as has beens of that era. But I could see where an ECW invasion where the ECW guys were comming in (led by Paul Haymen) to essentially run guys like Flair and Hogan and Savage and Lex Luger and Sting out of wrestling for good and those guys defending their territory against ECW could have been interesting. And then you take the guys like Booker T and DDP and Goldberg and Kevin Nash and Scott Steiner who would have been free agents who's loyalties could have gone either way or they just stayed free agents. I don't know if that would have saved WCW but it would have been way more interesting than anything WCW was actually doing at the time. WCW just got SO BAD in that last 6 months to year. It just became more and more unwatchable as time went on.

WCW didn't fail horribly overall. 2000 WCW I think had more money and better ratings than AEW now, and maybe WWE now. Time Warner wanted it gone period.

Artwork reminded me Paul Heyman used to wear caps.

This is like fantasy booking inception

Imagine Taz comes to WCW and goes on a squash winning streak ala Goldberg. A showdown between the two would've drawn huge. The Dudley's vs the Outsiders would have been amazing. Then add in RVD to the midcard with guys like Benoit, Eddie, etc.

Rvd vs Buff bagwell

Kevin Nash's perspective on the fall of WCW imo is the most accurate. Spoiler: The cooperate management after the AOL Time Warner merger had no interest in having a wrestling company in their portfolio.

"99 Heyman in his treanch coat" LOL😂😂

Jim Cornette and Paul Heyman are polar opposites. Cornette was about the old school style good guy vs bad guy while Heyman was about the antiestablishment/hardcore style anti hero guy vs neutral guy. Both were business minded in their own right despite failing financially.

The problem is the AoL time warner exec's had already decided they did not want wrestling anymore. And raided all the funding to other departments. Which legally they could

I like this what if question, I would have liked to have seen how it would have played out. I can only assume that despite for how talented Paul is it would have unfortunately failed. Too many issues for Paul to deal with. The money situation, bloated roster with a lot of the top stars earning a fortune and have creative control, they would have been seen by the company as assets at that time so if for example Paul didn’t want to use a Kevin Nash or a Hulk Hogan you can bet for the money they are earning and the contract they have with creative control they will be on tv. Also the biggest storyline in WCW was the nWo invasion, would a second storyline with the ECW invasion have worked? Would there have been enough people who would have given a crap?

Heyman would have done a better job than Russo; that's for sure.

Nothing would have been different. WCW was going down quick.

You can hear the immense respect Jim has for Paul in this. This is a fantastic what if. But I think Jim nailed it on the head with his explanation.

1. Wcw wouldn't bother buying ECW(they probably could've had AWA too). 2. Ecw was mostly Heyman giving a middle finger to WCW after his firing/lawsuit settlement. 3. Going to wcw wouldve killed his relationship to wwf. 4. The aol time warner merger still likely wouldve happened. 5. Probably wouldve had some version of the new breed anyway. 6. Heyman likely wouldnt be able or allowed to negotiate contracts.

Sure, you can fantasy book a great WCW. But what you gonna do when you want Hogan to drop a match and he points at his creative control clause? Or Hall. Or Nash. Or Goldberg. Or Sting. No one could have gotten all these people to play nice and do what is best for business. That's one of the things that did in WCW.

WCW Also Had Konnan in '99, as Well ... Who Brought Rey & Psicosis/Nicho to Paul/ECW

Tbs didn't want wrestling on their station no more that's why they made it difficult for Eric Bisshoff to buy

The underlying problem with WCW in '99 is that there weren't a lot of up and coming stars to build alongside any incoming ECW talent for Heyman to work with, so in the short term, Heyman would still have been dealing with the Nash's, Hall's, Hogan's, Bret Hart's, Ric Flair's, Macho Man's, Luger's, Sting's, etc that had been largely smashed over for the last 2.5-3 years. Goldberg, Booker T, DDP, Chris Benoit, Jeff Jarrett and maybe a few others would comprise that list, so I am not entirely sure Heyman replacing Russo in the hypothetical, solves WCW's problems. Sure, it solves the problems Vince Russo would go on to create, but that is very different than saying that simply bringing in Heyman in '99 would have course-corrected WCW long term, because there were a lot of underlying issues in WCW.

Eric Bishoff said himself the executives at Turner network took power from Ted Turner and didn't want wrestling. They cut his budget and doubled the expectation. That killed WCW.

It's an interesting what-if, Don Calls suggested some kind of WCW/ECW merger as an idea on his and Storm's podcast before as well. And I'm surprised by how positive Cornette was about Heyman lol.

Can you imagine Meng (Haku) in a hardcore match against a glutton for punishment like Sabu? There would be nothing left of Sabu but a pair of shiny baggy pants with some red goo.

Here's a few things you gotta do BEFORE you hire Heyman in this alternate universe: 1) Put Eric Biscoff in charge as the counterpart to Vince McMahon and ensure that he is running things. You had an established chairman with WWF, make Biscoff that but the antithesis of McMahon and establish that early, Biscoff makes the final ruling. No inmates running the joint here 2) No creative control in ANYONE'S contract and if they no show due to not agreeing with said proposal or because their egos are hurt. They're fined 85% of their paycheck 3) Let the younger talent that is establishing or already established themselves get over as well as the legends. Not every fan wants to see Hulk Hogan win the WCW championship every other night So with all those established points between 1994 to around 1998, if, at that point, WCW buys out Paul Heyman's business and hires him, I think, in this alternate reality, yes, WCW has a fighting chance against WWF and may even win the Monday Night War That said, if WCW did everything the same except hire Paul and not fuckhead, they'd still go out of business, but with better storylines, purely cause of AOL Timewarner

There would have never been a WCW Nitro and ECW Thunder. Turner wouldn't allow that product on their network. Do people not remember Sabu's brief run in the late 90s-early 2000s? Sandman...excuse me, Hak?

I wasn’t a heyman fan but I’ll admit he was a maestro on the mic

Considering Russo was just a small reason wcw failed, I dont think heyman instead of russo would've made much of a difference in the long run. Turner's standards and practices plus creative controlled contracts, he wouldn't have been able to do things that made ecw popular.

My headcanon is Jim and Vince actually get along very well in private and they’re working us

It's interesting that WWE was paying Paul under the table at that time. I wonder if they could have even talked to Paul about it.

Once Ted was out of power after the merger WCW was dead. Budget cuts or not... they did not want wrestling on their channels. Ted was the only person that wanted wrestling on TV.

This never would’ve happened: TNT already had ridiculous restrictions on nearly every aspect of WCW. Kevin Nash said they couldn’t even have a booking meeting without a standards & practice representative sitting in with them. So no way would they A. Buy a promotion as violent as ECW or B. Allow its booker free reign over their TV. We need to remember that TNT executives wanted WCW to fail so they could get wrestling off the network for good.

Hogan killed it with his creative control.

I'm thinking if this scenario plays out. Bischoffs purchase goes through, they get a cable deal but the brand is in better shape.

Raw and nitro was two different types of wrestling

Main Event Starrcade 1999 Tag Team Match where winning team gets a No Holds Barred match against each other. Paul Heyman and Eric Bischoff vs. Jim Cornette and Vince Russo.

I definitely think the booking of WCW would've been far better if Heyman was there but there's no way that Heyman could've outright saved WCW. WCW's issues went way beyond bad booking.

ECW could have regained Bam Bam Bigelow and Terry Funk, beat the extreme back into Mike Awesome, assimilated Raven and The Flock, maybe brought in Vampiro…there were some WCW guys that ECW could have taken to make a believable invasion.

These "What If"s make me want to see a series similar to Marvel's "What If", but about wrestling history.

actually really cool insight how heyman would have handled it beyong just "hurr ecw invasion"

I don't think Time Warner would have allowed the Dudleyz to put folks through tables.

If this is before March of 99 he would have kept Jericho as well , Paul would have a stacked roster

Biggest problem at the end of WCW was the number of massive guaranteed contracts and the amount of wrestlers that had “creative control” in their contracts.

it would be hard for any writer with those "creative control" contracts